Commentary on Isaiah
Latin source: Jerome's commentary on Isaiah, in eighteen books with a prologue (written at Bethlehem about 408–410 for Eustochium), from Vallarsi's text as printed in J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 24 (Paris, 1845), cols. 17–678, verified against the page images and collated with Vallarsi's edition (Venice, 1767). Each lemma gives Isaiah in Jerome's own version from the Hebrew and then, after "LXX:", in his Latin of the Septuagint; all Scripture is translated as Jerome quotes it, from his own Latin. Psalms keep the Latin (LXX) numbering, with the Hebrew number in square brackets where it differs. The Scripture references are the editors', not Jerome's, and are given corrected where Migne misprinted them. Italics follow Migne's: the lemmata and other Scripture, and the words Jerome glosses or discusses. Hebrew and Greek are kept as printed, with the Origenian signs (÷ ※ ⁚) of the Septuagint lemmata; Vallarsi's glosses in the text stand in square brackets; the editors' variant notes are not translated. This English translation is released into the public domain.
Prologue
Having at last, after a long time, completed the twenty books of explanations on the twelve Prophets, and the Commentaries on Daniel, you compel me, Eustochium, virgin of Christ, to pass on to Isaiah, and to render to you what I promised your holy mother Paula while she was living. I remember, indeed, that I promised it also to your brother Pammachius, a most learned man; and though you are his equal in affection, you surpass him by being present. And so I pay to you, and through you to him, what I owe, obeying the commands of Christ, who says: Search the Scriptures (John 5:39); and, Seek, and you shall find (Matt 7:7). Let me not hear, along with the Jews: You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God (Matt 22:29). For if, according to the apostle Paul (1 Cor 1:24), Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, and he who does not know the Scriptures does not know the power of God and his wisdom, then ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. Therefore, supported by the help of your prayers, you who meditate day and night on the law of God and are a temple of the Holy Spirit, I will imitate the householder who brings forth from his treasure things new and old, and the bride who says in the Song of Songs: New and old, my kinsman, I have kept for you (Song 7:13); and I will so expound Isaiah as to show him to be not only a Prophet but an evangelist and an Apostle. For he himself says of himself and of the other evangelists: How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good tidings, who preach peace (Isa 52:7). And God speaks to him as to an Apostle: Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people? And he answered: Here am I, send me (Isa 6:8).
And let no one think that I wish to comprehend the subject of this volume in a brief discourse, since the present Scripture contains all the mysteries of the Lord, and proclaims Emmanuel both born of a Virgin and the doer of illustrious works and signs, dead and buried, and rising again from the lower world, and the Savior of all the nations. What shall I say of physics, ethics and logic? Whatever belongs to the holy Scriptures, whatever the human tongue can utter and the understanding of mortals receive, is contained in this volume. Of its mysteries he who wrote it himself testifies: And the vision of all shall be to you as the words of a sealed book, which, when they give it to one who knows letters, they shall say: Read this. And he shall answer: I cannot, for it is sealed. And the book shall be given to one who does not know letters, and it shall be said to him, Read, and he shall answer, I do not know letters (Isa 29:11-12). Whether, then, you give this book to the People of the nations, who do not know letters, it will answer: I cannot read, because I have not learned the letters of the Scriptures; or whether you give it to the Scribes and Pharisees, who boast that they know the letters of the Law, they will answer: We cannot read, because the book is sealed. Why then is it sealed to them? Because they did not receive him whom the Father sealed (John 6:27), who has the key of David: Who opens, and no one shuts; who shuts, and no one opens (Rev 3:7).
Nor indeed, as Montanus dreams along with his mad women, did the Prophets speak in ecstasy, so as not to know what they were saying, and, while they instructed others, themselves to be ignorant of what they said. Of such the Apostle says: Understanding neither what they say, nor the things about which they affirm (1 Tim 1:7). But, according to Solomon, who speaks in Proverbs: The wise man understands what he brings forth from his mouth, and on his lips he will carry knowledge (Prov 16:23), they too knew what they were saying. For if the Prophets were wise, which we cannot deny; and Moses, instructed in all wisdom, spoke to the Lord, and the Lord answered him; and of Daniel it is said to the prince of Tyre: Are you wiser than Daniel (Ezek 28:3)? and David was wise, who gloried in the Psalm: The uncertain and hidden things of your wisdom you have made manifest to me (Ps 50 [51]:8): how did the wise Prophets, like brute animals, not know what they were saying? We read also in another place of the Apostle: The spirits of the Prophets are subject to the Prophets (1 Cor 14:32), so that they have it in their own power when to be silent and when to speak. And if this seems weak to anyone, let him hear this from the same Apostle: Let two or three Prophets speak, and let the others judge; but if something is revealed to another who is sitting, let the first be silent (ibid., 29). By what reasoning can they keep silence, if it is in the power of the spirit that speaks through the Prophets either to be silent or to speak? If, then, they understood what they said, all things are full of wisdom and reason. Nor was it air struck by a voice that reached their ears; but God spoke in the mind of the Prophets, according to what another Prophet says: The angel who spoke in me (Zech 1:9); and: Crying in our hearts, Abba, Father (Gal 4:6); and: I will hear what the Lord God speaks in me (Ps 84 [85]:9).
Hence, after the truth of the history, all things are to be taken spiritually: and so Judea and Jerusalem, Babylon and Philistia, and Moab and Damascus, Egypt and the desert of the sea, Edom and Arabia, and the valley of Vision, and finally Tyre, and the Vision of the four-footed beasts, are to be understood in such a way that we seek everything in the sense, and that in all of these Paul the apostle, as a wise architect, may lay the foundation, which is no other than Christ Jesus. And it is a task of great labor and toil to wish to expound the whole book of Isaiah, over which the talents of our elders have sweated: of the Greeks, I mean. Among the Latins, however, there is a great silence, apart from the martyr Victorinus of holy memory, who could say with the Apostle: Though I be unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge (2 Cor 11:6). For Origen wrote on this Prophet, according to the four editions, as far as the Vision of the four-footed beasts in the desert, thirty volumes, of which the twenty-sixth book is not found. There are also current under his name two other books on the Vision of the τετραπόδων, addressed to Grata, which are thought to be pseudepigraphal; and twenty-five Homilies, and Σημειώσεις, which we may call Excerpts. Eusebius Pamphili also published fifteen volumes according to the historical explanation; and Didymus, whose friendship we lately enjoyed, published eighteen tomes from the place where it is written: Comfort, comfort my people, you priests; speak to the heart of Jerusalem (Isa 40:1), to the end of the volume. Apollinaris, however, after his manner, so expounds everything that he runs through it all, and with certain points and intervals, or rather abridgments, flies past the stretches of a great road, so that we think we are reading not so much Commentaries as indexes of chapters. From this you perceive how difficult it is that our Latins, whose ears are fastidious, who are nauseated at understanding the holy Scriptures and are delighted only by the applause of eloquence, should pardon me if I speak at some length, since Isaiah, by the number of his verses, is either equal to the twelve Prophets or greater. And wherever, passing over the Seventy, I have disputed from the Hebrew, the reason is that most things are either the same as or similar to the others, and, having set forth the twofold edition, I did not wish to lengthen the books of explanation, which even in a single explanation exceed the measure of brevity. But now let us carry out what we have set before us.
Book One
1:1
The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. For Judah, in which two tribes are signified, the Seventy and Theodotion put Judea, which denotes the whole land of the twelve tribes. And for what we have translated from the Hebrew, concerning Judah and Jerusalem, they translated, against Judea and Jerusalem. Symmachus, more plainly as is his custom, has about Judah and Jerusalem, so that he would have the title point to neither prosperous nor adverse things, but to those things which the prophetic word foretold about Judah and Jerusalem in either direction. Isaiah therefore speaks principally of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, apart from the ten which were in Samaria and were called Ephraim and Israel, and which Pul king of the Assyrians had already begun to lay waste under Uzziah king of Judah and Jerusalem. Then, in the fifty-second year of his reign, while Pekah son of Remaliah was reigning in Samaria, Tiglath-pileser king of the Assyrians came and took Ijon and Abel, the house of Maacah, and Janoah and Kedesh and Hazor and Gilead and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them away to the Assyrians (2 Kgs 15:29). From this it is shown that all these things are told, when the overthrow of Samaria was near, as a warning to the two tribes.
Now Uzziah is the same man who is also Azariah, with a double name. And from the kings who are set in the title we learn that Isaiah, Hosea, Joel and Amos prophesied at one and the same time; but the beginning of the word of the Lord was in Hosea the son of Beeri. Amos, however, the father of Isaiah, is not, as most suppose, the third of the twelve Prophets, but another; and among the Hebrews they are written with different letters. This one has as its first and last letters ALEPH and SADE (אמוץ); that one AIN and SAMECH (עמוס); and this one, according to some, means strength or robust; that one a hard people or heavy: about which we have spoken more fully in Amos. And not only this prophet, but others too, though they have in their title: The vision which Isaiah saw, or Obadiah, do not go on to say what they saw (for example: I saw the Lord Sabaoth sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and two Seraphim round about him), but they relate the things that were said, that is: Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth (Isa 6:1, 2). And: Thus says the Lord God to Edom. I have heard a hearing from the Lord, and he has sent an envoy to the nations (Obad 1:1). For the Prophets were formerly called seers, who could say: Our eyes are ever toward the Lord (Ps 24 [25]:15). And: To you have I lifted up my eyes, who dwell in heaven (Ps 122 [123]:1). Hence also the Apostles are commanded by the Savior: Lift up your eyes and see the fields, for they are already white for the harvest (John 4:35). These eyes of the heart the bride too had in the Song of Songs, to whom the bridegroom says: You have wounded my heart, my sister, my bride, with one of your eyes (Song 4:9). And in the Gospel we read: The lamp of your body is your eye (Matt 6:22). In the old Instrument also it is said that the people saw the voice of God (Exod 20:18). So let the ravings of Montanus fall silent, who thinks that the Prophets spoke of things to come in ecstasy and in madness of heart; for they could not see what they did not know. I know that some interpret Judea and Jerusalem of heavenly things, and Isaiah as in the person of the Lord Savior: that he foretells the captivity of that province in our land, and afterwards its return and ascent to the holy mountain in the last days. We judge these things contrary to the faith of Christians and reject them altogether; and, following the truth of the history, we interpret spiritually in such a way that whatever they dream about the heavenly Jerusalem we refer to the Church of Christ, and to those who either go out from it because of their sins or return through repentance to their former seat; of which we think this too is said in this same Prophet: Be enlightened, be enlightened, O Jerusalem, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you; and, In you the Lord will appear, and his glory will be shown upon you; and kings will walk in your light, and the nations in your brightness; when all her sons come from afar, and her daughters will be carried on the shoulders; and the camels of Midian and Ephah will cover her, bringing gold and frankincense; and the flocks of Kedar will be gathered in Jerusalem, and the rams of Nebaioth will hasten, and they will be acceptable victims upon the altar of the Lord (Isa 60:1ff.)
And as for its being set in the title that he prophesied under Uzziah and Jotham and Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, this is not to be understood confusedly, as in other Prophets, so that we do not know what was said specifically under which king; rather, up to the end of the volume it is recorded in writing what was revealed to him by the Lord separately under Uzziah, and what under Jotham, and what under Ahaz, and what under Hezekiah. Let us know also that Hezekiah began to reign in Jerusalem in the twelfth year of Romulus, who founded in Italy the city of his own name, so that it may clearly appear how much more ancient our histories are than those of all other nations. Now Isaiah means saved of the Lord; Judah, confession; Jerusalem, vision of peace; Uzziah, strength of the Lord; Jotham, perfection of the Lord; Ahaz, holding or robust; Hezekiah, dominion of the Lord. He, then, who is saved under the Lord's protection, and is the son of Amoz, that is, of the strong and robust, spiritually beholds the vision of confession while he bewails his old sins, and of peace when after repentance he passes over to the light and rests in eternal peace; and all his times pass under the strength of the Lord and under his perfection and might. And when he has done all things, he will say that word of the Gospel: We are unprofitable servants; for we have done what we ought to do (Luke 17:10).
1:2
Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord has spoken. Above, it was shown by the title who the prophet was, whose son, what he saw against Judah and Jerusalem, or concerning Judah and Jerusalem, and at what time; now he summons heaven and earth to listen. By heaven he signifies the supernal and angelic powers; by earth the race of mortals, μετωνυμικῶς, naming the things contained by the things that contain them. Or else because the Lord, through Moses, had called heaven and earth as witnesses when he gave his law to the people of Israel, and had said: Attend, O heaven, and I will speak; let the earth hear the words of my mouth (Deut 32:1), after the transgression of the people he calls the same again to witness, so that all the elements may know that God has been justly roused to anger in vengeance for his commandments. For heaven the Hebrew SAMAIM (שמים) sounds heavens, in the plural number, especially since he said hear, that is, SEMU (שמעו), which is expressed in the plural number, not the singular. But some hold that it is indeed said heavens in the plural but understood in the singular, as we call single cities Thebes and Athens. And it is an idiom of the Hebrew script that all words ending in the syllable IM (ים) are masculine and plural, like Cherubim and Seraphim; and those in OTH (ות), feminine and plural, like Sabaoth. And this too is to be noted, that to the heavens it is said, hear, to the earth, give ear; for the things that are on high have greater understanding, while the lower ones are wrapped in earthly senses. Hence the Savior too says in the Gospel: He who has ears to hear, he says, let him hear (Matt 11:15). If anyone, then, is heaven and has his citizenship in the heavenly places, let him hear mystically the things that are said; if anyone is earthly, let him follow the simple history. This also is to be observed, that he did not say: Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, what the Lord has spoken to you, but what he has spoken to me, so that what I have heard in the spirit I may report to you, who do not deserve to hear him speaking himself. Some [the Origenists] think that heaven and earth are summoned to listen as if they were living beings, according to what is said of the earth in another place: Who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble (Ps 103 [104]:32); whereas this belongs to the power of God, not to an understanding in the earth.
Sons have I begotten and exalted, but they have despised me. For which Symmachus and Theodotion translated thus: Sons have I nourished, and exalted (Exod 4:22). From this point the Prophet relates what the Lord has spoken: that the people of Israel, whom he had created as servants under the common law, he changed into sons, and said: Israel is my firstborn son. Then too the Lord in the Gospel promises the Apostles that if they do his will he will no longer call them servants but friends (John 15:15). But if Israel should grow proud on hearing that he is the firstborn, let him understand that he is called firstborn for this reason, that second sons are signified from among the nations. For he is not called only-begotten, which would exclude other brothers, but firstborn, to show that others too will follow; and yet, according to the mysteries of the Scriptures, it is not the firstborn who receive the inheritance but the second. Cain was the firstborn, but the gifts of Abel pleased God. Ishmael was the firstborn, but Isaac received the inheritance. Esau was the firstborn, but Jacob the supplanter snatched away the father's blessing. Reuben was the firstborn, but the blessing of the seed of Christ is nevertheless transferred to Judah. Thus they were first according to the order of calling, and were called the head; we, the second, who were called the tail, have been turned into the head and are called sons of God. For as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God (John 1:12). Nor have we received the spirit of bondage in fear, but the spirit of adoption, in which we cry: Abba, Father (Rom 8:15); for perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). And it is better to read according to the Hebrew, Sons have I nourished, rather than begotten, lest it seem contrary to that saying which we read in the Epistle of John: Everyone who is born of God does not sin (1 John 3:9). For if these were born of God, how could they sin, since everyone who is born of God cannot sin?
1:3
The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib. Israel has not known, my people has not understood. For which the Seventy alone translated: But Israel has not known me, and the people has not understood me; so that, according to the others and the Hebrew, Israel did not know his owner, and the people did not understand the crib of its master. And the sense is clear: I adopted them as sons, and made them a peculiar people, my portion and the cord of my inheritance, and called them firstborn; but they did not do even what brute animals do, so as to be won over by kindnesses and to recognize their shepherd and nourisher. Nor did he compare them to dogs, which are the most sagacious kind of animal and guard their masters' houses for a little food, but to the ox and the ass, of duller sense: of which the one, drawing carts, turns the hardest clods of earth with the ploughshare, the other carries burdens and lightens men's labor in walking; whence also they are called beasts of burden (jumenta), because they help (juvent) men. This passage can also be understood of God the Father, but it is referred rather to the Son, because the people of Israel did not know him nor receive him: whose day Abraham saw and rejoiced, and on whose coming the prayers of all the Prophets hung. He too says to Jerusalem in the Gospel: How often would I have gathered your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not (Matt 23:37)! Do we ask where we have read of the ox and the ass together? In Deuteronomy it is written: You shall not plough with a calf and an ass together (Deut 22:10). And in this same Isaiah: Blessed is he who sows upon every water, where the ox and the ass tread (Isa 32:20). Ebion ploughs with the ox and the ass together, worthy, for the lowliness of his understanding, of the poverty of his name; for he so receives the Gospel as not to abandon the ceremonies of the Jewish superstitions, which went before in shadow and image. But blessed is he who sows in the words of the Scriptures, of the old as well as of the new Instrument, and treads the waters of the letter that kills, so as to reap the fruit of the life-giving spirit. The ox, according to the anagogy, is referred to Israel, which bore the yoke of the Law and is a clean animal. The ass, weighed down with the burden of sins, is taken as the people of the nations, to whom the Lord said: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you (Matt 11:28). So while the Pharisees and Scribes did not believe, who had the key and the knowledge of the Law and were truly called Israel, that is, a mind seeing God, part of the people of the Jews believed, so that on one day three thousand believed together, and on another day five thousand. And while the wise of the world did not receive the cross of Christ, the unlearned crowd of the nations took it up. Hence the Apostle too said: See your calling, brethren: that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many powerful, not many noble; but the foolish things of the world God has chosen, to confound the wise; and the weak things of the world God has chosen, to confound the strong (1 Cor 1:26, 27). But these things are forced; the former interpretation is the true one.
1:4
Woe to the sinful nation, to a people heavy with iniquity, to a wicked seed, to criminal sons: they have forsaken the Lord, they have blasphemed the Holy One of Israel, they are estranged backward. What I have put last, they are estranged backward, the Seventy Translators do not have; and for they have blasphemed there is written in them, they have provoked to anger; and for a wicked seed, a most evil seed. Following which the others translated the Hebrew MEREIM (מרעים) as of the most evil, so that the fault would lie not so much in the seed (lest the nature of good and evil be thought to be different) as in the malice of those who forsook the Lord by their own will.
At the beginning of the volume is the title, recording the person, the subject and the time; in the second verse he makes the hearers attentive; in the third he relates what the Lord has spoken; in the fourth, as if in an outburst, he rebukes the sinful nation and the people full of, or heavy with, iniquity. Not that the nation is one thing and the people another, as some think; but Israel itself is called both nation and people, and criminal or wicked sons: so that those who were first by kindness called sons of the Lord were afterwards, by their own fault, called sons of iniquity; or, as the rest have rendered with one voice, corrupting sons, that is, υἱοὶ διαφθείροντες, who by their own fault destroyed the good of their nature. And what is joined to it, They have blasphemed the Holy One of Israel, is said properly of the Jews crying out: We have no king but Caesar (John 19:15); and: Is not this the carpenter's son? (Matt 13:55); and, He has a demon, and is a Samaritan (John 8:48). Because, then, they forsook Christ and blasphemed the Holy One of Israel, therefore they are estranged backward, so that those who were called the portion and the sons of God were afterwards spoken of thus: Strange sons have lied to me (Ps 17 [18]:46). The Savior commanded that, having taken hold of the plough, we should not look behind our back (Luke 9:62), lest we imitate Lot's wife. Hence the Apostle too, stretching forward to what lies before, forgets what lies behind (Phil 3:13). And as for what he said according to the Seventy, to a people full of sins (Zech 5:7), it shows that there was no kind of sin that was not in the people of Israel. But if we read, as it is in the Hebrew, To a people heavy with iniquity, let us remember that testimony, that iniquity sits upon a talent of lead, and that it is said in the person of the sinner in Psalm 37 (38): My iniquities have gone up over my head; like a heavy burden they have weighed heavy upon me (Ps 37 [38]:5). We pass quickly over what is plain, so as to dwell on the more obscure things and on those that need explanation.
1:5
Upon what shall I strike you, you who add transgression still further? By this testimony we learn that the Lord strikes those who offend for this purpose, that he may correct them once struck, and that it may be not so much a punishment as an amendment. And the sense is: I do not find what medicine I can apply to your wounds; all your limbs are full of wounds; I find no part of the body that has not already been struck. Or certainly in this way: I find no blows with which to break your hardness. For the greater the torments are, the more impiety and iniquity grow, or, as Theodotion translated, turning aside, so that you withdraw and turn aside from the Lord. Like that saying of Jeremiah: In vain have I struck your sons; you have not received discipline (Jer 2:30). Hence he speaks in anger through Hosea: I will not punish your daughters when they commit fornication, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery (Hos 4:14). And through Ezekiel: My jealousy shall depart from you, and I will be angry with you no more (Ezek 16:42). Of whom we read in the Psalms too: There is no firmness in their stroke; and they are not in the labors of men, nor shall they be scourged with men (Ps 72 [73]:4, 5).
Every head is sick, and every heart grieving. Gladness of mind sometimes eases pain of body; but if sickness of mind is added to the illness of the body, the infirmity is doubled. Among the senses themselves, too, and all the members of the body, the head holds the chief place, for in it are sight and smell, hearing and taste. When, therefore, the head is in pain, all the members are weak. And by a metaphor he teaches that from the princes down to the lowest common people, from the teachers down to the unlearned crowd, there is soundness in none, but all agree in impiety with equal ardor.
From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no soundness in it: wound and bruise and swelling sore. He keeps up the figure he has begun: from the feet up to the crown, that is, from the lowest to the highest, from the last to the first, they are pierced through in the whole body. Wound, he says, and bruise and swelling sore: for bodies are either livid from beatings, or swollen with blows, or gaping with wounds. We ask to what time these things should be fitted. After the Babylonian captivity, under Zerubbabel and Ezra and Nehemiah, Israel returned to Judea and recovered its ancient state. Under various princes and kings also the temple was built more magnificently, so much so that they even earned the friendship of foreign nations, of the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians and the Romans. Therefore this which he says, There is no soundness in it, he refers to the last captivity, when, after Titus and Vespasian and the final overthrow of Jerusalem under Aelius Hadrian, there has been no remedy down to the present time, and what is written is fulfilled: All have turned aside, together they have become unprofitable; there is none who does good, there is not even one (Rom 3:12). And as for what is added, there is no soundness in it, understand it either of the people, or of the body, or of the head.
1:6
It is not bound up, nor treated with medicine, nor soothed with oil. For which the Seventy translated: It is not possible to apply a plaster, nor oil, nor bandages. To this day the wound and bruise and swelling sore of the people of Israel is not bound up with bandages, nor treated with medicine. Which Aquila translated μότωσιν, namely the lint which is laid on wounds to dry up the matter and draw out the pus. Nor soothed with oil: that their hardness might be softened by tears of repentance. For the bandages, with which the wounds of Israel are by no means bound up, the Seventy translated plaster. Israel therefore lies pierced through and cut to pieces, because he killed the physician who had come to heal the house of Israel. Hence in Jeremiah too the Angels speak τροπικῶς in the person of Babylon: We have cared for Babylon, and she is not healed (Jer 51:9), that is, the city of confusion and of vices. And in the Gospel (Luke 10) we read of the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho who was wounded by robbers and cared for by the Samaritan, and of the softness of oil poured into his wounds after the sharpness of wine. From the place, then, where he had said above, Upon what shall I strike you, and every head is sick, down to what is added here, It is not treated with medicine, nor soothed with oil, the likeness of the figure is kept, and the description of incurable wounds expresses the eternal captivity of the Jews.
1:7
Your land is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your country in your sight, and it shall be made desolate as in a devastation by enemies. These things were partly fulfilled under the Babylonians, when the temple was burned and Jerusalem overthrown, when the Samaritans took possession of the region of the ten tribes, and the land of promise was reduced to such desolation that it was laid waste by lions. But what was to come under the Roman captivity is described more fully and more perfectly: when the Roman army laid waste all Judea, and the cities were burned, and strangers at the present time devour their country, and the desolation of the Jews will continue until the end of the world. We can also take these things tropologically of sinners who have fallen from their former holiness, after they have been handed over to the opposing powers: that all their goods come to desolation, and God does not remember their former righteousness, and all things are set on fire by the fire of the devil, and they become the food of beasts, of which it is written in another place too: Do not deliver to the beasts the soul that confesses to you (Ps 73 [74]:19).
1:8
The daughter of Zion shall be left like a shelter in a vineyard, and like a hut in a cucumber field. That all Israel is called a vineyard the same Prophet testifies in what follows, saying: For the vineyard of the Lord Sabaoth is the house of Israel, and the man of Judah his young and beloved planting (below, Isa 5:7); and in the Psalm: You have brought a vine out of Egypt; you have cast out the nations and planted it (Ps 79 [80]:9). As long as this vineyard bore the richest fruit, it had God as its keeper, of whom it is written: He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep (Ps 120 [121]:4). But after all who passed along the way had stripped it of its grapes, and the boar out of the wood had laid it waste, the Lord left his temple and, rising up in anger, said: Arise, let us go hence; and: Your house shall be left to you desolate (Matt 23:38). And through Jeremiah: I have left my house, I have abandoned my inheritance. My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest; it has given forth its voice against me, therefore I have hated it (Jer 12:7). The likeness of the devastation of the Temple and of Jerusalem is taken from farmers, who, as long as the vineyard is full of grapes, place keepers in shelters. In a cucumber field too, which the Seventy call a watch-place for fruit, little huts are made to keep off the heat and the rays of the sun; and from there they drive away either men or the small beasts that are wont to lie in wait for the growing crops. But when such produce has been carried away, the withered shelters of branches and the huts remain, the keeper departing, because he no longer has anything to guard. So too almighty God has forsaken the Temple and made the city desolate: which there is no need to prove with words, especially to us, who see Zion desolate and Jerusalem overthrown and the Temple razed to the ground. And in calling her the daughter of Zion he shows the affection of a most merciful parent. Nor is it surprising that Zion should be called a daughter, since even Babylon is very often named daughter. For we are all by nature sons of God, but by our own fault we become strangers. According to the anagogy, our soul can be called the vineyard of God and the orchard of fruit: if the mind, that is, νοῦς, presides over it, it has God as the keeper of the mind; but if vices, like certain beasts, have plundered us, we are left by God our keeper, and all our things will be reduced to desolation.
Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have been as Sodom, and we would have been like Gomorrah. Paul the apostle discusses this passage more fully to the Romans, writing: I say then, has God cast away his people? God forbid: for I too am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew (Rom 11:1, 2). And a little later: So then at this present time also a remnant has been saved according to the election of grace (ibid., 5). From this it is shown that the foregoing threats which the prophetic word uttered against Jerusalem and Judah are not to be referred to the time of the Babylonian captivity, but to the last, the Roman one, when in the Apostles the remnant of the people of the Jews was saved, and on one day three thousand believed and on another five thousand, and the Gospel was sown in the whole world. For the Lord of hosts, which we, following Aquila, have rendered in Latin, in the Hebrew is read the Lord Sabaoth, which the Seventy Translators translate in two ways according to the character of the passages, either the Lord of powers or the Lord almighty. And it must be asked whether it is said of the Father or of the Son. Nor is there any doubt that what is read in Psalm 23 (24), Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, O everlasting gates, and the king of glory shall come in. Who is this king of glory? The Lord Sabaoth (Ps 23 [24]:7, 8), that is, the Lord of powers, he is the king of glory, is referred to Christ, who after the triumph of his passion ascended victorious to the heavens. And in another place it is said of the Lord that he is the king of glory: For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor 2:8). Therefore not only according to the Apocalypse of John and the apostle Paul, but in the Old Testament too, Christ is called the Lord Sabaoth, that is, the Almighty. For if all things of the Father are the Son's, and, as he himself says in the Gospel, All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth (Matt 28:18), and, All mine are yours, and I am glorified in them, why should not the name of the Almighty also be referred to Christ, so that as he is God of God and Lord of Lord, so he is the Almighty Son of the Almighty?
1:10
Hear the word of the Lord, you princes of Sodom; give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. Once the remnant of the people of Israel had been saved through the Apostles, the prophetic word turns to the Scribes and Pharisees and the people shouting: Crucify, crucify such a man (John 19:6), and calls them princes of Sodom and people of Gomorrah, according to what we read in what follows: They have proclaimed and displayed their iniquity like Sodom. Woe to their soul, for they have devised a most evil counsel against themselves, saying: Let us bind the righteous man, for he is unprofitable to us (below, Isa 3). Therefore they are called princes of Sodom and people of Gomorrah for this reason, that they devised a most evil counsel and bound the righteous one, and said, We have no king but Caesar (John 19:15). And again: We know that God spoke to Moses; but as for this man, we do not know who he is (John 9:29). And at the same time, glorying in the Gospel, We are the seed of Abraham, and have never been slaves to anyone (John 8:33), they hear from the Lord Savior: If you were sons of Abraham, you would surely do the works of Abraham; and again: You are born of the devil as your father, and you wish to do the works of your father (ibid., 39, 44). Ezekiel too says something of the kind to Jerusalem: Your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite (Ezek 16:45). The Hebrews say that Isaiah was put to death for two reasons: because he called them princes of Sodom and people of Gomorrah, and because, though the Lord said to Moses, You cannot see my face (Exod 33:20), he dared to say, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up (below, Isa 6:1); not considering that the Seraphim covered the face and feet of God, or their own, for in the Hebrew it reads ambiguously, and that Isaiah writes that he saw only his middle parts. Man, then, cannot see the face of God. But the Angels even of the least in the Church always see the face of God (Matt 18:10). And, Now we see in a mirror and in a riddle, but then face to face (1 Cor 13:12): when we have advanced from men to Angels and can say with the Apostle: But we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor 3:18). And yet no creature sees the face of God according to the proper character of his nature; and he is then discerned by the mind when he is believed to be invisible.
1:11
To what purpose is the multitude of your victims to me, says the Lord? I am full. Burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fatlings, and the blood of calves and of lambs and of goats I did not want. For what is I did not want, the Seventy translated I do not want, the present tense for the past. But according to the Hebrew, God shows that he never wanted the victims of the Jews; which we read also in Psalm 49 (50): I will not take calves from your house, nor goats from your flocks: for all the wild beasts of the forests are mine, the cattle on the mountains and the oxen. I know all the birds of the sky, and the beauty of the field is with me. If I am hungry, I will not tell you: for the world is mine and the fullness thereof. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or shall I drink the blood of goats (Ps 49 [50]ff.)? And having rejected the ceremonies of the old Law, he passes on to the purity of the Gospel, and shows what he desires in their place: Offer to God the sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High. And call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you shall honor me. So the whole content of this chapter, down to the place where he says, Judge for the orphan, defend the widow, and come, and let us reason together, rejects the sacrifices of victims and teaches that obedience to the Gospel is above sacrifice. And what he added, I am full, is to be taken in this sense: I lack nothing; The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof (Ps 23 [24]:1). Hence we too have all received of his fullness. This can also be taken of those who, while not doing God's commandments, believe that they can buy God off with gifts and offerings; or of those who offer to the altar and to the poor what they have taken by robbery and greed.
1:12
For who has required these things at your hands? Let the Ebionites hear, who think that the Law, abolished after the passion of Christ, is to be kept. Let the companions of the Ebionites hear, who decree that these things are to be observed only by the Jews and by those of the stock of the Israelite race. Victims, then, and the immolation of sacrifices were not required by God as a principal thing, but so that they should not be made to idols, and so that from carnal victims, as through a type and image, we might pass over to spiritual sacrifices. And by saying that he did not require victims, he shows that the Law is spiritual, and that all that the Jews do carnally is fulfilled by us spiritually.
1:13
You shall no more tread my court. Observe that after the Babylonian devastation the Temple was built again by Zerubbabel, and that sacrifices were offered in the Temple through a long series of years (Ezra 5). Therefore he points to the last destruction of the Temple under Vespasian and Titus, which is to last until the consummation of the world.
1:14
Your new moons, and sabbaths, and other festivals I will not bear: your assemblies are wicked. Every gathering that does not offer spiritual sacrifices, nor hears what is sung in Psalm 50 (51), A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise, is abominable to God. And therefore he adds and says: Your calends and your solemnities, so as to call them not his own festivals but those of the people who abuse them wickedly. And as for what the Seventy translated, fasting and idleness, we can say that that fast is accepted by God which has no idleness from good works. My soul hates. Ἀνθρωποπάθως: not that God has a soul, but he speaks in terms of our feelings.
1:15
You have become a surfeit to me: I will by no means forgive your sins. For which Aquila translated, I have labored in bearing; Symmachus ἐκοπώθην ἱλασκόμενος, that is, I have grown weary of showing mercy; to show that he will by no means have mercy any longer, because it is one thing to kill the servants sent to them, another to kill the Son. This sense we read also in the prophet Hosea: Your destruction, O Israel; only in me is your help (Hos 13:9). Which is understood thus: You would perish, Israel, because you are saved not by your own merit but only by my help.
Your hands are full of blood. He makes plain the reason why God turns his eyes away from them and does not hear their multiplied prayer: because they have shed the blood of the righteous one, and the wicked husbandmen have killed the heir sent to them. Hence the Savior too says to them: Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers (Matt 23:31). For they killed the Prophets sent to them; you, slay the Son of the householder. This testimony is to be used also against those who, while their hands are full of blood from their daily deeds, join day to night in prayer.
1:16
Wash yourselves, be clean. In place of the former victims and burnt offerings and fat of fatlings and blood of bulls and goats, and in place of incense and new moons, sabbath, feast day and fasts, calends and other solemnities, the religion of the Gospel pleases me: that you be baptized in my blood through the washing of regeneration, which alone can forgive sins. For unless one is born again of water and the spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven (John 3:5). The Lord himself too, ascending to the Father: Go, he says, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19).
Take away the evil of your thoughts from my eyes. As John the Baptist said: Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear therefore fruits worthy of repentance (Matt 3:7; Luke 3:7): so that he who has obtained the baptism of Christ should take away evil from his heart, and cease to act perversely, and afterwards learn to do good, according to what is commanded elsewhere: Turn away from evil, and do good (Ps 36 [37]:27).
Learn to do well. Virtue, then, must be learned, and the good of nature alone does not suffice for righteousness unless one is trained by fitting disciplines (1 Pet 2:11). Jesus the son of Sirach too says something of the kind: You have desired wisdom: keep the commandments, and the Lord will give it to you. And in what follows the same Isaiah recalls: Everyone who has not learned righteousness on earth will not do truth (Isa 26:10 LXX). Righteousness, then, must be learned, and the thresholds of the masters of wisdom must be worn down.
1:18
Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge for the orphan, defend the widow: and come, and reprove me, says the Lord. The commandments of the Gospel succeed to the victims of the Jews, and therefore provision is made for orphans and widows, so that, secure about the protection of their wives and children, martyrs may go forth to battle. And when, he says, you have done these things, reprove me if I do not render the rewards I have promised. And when he says, Seek judgment, he shows that it is not for all to judge rightly, but for those who are prudent. So too Solomon, in a vision in a dream, asked this of the Lord, that having received wisdom he might judge the people justly.
If your sins are like scarlet, they shall be made white as snow; and if they are red like crimson, they shall be like white wool. An excellent order: for it is not enough to have said, wash yourselves, unless he adds, be clean, so that after the washing of water they may have purity of heart. For blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8). And when they have purity of heart, they must take away evil from their minds, not in the sight of men but in the sight of God, from whom nothing can be hidden. And what he adds, Cease to act perversely, echoes that word of the Gospel: Behold, you have been made whole; sin no more, lest something worse befall you (John 5:14). Withdrawing, then, from vices, let him learn good, and seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, support the orphan and the widow; and if he does this, then the sins which before were blood-red like scarlet will be forgiven, and the works of gore and blood will be changed by the garment of the Lord, which is made from the fleece of the lamb, whom in the Apocalypse (ch. 5) those follow who shine with the whiteness of virginity.
1:19-20
If you are willing and will hear, you shall eat the good things of the land; if you are not willing and will not hear (or, as it has in the Hebrew) and provoke me to anger, the sword shall devour you. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. He preserves free will, so that in either direction there may be punishment or reward, not from God's prejudgment but from the merits of each. And I think those are called the good things of the land of which we read in the psalm: I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Ps 26 [27]:13); and: Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land (Matt 5:3). Or certainly, because he was speaking to the Jews, who could not yet grasp spiritual things, he promises them the good things of the present age, so that, enticed at least by present things, they might do what was commanded. And because they would not hear, but on the contrary provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger, therefore the sword devoured them, that is, the Roman army destroyed them. And all these things, he says, will come to pass, For the mouth of the Lord has spoken; whose sentence, while men's sins remain, cannot be changed.
1:21
How has the faithful city become a harlot, full of judgment! Righteousness rested in it, but now murderers. The Hebrew word JALIN (ילין), for which the Seventy translated slept, means both rested and will rest, that is, it signifies both the past and the future tense. Hence Aquila and Theodotion too speak as of the future. And he marvels in the prophetic spirit that the city which was once faithful, or the dwelling of the faithful, has suddenly become a harlot. This can indeed be understood also of the times of Isaiah, but it is referred more fully to the passion of Christ, when all turned aside and together became unprofitable (Ps 13 [14]:3). And although Zion is not found in the Hebrew, the Seventy nevertheless added it to make the sense plainer. Now Zion is the mountain on which the city of Jerusalem was founded; after it was taken by David it was called the city of David. Nor do I doubt that there were holy men in it when it had the tabernacle of God, and afterwards when the Temple was built; when Nathan and Gad prophesied, and Asaph and Jeduthun and Heman and the sons of Korah were set over the choirs (which are described more fully in the book of Days), so that religion might pass little by little from the sacrifices of victims to the praises of the Lord (1 Chr 25). The city of the faithful, then, which before was full of judgment, and righteousness rested in it, is now full of murderers, who killed the prophets and the Lord Savior himself. And the fornication of Jerusalem, how she spread her legs to everyone who passed by, Ezekiel sets out under the name of Oholibah, which means my tabernacle in her; which is now said in other words, righteousness rested in it. For righteousness, in the Hebrew is written SEDEC (צדק), which sounds rather like the righteous one than righteousness, so that we may understand that the Lord formerly dwelt in it, of whom it is said elsewhere: But what has the righteous one done? The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord, his seat is in heaven (Ps 10 [11]:5). All of which we can refer, according to the anagogy, to the soul of a man once holy, in which the righteousness of God formerly dwelt, if afterwards he has sinned, and in place of God as guest murderous demons have dwelt in it.
1:22
Your silver is turned into dross. He speaks to the city of Zion, in which righteousness formerly rested: that its silver, namely the teaching of the Scriptures, of which we read in the Psalms, The words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried by fire, proved in the earth, refined sevenfold (Ps 11 [12]:7), is turned into dross, which in Hebrew is called SIGIM (סיגים): namely the rust of metals, or the refuse and filth that are smelted out by fire; so that, since he had named silver, he keeps the metaphor. This can also be said: that the righteous and holy men who formerly lived in the city were afterwards turned into the filth of sins.
Your innkeepers mix wine with water. For which Symmachus translated, Your wine is mixed with water. And the sense is: the Law of God, pure and sincere, and (so to speak) resting on unmixed truth (Matt 15), has been violated by the traditions of the Pharisees; as the Lord teaches more fully in the Gospel, that they had abandoned the law of God and followed the commandments of men. And every teacher who turns the severity of the Scriptures, by which he could correct his hearers, into something pleasing, and speaks so as not to correct but to delight his hearers, violates the wine of the holy Scriptures and corrupts it with his own sense. The heretics too corrupt the truth of the Gospel by perverse understanding, and are the worst of innkeepers, making water out of wine, whereas on the contrary our Lord turned water into wine (John 2), and such wine that the steward of the feast marveled at it: such as the queen of Sheba too marveled at in Solomon's banquet, praising with her own voice his cupbearers and the servers of the wine (2 Chr 9). And Ecclesiastes too describes in mystical language the services of the wine and of his banquet (Eccl 2). Hence for wine Aquila translated συμπόσιον, that is, banquet, which among the Greeks is named ἀπὸ τοῦ πότου, from drinking, but among us more rightly from living together (convictus).
1:23
Your princes are disobedient, companions of thieves. For disobedient, Aquila translated withdrawing, Symmachus turning aside. And by princes he means the Scribes and Pharisees, who, withdrawing from the Lord, or rather leaving the path of truth, walked on a perverse road and were companions of Judas, the betrayer and thief. This indeed we too must beware of, lest, by accepting gifts from men of the world who gather riches through robberies and the tears of the wretched, we be called not so much thieves ourselves as companions of thieves, and it be said to us: You saw a thief and ran with him, and you put your portion with adulterers (Ps 49 [50]:18).
All love gifts, they follow after rewards. In the catalogue of vices are numbered also those who love gifts. He did not say, those who accept them, for this often happens out of necessity; but those who count none their friends except those from whom they have received presents, and look not at the faces of their friends but at their hands, and judge those holy whose purses they drain; of whom Ecclesiastes too speaks: He who loves money will not be filled with money (Eccl 5:9). Such men follow after rewards, so that they praise those from whom they have received something, or certainly give nothing to anyone except one from whom they think they will receive in return. For rewards, Symmachus translated requitals, or vengeances, so that these too are at fault who render evil for evil, and tooth for tooth, eye for eye (Exod 21), and do not imitate that word of David: If I have repaid those who rendered evil to me (Ps 7:5); and of Jeremiah, who says of the righteous man: He will give his cheek to the one who strikes him, he will be filled with reproaches (Lam 3:30); so that he may fulfill the man of the Gospel, to whom it is said: Whoever strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other also (Matt 5:39).
1:24
Therefore says the Lord of hosts, the mighty one of Israel. For the mighty one of Israel, which all translated alike, the Seventy alone, intending I know not what, put: Woe, you mighty of Israel; which we can expound thus, by saying that the princes too and the strong are rebuked, of whom it is written: The mighty shall mightily suffer torments (Wis 6:7); and: To whom more is given, more will be required of him (Luke 12:48). And we may turn this testimony to use, whenever there is need, against princes of the Church who destroy their own dignity by their deeds.
Ah, I will be comforted over my foes, and I will avenge myself on my enemies. Again in this place too the Seventy put what is not found in the Hebrew: For my fury has not ceased against my enemies. And he rebukes the Scribes and Pharisees, of whom he also speaks in the Gospel: Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees (Matt 23:13ff.). And in another place: An adulterous and perverse generation seeks a sign, and no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet (Matt 12:39). And the most merciful father laments the offending princes, and calls them his foes and names them his enemies, because they perish, since they will not repent, since they did not receive him when he came. For drawing near to Jerusalem he wept and said: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the Prophets and stone those who are sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children, as a hen gathers her chicks, and you would not (Matt 23:37)! The consolation of God, then, is over his foes and enemies: that those who did not feel his benefits may be corrected by punishments.
1:25
And I will turn my hand upon you, and I will smelt away your dross to purity, and I will take away all your tin. For dross, which is Symmachus's translation, Aquila translated στέμφυλα, that is, grape-husks, Theodotion γιγαρτῶδες, that is, grape-stone; the Seventy alone, the unbelieving or the disobedient, rendering the sense rather than the words. For since he had said above, Your silver is turned into dross, he now keeps the metaphor: that he will turn upon her, that is, stretch out his hand to punish and to purge, and smelt away all the filth and vices of sins, so that, the tin being separated, pure silver may remain; which cannot be done without fire: by which he signifies that they are to suffer torments. We read also in Malachi of the Lord: He himself will go forth like the fire of a smelter, and like fullers' herb, and he will sit smelting and cleansing as silver and gold, and he will cleanse the sons of Levi (Mal 3:2, 3); so that, after they have been cleansed, it may be said of them: And they shall be offering victims to the Lord in righteousness. Ezekiel too says that the whole house of Israel is mixed with bronze and iron and lead and tin, and is afterwards to be purged, so that, after it has been purged, it may know that he is the Lord (Ezek 22:18). And in the Gospel too the same sense is shown under another metaphor: Whose winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will purge his threshing floor, and will cleanse the wheat, and will gather the grain into barns; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire (Matt 3:12).
1:26
And I will restore your judges as they were before, and your counselors as of old. In the faithful city of Zion, which afterwards became a harlot, murderers dwelt in place of the righteous one, or of righteousness. Therefore the Lord turns his hand, to smelt her to purity and take away all her tin, and to restore her judges as they were at the beginning, and her counselors as of old. The former judges were Moses and Joshua son of Nun and the others, from whom a book of holy Scripture also took its name; and afterwards David and other righteous kings. He will therefore restore the likeness of the Judges: either, after the Babylonian captivity, as the Jews would have it, Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah and the other princes who were set over the people up to Hyrcanus, whom Herod succeeded in the kingdom; or certainly, more truly and more rightly, the Apostles and those who believed through the Apostles and were appointed princes of the Churches; as we said at the beginning of this vision, that both the threat and the promise belong to the time of the Lord's passion, and to the faith which after his passion founded the Church.
After this you shall be called the city of the righteous one, a faithful city. These things the prophetic word plainly embraces concerning the Church, which is to believe in the Lord, from the Jews as well as from the nations. And the city of the righteous one, that is, of the Lord Savior, or she herself will be called righteous, of whom it was said: A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden (Matt 5:14). And by calling her faithful, or, according to the Seventy, metropolis, he shows that she is to be so named by those who are to believe in the Lord.
1:27, 29
Zion shall be redeemed in judgment, and they shall bring her back into righteousness, and he shall crush the wicked and the sinners together; and those who have forsaken the Lord shall be consumed; for they shall be confounded by the idols to which they sacrificed, and you shall blush over the gardens which you had chosen. Not all will be redeemed, nor will all be saved, but the remnant, of whom it was spoken above too. And they will be brought back in righteousness when the wicked and the sinners have been crushed and those who forsook the Lord consumed. And when these have been saved, those who formerly sacrificed to idols will be confounded, and will blush in the gardens which they had chosen. And he signifies places of luxury, groves and woods.
1:30
For they shall be like a terebinth whose leaves fall off, and like a garden, or a paradise, without water. To this day the Jews, reading the holy Scriptures, are a terebinth, or an oak, as Symmachus translated. And according to the Gospel (Matt 21) they are the fig tree that withered, on which the Lord sought fruit and, not finding it, cursed it with everlasting barrenness. But even the very leaves and fruits of words have now ceased to be among them; the watered garden too, that is, the knowledge of the Scriptures, or the paradise of various trees, which is without spiritual grace, does not bear even herbs, of which the Apostle speaks: Let him who is weak eat herbs (Rom 14:2); and with its roots dried up, all its greenness has turned to dryness and squalor.
1:31
And your strength shall be like the ash of tow. For ash, Symmachus translated ἀποτίναγμα: when tow is combed, and whatever filth it has is thrown away. So all the strength and pride of the sinners and wicked of Israel, who forsook the Lord and were therefore consumed, and sacrificed to idols, and will blush in the gardens which they chose, will be reduced to the refuse of tow, which is devoured by a light fire. For there follows: And its work, that is, the work of your strength, or of the idolatry in which you had gone astray, a tiny spark will consume.
And both shall be set on fire together, and there shall be none to quench it. Both, namely, the knowledge of the Jews and all the works they do; or else both the idol and Jerusalem, in which the idol was; and when the Lord sets it on fire, no one will be able to quench it. All of which we can also take of contrary doctrines: that both masters and disciples perish alike, and all their work is food for fire.
2:1
The word which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In the former Vision too, which we have already expounded, where the Seventy translated, which he saw against Judea and against Jerusalem, there is written in the Hebrew AL JUDA UJERUSALEM (על יהודה וירושלם); and in this one, which is the second, the Hebrew likewise has it. And I wonder why the Seventy Translators said in that one, against Judea and Jerusalem, and in this one about Judea and about Jerusalem; unless perhaps, because there the nation is called sinful, a people full of sins, a most evil seed, sons of iniquity, and princes of Sodom and people of Gomorrah, and a harlot city, and other things of that kind, they translated the sense rather than the word; and here, because prosperous things are promised at once, In the last days the mountain of the Lord shall be manifest, and the house of God on the summit of the mountains, they understood the prophecy not as against Judea and Jerusalem but as about Judea and Jerusalem: although in that one too we read prosperous things after the threat, I will restore your judges as they were before, and your counselors as of old: after this you shall be called the city of the righteous one, a faithful city; and in this one, after the prosperous things, there is a fierce threat: Behold, the ruler, the Lord of hosts, will take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the mighty and the strong, all the strength of bread and all the strength of water, and the rest. Therefore, according to the Hebrew, both in that vision and in this word which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw, it is to be understood as about Judah and Jerusalem: not against Judea and Jerusalem, nor for Judah and Jerusalem, as Symmachus translated, but absolutely, about Judah and Jerusalem, in which both glad and sad things can be contained. And this must be considered, that there he sees a vision, here the Word, which was in the beginning with God; and that in that one, threatening the Jews, he comes to the salvation of the nations; in this one, beginning from the salvation of the nations, and Israel being punished, he gathers believers from both callings into the Church of Christ.
2:2
And in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of the mountains. We read of the last days in Genesis too: that Jacob, calling his sons and saying, Come, that I may announce to you what is to come in the last days (Gen 49:1), afterwards said to Judah, from whose seed Christ was born: A prince shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up; and he shall be the expectation of the nations. In these last days will be the last hour, of which John the Apostle speaks: My little children, it is the last hour (1 John 2:18); in which the stone cut from the mountain without hands grew into a great mountain and filled the whole earth; by which the prince of Tyre is said in Ezekiel to have been wounded (Ezek 28:16 LXX). This mountain is in the house of the Lord, for which the Prophet sighs, saying: One thing have I asked of the Lord, this will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life (Ps 26 [27]:4); and of which Paul writes to Timothy: But if I am delayed, that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim 3:15). This house is built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, who themselves too are mountains, as imitators of Christ (Eph 2). Of this house, Jerusalem, the Psalmist cries out, saying: Those who trust in the Lord are like mount Zion; he who dwells in Jerusalem shall not be moved for ever. Mountains are round about it, and the Lord is round about his people (Ps 124 [125]:1). Hence too Christ founds the Church upon one of the mountains, and says to him: You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matt 16:18). Something similar the holy man says to his soul, which longs and impatiently desires to see the house of God: Why are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me (Ps 41 [42]:6)? And again: These things I remembered, and I poured out my soul within me: for I shall pass over into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God, with the voice of exultation and confession, the sound of those who feast (ibid., 5). The Seventy translated, The manifest mountain of the Lord, and the house of God upon the heads of the mountains. This testimony the prophet Micah too has set down in the same words: which I have expounded in its place (Mic 1).
And it shall be lifted up above the hills. He who was shown and prepared on the heads of the mountains, he shall be lifted up above the hills. Of these mountains and hills the bride too speaks in the Song of Songs: The voice of my kinsman: behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills; my kinsman is like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of Bethel (Song 2:8, 9).
And all nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall go. For all nations shall serve him to whom it was said: Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession (Ps 2:8); so that they may serve him, according to Zephaniah, under one yoke; of whom the same prophet testifies: From the borders of the rivers of Ethiopia they shall bring you victims (Zeph 3:10). And in Psalm 71 (72) we read: Before him the Ethiopians shall fall down (Ps 71 [72]:9). For at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, on earth and under the earth (Phil 2).
2:3
And they shall say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us his ways, and we shall walk in his paths. The nations and peoples, by no means content with their own salvation, will exhort one another and say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob. We have said above what the prepared mountain of the Lord is, and what the house of the Lord on the top of the mountains. And the house of the Lord is called the house of the God of Jacob, so that we may receive the old Instrument, and not, after the manner of Manichaeus, seek another house outside the house of the God of Jacob. And when we are in the house of the God of Jacob, then he will teach us his ways, by which we may go to him, and we shall walk in his paths, which the others too have given. So too Jesus, going up into the mountain, taught his disciples the eight beatitudes and the other things which the word of the Gospel contains (Luke 6). First, then, the ways of the Lord must be learned, and afterwards we must walk in his paths.
For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. All the nations and many peoples will exhort one another for this reason and say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and the rest that follows: For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem: by no means from Sinai, and from the desert, and from mount Horeb, but from mount Zion, on which Jerusalem was built, and from Jerusalem, in which is the Temple and the worship of God. We read that the Lord often taught in the Temple (Matt 13), and that it was not fitting for a Prophet to die outside Jerusalem; and above, the word and the law were named together. The princes are commanded to hear the word, the people to give ear to the law. For whoever has first kept the law afterwards comes to the speech of God. And indeed the Church, founded first in Jerusalem, sowed the Churches of the whole world. And this must be said, that whoever is in the watchtower and in the vision of peace, in him both the law and the word of the Lord are established. And he finely did not say: the word and the law of the Lord will be and remain in Zion and in Jerusalem, but will go forth, to signify that all nations are to be watered by the teaching of God from that fountain.
And he shall judge the nations, and rebuke many peoples. Therefore there is to be judgment among the nations too; nor are all unbelievers to be condemned by the same sentence, but according to the diversity of their merits they will suffer diverse things. And after he has judged the nations, then he will rebuke many peoples, or, as the Seventy translated, a great people. And note the order: the nations will be judged, because they are going to believe: For he who does not believe is already judged (John 3:18). But the great people, which is understood as Israel, will by no means be judged, but rebuked, because it did not receive the Son of God sent to it.
2:4
And they shall forge their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles. Every zeal for war will be turned to peace, and instead of discord there will be concord in the whole world. Swords will be changed into ploughshares and spears into sickles, so that, putting aside the fury of war, they may serve agriculture and cut the richest harvests with sickles. This indeed can also be understood spiritually, when all the hardness of our heart is broken by the ploughshare of Christ, and the thorns of vices are rooted out, so that the seed of the word of God may grow into crops; and afterwards we shall eat the labors of our hands, when coming they shall come with exultation, carrying their sheaves (Ps 125 [126]:6).
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they be trained any more for battle. Let us turn over the ancient histories, and we shall find that up to the twenty-eighth year of Caesar Augustus (in whose forty-first year Christ was born in Judea) there was discord in the whole world, and the several nations burned with the zeal of fighting against their neighbors, so that they slew and were slain. But when the Lord Savior arose, when under Quirinius, governor of Syria, the first enrollment of the world was made, and by the peace of the Roman empire the way was prepared for the teaching of the Gospel, then all wars ceased, and they were by no means trained for battle throughout the towns and villages, but for the cultivation of the fields, the zeal for war against the barbarian nations being delegated only to the soldiers and the Roman legions: when that harmony of the Angels was fulfilled, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will (Luke 2:14); and in his days righteousness arose and abundance of peace.
2:5-6
House of Jacob, come, and let us walk in the light of the Lord: for you have cast off your people, the house of Jacob. After the calling of the nations and the showing of the mountain of the Lord on the top of the mountains, the Prophet turns to his own people, that is, the people of the Jews, which is called the house of Jacob, and exhorts them that, being in the darkness of error, they should receive the light of truth and walk in the light of the Lord. And in a manner he sings that word of David: Come to him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be confounded (Ps 33 [34]:6). For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his works be reproved. But you, house of Jacob, house of my people, come with me, and let us walk together in the light of the Lord: let us receive the Gospel of Christ, let us be enlightened by him who says: I am the light of the world (John 8:12). And when he had said this to the people of the Jews, seeing their impenitent heart and their soul most hardened by unbelief, he makes an apostrophe to the Lord, and says: I exhort them to come to you and enjoy your light with me for this reason, that, in requital for their sins, you have forsaken your people, once the house of Jacob.
2:7
Because they have been filled of old, and have had soothsayers, like the Philistines. For Philistines the Seventy always translated foreigners, a common noun for a proper one: this is today the nation of the Palestinians, as it were of the Philisthinians, because the Hebrew tongue does not have the letter P, but uses the Greek PHI in its place. Hence what is said in the Psalms, with the enumeration of the other nations, The foreigners have been made subject to me (Ps 59 [60]:10), signifies not all foreign nations but properly the Palestinians. And he gives the reasons why God has cast off his people, the house of Jacob: because they have been filled, he says, as they were at the beginning, with soothsayers and omens and all the filth of idolatry. We know from the writing of Moses that the omens and auguries which the nations had whom the Lord drove out before Israel, the Canaanites, Amorites and Hittites, were not to be heeded. The commentators of the Church expound this passage in one way and another. For some will have it to signify that, the people of the Jews having been cast off, the Roman army entered the land once of promise, and, the Jews being expelled, foreigners dwelt in Judea, settlers of diverse nations from the whole world, brought in by Titus and Vespasian and Hadrian and the other emperors. Others, however, think that this does not pertain to Roman times but to earlier ones, before they were laid waste by the Babylonians, because they are related to have lived under impious kings and were forsaken by the Lord.
And they have clung to strange boys. For which the Seventy translated: And many foreign sons were born to them. Symmachus: And with strange sons they applauded. For which there is written in the Hebrew JESPHICU (ישפיקו), which the Hebrews interpret ἐσφηνώθησαν, and we have rendered they have clung, so that the shamefulness of the vices in the Jewish nation may be shown. And the Greeks and the Romans once suffered from this vice to such a degree that even the most famous philosophers of Greece kept male concubines publicly; and Hadrian, learned in the arts of philosophy, consecrated Antinous as a god and established a temple, victims and priests for him, and from him a city and a region of Egypt received its name. Among the harlots too, in the arches of the theaters, boys stood exposed to public lust, until under the emperor Constantine, when the Gospel of Christ shone forth, both the unbelief of all the nations and this shamefulness were done away. The Seventy, however, signify that their wives were violated, in bearing strange sons to the Jews. Symmachus, by a certain circumlocution and in the decent word of applauding, has shown the same shamefulness with boys.
2:8
And the land is filled with silver and gold, and there is no end of its treasures. Among the other vices of the land of the house of Jacob is numbered also the abundance of gold and silver. Among omens and soothsayers, horses and chariots, which God forbade the kings of Israel to multiply, among idols, which are the works of men's hands, avarice is condemned. Hence the Lord commanded in the Gospel that we should not lay up for ourselves treasures on earth, and that we should not make treasures from which a thief can snatch, adding at the last: You cannot serve God and mammon (Matt 6:24). And finely has the Prophet expressed in other words that phrase of the little verse, The greedy man is ever in want, saying: And there is no end of its treasures; not that treasures have no end, but that the mind of those who possess them is not filled. And by these words both nations, the Jews and the Romans, are branded for avarice. Which the histories too, Greek as well as Latin, relate: that nothing is more avaricious than the nation of the Jews and of the Romans. Hence too the law on extortion was established, and daily we see that word of the Apostle fulfilled: You who preach that one must not steal, do you steal? (Rom 2:21). A more thievish judge hears and condemns a thief, pronouncing in another's case a sentence upon himself.
And its land is filled with horses, and its chariots are innumerable. For what is possessed against God's command is not worthy of number. Hence it is said in the Psalms: The horse is deceptive for safety (Ps 32 [33]:17). And in Exodus: The horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea (Exod 15:1). And in another psalm: Some in chariots and some in horses, but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God (Ps 19 [20]:8). Both can be understood: that the people of the Jews multiplied horses and chariots for themselves against God's precept, and that the land of Judea was filled with the horses and chariots of the conquerors.
2:9
And its land is filled with idols; they have worshiped the work of their own hands, what their fingers have made; and man has bowed himself down, and the man has been humbled. Where once was the Temple and the worship of God, there the statue of Hadrian and the idol of Jupiter were set up. Which many interpret of that testimony which we read in the Gospel: But when you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Mark 13:14). And they bowed down to the work of their hands, and man, a rational animal, worshiped bronze and stone. But there are those who interpret these things of the Jews, that before they were taken by the Babylonians they did all these things, and were therefore abandoned by God. Hence at the end of the chapter too is set: Do not, therefore, forgive them. We can say this too according to the anagogy, that every doctrine contrary to the truth worships the works of its own hands and sets up idols in its land, and man bows down and the man is humbled and cannot raise himself up, because he is bound by the devil, unless the Lord raises him up, after the example of that woman whom Satan had bound for eighteen years, so that she could by no means look at the sky but always at the earth (Luke 13).
Do not, therefore, forgive them. For which the Seventy translated: And I will not forgive them. If God is speaking, it is to be understood thus: Because they have done such things, I will not spare them, nor will I forgive such innumerable sins. If the Prophet, it is to be taken thus: Do not, therefore, forgive those who have committed such crimes. And if we understand it of the Romans, the interpretation is truer: who, overthrowing the temple of God, did not worship him who gave them the victory, but the idols of their own hands. But if of the Jews, it is a fierce sentence of the Prophet, so that he seems to pray against his own people, to whom he had said above: House of Jacob, come, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.
2:10
Enter into the rock, hide yourself in the dug-out ground from the face of the fear of the Lord and from the glory of his majesty. I indeed exhorted the people, saying, House of Jacob, come, and let us walk in the light of the Lord. But because the Lord has cast off the people of Jacob, and has cast them off because they either did or suffered the things which we have expounded above, therefore I foretell to you the evils that are to come, and I exhort you to enter the rocks and hide in the caves from the face of the Babylonian or the Roman army, when all things will be laid waste, according to what we read in the Gospel: Then they will say to the mountains, Fall upon us; and to the rocks, Hide us (Luke 23:30). But according to the anagogy we are commanded, before the face of the Lord's majesty, to take on the strength of the rock, of which it is said: The rock is a refuge for the hares (Ps 103 [104]:18); and, On a rock you have exalted me (Ps 26 [27]:6). Moses too is set in a cleft of the rock to see the back parts of God (Exod 33). And, The people drank from the spiritual rock that followed them (1 Cor 10:4). And he hides himself in the rock who enters his chamber and, having shut the door, adores the Father, so that, though placed in an earthly body, he does not feel the passing storm of the world.
2:11
The lofty eyes of man are humbled, and the height of men shall be bowed down; but the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. When the enemies have come, and the Babylonian or Roman sword has laid waste the whole province, and the columns of warriors have besieged Jerusalem, then neither riches nor nobility of birth nor the power of offices will be able to defend anyone; but there will be one captivity for all, and God alone will be exalted, whose wrath no one will be able to avoid. Many understand these things of the day of judgment: that every creature, in comparison with the divine glory, will be humbled and bowed down, and will feel itself to be nothing.
2:12
For the day of the Lord of hosts is upon everyone proud and lofty, and upon everyone arrogant. These things too are joined to the former. In that day, he says, in which the Lord alone will be exalted, that is, in the day of the Lord's vengeance, all the lofty and the arrogant and the high will be subjected to captivity and the sword. Μεταφορικῶς the word is about the great and the princes: that the more they have been proud, the more they are brought low. For the Lord resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (1 Pet 5). Those who understand it of the day of judgment think that the devil is called proud and lofty and high and arrogant; who in his pride says: I will set my seat above the stars of heaven; I will sit on the lofty mountain, above all the lofty mountains, toward the North; I will ascend above the clouds; I will be like the Most High (Isa 14:13, 14): when out of the mouth of infants and sucklings praise will be perfected, that the enemy and the avenger may be destroyed (Ps 8:3).
2:13
And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan. In Psalm 28 (29) too it is sung: The voice of the Lord breaking the cedars; the Lord will break the cedars of Lebanon, and will crush them like the calf of Lebanon (Ps 28 [29]:5, 6). And in Psalm 36 (37): I saw the wicked man exalted and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found (Ps 36 [37]:35, 36). The oaks of Bashan too, which Aquila translated δρύας, Symmachus and Theodotion βαλάνους, we know to be acorn-bearing trees, which, even if they bear fruit, are food for swine, not for men. Bashan is a region of Arabia, over which Og ruled, who was called king of Bashan; and it means αἰσχύνη, that is, ignominy; and if we chose to translate it confusion, that would rather signify σύγχυσιν, that is, Babylon, than Bashan. Upon all, then, who are lifted up in pride, and do works of ignominy, and wallow in the mire of lusts, the vengeance of the Lord will rise. But if the prudent reader should ask why cedar wood was set in the temple of the Lord, and why in Psalm 103 (104), according to the Hebrew truth, we read, The trees of the Lord shall be satisfied, and the cedars of Lebanon which you have planted; there the sparrows will build their nests (Ps 103 [104]:16, 17); and why among the other trees the cedars too are summoned to the praises of the Lord; and why at the coming of the Savior, when all the trees and the wood of the field will clap with their branches, it is written: I will set in the waterless land the cedar and the box, and the cypress and the pine (Isa 41:19 LXX); and now the prophetic word threatens the day of the Lord upon the cedars of Lebanon? it must be said that out of the same kind of men some are raised up to the kingdom, others dragged down to punishment; and the cedars of Lebanon, which will be broken because of their pride, are chosen when they are of good odor and have said with the Apostle: We are the good odor of Christ (2 Cor 2:15).
2:14
And upon all the lofty mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up. Just as in a good sense, according to the variety of virtues, men are called mountains and hills, so among the impious, according to the diversity of vices, and above all of pride, some are mountains, others hills, upon which the day of the Lord will be; of whom it is written in Ezekiel: Thus says Adonai the Lord to the mountains and the hills: Behold, I will bring a sword upon you, and your high places shall be scattered, and your altars shall be broken, and the rest (Ezek 6:3).
2:15
And upon every lofty tower, and upon every fortified wall. Those who refer these things to the times of Vespasian and Hadrian say that what is written was fulfilled bodily: that no lofty tower, no strongest wall, no multitude of ships and industry of trade could prevail against the might of the Roman army; but that the inhabitants of Judea came into such terror that they, with their wives and children, buried themselves in pits of the earth with the gold and silver which they thought would be a help to them, and sought out the deepest caves. For if the belly is the god of the gluttonous and the luxurious, why should not gold and silver be called the god of the avaricious? Others refer these things to Babylonian times. So I will run through each point according to the laws of tropology. A tower is built either for the defense of a city or for a lookout, so that the enemy may be seen coming from afar. Each of us, then, ought to build a tower, having first reckoned the cost, lest, according to the parable of the Gospel (Luke 14), he be laughed at when he cannot finish the work. This tower, well built, stands firm. But if, raised up in pride, it has no firm foundations, it will fall upon him by whom it was built, like that one in Siloam which killed eighteen men. Hence the Lord too says to his hearers: And unless you repent, you will likewise perish (Luke 13:3). In what follows too we shall read that the Lord built a tower in his vineyard, and made a winepress, and put a wall around it, but that all these things were destroyed and laid waste because they swelled with the vain brow of pride (Isa 5). Lofty walls too are built so that the city may not be quickly destroyed, so that it may not lie open to enemies: for the Churches are surrounded with the wisest men and fortified with every reason, lest any perverse doctrine prevail against the truth. Of such walls God speaks to Jerusalem: Behold, upon my hands I have painted your walls, and they are always in my sight (below, Isa 49:16 LXX). But if those who before had attacked the Church, having come to know the truth, pass over to the faith and fight for that which they had before attacked, then this will be fulfilled: You shall quickly be built by those by whom you had been destroyed (ibid., 17). In Leviticus too we read that a house which is in walled cities, if it has not been redeemed within the year, is confirmed to the buyer as a perpetual possession; but if it is in country places and villages which have no walls, it can always be redeemed, and the buyer's price remains unsettled (Lev 25).
2:16
And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all that is beautiful to see. For Tarshish, which all translated alike, the Seventy alone translated sea. The Hebrews think that in their own tongue the sea is properly called THARSIS (תרסים), and that when it is called IAM (ים), it is called so not in the Hebrew tongue but in the Syriac. Jehoshaphat too had ships which he sent to Tarshish (1 Kgs 22:49), but they were broken at Ezion-geber. Solomon too had ships which went to Tarshish (1 Kgs 10:22) and returned after three years and brought the king silver and gold, ivory and apes. But because both kings had sinned, the one given to pleasure and a lover of women of foreign nations, the other joining himself with the king of Samaria, both of which things are referred to the pagans and the heretics, in whom there is nothing but the glitter of eloquence, and a sense built up by diabolical art, and dead speech, which is interpreted in the ivory teeth, and a likeness of human reason, which is perceived in the apes; therefore we read in the Psalms, With a violent wind you will shatter the ships of Tarshish (Ps 47 [48]:8). And of these ships the same Isaiah speaks: Woe to the wings of the ships which are beyond Ethiopia (below, Isa 18:1 LXX). But there are on the contrary good ships too, of which it is said in the same psalms: Those who go down to the sea in ships and do business in many waters, they have seen the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep (Ps 106 [107]:23). For those who are not idle in the waves of this world, but work, and carry the Lord's merchandise, and hasten to come to the harbor of rest, they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep, when they have come to deep knowledge and, searching all things, that is, even the deep things of God, have beheld his wonders. Josephus thinks Tarshish is Tarsus, a city of Cilicia; others think it a region of India, and that by this name too one of the twelve gems is called, the stone which among us is called chrysolite, from the likeness of its color to the sea. But it is better to take Tarshish absolutely as either the sea or the open main. For Jonah, sailing from Joppa, could not reach India, to which one cannot sail by that sea; but simply go out to the open sea and make for whatever islands. And what follows, And upon all that is beautiful to see, or, as the Seventy translated, And upon every sight of the beauty of ships, is to be taken in the same sense: that whatever seems beautiful in words and is built up by human reason will be destroyed by the day of the Lord, if it lifts itself up against the knowledge of God.
2:18
And the loftiness of men shall be bowed down, and the height of men shall be humbled, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day, and the idols shall be utterly broken. Human speech seems to have reason so long as it has not been compared with divine knowledge. But when falsehood draws near to the truth, like stubble to fire, it is quickly devoured and perishes, and all the doctrines of falsehood, which are now called idols because they are feigned and fabricated, will be utterly broken.
2:19
In that day man shall cast away the idols of his silver and the images of his gold, which he had made for himself, to worship moles and bats; and he shall go into the clefts of the rocks and the caverns of the stones from the face of the terror of the Lord and from the glory of his majesty, when he rises to strike the earth. We have often said that silver and gold are taken for speech and sense; and though these were given by God to men so that they might either speak of God or perceive God and praise their creator, they abuse this gift for the fashioning of idols; according to what is written: I gave them silver and gold, but they made Baal of my silver and gold (Hos 2:8). When, then, someone, terrified by the fear of the Lord, has first hidden his idols in the cave of his breast and concealed them in the abysses of the earth, not daring to bring out what he had wickedly fashioned, the second advance is that he cast away what he had first concealed and not suffer it to be in him. For moles, as we have translated, the Seventy have vain things, Aquila ὀρυκτὰ, Symmachus unfruitful things; Theodotion put the Hebrew word itself, PHARPHAROTH (פרפרות). It is an animal without eyes, which always digs the earth and throws out the soil, and, eating the roots underneath, is harmful to crops; the Greeks call it ἀσπάλακα. The bat, a bird of the night, which received from them the fitting name νυκτερὶς because it flits about in the night, is a small animal, like a mouse, sounding not so much with voice and song as with squeaking; and though it is seen to fly, it shuns the light and cannot bear to see the sun. To such animals are compared the idols, which, blind and dark, are worshiped by the blind, and all doctrines contrary to the truth. And when these have been abandoned in the day of the Lord, those who have cast them away will enter the clefts of the rocks and the caverns of the stones, so as to dwell not in the dust of the earth and in vile mud but in firm reason, and find for themselves the various openings of the virtues, through which they may be able to come to the truth. These things, according to the anagogy, I have touched on as I could in brief words; the Hebrews refer them to Babylonian times and the overthrow of Jerusalem, when the Lord rose to strike the land of the Jews.
2:20
Cease, therefore, from the man whose breath is in his nostrils, for he himself is reckoned lofty. The Seventy omitted this, and in the Greek copies it was added by Origen under asterisks from the edition of Aquila; in the Hebrew it reads thus: HEDALU LACHEM MEN AADAM ASER NASAMA BAAPHPHO CHI BAMA NESAB HU. Where we have said, he himself is reckoned lofty, Aquila translated, in what is this one reckoned. The Hebrew word BAMA (במה) means either ὕψωμα, that is, a high place, which we read both in the books of Kingdoms and in Ezekiel, or else in what, and it is written with the same letters, BETH, MEM, HE; and according to the character of the passages, if we wish to read in what, we say BAMMA; but if high place or lofty, we read BAMA. The Jews, then, understanding that the prophecy is about Christ, interpreted the ambiguous word in the worse sense, so that they might seem not to praise Christ but to count him as nothing. For what consequence of words is there, and what order of reason and sense, that we should say: Since these things are so, and the day of the Lord is to come, in which the whole state of Judea is to be overthrown and all things broken, I warn and command you to cease from the man who breathes and lives as we men do, because he is to be reckoned as nothing? Would any man so praise someone as to say: Beware of offending him who is altogether nothing? Therefore it must be understood the other way: Since all these things are to come upon you, and are foretold by the prophetic spirit, I warn and command you to cease from him who according to the flesh is indeed a man, and has a soul, and so breathes and draws breath through his nostrils as we men breathe and live, but who according to the divine majesty both is lofty and is reckoned and believed so. Turning it over silently in my mind, I cannot find the reason why the Seventy would not translate into Greek so clear a prophecy about Christ. For as to the others, who did translate it but dragged the ambiguous word to an impious sense, it is no wonder why they translated badly and would not say anything glorious about Christ, in whom they did not believe: being, namely, Jews or half-Jews, that is, Ebionites. And that Christ is lofty or most high, which among the Hebrews is called by another word, ELION (עליון), we read in Psalm 86 (87): Shall not a man say to Zion, and a man was born in her, and the Most High himself founded her (Ps 86 [87]:5)? And in the Gospel: And you, child, shall be called the Prophet of the Most High (Luke 1:76). And not to draw out a long rope (for in the exposition of the holy Scriptures we ought to follow the truth, not contention), in this place BAMA among the Hebrews means not lofty but a high place, that is, loftiness itself and sublimity: as if we were to say of someone, he is not divine but divination, not a stream but a fountain, not a man but humanity itself. Origen interpreted this passage thus: Because it is said in the singular of one man, it can be referred also to the Lord Savior, the Prophet commanding them to cease from him who is reckoned as something great, although at present he appears as a man and to have breath in his nostrils, as other men too breathe.
Book Two
Having finished the first volume on Isaiah, which I dictated in hasty speech as I could, not as I would, seeking out the sense of the Scriptures rather than the words of a composed discourse, I shall now pass on to the second; and whatever strength is in me, and whatever will inclined toward the Lord, I shall offer to him who spoke through the Prophet: I have multiplied visions, and in the hands of the Prophets I have been likened (Hos 12:10). Wherefore I beseech you, virgin of Christ Eustochium, that while we contend in the explanation of the Scriptures, you with Moses may lift up your hands to the Lord, so that we who, going out of Egypt, have crossed the Red Sea may conquer Amalek, which means devouring and licking up; and that we may be able to say with you: Blessed be the Lord my God, who teaches my hands for battle, and my fingers for war (Ps 143 [144]:1).
3:1
For behold, the ruler, the Lord of hosts, will take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the mighty and the strong: all the strength of bread, and all the strength of water. Up to this point they think it is spoken of the judgment. What follows concerns the captivity to come, which some refer to the Babylonians, others to the Romans. But it is better, as we said above, for everything to be referred to the Lord's passion. For after he was slain, all graces and gifts were taken away from the Jews, according to what is written in the Gospel: The Law and the Prophets until John the Baptist (Matt 11:13). And the order is this: Because you would not cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, who has been reckoned exalted, but on the contrary you shed the blood of the righteous one and devised the worst counsel, saying: Let us bind the righteous one, for he is useless to us (Wis 2:12), therefore you shall eat the fruit of your own devices. Among the Jews after the Passion of the Lord nothing is strong, nothing is mighty, but all things are weak and languid. Nor can anyone among them say: I can do all things in him who strengthens me (Phil 4:13), Christ Jesus our Lord. And since according to the Seventy we read the mighty man and the mighty woman, to the mighty man we can fit this: Until we all meet in the perfect man, in the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:13). And further, of the mighty woman: I wish, he says, to present you all as a chaste virgin to Christ (2 Cor 11:2). Now the strength of bread and the strength of water is taken for all food and drink. We read that Moses was on Mount Sinai, and for forty days did not eat bread and did not drink water (Exod 34). That too which is said to Adam: In the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken (Gen 3:19), is to be heard in the same way. So also what is said by the Savior: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes forth through the mouth of God (Matt 4:4). The strength of bread, then, will be taken away from them: he who says, I am the living bread, who came down from heaven (John 6:51). And the strength of water, of which the same Lord spoke: Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will not thirst for ever; but the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water leaping up into eternal life (John 4:13). Of such loaves we read in Proverbs as well: Open your eyes, and be filled with loaves (Prov 20:13). The Jews have bread, but without strength; they have waters, but without vigor. For they read the Scriptures, but do not understand them; they hold the parchments, and have lost Christ, who is written in the parchments (1 Cor 3). For they are fed on milk, like little children, and not on solid food. And because they have lost their strength and are weak, therefore they eat vegetables. But the food of athletes is solid, which both sustains human life and furnishes strength to the living (Rom 14). Of such bread and water, that they are to be taken away from the Jews, another Prophet too bears witness, saying: Behold, the day will come, says the Lord, and I will send a famine upon the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord (Amos 8:11).
3:2
The strong man and the man of war, the judge and the Prophet, and the soothsayer, and the old man. For strong man, which alone is in the Hebrew, the Seventy translated two words together, giant and strong man, meaning the same man to be the giant who is the strong man. Of the strong man we have spoken above. Now a giant in the good sense, that is, of the Lord and Savior, we read in the eighteenth psalm: He has exulted as a giant to run his course; his going forth is from the height of heaven, and his circuit even to its height (Ps 18 [19]:8). But if we read of Nimrod the giant (Gen 10), who was a hunter before the Lord, and of the giants (Gen 6) on whose account the flood came upon the earth, they are to be taken in the contrary sense. The man of war, too, we understand according to the history in this way: that they have been taken captive, and to this day are in servitude, and have not laid aside the yoke of slavery; that they do not even have judges of their own, but are subject to Roman judges, so much so that Roman rulers judge those of their princes who seem to be of standing among the people. But this too must be said: that there is no man of war among them in the Law, having the knowledge of judging, but all things are vain and perishable and full of folly. As for the Prophet, that he has ceased to exist among them no one doubts. We ask, according to the Hebrew, how we are to interpret soothsayer, whom all have translated diviner, except the Seventy, who for this translated conjecturer. And it must be said that future things are often told even through soothsayers, as we read of the diviner Balaam, and of the diviners of the five cities of the Philistines, Gaza and Ashkelon, Gath and Ekron and Ashdod, who give counsel how the ark of the Lord is to be sent back (1 Sam 6). And the sense is: both true things and false will alike be taken away from the Jews. The old man too, whom the Seventy translated elder, he understands to be taken away from the Jews, he who would know that in the holy Scriptures elders are chosen for merit and wisdom, not for age. For old men have not ceased to exist among the Jews; we often see them reach a decrepit old age. And we read in the beginning of Daniel, according to Theodotion, of two elders grown old in evil days (Dan 13). For Moses too is commanded to choose elders whom he knows to be elders (Exod 18). And the apostle Paul writes most fully to Timothy what kind of elder ought to be chosen (1 Tim 5). Hence it is said in Proverbs as well: The glory of old men is gray hair (Prov 20:29). What is this gray hair? Doubtless wisdom, of which it is written: Prudence is the gray hair of men (Wis 4:8). And though we read that from Adam to Abraham men lived nine hundred years and more (Gen 24), no one before was called an elder, that is, an old man, except Abraham, who is shown to have lived far fewer years. Hence John too, after the children and the young men, writes also to the old, saying: I have written to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning (1 John 2:13). And Rehoboam the son of Solomon lost the kingdom for this reason, that he would not listen to the elders (1 Kgs 12).
3:3
The captain of fifty. Συνεκδοχικῶς, the whole from a part. For just as those who command a hundred soldiers are called Centurions, and those who command a thousand Chiliarchs, whom we call Tribunes, from the fact that they command a tribe: so in the army of Israel those who were at the head of fifty soldiers were called captains of fifty. Hence too we call Decurions those who command ten men. Nor is it a wonder if among the Jews every rank of warriors has perished, since they have no power to serve under the sword and to bear arms. But since the number fifty is always referred to penitence, and Christ is the prince of penitence and the head of those who are saved through penitence, let us briefly lay open the mysteries of this number. In Genesis we read, when Abraham speaks to the Lord, that he said first that the city should be saved for fifty righteous, if they were found in it. And in Numbers there is the most celebrated festival of the seven weeks, that is, of Pentecost. The Jubilee too, that is, the year of remission, which is woven of seven weeks of years, that is, of forty-nine years, in which the trumpets sound and the ancient possession returns to everyone, contains this mystery. Hence David too writes the Psalm of penitence at the fiftieth number. We read also in the same book of Numbers that of the booty and spoils the priests were to receive the fiftieth head, of men as well as of beasts, and the Levites who guard the doors of the tabernacle the fiftieth. That parable of the Gospel as well (Luke 7 and 16), in which two debtors are spoken of, one who owed five hundred denarii and the other fifty, refers to this understanding. Hence the Apostle too, among the Ephesians, to whom he had unfolded every mystical thing, wishes to remain until Pentecost, until they should be perfectly converted to the Lord, saying: For a great and evident door has been opened to me, but there are many adversaries (1 Cor 16:9). But the devil also imitates the army of Israel, concerning which Jethro had given counsel to his son-in-law Moses, that he should set over the people tribunes and centurions and captains of fifty (Exod 18). Hence the impious king (2 Kgs 1) sends two captains of fifty with the soldiers under them to bring Elijah: they were consumed by divine fire. But the third of them is saved, who, having turned to prayers, had come to know the mysteries of penitence. Hence the Jews too, unwilling that the Lord should be perfect or the captain of fifty, say to him: You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham? (John 8:57). And he, knowing himself to be the prince not only of the penitent but also of the righteous, answered: Before Abraham was, I am (ibid., 58). And that the Lord is the Captain of Fifty we can understand from a single festival, of which he says: The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath (Matt 12:8). If of the Sabbath, then of the Kalends too. If of the Kalends, then of the Pasch, that is, of the Unleavened Bread. If of the Pasch, then of the Jubilee. If of the Jubilee, then of Tabernacles. If of Tabernacles, then of Pentecost, which is referred to the fiftieth number.
And the honorable in countenance, and the counselor. For two, that is, honorable in countenance, and counselor, the Seventy translated one, wonderful man counselor. Among the other graces the Lord will take this too away from Judea, that they have no counselor, but do everything without counsel. And there is that praiseworthy and admirable saying of a Greek poet: "He is first in happiness who is wise of himself; second, he who listens to the wise." But he who lacks both is useless, both to himself and to all. Hence we read this too in our books: Let your friends be very many, but your counselor one of a thousand (Sir 6:6). And again: Do all things with counsel (Prov 13:10); and prudence will give you a wonderful counselor. Decrees of the Senate too are called consulta, and the chief men of Rome were once called consuls, either from consulting for the citizens or from ruling all things by counsel. And we in the Church have our senate, the assembly of elders. Since, then, among other things Judea has lost even its old men, how will it be able to have counsel, which properly belongs to the elders?
And the wise architect. For which Aquila translated the wisest of craftsmen, to show that they once had many craftsmen: such as was that Bezalel son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, whom God filled with the spirit of wisdom and understanding and knowledge, so that in every work he was a most accomplished workman, not only in gold and silver but also in bronze and the other things that Moses enumerates, he who built the Tabernacle of God (Exod 31). Since, then, they have lost their architects, all the grace of building has been transferred to the Church. Hence the apostle Paul says: As a wise architect I have laid the foundation (1 Cor 3:10). Jeremiah too was an architect, who not only rooted up and dug under and destroyed, but also built (Jer 18). Hence the same Apostle says: We are God's husbandry, God's building (1 Cor 3:9). Our Lord too is called the builder of walls (Eph 2). And in the Gospel he who made all things is taunted as the son of a carpenter (Matt 13). In the volume of Kings too we read that king Solomon sent and took Hiram the Tyrian, the son of a widow woman, who was of the tribe of Naphtali and had a Tyrian father, a worker in bronze. And he came in to the king and did all the works for king Solomon: in him there is a type of the Church to be built, which was begotten not only of the tribe of Judah but also of Naphtali, and of a Tyrian father, he who had a widowed mother, because she had lost her former husband (1 Kgs 7). And many more are the children of the desolate than of her who has a husband (Isa 54). But in the book of Chronicles too we read of the valley of craftsmen: And Seraiah begot Joab, the father of the valley of craftsmen: for craftsmen were there (1 Chr 4:14). They are said to dwell in a valley for this reason, that knowledge did not puff them up, but they followed the humble and meek Jesus, and could say with the Apostle: For I am the least of the Apostles, who am not worthy to be called an Apostle (1 Cor 15:9). And elsewhere: We know in part, and we prophesy in part, and now we see through a mirror in an enigma (1 Cor 13:9).
And the one prudent in mystic speech. For which the Seventy translated the prudent hearer; Theodotion, the prudent enchanter; Aquila, the prudent whisperer; Symmachus, the one prudent in mystic speech, whom we too have followed in this place. First it must be said, according to the Seventy, that among the other spiritual graces a prudent hearer too is necessary in the Church. For to one is given prophecy, to another the discerning of spirits (1 Cor 12:10). Hence there were also established among the people of the Jews priestly ranks, to discern prophets and false prophets, that is, to understand who spoke from the Spirit of God and who from the contrary spirit. Let us read Jeremiah. But the prudent one in mystic speech (Jer 14), or the whisperer, and, as Theodotion would have it, the enchanter, seems to me to be a man learned and practiced both in the Law and the Prophets and in the Gospel and the Apostles, who can heal each disturbance of the soul by his teaching and bring it back to a settled state of mind: while the fornicator recovers chastity, and the glutton frugality, and the man once greedy gives alms. Sift through all the synagogues of the Jews, and you will be able to find no teacher who enjoins holy things and, despising riches, teaches that poverty is to be pursued. Of such enchanters against serpents and asps, that is, against sinners who have abandoned the righteousness of God, David spoke in the Psalm: Sinners have been estranged from the womb; they have gone astray from the belly, they have spoken falsehoods. Their fury is after the likeness of a serpent: like the deaf asp that stops its ears, which will not hear the voice of the enchanters, nor of the sorcerer who charms wisely (Ps 57 [58]:4ff.). Every word of the Apostle is an enchantment against serpents and asps, which sinners and heretics do not hear, because they shut their ears so as not to hear the truth.
3:4
And I will give children to be their princes. If it is said in the person of the Prophet: For behold, the ruler, the Lord of hosts, will take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the mighty man and the mighty woman: all the strength of bread, and all the strength of water, and the rest, how does the same prophet now say: I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them? Therefore, according to prophetic custom, while the Prophet is speaking, God suddenly speaks through the Prophet in his own person, and says: I will give children to be their princes: for having removed the things I had given before, and having taken away good things as though in anger, now on the contrary I will give evil things. I took away the old man and the captain of fifty, and the wonderful counselor, and the wise architect, and the prudent hearer, and so on. In their place I will give children as princes. For those who have lost the elder, such as the discourse above has shown, such as Abraham too was who was first called an elder, rightly receive young men as princes (Gen 7). Of these we read in Ecclesiastes too: Woe to you, O city, whose king is a youth, and your princes eat in the morning. Blessed is the land whose king is a son of the freeborn (Eccl 10:16). Such a young king was Rehoboam the son of Solomon, who followed the counsels of the young men (1 Kgs 12): not that he was young in age, but in wisdom. Otherwise, he is related to have received the kingdom at forty years and more. And on the contrary, Solomon was twelve years old when he took up the rule, and because he had wisdom, he was therefore not called a youth. For there was in him breadth of heart and amplitude of wisdom as great as the sand on the shores of the sea. Hence the Apostle too writes to Timothy: Let no one despise your youth (1 Tim 4:12). For he who is young in age is an old man in maturity. And Daniel, according to Theodotion, was called a boy before he judged (Dan 13); but after God stirred up his spirit in him and he judged the elders, he received the dignity of the eldership. To Jeremiah too, who had said to the Lord who was sending him, You who are ruler, O Lord: Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am a youth (Jer 1:6), the Lord answered: Do not say, I am a youth; for before you were formed in the womb I knew you, and before you came forth from your mother's womb I sanctified you, and I appointed you a prophet among the nations. For this reason, I think, the young widows too are commanded by the Apostle (1 Tim 5) to take husbands and be mothers of families and bring up their children, because many have gone back after Satan; and when they have grown wanton against Christ, they wish to marry, having condemnation, because they have made void their first faith. Nor is a widow supported on the Church's provisions unless she is sixty years old and has maturity of character as well as of age. One might think that what the Apostle forbids (1 Tim 3), that a neophyte be made a bishop, pertains to this, because he is a little one in faith, lest, puffed up into pride, he fall into the judgment of the devil. And the judgment of the devil is nothing else but pride, on account of which he fell from heaven. Hence the Savior too says: I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:18).
And the effeminate shall rule over them. For which in the Hebrew is written THALULIM (תעלולים), whom the Seventy and Theodotion interpreted as mockers, Aquila ἐναλλάκτας, those who change themselves and take turns in shameful acts, such as we read of in the book of Judges concerning the Levite's concubine in Gibeah (Judg 19). Let us consider the Patriarchs of the Jews, and the young men or boys, effeminate and abounding in luxuries, and we shall see that the prophecy has been fulfilled. We may also call mockers the teachers of the people of Israel, who devour the people of God like a morsel of bread, and interpret the holy Scriptures perversely, and make sport of the folly of their disciples.
3:5
And the people shall rush, man upon man, each one upon his neighbor: the boy shall riot against the old man, and the base against the noble. When the princes are young men, and mockers of the Lord, such as the prophetic discourse describes, then no order will be kept, whether of dignity or of age or of knowledge; but boys will rebel against old men, and the base against the noble, and they will fall upon one another. And that saying of the Apostle will be fulfilled: Biting one another, you have been consumed by one another (Gal 5:15). That these things befell the people of the Jews under Titus the son of Vespasian, Josephus writes (Jewish War, Book 5): and that, when they were being besieged by the Romans, Jerusalem was divided by sedition into three parts, and some held the citadel and the Temple, others the lower, others the upper part of the city.
3:6
For a man shall take hold of his brother, of the household of his father: You have a garment, be our prince; and let this ruin be under your hand. For ruin, Symmachus and Theodotion translated weakness; the Seventy, food. It signifies the scarcity of men, and above all the want of all things, so that whoever has food and clothing is believed to be powerful and rich and illustrious. And what it says according to the Hebrew, And let this ruin be under your hand, has this sense: Let our misery and calamity be sustained and protected by your help. And this must be considered, that each man chooses for himself his own prince, and that there is sedition in the choosing of princes, while some think some men worthy of rule and others others. Nor do they say to them, Your possessions and riches and revenues will be able to sustain us; but, This weakness, or my food, will be healed by your judgment and will hang upon it.
3:7
And he will answer in that day, saying, I am not a physician, and in my house there is neither bread nor garment; do not appoint me prince of the people. For physician, Symmachus and the Seventy translated prince; Theodotion, ἐπιδεσμεύοντα, one who binds up wounds and provides for health. He will answer is not found in the Hebrew, but has been added from the Seventy. For in the Hebrew it is joined to what is written above: In that day he will say, I am not a physician, and the rest. And he will say it who has been chosen prince. And just as the people desires to have as prince the one whom it perceives to be richer in comparison with itself, so the one who is chosen, considering his poverty and his weakness, testifies that he is unworthy of the honor conferred and cannot heal vices, that is, cure the sick, give food to the hungry, clothe the naked, since he himself is scarcely able to sustain himself. Let us not, then, at once acquiesce in the judgment of the multitude; but when chosen for leadership, let us know our measure and be humbled under the mighty hand of God, because God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (1 Pet 5). How many, having neither bread nor clothing, though they themselves are hungry and naked, and have no spiritual food and have not kept the tunic of Christ whole, promise others both nourishment and clothing, and, full of wounds, boast that they are physicians; nor do they keep that saying of Moses: Provide another whom you may send, and that other command: Seek not to be made a judge, lest perhaps you be unable to take away iniquities (Sir 7:6). Jesus alone heals all sicknesses and infirmities, of whom it is written: Who heals the broken in heart, and binds up their bruises (Ps 146 [147]:3).
3:8-9
For Jerusalem has fallen, and Judah has collapsed: because their tongue and their devices are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his majesty. The recognition of their countenance has answered them: and they have proclaimed their sin like Sodom, and have not hidden it. It is the Prophet who says this, not, as many think, the one who had been chosen prince. And he says that no one is willing to be set over a sinful people for this reason, that both Judah and Jerusalem, both the city and the province of Judea, or the tribe of Judah, have fallen alike. And he gives the causes of their impiety: that they blasphemed against the Lord and said, Away, away, crucify such a one; we have no king but Caesar (John 19:15, 16), and by the fury of their tongue provoked the most merciful Lord to bitterness. The recognition of their countenance will answer them: that is, they have received back their own sins; or, as the Seventy translated, the confusion of their countenance has stood against them: that is, they have always had their own offenses before their eyes. And just as the Sodomites, sinning with all license and having not even any shame in their crime, said to Lot, Bring the men out, that we may lie with them (Gen 19:5): so these too, crying out publicly, proclaimed their sin and had no modesty in blaspheming. For to hide one's impiety is the second plank after shipwreck and a consolation of miseries. Hence they are also called princes of Sodom, because they had the sins of Sodom.
3:10-11
Woe to their soul, because evils have been repaid to them. Say to the righteous that it is well, because they have eaten the fruit of their own devices. Woe to the wicked unto evil: for the reward of his hands shall be done to him. According to the Hebrew and the other Translators it has this sense: Woe to them, because they have received back their crimes. Therefore you who hear, or who read the book of the Prophet, praise the righteousness of God, because he has done well: because the wicked have eaten the labors of their own hands. And woe to the wicked people unto evil: for it has received what it deserved. And he who handed over his prince to the Roman power himself lies subject to Roman servitude. But according to the Seventy Translators, who said: Woe to their soul, because they have devised the worst counsel against themselves, saying: Let us bind the righteous one, because he is useless to us; therefore they shall eat the fruits of their works, it is clearly said of the passion of Christ, that they entered upon the worst counsel, not so much against the righteous one as against themselves and their own soul; and now they eat the fruits of their works. For whatever a man sows, that he will also reap (Gal 6:5-8), and each one will bear his own burden.
3:12
My people, their exactors have despoiled them, and women have ruled over them. For women, whom Symmachus alone translated so, and who in Hebrew are called NASIM (נשים), Aquila and the Seventy translated ἀπαιτοῦντας, which means exactors; Theodotion δανειστὰς, that is, usurers. Now the prophetic discourse speaks against the Scribes and Pharisees, who for the sake of base gain, to receive tithes and first-fruits, denied the Son of God. And he does not call them masters, scribes and teachers, but exactors (Luke 20), who think that piety is a means of gain, and devour, not, as in the Apostle, only the houses of widows, but the whole people; and, accusing their luxury and their shameful way of life, he calls them not only exactors, as men seen to exact money from the unwilling, but women, because they do everything for lust's sake and are given over to pleasures. Let us too, then, beware that we be not exactors among the people; that, as the impious Porphyry says, matrons and women be not our senate, ruling in the Churches, and that the favor of women judge not of the priestly rank.
3:13
My people, those who call you blessed, they deceive you, and scatter the way of your steps, or throw it into confusion. He had called the Scribes and Pharisees exactors, not masters; and above, mockers, who because of gifts, which blind the eyes even of the wise, not only did not rebuke the sinners among the people, but for the sake of riches and profits extolled them with praises, calling them blessed, and pillars of the house of God, and the other things flatterers are wont to say. He, then, is the churchman teacher who moves tears, not laughter, who rebukes sinners, who calls no one blessed, no one happy, and does not anticipate the sentence of his judge, since holy Scripture says (Sir 11:30): Call no man blessed before death. But in another place too we read (Prov 27:14): He who blesses his friend in the morning with a loud voice differs in nothing from one who curses. Therefore, despising the judgments of men, let us neither be lifted up by their praises nor saddened by their disparagements; but let us enter upon the right way and the paths trodden by the holy prophets, and let us hear the prophet Jeremiah saying: Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the everlasting paths of the Lord, which is the good way, and walk in it (Jer 6:16). And if ever we go astray and, being men, proceed by a perverse road, let us await the promises of the Lord, who says through Ezekiel: I will give them another way, and another heart (Ezek 36). But the exactors have perverted and troubled the way of the Lord, so that, having the key of knowledge, they neither entered themselves nor suffered the people to enter, but made them lose the way of the truth, which says in the Gospel: I am the way, and the life, and the truth (John 14:6).
3:13-14
The Lord stands to judge, and he stands to judge the peoples. The Lord will come to judgment with the elders of his people, and with its princes. The people, which was deceived through simplicity and inexperience, is still called the people of God, and is therefore judged that it may be saved. Nor does the Lord sit in the attire of one judging, as we read in Daniel: Thrones were set, and books were opened (Dan 7:9); but he stands to judge, and he stands to judge the peoples, wishing those to stand whose way had been scattered. But against the princes and elders of his people he comes to judgment, not to judge but to be judged alike with them, giving them room for defense, if they can have anything to answer, according to what is said in the fiftieth psalm: That you may be justified in your words, and may overcome when you are judged (Verse 6). In the prophet Micah too we read something of the kind (Mic 6), which we have interpreted in its place. This present passage, then, is taken against the Pharisees and the Δευτερωτὰς. And between the old men and the princes there was, I think, in the old people what there is now between the elders and the bishops.
For you have grazed down my vineyard: the plunder of the poor is in your house. Why do you wear down my people, and grind the faces of the poor?, or crush them, and as the Seventy interpreted, put them to confusion. He keeps the prophetic custom of suddenly changing the persons: for above the Lord himself had said, My people, those who call you blessed, they deceive you; and afterwards the Prophet had added, The Lord stands to judge: the Lord will come to judgment. Therefore after the prophet, the Lord himself, who had come to judgment with the elders of his people and its princes, speaks to them and rebukes the offenders: Why do you graze down my vineyard?, of which it is written: You have brought a vine out of Egypt (Ps 79 [80]:9). And in this same prophet: The vineyard of the Lord Sabaoth is the house of Israel (Isa 5:7). This vineyard the Lord in the Gospel too let out to most wicked husbandmen, who killed the son of the householder sent to them (Matt 21). The plunder of the poor, he says, is in your houses. Take the poor man either simply, as one who needs alms, or rather as the poor in spirit, of whom it is written: Blessed is he who understands concerning the needy and the poor (Ps 40 [41]:1). And the apostle Paul: Only, he says, that we should be mindful of the poor (Gal 2:10). And what follows, Why do you wear down my people, and grind the faces of the poor?, or put them to confusion, is plainly said to the princes of the Jews. But it can also be referred to our own princes, if they wear down the common people subject to them, and publicly reprove and confound the poor when they offend, but do not dare even to say mu to the rich who sin worse. And the plunder of the poor is in their houses when they fill their treasuries and abuse the wealth of the Church for their luxuries, and either keep for themselves or distribute to their relatives the public offerings given for the support of the poor, and make the want of others into the riches of themselves and their own.
3:15
And the Lord said: Because the daughters of Zion are lifted up, and have walked with outstretched neck, and went with nods of the eyes, and clapped, and walked, and stepped with their feet in measured gait. Above, both the prophet and the Lord had rebuked both the people and the princes; now the prophetic discourse turns to the women of whom he had said before, And women have ruled over them, lest they should think themselves strangers to the crime, they on account of whose luxuries and wantonness the exactors grazed down the Lord's vineyard, and the plunder of the poor is in their houses, and they wore down his people and put to confusion the faces of the poor. Some think these are truly the women of the Jews; others judge that it is said metaphorically of the cities of Judea, which are called daughters of Zion: the lesser towns, that is, villages and townships. Hence in the book of Joshua too the names of the cities are set down tribe by tribe (Josh 15), and afterwards the villages and fortresses are described and are called daughters. Others, according to tropology, take the women to be souls, which, if they walk with outstretched neck and raise themselves up in pride, and pursue not manly hardness but the softness of women, are rebuked by the prophetic discourse and lose all the ornaments of the virtues, which are described under the crescents and necklaces and jewels and bracelets, the headbands and hair-ornaments and the rest of this kind. This testimony is to be turned also against the women of the Church who walk with outstretched neck and speak with nods of the eyes and clap with their hands as well as their feet, and who, to step in measured gait, do not follow nature as their guide, but hire actors as their teachers.
3:16
The Lord will make bald the crown of the daughters of Zion, and will lay bare their hair, and instead of adornment there will be disgrace. This will befall us too whose sins are concealed, when that which is written has been fulfilled: Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed (Luke 8:17). For so long as we are covered by the hair and garment of ignorance, and men think us, who are within full of dead men's bones, to be whitened sepulchers (Matt 23), we seem to have some cleanness. But when what is hidden has been laid open, all the hair will be taken away, and a foul baldness will appear to all.
3:17
In that day the Lord will take away the adornment of the shoes. In what day? The Jews think, that of the Babylonian captivity. We prove that it is more truly when they were taken by the Romans and lost all the ornaments of clothing and gems, of gold and jewels, and their various furnishings. Or else, through the metaphor of the women, all the adornment of the cities is related to have been destroyed. Understand the ornaments of the cities to be in the streets and porticoes, the forum and the gymnasia and the public walls. If we refer these to the state of souls, let us recall that we have read of the shod feet of him who is to eat the flesh of the lamb and celebrate the Pasch, and that neither the garments nor the shoes of those passing through the wilderness were worn out. What are these shoes? Those of which the Apostle writes to the Ephesians: Your feet shod in preparation of the Gospel of peace (Eph 6:15). These shoes souls will lose when they walk with outstretched neck and drag their garments with their feet, and instead of matronly cleanness sweep up the filth of the ground.
3:18, 21
And the crescents, and the necklaces, and the jewels, and the bracelets, and the headbands, and the hair-ornaments, and the anklets, and the little chains, and the scent-boxes, and the earrings, and the rings, and the gems hanging on the forehead. He describes the jewels of the women, and through them the insignia of the cities; or, according to the anagogy, the ornaments of the various virtues. Women have little bosses hanging down in the likeness of the moon, which we transfer to the ornaments of the Church, which is illumined by the sun of righteousness. Necklaces too, hanging down as far as the breast, show the understanding and the ruling part (ἡγεμονικόν) of the mind in the heart. And jewels, which in a single word signify all ornaments; and the good works of bracelets, such as Rebecca received at her betrothal (Gen 24); and headbands, the ornaments of the head; hair-ornaments, that it may have judgment of each thing; and anklets, by which our step is adorned, that we may hear: Your foot will not stumble (Ps 90 [91]); and: He will rescue my feet from falling (Ps 55 [56]); and little chains, which are woven of rods of gold and silver, that is, of the sense and the words of the Scriptures; and scent-boxes, that we may be the good odor of Christ (2 Cor 2:15); and earrings, that we may not hear the judgment of blood, but the words of the Lord who says: He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Luke 8:8); and rings, with which we are sealed for the service of the Lord, whom God the Father has sealed. Hence it is said to the prince of Tyre: You are the seal of likeness (Ezek 28:12). The prodigal son too received a ring with the robe (Luke 15), and shoes; and gems hanging on the forehead, by which our faces are adorned. Of the adornment of this head we read in the psalm as well: Like ointment on the head, which runs down upon the beard, the beard of Aaron (Ps 132 [133]:1). Although the Seventy Translators, Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion translate all these in different ways, we have woven them together as we could, either from the Hebrew or from their translation; nor do we wish to linger longer on each, lest the exposition become trifling and produce weariness in the prudent reader.
3:22
And the changes of raiment, and the mantles, and the linen cloths. For linen cloths the Seventy interpreted transparent Laconian garments, wishing to signify the very fine garments with which the bodies of the Lacedaemonians were covered, who were most ready for war and of a rather austere life; although neither the Hebrew nor any other of the translators has Laconian. Changes of raiment and mantles, which Symmachus translated more expressively ἀναβολαια, are ornaments of women's clothing, by which the shoulders and breasts are covered. Changes of raiment, according to the anagogy, are those of which it is said: They will go from strength to strength (Ps 83 [84]:8); and linen cloths, that, washed in the Lord, we may enjoy delights, according to what is written in the Psalms: You will give them to drink of the torrent of your pleasure (Ps 35 [36]:9). But all these things the daughters of Zion lost, because they walked with outstretched neck and with nods of the eyes made a show of pride, thinking that what they had was of their own power and not of the grace of the Lord.
3:23
And the pins, and the mirrors, and the fine linens, and the fillets, and the summer veils. Women have pins, by which the arrangement of the dressed hair is held together, so that it may not flow too loosely and be scattered into straggling locks. They have mirrors too, in which they look at their face, and if they see anything lacking, they add to their adornment. They have fine linens, which are called wraps; and fillets, with which the hair is bound, which they call ταινίας. They have summer veils too, which we can call mantles, with which Rebecca also was covered; and today too the women of Arabia and Mesopotamia are veiled with them. In Hebrew they are called ARDIDIM, in Greek θέριστρα, from the fact that in θέρει, that is, in summer and the heat, they protect the bodies of women. The daughters of Zion, therefore, because of their pride lost the pins by which the rule of all the precepts was held fast. They lost the mirrors which the women staying at the doors of the tabernacle offered in Exodus for making the laver of the Lord (Exod 38); of which the apostle Paul too spoke: But now we see through a mirror in an enigma (1 Cor 13:12). They lost the fine linens and the fillets, with which they covered their shoulders and bound fast the mind that flowed this way and that; and the summer veils, with which they were covered as by a most safe shade in the heats. We say these things lest we seem altogether to shun the tropology of this place. But it is a very great labor to linger on each item and to seek a broad explanation.
3:24
And instead of a sweet odor there will be a stench, and instead of a girdle, a cord. The penitent says that sins stink: My wounds have putrefied and are corrupted because of my folly (Ps 37 [38]:6). The Apostle commanded the loins to be girded with a girdle, saying: Stand, having your loins girded in truth (Eph 6:14). And of the sinner we read: Each one is bound fast with the cords of his own sins (Prov 5:22). Therefore, instead of the good odor of the virtues, the daughters of Zion will have the rottenness of sins; and instead of the girdle of truth they will be bound with the cords of falsehood, such as those had upon their heads who with rags and filth begged their life from the king of Syria.
And instead of a breast-band, haircloth. For breast-band, as Symmachus interpreted it, the Seventy translated a tunic μεσοπορφύραν, that is, striped with purple, which Aquila expressed as girdle of exultation. Theodotion set down the Hebrew word itself, PHTHIGIL (פתיגיל), which is a kind of women's ornament. The band covers the breast, and holds that place in women which the Rational holds in the High Priests. Of this breast-band Jeremiah too spoke in mystical speech: If a bride can forget her adornment, or a virgin her breast-band, I too will forget you, says the Lord (Jer 2:32). The virgin, such as the Apostle desires to present us to Christ (2 Cor 11), so long as she is not corrupted in Egypt and her breasts, which are bound with the breast-band, are not broken, is joined to the bridegroom; and though daily she bears sons of the virtues, she by no means ceases to be a virgin. But if at some time she has spread her feet to every passer-by and followed her lovers, and, according to the prophecy of Hosea, the Lord has hedged in her ways and shut off her paths, she will return to her former husband and will hear: Put off the garments of mourning, and put on the garments of your glory (Hos 2).
3:25
Your most beautiful men too shall fall by the sword, and your strong ones in battle. For most beautiful men the Seventy interpreted, and your most beautiful son, whom you love, shall fall by the sword. If we understand this of the state of a soul which has sinned after the virtues, let us take her most beautiful son to be good works, which have fallen by the enemy's sword; and the strong too to have perished in battle, because the righteousness of the righteous man will not deliver him in whatever day he has gone astray (Ezek 33:12). But if we follow the history, we shall be taught by these words that the prophet's discourse is not about women whose husbands fell in battle, but about the cities of Judea, which he called daughters of Zion, and whose warriors fell in the conflict. Lastly, the following verse speaks of the same Zion.
3:26
And her gates shall lament and mourn, and the city itself, desolate, shall sit upon the ground. This we see with our eyes to this day. According to tropology the interpretation is easy: that whoever has given place to the devil and has not kept his heart with all watchfulness, his gates mourn; and, the bridegroom being absent, he is ever in mourning, and, falling from the heights, sits in the dust of the earth.
4:1
And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying: We will eat our own bread, and be covered with our own garments; only let your name be called upon us: take away our reproach. When the most beautiful men of the city of Jerusalem have fallen by the sword, and the strong have perished in battle, and her gates have lamented and mourned, and she herself has been made desolate through the very great scarcity of men, the warriors having been slain, seven women will take hold of one man, desiring to have seed in Zion and a household in Jerusalem, saying that they have food and clothing, only so that they may not be seen to be without a husband and lie under that curse which is written: Cursed is the barren woman, and she who does not make seed in Israel (Deut 7). Zechariah too agrees with this sense: In those days ten men out of all the tongues of the nations shall take hold of the fringe of a Jewish man, saying: We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you (Zech 8:23). The numbers seven and ten are familiar to the Jews on account of the sabbath and the ten precepts of the Law, and therefore they make frequent use of them; although, according to the ambiguity of the Hebrew language, in which they interpret the word SABA (שבע) now as seven, now as many, now as oath, it may in this place signify not seven but many. This is according to the letter. But at the coming of the Lord and Savior, seven women, that is, the seven graces of the Holy Spirit, of which the same Prophet is going to speak in what follows: There shall come forth a rod from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up from his root; and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and piety; and the spirit of the fear of the Lord shall fill him (Isa 11:1, 2), will take hold of Jesus, whom they had long desired, because they had been able to find no other in whom they might rest in an everlasting abode. Hence John the Baptist too relates in the Gospel: And he who sent me said to me himself: He upon whom you see the Holy Spirit descending and remaining upon him, he it is (John 1:33). In Zechariah too we read of seven eyes upon one stone, and on one golden lampstand seven lamps and seven pipes, and two olive trees on either side of the lamp, founded with a firm root (Zech 3). And that the grace of the Holy Spirit possesses all things needs no exposition. But because among men it always suffered reproach, no one living as the gifts of the Holy Spirit demanded, therefore they desire the name of Jesus to be called upon them, so that what was imperfect in the Law may be completed in the Gospel.
4:2-3
In that day the bud of the Lord shall be in magnificence and in glory, and the fruit of the earth exalted, and exultation for those who shall have been saved of Israel. And it shall be that everyone who is left in Zion, and remains in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, everyone who is written in life in Jerusalem. When the daughters of Zion have lost all adornment because of their pride, and her gates have lamented and mourned, and she herself has fallen desolate, and all her warriors have perished in battle, so much so that many women can scarcely have one husband, then the bud of the Christian name will spring up, and the earth will give its fruit; and there will be exultation for those who have been saved of Israel, of whom it was said above as well: Unless the Lord Sabaoth had left us a seed, we should have been as Sodom, and should have been like Gomorrah (Isa 1:9). And note that not all Israel is saved, but the remnant of the people of Zion, and he who remains in Jerusalem: everyone who is written in life in Jerusalem, to whom the Lord too spoke: Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven (Luke 10:20). It signifies the Apostles and those who believed through the Apostles.
4:4
When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have washed the blood of Jerusalem from her midst by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning. Then the remnant of Israel will be saved, when in the baptism of the Savior their sins have been forgiven them, and that blood has been washed away which the erring people invoked upon itself: His blood be upon us, and upon our children (Matt 27:25). Hence we read above: When you stretch out your hands, I will not hear you: for your hands are full of blood (Isa 1:15, 16). And afterwards, calling them to penitence, he adds: Wash yourselves, be clean. And note that he washed the filth of the daughters of Zion by the spirit of judgment, but the blood of Jerusalem by the spirit of burning. For what is light is washed; what is heavier is burned out. Of this spirit of judgment and spirit of burning John the Baptist spoke in the Gospel: I baptize you in water, but he who comes after me will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire (Matt 3:11). From which we learn that man gives only water, but God gives the Holy Spirit, by whom both filth is washed away and the sins of blood are purged.
4:5
And the Lord will create over every place of mount Zion, and where he has been called upon, a cloud by day, and smoke and the brightness of flaming fire by night. For in Christ there is a new creation, of which we read elsewhere: The old things have passed away: behold, all things have been made new (2 Cor 5:17). For which the Seventy translated: And he will come, and it will be; every place of mount Zion, and all things that are round about it, a cloud will overshadow by day, and the light of flaming fire by night. And who will come, if not he of whom it is written: There will come out of Zion one who will deliver (Isa 59:20 LXX)? And of whom another prophet makes mention: Yet a very little while, and he who is to come will come, and will not delay (Hab 2:3). When he has come, the former happiness will be restored to the people, which they once had in the wilderness, when the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud and by night in a pillar of fire (Exod 13), so that they may never be troubled either in prosperity or in adversity. This is said in the psalm as well: The sun shall not burn you by day, nor the moon by night (Ps 120 [121]:6). And smoke in this place signifies not error and ignorance but glory, according to what, in the opinion of some, we shall read in this same prophet (below, Isa 6): And the house was filled with smoke. And in Joel it is said of the grace of the Holy Spirit which descended upon the apostles: I will pour out of my spirit, and they shall prophesy (Joel 2). And: I will give wonders in the heaven above, and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke (Acts 2:17). The same thing, I think, is signified also by that in the Psalms: Who touches the mountains, and they shall smoke (Ps 103 [104]:32).
4:6
And over all the glory a protection. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shade by day from the heat, and for security, and for a hiding place from the whirlwind and from the rain. This place the Jews refer to Antichrist, who they judge is signified by the whirlwind and the storm, when the Lord is to defend them from a most powerful adversary. But let us refer everything to the first coming of Christ, of which we read in the psalms as well: He has protected me in the secret place of his tabernacle: upon a rock he has exalted me (Ps 26 [27]:5); upon which the Church, being founded, is shaken by no storm, overthrown by no whirlwind and winds. Very many of the Jews understand both these things and all those with which they are joined of the Babylonian captivity and the return to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel and Ezra and Nehemiah.
5:1
I will sing now to my beloved the song of my cousin concerning his vineyard. The prophet sings a lamentable song to the people of Israel, which he composed of whom it is written in the Gospel: But when he had seen it (doubtless Jerusalem) he wept over it, and said: If you too had known the things that are for your peace, for the days will come upon you, and your enemies will throw up ramparts around you, and will hem you in, and will lay you low, and your children (Luke 19:41ff.). And again: How often would I have gathered your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not? Behold, your house will be left to you desolate (Matt 23:37, 38): to which this is like, which is now said in this song: I will abandon my vineyard. And that Christ is called the beloved and dearest one, whom Aquila interpreted πατράδελφον, uncle, or cousin, the title of the forty-fourth psalm teaches us: A song for the beloved. And the voice of God the Father in the Gospel: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Matt 3:17). And in the sixty-seventh psalm we read: The Lord will give the word to those who preach the good news with great power. The King of powers of the beloved (Ps 67 [68]:12, 13). This beloved, then, made a mournful song for his vineyard, which I will sing to my beloved and pitiable people. Or certainly it is to be understood thus: I will sing to Almighty God the Father the song of Christ, who is my cousin, that is, born of the same nation as I. And that the people of Israel is called the vineyard of God we read also at the end of this song: The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the man of Judah his praiseworthy shoot. And in the seventy-ninth psalm (Verse 9): You have brought a vine out of Egypt, you have cast out the nations, and planted it. In the Gospel too, in almost the same words in which the Prophet now speaks, the Lord weaves a parable: There was a certain householder who planted a vineyard, and set a wall around it, and dug a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, etc. (Matt 21:33). And in Jeremiah we read: I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true: how have you been turned into bitterness, a strange vine? (Jer 2:21). And so Jerusalem, as we have said, is lamented, and her ruin is sung in prophetic speech. But for the Church, and the people once of the nations, another song has been put forth, of which we read in the psalms: Sing to the Lord, all the earth; announce his salvation from day to day. Announce his glory among the nations, his wonders among all peoples (Ps 95 [96]:2, 3). And again: Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done wonders. The Lord has made known his salvation, in the sight of the nations he has revealed his righteousness (Ps 97 [98]:1, 2).
My beloved had a vineyard on a horn, the son of oil. Theodotion and Aquila translated this according to the Hebrew; but Symmachus, in his manner, more plainly: My beloved had a vineyard on a horn in the midst of olive trees. The Seventy, moreover, interpreted the sense rather than the word: My beloved had a vineyard on a horn, in a fat place, or a fertile one, for πίων signifies both. And indeed nothing is fatter than the land of Promise, if you consider not the mountainous and desert parts but its whole breadth, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates toward the East, and on the northern side as far as Mount Taurus and Zephyrium of Cilicia, which overhangs the sea. And we often read that horn signifies kingdom and power, as in that saying in the Gospel: He has raised up a horn of our salvation in the house of David his servant (Luke 1:69). And: In you we will toss our enemies with the horn (Ps 43 [44]:6). And in Zechariah four horns denote four most powerful kingdoms (Zech 1). The Hebrews expound this place thus: A vineyard was planted for Christ on a horn, that is, in a strong and lofty place, which is called the son of oil, either because it stands in need of God's mercy and is sustained by his help, or because it has furnished the clear light of the knowledge of God to all nations.
5:2
And he fenced it, and chose out the stones from it, and planted the vine Sorec, and built a tower in its midst, and set up a winepress in it. Through the metaphor of the vineyard, as we said before, he describes the people of the Jews, which he fenced with the help of the Angels. And he chose out the stones from it, either idols or all things that could hinder the worship of God. And he planted it with the vine Sorec, which Symmachus alone interpreted as choice, expressing, as it seems to me, not word for word but the sense contained in the word. For the Hebrews say that Sorec is a kind of excellent vine, because it produces abundant and lasting fruit. Lastly, Sorec is interpreted by some as καλλίκαρπος, which we can render as of most beautiful fruit. He also built a tower in its midst, that is, the temple in the midst of the city; and set up a winepress in it, by which some think the altar is signified. For just as all the grapes are carried to the winepress and trodden, so that wine may be pressed out of them, so the altar receives the fruits of all the people and devours the victims offered, according to what we read of Benjamin, in whose tribe the temple and the altar were: Benjamin is a ravening wolf; in the morning he will eat, and at evening he will give food (Gen 49:27). All that is said of the vineyard can also be referred to the state of the human soul, which, planted by God for good, has brought forth not grapes but wild grapes, and has afterwards been handed over to the beasts to be trampled, and has not received the divine rain of teachings, because it despised the former gifts.
And I waited for it to make grapes, and it made wild grapes. For wild grapes, as we have rendered it, in the Hebrew is written BUSIM (באשים), which Aquila interpreted σαπρίας, that is, most worthless fruits; Symmachus ἀτελῆ, that is, imperfect; the Seventy and Theodotion thorns, with which the Jews crowned the Lord. For while he waited for them to bring grapes to the winepresses at vintage time, for which the eighth, the eightieth and the eighty-third psalms have their titles, they, sinking themselves in the cares and vices of the world, which in the Gospel (Mark 4) are interpreted as thorns, offered the goads of blasphemies. But I think it better that Busim be understood as wild grapes rather than thorns, so that the likeness of the metaphor begun may be kept. Hence the Savior too says in the Gospel: Do they gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? (Matt 7:16).
5:3-4
Now therefore, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard: what is there that I ought to have done further for my vineyard and have not done for it? Or is it that I waited for it to make grapes, and it made wild grapes? I have done, he says, all that I ought: I planted the vineyard in a most fertile place, I set a wall around it, I chose out the stones, and I propped up its shoots with stakes and reeds; the vine itself too was not one of many, but choice and καλλίκαρπος. I built a very strong tower, in which to store the crops and from which to watch the beasts that lie in wait for the crops. I set up a winepress, so that the grapes might be pressed above all in that same place and pour out wine. Since, then, I have done the things I ought to have done, let the inhabitants of Jerusalem and of Judah answer me; nay rather, let them judge between me and my vineyard, what is there that I ought to have done and have not done? And as they keep silent, he answers himself: Unless perhaps I erred in this, that for my labor I waited for it to make grapes, not wild grapes, which an untilled and deserted vineyard is wont to bring forth. Something of the kind the Prophet Nathan, sent to David, says too (2 Sam 12), and he questions him through a parable, so that while judging of another he may pronounce sentence on himself. So here too the people is questioned as though about a vineyard, so that it may answer against itself. This place the Savior carries out more fully in the Gospel (Matt 21), and what is passed over here, he puts as a question to the Scribes and Pharisees. For in Isaiah nothing is said of the husbandmen, nor is it indicated what they are to suffer, but the discourse is only of the vineyard; there, however, as though the vineyard were one thing and the husbandmen another, he speaks of the people and of the teachers in such a way that he destroys the wicked wickedly and lets out the vineyard to other husbandmen, signifying the apostles and those who were to succeed the apostles. Nor is there a ταυτολογία, as many think, in his saying: Or is it that I waited for it to make grapes, and it made wild grapes? For above he speaks silently within himself, but here he asks others what he had been thinking.
5:5-6
And now I will show you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it shall be for plunder; I will break down its wall, and it shall be for trampling. And I will make it desolate; it shall not be pruned, and it shall not be dug: and briers and thorns shall come up over it. I challenged you above, he says, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of the tribe of Judah, to judge between me and my vineyard, and I asked you to say what I ought to have done that I have not done. And since, according to the Gospel parable, you will not answer what I ask, I myself will answer for you, showing what I am going to do: Since I have done for my vineyard all that I ought, and instead of grapes it has brought forth wild grapes, I will take away all that I had given. I will take away the help of the angels, of whom it is written in the psalms: The Angel of the Lord encamps round about those who fear him, and will deliver them (Ps 33 [34]:8); and it will be plundered by its adversaries. I will destroy the walls, and it will lie subject to hostile nations, and it will be desolate and will not be pruned for ever, nor dug, so that it may be reduced to briers; and thorns will come up in it. These things are said, under the metaphor of the vineyard, of the desolation of Jerusalem and Judea, which most of the Jews think took place under the Babylonians: and we cannot deny that this was in part fulfilled. But since there follows, And I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it, this cannot be understood of that captivity. For Jeremiah too prophesied among the people when the city had already been taken; and Ezekiel, Daniel too and the three boys, are related either to have prophesied or to have done wonderful signs even in the captivity; and afterwards Haggai and Zechariah foretold the future for the consolation of the people in servitude. And the help of God is taken away from those who are unworthy, so that, since they had not perceived God through his benefits, they may perceive him through punishments. Or else he threatens certain harsh and rough things for this reason, that, having turned to penitence, they may avoid the impending torments. The Hebrew word SAITH (שית) all have interpreted by a similar word as thorns. If, then, Saith in the present place is called thorns according to Aquila and Theodotion and the Seventy, let them answer how above they translated Busim not as wild grapes but as thorns.
And I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it. These are the clouds which the Lord brought out from the end of the earth, of which we read in the psalm as well: Your truth reaches to the clouds (Ps 35 [36]:6). These clouds, since under Elijah all were idolaters, did not rain upon the land of Israel for three years and six months (1 Kgs 18). This indeed we can understand not only of the prophets but of the apostles: that after the passion of the Lord the Jews had neither prophets nor apostles, lest instead of grapes they should bring forth thorns, but that they might pray, for their barrenness and dryness, to him who can supply the rains of the virtues. Hence in Leviticus too he says to them: I will make the heaven of iron for you, and the earth of bronze (Lev 26:19). And in Deuteronomy: The heaven over your head shall be of bronze, and the earth beneath you of iron (Deut 28:23, 24). And again: The Lord will give rain to your land. And: Ashes shall come down from heaven upon you, until it uproots you and destroys you; because land which receives the rain that often comes upon it, and produces not a crop but thorns and thistles, is reprobate and near to a curse, whose end is burning.
5:7
But the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his delightful shoot. That is, of God; or, as the Seventy translated, a most beloved young planting. Israel and Judah differ from each other in this: that the whole people was at first called Israel, and afterwards, when David reigned over the tribe of Judah, and Rehoboam the son of Solomon over two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, those who were in Samaria, that is, the ten tribes, were called Israel; and those over whom men of David's line reigned were called Judah. And since calves were worshiped by Israel in Dan and in Bethel, Samaria was therefore taken first by the Assyrians; and a long time afterwards Judah was led away by the Chaldeans into Babylon, because they had sinned less. Hence in Ezekiel too, for purging the sins of both peoples, there are set on the left side for Israel, according to the Seventy, one hundred and ninety days, or, as is more truly contained in the Hebrew, three hundred and ninety, but for Judah forty days (Ezek 4, according to the Seventy and according to the Hebrew). I say this to show that, in comparison with Israel, that is, the ten tribes, Judah was lovable and beloved, in which were the priests and the Levites, and in which the worship of God was carried on at the time when the prophet Isaiah was speaking to the people. And beautifully Israel, that is, the whole people, is the house; but Judah, which sprang up afterwards when the tribes were separated, is called the delightful young plant. And this too is to be noted, that, according to prophetic custom, what was first said through a metaphor or through a parable is afterwards explained more plainly: that the vineyard and the young planting are Israel and Judah.
And I waited for it to do judgment, and behold, iniquity; and righteousness, and behold, a cry, or, as the Seventy translated, I waited for it to do judgment, and it did iniquity, and not righteousness, but a cry. We wish to convey to Latin ears what we have learned from the Hebrews. Judgment among them is called MESPHAT (משפט); iniquity, or scattering, as Aquila interpreted, MESPHAA (משפה). Again, righteousness is called SADACA (צדקה), and cry is called SAACA (צעקה). So, by either adding or changing one letter, he so tempered the likeness of the words as to set MESPHAA for MESPHAT and SAACA for SADACA, and to render an elegant structure and sound of words according to the Hebrew tongue. Now God waited for the people of the Jews to do judgment, that is, grapes; and it did iniquity, that is, wild grapes. And he waited for righteousness, that it should receive the bestower of such great gifts sent from the Father; and it made a cry, with which it shouted against the Lord, and cried out, saying: Away, away, crucify such a one (John 19:15). Hence the apostle Paul too writes: Let all anger and clamor and blasphemy be taken away from you, with all malice (Eph 4:31). Or else, since they had shed the blood of the righteous one, the blood of the Lord's passion cried out to the Lord; therefore they rendered a cry instead of righteousness, according to what we read in Genesis: The voice of the blood of your brother Abel cries to me (Gen 4:10).
5:8
Woe to you who join house to house, and link field to field, as far as the limit of the place: will you alone dwell upon the earth? For what we have said, as far as the limit of the place, the Seventy translated, that you may take something from your neighbor; Symmachus and Theodotion, until place fails, or there is none, so that, though the land fails, greed is by no means sated. This I think is said both generally against all for whom nothing is enough, and specially against the vineyard of the Lord, which instead of grapes made wild grapes, that is, instead of judgment iniquity, and instead of righteousness a cry. For what madness it is, when houses and fields ought to be had to keep off the rains and to sow crops, to desire to have those in all of which you cannot dwell and which you are not able to till, and to make another's need your pleasure! According to tropology some think this said against the heretics, who, moving their feet from the East, come into the plain of Shinar, which means shaking out of teeth, and build the city of confusion and the tower of pride, and hear in other words: Hear these things, leaders of the house of Jacob, and you remnant of the house of Israel, who abhor judgment and pervert all that is right, who build Zion in blood and Jerusalem in iniquity (Mic 3:9, 10). These join houses to houses, that is, doctrines to doctrines; to whom it is said through Micah, Do not build a mockery in the house (Mic 3), lest upon the foundation of Christ, which the apostle Paul laid (1 Cor 3), and on which they ought to have built gold, silver, precious stones, they on the contrary build wood, hay, stubble, whose end is burning. Of such houses the Savior speaks in the Gospel: Everyone who hears my words and does not do them shall be likened to a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. The rain came down, the floods came, the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell: and great was the ruin of that house (Matt 7:26, 27). And the heretics go on seeking to join new things to old, and to change the same for more recent ones, until both human sense and speech fail.
5:9
These things of the Lord of hosts are in my ears: Unless many houses are made desolate, great and beautiful, without an inhabitant. For what we have rendered according to the Hebrew, These things of the Lord of hosts are in my ears, that is, the words which the Lord spoke still resound in my ears, the Seventy translated, These things have been heard in the ears of the Lord Sabaoth: not that the Prophet heard the words of the Lord, but that the things the Prophet was going to say were heard in the ears of the Lord; whereas it is more consistent to understand that the Prophet heard what the Lord spoke. And the Lord spoke this: that after the captivity great and most beautiful houses would be desolate, having no inhabitant.
5:10
For ten acres of vineyards shall make one little flask, and thirty measures of seed shall make three measures. For little flask, which the Seventy alone translated, all the others interpreted bath, which in Hebrew is called BETH (בת). And for thirty measures, which we have set down for a cor, which in Hebrew is called OMER (תמר), the Seventy rendered six artabas, which is an Egyptian measure and makes twenty measures. In the excessive barrenness, then, which follows the captivity, ten acres of vineyards will make a bath, that is, three amphorae; and thirty measures of seed, that is, a cor, will make an ephi, which the Seventy interpreted as three measures, that is, three modii. Now bath is said of liquid kinds, and ephi or epha, of the same measure, of dry ones. As we read in Ezekiel according to the Hebrew: You shall have a just ephi, and a just bath. The ephi and the bath shall be equal and of one measure, so that the bath holds the tenth part of a cor, and the ephi the tenth part of a cor: their balance shall be equal according to the measure of the cor (Ezek 45:10, 11). We ask, according to the anagogy, how the houses of the heretics are great and beautiful, which, when the time of judgment has come, have no inhabitant. For all the pomp and structure of words and the arguments of dialectic will be reduced to nothing. And since, according to the apostle Paul (1 Cor 3), we are not only God's building but also his husbandry, which the heretics imitate and are dug under and rooted up by Jeremiah: therefore where ten acres of vineyards, or where ten yoke of oxen are at work, they will make one bath, and thirty measures of seed will make an ephi (Jer 18), so that from the number ten, which in the holy Scriptures is mystical and perfect, and from thirty, at which Ezekiel prophesied (Ezek 1) and the Lord was baptized (Luke 3), they are reduced to an ephi, which, in comparison with a manifold number, is confined to unity. And that building and husbandry are referred to spiritual understanding the apostle Paul teaches in another place too (Eph 4), testifying that believers are founded and rooted in love. Hence Ecclesiastes too (Eccl 2) not only built himself houses but planted vineyards, and made gardens and orchards, and set out every fruit-bearing tree, and constructed pools to water the woodland. But the heretics, having only the image and shadow of the virtues and not the truth itself, without the fruit of works, promise the leaves of words. Of their trees the Lord says: Every planting which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up (Matt 15:13). For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and their offshoot from Gomorrah: their grape is a grape of gall, and theirs is a cluster of bitterness; their wine is the fury of dragons, and the incurable fury of asps (Deut 32:32ff.).
5:11-12
Woe to you who rise early in the morning to pursue drunkenness, and to drink until evening, so as to be inflamed with wine. Harp and lyre, timbrel and pipe, and wine are in your feasts; and you do not regard the work of the Lord, nor consider the works of his hands. For drunkenness, as Aquila and Symmachus interpreted it, the Seventy set down the Hebrew word itself, SICERAM (שכר), which signifies every drink that can intoxicate and overturn the settled state of the mind. And, following the sequence of the explanation begun, he rebukes the husbandmen of the vineyard, who, with barrenness impending and the burning near at hand by which the briers and thorns are to be consumed, gave themselves over to luxury and pleasures, not only in eating and drinking but also in the delight of the ears and in the various kinds of the art of music. While they do these things, they do not regard the work of the Lord, nor consider what is to come. Let us turn this testimony against the princes of the Church, who rise in the morning to pursue strong drink, and to drink until evening; of whom it is said in another place: Woe to you, O city, whose king is a youth, and your princes eat in the morning (Eccl 10:16). Occupied with delights, they do not understand the Creator from the creatures, nor consider the works of his hands, of which we read: By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and all their power by the breath of his mouth (Ps 32 [33]:6). According to a higher understanding, every disturbance of the soul can be called drunkenness, which is conceived from the wine of the fury of dragons and from the incurable venom of asps, which some drink from youth to old age, that is, from morning until evening (Deut 32). Others are roused from the banquet at the third, sixth, or ninth, and the eleventh hour, and it is said to them: Awake, you who are drunk with wine. Upon this wine and upon such grapes and vineyards the Lord rains sulfur and fire from the Lord; and whoever drinks of their wine is inflamed and burned up. He seeks the harp and the psaltery, whose inventor is Jubal, born of the stock of Cain (Gen 4), and does not hear the Lord saying to Aaron: You and your sons shall not drink wine and strong drink when you enter into the tabernacle of testimony, or approach the altar (Lev 10:8). These harps and lyres and timbrel and pipes the Babylonian king had, at whose sounding together the peoples of all nations prostrated themselves on the ground and worshiped the golden statue (Dan 3). And that the first time of human wisdom, when we leave childhood and come to the age of reason, is understood as morning in the Scriptures, many testimonies can teach us; of which, by way of example, a few are to be set down: In the morning I sent the Prophets; and: In the morning you will hear my prayer. In the morning I will stand before you, and will see (Ps 5:4, 5); and: From the night my spirit will rise early (Isa 26:9 LXX); and: O God, my God, to you I watch from the dawn (Ps 62 [63]:1); and: In the mornings I put to death all the sinners of the land, to destroy from the city of the Lord all who work iniquity (Ps 100 [101]:8); and in another place: Weeping will tarry until evening, and gladness until the morning, and other things like these. And we rise in the morning when we leave our vices behind in childhood, and can say: Remember not the sins of my youth and of my ignorance (Ps 24 [25]:7). And when the sun of righteousness has risen for us, the darkness is put to flight, and at once we put to death all the thoughts that provoke us to sins, and we destroy from the city of our mind those sinners of whom the Savior speaks: Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies (Matt 15:19), and the rest. But most unhappy are those who, occupied from morning until evening with drunkenness, gluttony and divers pleasures, do not understand the works of the Lord in themselves, nor consider why they were created.
5:13
Therefore my people has been led away captive, because it had no knowledge; and its nobles have perished with hunger, and its multitude is dried up with thirst. That these things befell the people of the Jews according to the letter under Vespasian and Titus, the Roman emperors, both Greek and Latin history relates. And this indeed they suffer spiritually today too, enduring not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of God; because they neither regarded the work of the Lord nor considered the works of his hands, nor had knowledge of him who has always spoken through the Prophets (Amos 8). Hence in the Psalms too it is said of them: They shall return at evening, and shall suffer hunger like dogs, and shall go round about the city (Ps 58 [59]:16). And that every word of teaching is called bread and water, that saying of the Gospel teaches: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes forth from the mouth of God (Luke 4:4); and: Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will not thirst for ever (John 4:13). And in the psalm it is said: He has brought me up beside the waters of refreshment (Ps 22 [23]:2). Hence the Lord too will not send away the hungry in the wilderness, lest they grow weary and collapse and be killed by hunger (Matt 15). And of the righteous man it is said: I have been young, and have grown old, and I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread (Ps 36 [37]:25). Some wish to interpret what is said, My people has been led away captive, because it had no knowledge; and its nobles have perished with hunger, and its multitude is dried up with thirst, generally of the underworld and of Gehenna, in which everyone will be punished who has not had knowledge of God.
5:14-15
Therefore the underworld has enlarged its soul and opened its mouth without any limit, and its strong ones and its people, and its exalted and glorious ones, shall go down into it. And man shall be bowed down, and the man of rank shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be brought low. Those who rose in the morning to pursue strong drink, and continued in drunkenness until evening, and, occupied with pleasure and delights, would not regard the work of the Lord nor contemplate the works of his hands, were therefore led into captivity, because they had no knowledge of the Son of God, who himself says to them, You know neither me nor him who sent me (John 8:19); and in the captivity itself they perished with hunger and were dried up with thirst. Hence the underworld and death enlarged its soul and opened its mouth, and without any number or satiety devoured those who are to be punished for ever: so that the princes and the people, and the exalted and glorious ones of the land of Judah, went down into it, and all pride was humbled, and the eyes of the lofty were brought low, as they understood that they were mortal; and all that the Lord had announced through the Prophets as to come was fulfilled in fact. Now the underworld is said to have a soul, not because it is a living creature, according to the error of some, but because in words of human usage we express the condition of insensible things: that it is insatiable and is never filled by the multitude of the dead. Just as death too is said to be in the hand of the tongue (Prov 18), and Almighty God says that his soul hates the Sabbaths and New Moons of the Jews (Isa 1). Whatever we have said of the people of the Jews can be referred tropologically to those who, occupied with the delights of the world and not regarding the works of God, are led captive into sin and have no knowledge of God; and therefore they perish with hunger and thirst for good works and virtues, and will be dragged down into Gehenna, and there, consigned to eternal torments, they will see their power and pride changed into misery and humility.
5:16
And the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and the holy God shall be sanctified in righteousness. When the people has been led away captive because it had no knowledge, and has perished with hunger and been dried up with thirst, and the underworld has enlarged its soul, and the strong and the exalted and glorious have gone down into the depth, and man has been bowed down and the man of rank humbled, and all have received according to their deserts: then the Lord will be exalted in judgment, whose judgment before seemed to be unjust, and the holy God will be sanctified by all in righteousness, so that what is said in the Gospel may be fulfilled: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name (Matt 6:9); and: Righteous Father, the world has not known you (John 17:25). Hence we must beware lest we anticipate the judgment of God, whose judgments are great and unspeakable, and of which the Apostle speaks: His judgments are inscrutable, and his ways unsearchable (Rom 11:33), until he lights up the hidden things of darkness and lays open the thoughts of hearts (1 Cor 4:5), he who says in the Gospel: Judge not, that you be not judged (Matt 7:1). In agreement with this sentence the apostle Paul commanded: Who are you that judge another's servant? To his own Lord he stands or falls. But he will stand: for God is able to make him stand (Rom 14:4).
5:17
And the lambs shall feed according to their order, and strangers shall eat the deserts turned into fruitfulness. For the lambs feeding according to their order, which is taken in the good sense, the Seventy, intending I know not what, translated, those that are plundered shall feed like bulls, understanding bulls in place of lambs, and again interpreting lambs in place of strangers. But when the Lord has been exalted in judgment, and the holy one sanctified in his righteousness, so that the wicked husbandmen perish wickedly and the lofty cedar is cut down by the axe of the Lord, then those who are of the number of the lambs, not of the goats, will feed in the meadows of the Church and will say: The Lord feeds me, and I shall lack nothing (Ps 22 [23]:1); and what the Jews have deserted, turned into fruitfulness, the people of the nations will eat. This is according to tropology. But to complete the order of the history, the same thing is said in other words of which we read above: Strangers devour your land in your sight, and it is deserted and overthrown by foreign peoples (Isa 1:7). For a multitude of the nations, gathered from the whole world, dwells in Judea; and, the former peoples having been cast out, blindness has therefore come in part upon the house of Israel, that the fullness of the nations might come in (Rom 11). And beautifully, according to the Seventy, those were plundered and laid waste and led into captivity like bulls of whom the Lord had said, Fat bulls have beset me, so that lambs might occupy the places of the bulls.
5:18-19
Woe to you who draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as with the rope of a cart. Who say: Let his work make haste and come quickly, that we may see it; and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come, and we know it. For the rope of a cart the Seventy translated the strap of the yoke of a heifer, or of a cow. That sins are called bonds we read quite often; among them is this: Each one is bound fast with the cords of his own sins (Prov 5:22). And the Lord, rebuking the offending people, which had joined sins to sins, made a scourge of cords, showing them how they had made the house of God a den of robbers (John 2), and had turned the seat of prayer into a house of trade (Matt 21). The guest too at the Lord's supper, not having a wedding garment, is bound hand and foot and cast into the outer darkness (Matt 22). And the Lord came to say to those who were in bonds, Come out (Isa 49:9); and to those who were in darkness, Be revealed (Ps 145 [146]:8). For he himself looses the fettered and enlightens the blind, whom Jeremiah calls the prisoners of the earth. Nor does he lament over those who have begun to sin and have at once ceased; for there is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin at some time (Eccl 7:21); but over those who have drawn out their sins with a long cord. Hence we read in Numbers too (chapter 19) that the red heifer, whose ashes are the expiation of the people, is not sacrificed and offered at the altar of the Lord unless it has done no earthly works and has not drawn the yoke, nor been bound with the bonds of the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar. And in this same prophet, instead of the girdle of truth, the daughters of Zion are girded with a cord. Ahithophel too and Judas [one of whom betrayed David, the other the Lord], drawing their sins with a very long rope, perished by hanging, thinking that the evil of conscience would be ended by present death, and that there is nothing after death. And that according to the Hebrew and all the other translators they are called cords of vanity signifies this: that for those who commit it sin is easily woven, and is as empty and easy as the threads of spiders are woven; but when we wish to get out of it, we are tied with the most solid bonds. And the cart full and laden with sins they understand more easily who remember that it is written in Zechariah that impiety sits upon a talent of lead (Zech 5), and that the Egyptians, who were weighed down by the heavy burden of their sins, were sunk like lead in the Red Sea (Exod 15). And in another place the sinner says: My iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden they have weighed upon me (Ps 37 [38]:5). These things are said to the princes of the Jews, who were rebuked above for avarice and luxury: that, called by the Lord to penitence, and afterwards by his Apostles, they persevere to this day in blasphemies, and three times every day in all the synagogues, under the name of the Nazarenes, they anathematize the Christian name. And the sense is: Woe to you who think that the day of judgment will not be, or that the captivity which the prophetic discourse foretells will not come; who say to the Prophet: How long will you threaten us with the wrath of God? We wish to know it; let it come now. And they say this in irony, because they think it will not come, but is feigned by the Prophet.
5:20
Woe to you who call evil good, and good evil, putting darkness for light, and light for darkness, putting bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. It is a crime of the same kind to call good, light and sweet by contrary names as to call evil, darkness and bitter by the names of virtues. This is against those who do not think it a sin if they disparage the good, and do not judge it an offense if they praise the evil. And the Jews put good as evil, and light as darkness, and sweet as bitter, when they took up Barabbas, the author of robbery and sedition, and crucified Jesus, who had come only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to save what had perished. In Barabbas let us understand the devil, who, though he is night and darkness, transforms himself into an Angel of light (Matt 27). Hence the Apostle too says: What participation has righteousness with iniquity? What fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial? (2 Cor 6:14, 15). For neither is the lamp to be taken away and put under the bushel or under the bed, but upon the lampstand, that it may give light to all. Nor is a tree bearing evil fruits to be called by the name of a good tree (Matt 5). Hence in Genesis too it is related in mystical speech that God divided between the light and the darkness, which in the beginning were borne over the abyss (Gen 1). And that the Savior is called good, he himself says in the Gospel: The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep (John 10:11). He says too that he is the light: I am the light of the world (John 8:12); and daily, filled with the heavenly bread, we say: Taste and see how sweet the Lord is (Ps 33 [34]:9). On the contrary, when we say, Deliver us from evil (Matt 6:13), and, The world is set in the evil one (1 John 5:19), we desire to be delivered from the snares of the devil. And that he himself is signified by the names of darkness and bitterness we read quite often. But we can say this too, that all doctrines contrary to the truth are bitter, and the truth alone is sweet. Hence we must beware lest we follow falsehood instead of truth, darkness instead of light. For there are many ways that seem right to men, and their ends reach to the depth of the underworld. There is also the righteous man perishing in his righteousness, to whom it is said: Be not overly righteous (Eccl 7:17). For which reasons Israel promises that he will walk by the king's way and will turn aside neither to the left nor to the right (Deut 5). And to say what I feel: with difficulty can anyone be free of this curse, since we often flatter the wicked for their power and despise the good for their poverty. Hence Aquila interpreted more expressively: Woe to him who says to the evil man, You are good, and to the good man, You are evil (Prov 17:15). And with this sense agrees what Solomon says in Proverbs: He who judges the righteous unrighteous, and the unrighteous righteous, both are abominable with God. The Scribes and Pharisees too, receiving not the words of the Savior but the traditions of men and old wives' fables, made good evil and evil good.
5:21
Woe to you who are wise in your own eyes, and prudent in your own sight. You who seem to yourselves, he says, to be wise, who follow the prudence not of God but of men: and though you do not receive the power of God and the wisdom of God, you think yourselves wise (1 Cor 1). Between wisdom and prudence the Stoics say there is this difference: that wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human, but prudence only of mortal things. And these things are said consistently against the Scribes and Pharisees, who, having the key of knowledge, neither enter in to Christ themselves nor allow others to enter (Luke 11).
5:22
Woe to you who are mighty to drink wine, and strong men to mix strong drink, that is, drunkenness. Of those to whom he had said above, Woe to you who rise early in the morning to pursue drunkenness, and to drink until evening, so as to be inflamed with wine, he speaks now too: who are mighty to drink wine, and strong men to mix strong drink (Deut 32). Drunk with the wine of the dragon and the incurable venom of asps, they slandered the power of the Lord. And being drunk themselves, they made the peoples drunk, so that, raving with a like fury, they cried out together against the Lord. According to tropology we have already said before that the priests who are to enter the Tabernacle of God ought not to drink wine and strong drink (Lev 10). To which we now add that it was commanded the Nazirites too, who sanctify themselves to the Lord, that they should neither drink nor eat wine and strong drink and anything that comes from grapes, not even a raisin, nor vinegar made from wine (Num 6). But in Proverbs too it is commanded: Let the mighty who are wrathful not drink wine, lest when they have drunk they forget wisdom. Between wine and strong drink, according to the anagogy, I judge the difference to be this: that wine is one disturbance out of many, for example, of lust, of avarice, of gluttony, and of envy; but strong drink, that is, drunkenness, contains in itself all the passions of the vices, which in the Latin tongue we can more rightly call disturbances, because they overturn the settled state of the mind and make the drunken not know what they do. Those, then, who are set over others ought above all to be free of vices, and most of all of anger, which is nearest to madness, lest the more they can, the more they harm those subject to them. He mixes strong drink who, though full of drunkenness, pretends, in order to deceive men, to have certain shadows and images of the virtues.
5:23
You who justify the wicked for gifts, and take away from the righteous man his righteousness. This too is part of the vices of the vineyard which instead of grapes made wild grapes, and, when the Lord waited for it to do judgment, did iniquity, justifying the wicked for gifts, and considering not the cases but the presents, which blind even the eyes of the wise. Hence we must beware lest we be drunk with wine, in which is luxury (Deut 16:19; Eph 5), and the thighs of our shame be laid bare (Gen 9), and lest we flatter the wicked for gifts and despise the righteousness of the righteous man for his poverty. This is commanded in the Epistle of James as well: that we not become judges of iniquity by honoring the wicked rich and despising the holy poor.
5:24
Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and the heat of the flame burns it up, so their root shall be as ashes, and their bud shall go up as dust. For they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and have blasphemed the word of the Holy One of Israel. For the causes given above, of pride and drunkenness and avarice, because instead of grapes they brought forth thorns, and hay, wood, stubble, and briers that are to burn, therefore the root of their malice will be reduced to ashes, and every flower and beauty of riches and of the body will be compared to dust (1 Cor 3). For they did not only do these things, but by these steps they came to blasphemy, so that they did not receive the law of the Lord and blasphemed the word of the Holy One of Israel; of which we read above: Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Isa 2:3). The root can be taken as evil thoughts, and the fruit and bud as evil works and words, so that what lies hidden in the root is shown in the bud; and both will be devoured by the Lord's burning. Hence the Apostle too (Heb 12:15) speaks of the root of the bitterness of evils springing up.
5:25
Therefore the fury of the Lord is angered against his people, and he has stretched out his hand over it and struck it, and the mountains are troubled, and their carcasses have become like dung in the midst of the streets. For all this his fury is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out. Because they cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, which the Lord promises through Jeremiah that he will give, saying: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will strike a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the pact which I made with your fathers in the day when I took their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt (Jer 31:31, 32). And they blasphemed the word of the Holy One of Israel, saying: He has a demon, and is a Samaritan (John 8:48); and: Is not this the son of the carpenter? (Matt 13:55). Therefore the fury of the Lord is angered against his people, that fury which before had been angered against the princes and the mighty, who were wise in their own eyes and justified the wicked for gifts, and the tongue of fire had devoured them like stubble, and the heat of the flame had burned them up, so that the mighty might mightily suffer torments. And he stretched out his hand against it, which he calls his people because it was the portion of his inheritance and the cord of his possession (Deut 32). And he stretches out his hand to strike, and his fury is angered, of which we read in another place too: O Lord, rebuke me not in your fury, nor chastise me in your wrath (Ps 6:1). And Jeremiah: Correct us, he says, O Lord, but in judgment, and not in fury (Jer 10:24). And the Lord is said to rage, not because he is subject to human disturbances, but because we who offend do not fear the Lord unless we have heard him angry. Hence the Apostle too writes (Rom 2) that the goodness and patience of God call us to penitence, but we, according to our hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up wrath for ourselves in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. And what the hand is that is stretched out or lifted up over the sinful people Job says more plainly: For the hand of the Lord has touched me (Job 19:21). Hence the devil too, knowing the mighty hand of the Lord and the arm that has been revealed to all the nations, says to the Lord: Put forth your hand and touch all that he has: and see if he will not bless you to your face (Job 2:5). And that what is to come is spoken of as past follows prophetic custom, in which the things foretold as to come are so certain that they are thought to be past. This is sung in the Psalms too: They gave gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink (Ps 68 [69]:22). And again: They divided my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots (Ps 21 [22]:19). And as for what follows, And he struck it, that is, his people, and the mountains are troubled: some think the mountains are the contrary powers, or those spirits which are in the ministry of God and to whom sinners are handed over to be punished. But we think it is said hyperbolically: that because of the greatness of the impending evils even the mountains are moved, and all the streets of the cities are filled with the corpses of the dead. That this befell the Jews after the passion of the Lord under Vespasian and Hadrian no one doubts. And though these things have been done, his fury is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out, or lifted high, which shows the bearing of one who is angry and strikes. And it is to be noted in all these things that he does not reproach them with idolatry, nor with other sins by which they offended God, but because they cast away the law of the Gospel and blasphemed the word of the Lord.
5:26ff.
And he will lift up a signal among the nations far off, and will whistle to him from the ends of the earth; and behold, he will come swiftly in haste. There shall be none faint nor laboring among them; he shall not slumber nor sleep, nor shall the girdle of his loins be loosed, nor the latchet of his shoe be broken. His arrows are sharp, and all his bows bent; the hoofs of his horses are like flint, and his wheels like the rush of a tempest. His roaring is like a lion's; he shall roar like the lion's whelps, and gnash his teeth, and seize the prey, and embrace it, and there shall be none to rescue it. And he shall resound over it in that day like the sound of the sea: we shall look upon the land, and behold, the darkness of tribulation, and the light is darkened by its gloom. The Hebrews understand this place to be prophesied of the Babylonians and Nebuchadnezzar, that by the will of God he was brought into Judea and Jerusalem and overthrew the temple. But we, following the order and joining what follows to what precedes, say that the signal was lifted up among the nations far off, and that the Lord whistled for them or drew them from the ends of the earth, for this reason: because they cast away the law of the Gospel and blasphemed the holy word. For if the discourse were about the Babylonians, according to prophetic custom he would have said: I will call him who is from the North, because, relative to the position of Judea, the Assyrians and Chaldeans are in the northern region. Or certainly he would have described the Babylonians and Assyrians more openly. But now, by saying, He will lift up a signal among the nations far off, and will whistle to him from the ends of the earth, he signifies nations set far off and dwelling at the ends of the earth: doubtless the Romans and all the peoples of Italy, Gaul and Spain, who under Vespasian and Hadrian lay subject to the Roman empire. Hence Italy too, from the fact that Hesperus sets there, was once called Hesperia. And at his coming it was struck, and all the mountains of Judea were troubled, as Theodotion and Symmachus interpreted, or were moved, as Aquila set down, or were embittered, as the Seventy translated, so that by the onslaught of the enemies all the streets were filled with the corpses of the dead. The divine discourse, then, describes the swiftness of the army that comes, which came not by its own will but by the Lord's, nay rather was drawn and summoned by his whistle: that it did not faint nor grow weary on so long a march, and in its greed for plunder did not admit sleep to its eyes, and its shoes too were not worn out; the multitude of archers, the squadrons of horsemen, the heat of the chariots and four-horse teams; that like a lion it came not so much to fight as to plunder and devour; and the howling of the victorious army is compared to the waves of the sea. From this it is to be noted what the sound of the sea signifies wherever it is named in the Scriptures. When, then, the Roman army has come and seized the prey, and there has been no one to rescue it, the Prophet, with the feeling of one who suffers with them, joins himself to the people and says: We shall look upon the land, and behold, the darkness of tribulation. For we shall not dare to look upon heaven, whose dweller we have offended; and our light, which we always had in God, has been darkened by the gloom of tribulations. I have read in someone's Commentaries that what is said, He will lift up a signal among the nations far off, and will whistle to him from the ends of the earth, ought to be understood of the calling of the nations: that, when the signal of the Cross was lifted up and the burdens of sins laid down, they came swiftly and believed. But I do not know how what follows can agree with this sense.
Book Three
The sheer size of the volumes being woven in the explanation of the prophet Isaiah is enough for me, where to pass anything over is a loss to the understanding. Therefore in the individual books, which signify only their number and order, I have set brief little prefaces. And you, Eustochium, virgin of Christ, I beg to help me with your prayers in the exposition of a most difficult vision: in which God almighty is seen in his majesty; and two Seraphim standing round about him and crying: Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lord Sabaoth, the whole earth is full of his glory; and the threshold of the temple moved and shaken, and the Jewish house filled with the darkness of error. And the Prophet, in comparison with the divine glory, saying that he has unclean lips and dwells in the midst of a blaspheming people, who cried out with the concordant voice of impiety: Crucify, crucify such a one; and, We have no king but Caesar (John 19:6 and 15). And one of the Seraphim sent to Isaiah, who, having taken a coal from the altar with tongs, was to cleanse the prophet's lips, while the people remained unclean. This, then, is the opening of the third book on Isaiah.
6:1
In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up. That Isaiah prophesied under four kings, over Judah and Jerusalem, was shown by the title of the first vision; that is, under Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. So when Uzziah was dead, under whom all the things we have expounded above were spoken, his son Jotham succeeded him, who reigned sixteen years, and did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and built the high gate of the temple. While he was ruling, Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, so as to show the bearing of one who reigns.
And the things that were under him filled the Temple, or, as Theodotion and Symmachus translated: And the things that were under his feet filled the Temple. For which the Seventy translated: And the house was full of his glory. On this vision, about thirty years ago, when I was at Constantinople and was being trained in the study of the holy Scriptures under that most eloquent man Gregory of Nazianzus, then bishop of the same city, I know that I dictated a brief and hasty treatise, both to make trial of my little talent and to obey friends who bade me. To that little book, then, I send the reader, and I pray that he be content with the brief exposition of the present time. That Uzziah was struck with leprosy because he claimed for himself a priesthood not permitted to him, the sacred history relates; and when he was dead, the Lord is seen in the Temple which he had polluted (2 Chr 26). From this we perceive that while a leprous king reigns in us, we cannot see the Lord reigning in his majesty, nor know the mysteries of the holy Trinity. Hence also in Exodus, after Pharaoh was dead, who oppressed Israel with clay and straw and bricks, the people, who while he lived could not cry out, cried to the Lord. And Ezekiel, when Pelatiah the son of Benaiah, a most wicked prince, was dead, falls upon his face and cries with a loud voice to the Lord. And beautifully, according to the Hebrew, it is not the Lord himself who filled the Temple, whose throne is heaven and the earth the footstool of his feet, and of whom we read in another place: The Lord is in his holy Temple, the Lord's seat is in heaven (Ps 10 [11]:5); but the things that were under his feet filled the Temple (Isa 66). But who this Lord is who is seen, we learn more fully in the evangelist John and in the Acts of the Apostles. Of whom John says: These things Isaiah said when he saw his glory, and spoke of him (John 12:41), meaning without doubt Christ. Again Paul in the Acts of the Apostles, where at Rome he speaks to the Jews: Well, he says, did the Holy Spirit speak through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers, saying: Go to this people and say: With the ear you shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing you shall see and shall not perceive; for the heart of this people has been made gross, and with their ears they have heard heavily; and they have shut their eyes, lest perhaps they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I should heal them (Acts 28:26-27). Now the Son was seen in the bearing of one who reigns, and the Holy Spirit spoke, on account of the fellowship of majesty and the unity of substance. Someone may ask how the Prophet now says that he has seen the Lord, and not simply the Lord but the Lord Sabaoth, as he himself testifies in what follows; when the evangelist John has said: No one has ever seen God (John 1:18). And God speaks to Moses: You cannot see my face; for man shall not see my face and live (Exod 33:20). To which we shall answer that not only the divinity of the Father, but not even that of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, since in the Trinity there is one nature, can the eyes of the flesh behold; but the eyes of the mind, of which the Savior himself says: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8). We read that the Lord was seen by Abraham in the figure of a man; and that he who was God wrestled with Jacob as a man. Hence that very place was called Phanuel, that is, the face of God: For I have seen, he says, the Lord face to face, and my soul has been saved (Gen 32). Ezekiel too saw the Lord in the form of a man sitting upon the Cherubim; from his loins and downward there was as it were fire, and the upper parts had the appearance of electrum (Ezek 1). The nature of God, then, is not discerned, but he is seen by men as he wills.
6:2
Seraphim stood above it; six wings to the one, and six wings to the other: with two they covered his face, and with two they covered his feet, and with two they flew. And they cried one to another, and said: Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. What we, following the other Translators and the Hebrew truth, in which is written MEMMALLO ממעללו, that is, ἐπάνω αὐτοῦ, which in Latin is said above it, have rendered, the Seventy translated round about him, so that the Seraphim are described as standing not above the Temple but round about the Lord. Again, where we said that one of the Seraphim covered his face and feet, by which is understood God's: in the Hebrew is written PHANAU פניו and REGLAU (רגליו), which can be interpreted both as his and as its own: so that, according to the ambiguity of the Hebrew speech, the Seraphim may be said to cover both the face and feet of God and their own face and feet. In the seventy-ninth psalm we read: You who sit upon the Cherubim, shine forth (Ps 79 [80]:3): who in our language are interpreted multitude of knowledge. Hence the Lord is plainly shown to sit upon the Cherubim in the manner of a charioteer. But the Seraphim, apart from this place, I do not know that I have read anywhere else in the canonical Scriptures, who are said to stand above the Temple, or round about the Lord. Therefore those err who are accustomed to say in their prayers: You who sit upon the Cherubim and Seraphim, which Scripture has not taught. Now Seraphim is interpreted ἐμπρησταὶ, which we can say as kindling or burning, according to what we read elsewhere: Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire (Ps 103 [104]:5). Hence also the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which Latin custom does not receive: Are they not all, he says, ministering spirits, sent into ministry for the sake of those who shall receive the inheritance of salvation (Heb 1:14)? Daniel too, when he had described the Lord in the bearing of one who reigns, added: Thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him. (Dan 7:10). In the Cherubim, then, the Lord is shown; in the Seraphim he is in part shown, in part hidden. For they cover his face and feet, because we can know neither the things past before the world nor the things to come after the world; but we contemplate only the middle things, which were made in the six days. Nor is it strange to believe this of the Seraphim, since the apostles too open the Savior to believers and hide him from unbelievers; and there was a veil before the Ark of the Testament (Exod 40). They are said also to have wings, on account of their swiftness and their running to and fro in all things; or because they always dwell in higher places. For neither does that which is said of the winds, Who walks upon the wings of the winds (Ps 103 [104]:4), testify that the winds truly have wings, after the fables of the poets and the licence of painters; but rather their swift running to and fro in all things. And each has six wings, because we know only of the making of the world and of the present age. And in that they cry one to another, or, according to the Hebrews, this one to that one, that is, one to one, they exhort one another to the praises of the Lord, and say: Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lord of hosts, so as to show the mystery of the Trinity in one Godhead; and to testify that no longer the Temple of the Jews, as before, but the whole earth is full of the glory of him who for our salvation deigned to take a human body and to come down to the earth. Indeed, when Moses too was praying the Lord, after the calf had been worshipped, to spare the sinful people, the Lord answered: I will be propitious to them. But as I live, and as my name lives: for the whole earth shall be filled with my glory (Num 14:20-21). And the seventy-first psalm sings: The whole earth shall be filled with his glory (Ps 71 [72]:19). Hence also the Angels cried to the shepherds: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will (Luke 2:14). Impiously, therefore, a certain one understands the two Seraphim as the Son and the Holy Spirit: since, according to the evangelist John and the apostle Paul, we teach that the Son of God was seen in the majesty of one who reigns, and that the Holy Spirit spoke. Some of the Latins understand the two Seraphim as the old and the new Instrument, which speak only of the present age. Hence they are said to have six wings, and to cover the face and feet of God, and to bring forth in rivalry the testimony of the truth, and in all that they cry to show forth the mysteries of the Trinity. And to marvel together that the Lord Sabaoth, being set in the form of God the Father, took the form of a servant and humbled himself even unto death, and the death of the cross (Phil 2), and that no longer, as before, do heavenly things alone know him, but earthly things also.
6:4
And the lintels of the hinges were moved at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke. When the Seraphim cried and proclaimed the mystery of the Trinity in all the earth, when the whole earth came to know the passion of the Lord and Savior, at once the threshold of the Temple was moved, or taken away, and all its hinges fell down, the Savior's threat being fulfilled, when he said: Your house shall be left to you desolate (Matt 23:38). And how beautiful is the order of the words! After the earth was filled with the glory of the Lord Sabaoth, the Temple of the Jews was filled with the darkness of ignorance, and with gloom, and with smoke, which is harmful to the eyes. Or certainly by the smoke of the Temple a burning is signified. For first the Gospel of the Savior was preached in the whole world, and forty-two years after the Lord's passion Jerusalem was taken and the Temple burned. The Jews think that the Temple filled with smoke signifies thymiama, that is, incense, and through this the coming of the divine majesty.
6:5
And I said: Woe is me, because I was silent, because I am a man polluted in lips, and I shall dwell in the midst of a people having polluted lips, and I have seen with my eyes the king, the Lord of hosts. Abraham too, after he saw the Lord and heard his voice, says that he is earth and ashes (Gen 18); and Isaiah, according to the Seventy Translators, testifies that he is pierced with compunction, not for other crimes, but because he had unclean lips. Happy the conscience that has sinned only in speech, and that not by its own fault, but by fellowship with a people having polluted lips, with whom he was very often compelled to speak. From this it is shown that it is harmful to live with sinners: For he who touches pitch shall be defiled by it (Sir 13:1). But since in the Hebrew we read: Woe is me, because I was silent, the Prophet bewails himself because he was not worthy to praise the Lord Sabaoth with the Seraphim, whom we understand as the Angelic powers. And he did not dare to praise the Lord because he had unclean lips. And he had unclean lips for this reason, because he lived among a sinful people. Or certainly it is to be understood thus: Because I was silent, and did not boldly rebuke Uzziah the impious king, therefore my lips are unclean, and I do not dare to sing the praises of the Lord with the Angels, lest it be said to me: Why do you declare my righteousnesses, and take my covenant in your mouth (Ps 49 [50]:16)? For praise is not beautiful in the mouth of a sinner (Sir 15:9). And we say this, not as teaching that Isaiah was such a man, but that he himself, out of humility, and only because of unclean lips, confesses himself unworthy of the praise of God.
6:6
And one of the Seraphim flew to me, and in his hand a pebble, which he had taken from the altar with tongs, and he touched my mouth, and said: Behold, I have touched your lips with this, and your iniquity shall be taken away, and your sin shall be cleansed. One of the Seraphim, which is interpreted kindling, flew, or was sent, to cleanse the Prophet's unclean lips, and to purge them with the live coal, or pebble, which he had taken from the altar. Many, however, think that there are two Seraphim, because one cried to another, although among many too individuals can cry to individuals; and the edition of the Seventy rather signifies very many, who translated, Seraphim stood round about him. For if it were said of two, they would have said not round about, but on either side. And this fits the multitude of Angels, which is made ready for the ministry of God. And they are called Seraphim in the plural number, and Seraph in the singular: just as Cherubim and Cherub. And that an altar, under which are the souls of the martyrs, is seen in heaven, John too speaks in the Apocalypse (Rev 6); and this pebble, which by the Seventy alone was translated ἄνθραξ, that is, carbuncle, may signify not a coal or a live ember, as most think, but ἄνθρακα, that is, the carbuncle stone, which is called fiery because of the likeness of its flame-like color. From this we understand that the altar of God is full of carbuncles, that is, of fiery pebbles and live coals, which purge sins. Hence we read it written of God: Coals were kindled by him (Ps 17 [18]:9). And of the Lord himself it is said that he is a consuming fire. And the Savior in the Gospel: I came to cast fire upon the earth (Luke 12:49): that he might baptize in the Holy Spirit and in fire. For the fire will prove of what sort each one's work is (1 Cor 3). And he who is to be saved will be saved thus, as if he had passed through fire. And this is to be noted, that to Jeremiah, to whom it was said: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and in your mother's womb I sanctified you (Jer 1:5), because he did not have unclean lips but had only said: I do not know how to speak, for I am a youth, the Lord himself stretched out his hand and touched his mouth and said: Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. But to Isaiah, who had said: I am a man polluted in lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people having polluted lips, the hand of God is not stretched out, but a Seraph is sent by God, or flies of his own will, because he has been bound over to this office. And in his hand he holds the pebble, which, according to the Seventy and Theodotion, he took with tongs (in the singular), according to Aquila and Symmachus, who followed the Hebrew, with tongs (in the plural), that is, MALCAIM (מלקחים), so as to touch his mouth and purge his former offenses. And the hand is sent both by God and by the Seraph, so that the Prophet, seeing a member of his own body, may not be terrified by an outward touch. Some of our people think that the tongs, by which the pebble is grasped, are the two Testaments, which are joined to one another by the union of the Holy Spirit. And since the Lord is introduced sitting, and sitting in the Temple, and the house was filled with smoke, of thymiama, as the Jews think, consequently tongs too are set down, which we also read of in the priestly ministry (Exod 37).
6:8
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And I said: Here am I, send me. In place of what both we and all the other translators rendered for us, which in Hebrew is said LANU (לנו), the Seventy, wishing I know not what, set down to this people, which is not found in the Hebrew at all. Now when for us is said in the person of God, it is to be taken in the sense in which we also read in Genesis: Let us make man to our image and likeness (Gen 1:26), so as to indicate the mystery of the Trinity. For just as we read in the Gospel, where the Lord says: I and the Father are one (John 10:30); and one we refer to the nature, are to the distinction of persons: so, when the Lord commands, the Trinity gives the order. And the Lord does not say whom he orders to go, but sets the choice before those who hear, so that the will may obtain the reward. And the Prophet promises that he will go not out of the rashness and arrogance of his own conscience, but out of confidence: since his lips have been cleansed, and his iniquity taken away, and his sin cleansed. So Moses too, to whom the Lord had said: Come, I will send you to Pharaoh king of Egypt (Exod 3:10), and he said: I beseech you, Lord, I am not worthy; provide another whom you may send, or as is read in the Hebrew, Send whom you are going to send (Exod 4:13), answered not out of contempt but out of humility, because he who had been instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians had heard nothing about his lips being cleansed. And Isaiah, not by his own merit but by the grace of the Lord, by which he was cleansed, offers himself for the ministry. Others, however, think that Isaiah offered himself for this reason, because he supposed that prosperous things were to be announced to the people: but because he heard: Go, say to this people: With your ears you shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing you shall see and shall not know (Isa 6:9), for that reason, in what follows, when the voice of the Lord says to him: Cry, he does not cry at once, but asks, what shall I cry? And Jeremiah, to whom it had been said: Take the cup, and you shall give drink to all the nations to whom I shall send you (Jer 25:15), gladly accepting the cup of punishments to pledge it to the hostile nations, that they might drink and vomit and fall, after he heard, go, and first you shall give drink to Jerusalem, answered: You have deceived me, Lord, and I have been deceived (Jer 20:7). This is an observation of the Hebrews. For our part, however, we say that it was not of rashness but of obedience that he offered himself to the Lord to be sent.
6:9ff.
And he said: Go, and you shall say to this people: Hear with hearing, and do not understand, and see with sight, and do not know. Blind the heart of this people, and make its ears heavy, and shut its eyes, lest perhaps it see with its eyes, and hear with its ears, and understand with its heart, and be converted, and be healed. The Seventy translated this place as the evangelist Luke set it down in the Acts of the Apostles: And when they did not agree among themselves, without doubt the Jews, they departed, Paul having said one word: Well did the Holy Spirit speak through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers, saying: go to this people and say: With the ear you shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing you shall see and shall not perceive; for the heart of this people has been made gross, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and they have shut their eyes, lest perhaps they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I should heal them (Acts 28:25ff.). And at what time this prophecy was fulfilled, the Apostle Paul himself says in what follows: Let it be known to you, therefore, that this salvation of God has been sent to the nations, and they will hear (Acts 28:28). Hence too we read in the same Acts of the Apostles that Paul and Barnabas, when the Jews would not believe, said: It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you; but since you have thrust it away and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles (Acts 13:46-47). For thus the Lord has commanded us: I have set you for a light to the nations, that you may be for salvation to the end of the earth (Isa 49:6). So according to the Seventy the interpretation is easy: that Isaiah the prophet, at the Lord's command, foretells what the people is going to do. In the Hebrew there is a difficulty: how God himself commands the people to hear with hearing and not understand, and seeing to see and not recognize, and afterward the prophet is introduced speaking, and he entreats the Lord and says: Blind the heart of this people, and make its ears heavy, and shut its eyes, lest perhaps it see with its eyes, and hear with its ears, and understand with its heart, and be converted, and be healed (Isa 6:10). And first we must resolve the question that can be put to us: why did the apostle Paul, disputing with Hebrews, speak not according to the Hebrew, which he knew to be correct, but according to the Seventy? The ancient expositors of the Church relate that the evangelist Luke was most learned in the art of medicine, and knew Greek letters better than Hebrew. Hence his speech too, both in the Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles, that is, in both volumes, is more polished and has the scent of secular eloquence, and he uses Greek testimonies more than Hebrew. But Matthew and John, of whom the one wove his Gospel in the Hebrew tongue, the other in Greek, bring forward testimonies from the Hebrew, such as this: Out of Egypt I have called my son (Hos 11:1). And: For he shall be called a Nazarene (Matt 2:23). And: Rivers of living water shall flow from his belly (John 7:38). And: They shall look on him whom they pierced (Zech 12:10; John 19:37), and other things like these. The Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews too is gainsaid for this reason, that in writing to Hebrews he uses testimonies that are not found in the Hebrew volumes. But if anyone should say that the Hebrew books were afterward falsified by the Jews, let him hear what Origen answers to this little question in the eighth volume of his Explanations of Isaiah: that the Lord and the Apostles, who rebuke the other crimes in the Scribes and Pharisees, would never have kept silent about this crime, which was the greatest. But if they should say that the Hebrew books were falsified after the coming of the Lord and Savior and the preaching of the Apostles, I shall not be able to hold back my laughter, that the Savior and the Evangelists and the Apostles should have brought forward testimonies in such a way as the Jews were afterward going to falsify them. But of the present place this must be said: that we take refuge in the translation of the Seventy in vain, lest what is said according to the Hebrew should seem blasphemous: Hear with hearing, and do not understand: and see the vision, and do not know, since we find testimonies of this kind in the Seventy Translators too, such as that in Exodus which is said to Pharaoh: For this reason I have raised you up, to show my power in you (Exod 9:16). But if he himself raised him up and hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he should not believe; and of others it is said: God gave them a spirit of compunction, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear (Rom 11:8); and in the Psalms: Let their table become a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block, and a recompense: let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bend their backs always (Ps 68 [69]:23-24): then those who do not see are not at fault, but he who gave them eyes for not seeing. So even apart from this testimony which we are now trying to expound, the same question remains in the Churches, and either the others will be resolved along with this one, or this one too will be insoluble along with the others. The blessed apostle Paul explains this place more fully to the Romans, and we should be doing something superfluous if we wished to comprise in a brief discourse what he pursued through almost the whole epistle. For he says, after many things: God has shut up all things in unbelief, that he may have mercy on all (Rom 11:32). And marveling at the mysteries of the Lord he added: O depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how inscrutable are his judgments, and how untraceable his ways. And again, disputing about the unbelief of the Jews, he says: Have they so sinned that they should fall? God forbid; but by their offense salvation came to the Gentiles, to provoke them to emulation (Rom 11:11). And a little after: For if their casting away is the reconciliation of the world, what will their taking up be? Is it not life from the dead? And again: For I would not have you ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, lest you be wise in yourselves, that blindness has come in part upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, and then all Israel should be saved. And a little after (Rom 11:25): As concerning the Gospel they are enemies for your sakes, but as concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers: for the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. For as you, he says, once did not believe God, but now have obtained mercy because of their unbelief: so these too have now not believed in your mercy, that they too may obtain mercy. For God has shut up all things under sin, that he may have mercy on all. It is therefore not the cruelty of God but his mercy that one nation should perish so that all may be saved; that a part of the Jews should not see, so that the whole world may behold. Hence the Lord himself too in the Gospel turns the mystery of the man blind from birth, who had received his eyes, to Tropology, and says: For judgment I came into this world, that those who see may not see, and those who do not see may see (John 9:39). And in another place Simeon speaks: Behold, this one is set for the fall and for the rising again of many (Luke 2:34). So while they do not see, we see; while they fall, we rise again. Understanding this, the Prophet in a certain manner says in other words: O Lord, you command me to speak to the people of the Jews, that they may hear and not understand the Savior, and see him and not recognize him. If you will that your command be fulfilled and the whole world be saved, which I too desire to come about, then blind the heart of this people and make its ears heavy and shut its eyes, that they may not understand, may not hear, may not see. For if they see, and are converted, and understand, and are healed, the whole world will not receive healing. From this we perceive that, however grave the sin, if anyone is converted he can be healed. And at the same time this too is to be understood: that for the greatness of their crime they were judged unworthy even of repentance, as the Lord himself says to Jerusalem: How often would I have gathered your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not (Matt 23:37).
6:11, 13
And I said: How long, Lord? And he said: Until the cities are made desolate without inhabitant, and the houses without men, and the land is left deserted. And the Lord will remove men far away, and she that had been forsaken in the midst of the land shall be multiplied. And yet in it there shall be a tithing, and again it shall be for a plundering, like a terebinth, and like an oak that has cast its fruits: the seed that shall have stood in it shall be holy. The Lord says: Go, and tell this people that it hears and does not hear, sees and does not see. And for this reason it neither hears nor sees: because it is not going to understand the words of the Lord nor to recognize his works, and because it has grown fat and broad and has forgotten its Creator (Deut 32). The Prophet answers, and asks anxiously about his people: How long, Lord, will this sentence remain, that hearing it should not hear, and seeing should not see? To whom the Lord answered: So long will it not hear and not see, and have its heart blinded, until the cities of Judea, when Vespasian and Titus make war, are utterly overthrown, so much so that not even their former name remains, and the houses, if any remain, are without inhabitant, and the land is reduced to a wilderness; and the Jewish people is scattered over the whole world, either by flight or by captivity; and the people of the Jews is multiplied no longer in Judea, as before, but among all the nations. And though I say that it is multiplied, so great will be the misfortune of the remnant of the people that, in comparison with its former multitude, scarcely a tenth part remains. And when there is a wilderness in the land itself also (for this place can be understood in two ways: that scarcely a tenth part remains even in the whole world, and that in Judea itself scarcely a small part of the people is preserved), again those very remnants will be for a plundering, when, after about fifty years, Hadrian comes and has utterly plundered the land of Judea, so much so that it is compared to a terebinth and to an oak that has lost its acorns. Finally, after the last devastation, public laws were even posted, and the Jews were forbidden to enter the land from which they had been cast out. But if anyone believes in Christ, and that is fulfilled which we read above: Unless the Lord Sabaoth had left us seed, we should have been as Sodom, and should have been like Gomorrah (Isa 1:9): when, according to the Apostle (Rom 9), the remnant will be saved; this seed will be holy, and from the shoot of the Apostles all the Churches will sprout. What we have said, the seed that shall have stood in it shall be holy, or according to Aquila, its shoot shall be a holy seed, is not found in the Seventy Translators, but was added by Origen from the Hebrew and the edition of Theodotion; it is carried in the copies of the Church, so that after the fullness of the Gentiles has entered, then all Israel may be saved; and that in this too the word of the Lord may be fulfilled, who says: I will kill, and I will make alive, and I will strike, and I will heal (Deut 32:39).
7:1-2
And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah: Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, the king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to fight against it, and they could not subdue it. And they told the house of David, saying: Syria has come to an agreement with Ephraim; and his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the woods are moved before the wind. Uzziah, who is also Azariah, king of Judah, reigned in Jerusalem fifty-two years (2 Kgs 15). At the very end of his time Isaiah saw the things which the preceding discourse has set out. When he was dead and Jotham his son, a most righteous king, was reigning in his place, the prophet at once saw the Lord and Savior reigning in his majesty, and announcing the blindness of the Jewish people, and the overthrow of Jerusalem and of the other cities under Vespasian and Hadrian; and how in the Apostles a remnant was to be saved. As third king, the son of Jotham, Ahaz succeeds, a most impious man (2 Kgs 16; 2 Chr 28), who shut the doors of the temple, and in the valley of Ben-hinnom worshipped the Baals, and consecrated his son to idols; so that he even took away the bronze altar that Solomon had made, and placed in the Temple of God an altar of the idols, whose pattern he had received from Damascus. Justly, therefore, was he forsaken by the help of the Lord, and Rezin the king of Syria, that is, Aram, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel in Samaria, rose up together against him, and came to Jerusalem to storm it (ibid.). We read in the book of Chronicles that Rezin the king of Damascus, having conquered Ahaz, carried many from Judea off to Damascus; and that Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of the ten tribes, which were called Israel, who reigned in Samaria, struck down in one day a hundred and twenty thousand fighting men of Judah, and led captive into Samaria two hundred thousand women, boys and girls, with boundless plunder. Of that contest the prophet has now kept silent, but relates the second battle, when, having had proof of their strength and victory, and lured by the greatness of the plunder, they come again to Judea and desire to subdue Jerusalem, and could not, because the Lord helped it, so that, on the occasion of the mercy by which he was freeing the besieged people, he might announce that his Son would be born of a Virgin. When the house of David, that is, the royal house, heard that Syria and Ephraim, that is, Rezin and Pekah, were coming with joined army, it was terrified and greatly afraid, and both king and people trembled so that you would think the leaves of trees were being tossed by the blasts of the winds. According to the anagogy the interpretation is easy: that while Ahaz the impious king is reigning, the king of Aram, which is interpreted lofty and sublime, so as to indicate the arrogance of secular wisdom, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, who himself too, according to the prophet Hosea, was of the tribe of Ephraim, from which Jeroboam the son of Nebat had set up the golden calves in Bethel and Dan (1 Kgs 12) and had separated the people of God from David, are referred to the heretics, who agree together to storm the Church. And when the house of David hears this, David whom we read in Ezekiel is to be raised up as the good shepherd (Ezek 34), and his people believing simply in the Lord, it trembles greatly. And it trembles for this reason, because it is compared not to fruit-bearing trees but to an unfruitful forest. And that these same heretics and the gentiles fight against the house of David with the swords of arguments and of the dialectical art, no one doubts: so that those who are at variance among themselves agree in attacking the Church; according to that instance in which Herod and Pilate, who were at discord with each other, were bound together in friendship at the Lord's passion.
7:3-4ff.
And the Lord said to Isaiah: Go out to meet Ahaz, you and Jasub your son who is left, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, on the road of the fuller's field. And you shall say to him: See that you keep silent; do not fear, and let not your heart be afraid of the two tails of these smoking firebrands, in the wrath of the fury of Rezin and of Syria and of the son of Remaliah, because Syria, Ephraim and the son of Remaliah have taken most evil counsel against you, saying: Let us go up to Judah, and rouse it up, and tear it away to ourselves, and set a king in the midst of it, the son of Tabeel. Thus says the Lord God: It shall not stand, and this shall not be; but the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin, and yet sixty-five years, and Ephraim shall cease to be a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria the son of Remaliah. If you do not believe, you shall not remain. Jasub the son of Isaiah, which is interpreted left over and returning, as a type of the people of Judah, which was to be freed from the hands of two kings, is ordered to go out with his father and to meet Ahaz king of Judah at the place of the conduit of the upper pool, on the road of the fuller's field, where we shall read later that under Hezekiah king of Judah Rabshakeh stood and, at the command of Sennacherib king of the Assyrians, blasphemed the people of God. To which place there went out, sent by Hezekiah, the princes of the city whom we read of in the volume of Kings. And Ahaz (2 Kgs 18), though an impious king, is commanded, on account of the mercy of the Lord, to keep silence and not to be terrified, nor let his heart be afraid, thinking that he will suffer things like those he had endured before. And he calls Rezin king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah king of Samaria two tails of firebrands, that is, of smoking brands, because in them the kingdom of Syria, that is, of Damascus, was ended, and the kingdom of Samaria, that is, of the ten tribes, which by another name were called Ephraim. For it is written (2 Kgs 16) that Tiglath-pileser king of the Assyrians, under king Ahaz, went up against Damascus and laid it waste, and carried its inhabitants off to Kir, and killed Rezin; and that Hoshea the son of Elah laid an ambush for Pekah the son of Remaliah, and struck him and killed him, and reigned in his place in Israel nine years; and that Shalmaneser king of Assyria came and besieged Samaria, which is now called Sebaste, for three years, and in the ninth year of the reign of Hoshea took it, and sent Hoshea bound into prison, and carried Israel off to the Assyrians, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river Gozan, in the cities, or, as the Seventy translated, in the mountains of the Medes (2 Kgs 17). For although these two most evil kings took counsel to go up to Judah, whose region is set in the mountains, and to rouse it up while it was at rest and in a manner sleeping, and to subjugate it to their own rule, and to set over it as king the son of Tabeel, which is interpreted good God, so as to indicate either a man of this name or an idol; nevertheless thus says the Lord God: This counsel shall not stand, but for the meantime only Damascus shall be the head of the cities of Syria, and in Damascus itself, the metropolis, Rezin shall rule. Further, in Ephraim, on account of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who first reigned from Ephraim, Samaria shall be the head, that is, the royal house in the city of Samaria, and the head of Samaria shall be the son of Remaliah, that is, Pekah; but the kingdom of the ten tribes, that is, of the people of Ephraim, will cease to exist after sixty-five years. Which, unless we attend more carefully, cannot stand. For in the twelfth year of Ahaz the son of Jotham in the tribe of Judah, Hoshea reigned over Samaria, and in the ninth year of his rule he was taken (2 Kgs 17). And Ahaz reigned over Judah sixteen years (2 Kgs 16), and in the seventh year of Hoshea's rule after Ahaz's death Hoshea was taken, and Samaria destroyed, and the whole people carried over into Media: so that if we choose to put sixteen years of Ahaz and seven of Hoshea, the result is twenty-three years, or at most twenty-four; and where will the sixty-five years be, within which the kingdom of Israel is said to be ended? The Hebrews therefore set out this place thus: that Amos, who began to prophesy under Uzziah, when Isaiah too had the beginning of his prophecy, was the first to prophesy against Israel, saying: But Israel shall be led captive out of his land (Amos 7:11, 17). And that the title of his prophecy is against Samaria; and that he began to prophesy in the days of Uzziah king of Judah two years before the earthquake, which they hold to have occurred at the time when Uzziah, entering the Temple of God, claimed the priesthood for himself, and the earth was struck, and the ashes of the altar were poured out, and the king himself was struck with leprosy (2 Chr 26). And they hold that it was the twenty-fifth year of Uzziah when these things happened, whose remaining years are twenty-seven. For Uzziah reigned fifty-two years (2 Kgs 15); after him reigned Jotham his son for sixteen years, and his son Ahaz for another sixteen years; after whom reigned Hezekiah, in the sixth year of whose rule Samaria was taken; and thus sixty-five years are made up together (2 Kgs 16). When the Lord foretold these things through the prophet, both Ahaz and the people did not believe that they would come to pass. Hence it is added: If you do not believe, you shall not remain, as Symmachus translated, that is, you too shall not remain in your kingdom, but shall be led into captivity, suffering the penalties of those whose unbelief you have imitated. Or certainly, according to the Seventy, you shall not understand. And the sense is: because you do not believe the things that the Lord says are to come, you will not have understanding. This much we have said according to the history. But according to the tropology we have begun, we must consider that Isaiah is ordered to meet the impious king, going out from his own place, not at the beginning of the conduit, but at the outermost bounds of the upper pool, which was in the fuller's field, where filth and stains were washed away. For although Ahaz was reigning over Judah, yet because he was impious he lingered at the outermost bounds of the upper pool. So God has mercy not so much on the king, whom he judged unworthy of salvation, as on his people. And by the two tails of smoking brands, as we said before, he means secular wisdom and heretical speech, whose end is burning. They took counsel in vain to go up against Judah, and to seize it as though negligent and sleeping, and to join it to their own errors, and to set over it as king the son of Tabeel, that is, of the good God. For each adversary judges that the truth is with himself, that the best doctrine is with himself. Indeed Marcion the heretic thinks that Christ is the son of the good God, that is, of another, and not of the just God whose the Prophets are, whom he calls bloodthirsty, cruel, and a judge. While they say these things, the Lord threatens that their counsel shall not stand, but that for the meantime, now, as long as this world stands, the things also that are of the world hold sway within their own bounds and in their own cities. But when the time of the consummation has come, that is, the sixty-five years, and both the things of the world, which were made in six days, and all that pertains to the five senses have received their end, then all things are to be dissolved, which the gentiles and the heretics do not believe will come, and on account of their unbelief they do not understand the things that are said.
7:10-11
And the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying: Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, in the depth of hell, or in the height above. He who had before spoken to Ahaz through the prophet: See that you keep silent; do not fear, and the rest, since Ahaz did not believe and therefore did not understand, himself speaks to Ahaz: that, terrified at least by the authority of the Lord, he may accept what is said. Because it seems difficult to you, he says, that most powerful kingdoms are to be ended in a short time, and that you with your people should be freed from great danger, ask for yourself a sign, not at all from the idols in whose error you are held, but from the Lord your God, who promises you help; and the very sign is of your own choosing, whence you would demand it, whether from the depth or from the height. Whereas the Seventy alone said this, the others, according to the Hebrew, translated more expressively, from the depth of hell. So just as the depth signifies hell, so by the height we ought to understand above the heavens: so that when you have received a sign from hell or from the height, you may believe that the things I have said will come. Do you wish, he says, that the earth be split, and that the underworld, which is said to be in the heart of the earth, lie open with a great gaping; or that the heavens be opened? Both of which pertain to the type of the Lord's death and ascension: For he who descended is the same who also ascended (Eph 4:10). And in the Apostle we read: Do not say in your heart, Who has ascended into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down. Or, Who has descended into the abyss? that is, to bring Christ back from the dead (Rom 10:6-7). And in another place, disputing about Christ, he says: What is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth of the surpassing knowledge and love of Christ (Eph 3:18). This, so far as concerns the mystical senses. But Moses too received signs from the earth, of which we read in the Psalms: He sent signs and wonders in the midst of you, O Egypt (Ps 134 [135]:9), frogs, locusts, gnats, and the dog-fly; and from heaven hail and fire and darkness of three days. I think that Hezekiah too, when the sun went back ten lines, received a sign from heaven (2 Kgs 20); and Joshua the son of Nun at Gibeon and Aijalon, when the sun and the moon stood still (Josh 10). Most think that Saul received a sign from the earth and from the depth of hell, when he seemed to have raised up Samuel through incantations and magic arts (1 Sam 28). But Jonah the prophet too, freed from the abyss, and from the deep and the jaws of death, gave and received the sign of hell (Jonah 2). I have read in the Commentaries of a certain man that this place was thinned out through allegory, so that he understood the depth and the height as αἰσθητὰ and νοητὰ, which we can call sensible things and intelligible things, of which the one is referred to the senses, the other to the mind and reason. The Virgin too he interprets as the soul which is corrupted by no consciousness of sin, and can bring forth from itself Emmanuel, God with us, that is, the present word of God. But we do not eat the flesh of the lamb boiled (Exod 12), but roasted, and such as can dry up in us all the phlegm of pleasures, lest, while we are wise beyond what we ought to be wise, we neglect the mystery of our faith.
7:12
And Ahaz said: I will not ask, and I will not tempt the Lord. It is not of humility but of pride that he will not ask a sign from the Lord. For although it is written in Deuteronomy: You shall not tempt the Lord your God (Deut 6:16), and the Savior used this testimony against the devil (Matt 4), yet, having been ordered to ask, he ought to have fulfilled the command by obedience, especially since both Gideon and Manoah asked for a sign and received it (Judg 6 and 13). And yet, according to the ambiguity of the Hebrew speech, in which is written ULO ENASSE ADONAI (ולא אנסה את יהוה), and all have likewise translated I will not tempt the Lord, it can be read I will not exalt the Lord. For the impious king knew that if he asked for a sign he would receive it, and the Lord would be glorified. So, as a worshipper of idols, who had set up altars at every corner of the streets and on the mountains and in the leafy groves, and had fanatics in place of Levites, he will not ask the sign that was commanded.
7:13
And he said: Hear then, O house of David: Is it a small thing for you to be troublesome to men, that you are troublesome to my God also? Who is this who said: Hear then, O house of David? Not at all God, who above had said to Ahaz: Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God; but the Prophet, as is proved from what follows: That you are troublesome to my God also. And the sense is: because you not only persecute the prophets and despise their sayings, but also contradict the sentence of God when he is present and commands; so that you cause labor to him who says in another place: I have labored in bearing it (Isa 1:14); for that reason the Lord will do the things that follow. For labor and trouble, which Aquila and Symmachus translated, the Seventy and Theodotion rendered agon, that is, wrestling and contest, because in their contentiousness they do not submit their neck to the service of the Lord, but, when he wishes to cure their wounds, spit out health. And this is to be noted, that when Ahaz, a most impious king, will not ask for a sign, the prophetic word is turned to the house of David, that is, to the royal tribe, of which we read above: And they told these things to the house of David, saying: Syria and Ephraim have come to an agreement.
7:14
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear, and you shall call his name Emmanuel. No longer at sundry times, according to the apostle Paul, and in many ways will God speak (Heb 1); nor, according to another prophet (Hos 12), will he be likened in the hands of the prophets; but he who formerly spoke through others will himself say, I am here (below, 58). Of whom the Bride too was asking in the Song of Songs: Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth (Song 1:2). For the Lord of powers is himself the king of glory (Ps 23 [24]:10): he himself will descend into the virginal womb, and will enter and go out by the Eastern gate which is always shut (Ezek 44); of which Gabriel says to the Virgin: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you: therefore the holy thing that will be born in you will be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35). And in Proverbs: Wisdom has built herself a house (Prov 9:1). And when it is said: The Lord himself will give you a sign, it ought to be new and marvelous. But if a young woman or a girl, as the Jews would have it, and not a virgin, gives birth, what sort of sign can it be called, since this is a name of age, not of integrity? And in truth, to set foot to foot with the Jews and not at all, with a contentious rope, give them occasion to laugh at our lack of skill: a virgin is called in Hebrew BETHULA (בתולה), which is not written in the present place; but in place of this word is set ALMA (עלמה), which all except the Seventy translated young girl. Now ALMA is an ambiguous word among them: for it is said both of a young girl and of one hidden, that is, ἀπόκρυφος..... Hence also in the title of the ninth psalm, where in the Hebrew is set ALAMOTH (עלמות), the other Translators translated for youth, what the Seventy rendered for the hidden things. And in Genesis we read, where Rebecca is called alma (Gen 24), that Aquila translated neither young girl nor girl but hidden. The Shunammite woman too, having lost her son, when she had thrown herself at the feet of Elisha and Gehazi was keeping her back, hears from the Prophet: Let her be, for she is in grief, and the Lord has hidden it from me (2 Kgs 4:27). In place of what is said in Latin, has hidden it from me, in the Hebrew is written EELIM MEMMENNI (העלים ממני). So alma is said not only of a girl or a virgin, but, with ἐπιτάσει, of a hidden virgin and a secluded one, who has never been open to the gaze of men, but has been guarded with great diligence by her parents. In the Punic tongue too, which is said to flow from the fountains of the Hebrews, a virgin is properly called alma. And, though we may give the Jews something to laugh at, in our own speech too alma means holy. And the Hebrews use words of almost all languages: as in the Song of Songs (Song 3:9), from the Greek φορεῖον, that is, litter, Solomon made himself one, which we also read thus in the Hebrew. The words nugas (trifles) and mensuram (measure) too the Hebrews call in the same way and with the same senses. And as far as I can contend with my memory, I think I have never read alma of a married woman, but of one who is a virgin: so that she is not only a virgin, but a virgin of younger age, and in the years of girlhood. For it can happen that a virgin is an old woman, but this virgin was in the years of girlhood. Or certainly a virgin, not a little girl and one who could not yet know a man, but now marriageable. Indeed, in Deuteronomy (Deut 22:25ff.) under the name of a girl and of a young woman a virgin is understood. If, he says, a man finds in the field a betrothed girl, and, overpowering her by force, lies with her, you shall kill only the man who lay with her, and to the girl you shall do nothing: the young woman has no sin worthy of death. For as when someone rises up in ambush against his neighbor and kills his life, so this matter happened. He found her in the field: the betrothed girl cried out, and there was none found to help her. And in the volume of Kings we read (1 Kgs 1) that they sought a girl, a virgin, named Abishag, and brought her in to the king, to sleep with him and to warm him; and the girl was exceedingly beautiful, and she ministered to him, and the king did not know her. And what follows: And you shall call his name Emmanuel, both the Seventy and the three others translated likewise, in place of which in Matthew is written they shall call: which is not found in the Hebrew. So this child who will be born of the Virgin, O house of David, let him now be called by you Emmanuel, that is, God with us, because by the very facts, being freed from two enemy kings, you will prove that you have God present; and he who will afterward be called Jesus, that is, Savior, because he is to save the whole race of men, let him now be called by you by the name of Emmanuel. The word CARATHI (קראת), which all have interpreted you shall call, can also be understood as she shall call: namely, that the Virgin herself, who will conceive and bear, is going to call Christ by this name. In many testimonies which the Evangelists or Apostles have taken from the old books, we must attend more carefully to the fact that they followed not the order of the words but the sense. Hence also in the present place, for shall conceive in the womb, Matthew set shall have in the womb (Matt 1:23); and for you shall call, they shall call. The Hebrews think that this is prophesied of Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, because in his reign Samaria was taken: which cannot be proved at all. Since Ahaz the son of Jotham reigned over Judah and Jerusalem sixteen years (2 Kgs 16), and his son Hezekiah succeeded him in the kingdom at twenty-five years of age, and reigned over Judah and Jerusalem twenty-nine years. How then, granting that this prophecy was made to Ahaz in his first year, is it said of the conception and birth of Hezekiah, when at the time Ahaz began to reign Hezekiah was already nine years old? Unless perhaps they say that the sixth year of Hezekiah's reign, in which Samaria was taken, is called his infancy, not of age but of rule. That this is forced and violent is plain even to fools. A certain one of our people contends that the prophet Isaiah had two sons, Jasub and Emmanuel, and that Emmanuel was begotten of the prophetess his wife, as a type of the Lord and Savior: so that the first son, Jasub, which is interpreted left or returning, signifies the Jewish people, which has been left and will afterward return; but the second, that is, Emmanuel, and God with us, the calling of the nations, after the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.
7:15
He shall eat butter and honey, that he may know to refuse evil and to choose good. For which the Seventy translated before he knows; and what follows, to take up evil, is not found in the Hebrew. And the sense is: O House of David, who are commanded by the word of God to call, that is, to call upon, when set in danger, the name of Emmanuel, that is, of God with us: do not marvel at the novelty of the thing, if a Virgin bears God, who has such power that, though he is to be born a long time after, being called upon he frees you now; for he it is who was seen by Abraham and spoke with Moses. I will tell you something else more marvelous, lest you think he will be born in a phantasm: he will use the foods of infancy, he will eat butter and milk. And although many ages later the Evangelist testifies of him: And the child advanced in wisdom and age and grace with God and men (Luke 2:52), and this is said so that the reality of his human body may be proved; yet while still wrapped in swaddling clothes, and fed on butter and honey, he will have judgment of good and evil, so that refusing evil things he chooses good things. Not that he did this, or refused, or chose; but that he knew how to refuse and to choose, so that by these words we may know that the infancy of the human body did not prejudice the divine wisdom. Indeed, the Angels announce him to the shepherds as he lies in the manger; the Magi, coming from the East, worship him, who surely, we must believe, were chosen. And on the contrary, Herod, the Scribes and the Pharisees are refused (Matt 2), because for the sake of one infant they slaughtered many thousands of little ones.
7:16
For before the child knows to refuse evil and to choose good, the land which you abhor shall be forsaken before the face of its two kings. In the sixth year of Hezekiah's rule Samaria was taken by the Assyrians (2 Kgs 18), that is, in the thirty-first year of his age. If, then, this one who is to be born, whether of a Virgin, as we prove, or of a young woman, as the Jews would have it, will eat butter and honey, and will be so small that he cannot distinguish evil from good, and before he passes beyond the time of infancy the land of Syria and of Samaria is to be laid waste by the Assyrians: let the Hebrews answer how Hezekiah at thirty-one years is proclaimed a little infant, and of such untrained age that, eating honey and butter, like the children of Nineveh, he knows neither left nor right, that is, neither evil nor good. But referred to Emmanuel, which is interpreted God with us, it will have an easy understanding: that at the mystery and the invocation of his name the land of Syria and of Samaria is laid waste by the conquering Assyrian, and the house of David is freed from the two kings whom it fears, namely Rezin and Pekah.
7:17
The Lord will bring upon you, and upon your people, and upon the house of your father, days that have not come since the days of the separation of Ephraim from Judah, with the king of the Assyrians. This place is to be read by hyperbaton. Indeed we too, following the Hebrew truth, have interpreted it thus: O house of David, listen to what I say: so that the land of Syria and Samaria may be forsaken before the face of the two kings whom you most vehemently dread, the Lord will bring days upon you, and upon the house of your father David, such as you have never had from the time when the ten tribes were separated from the two tribes and began to have a kingdom in Samaria. And he will bring those days, that is, times, with the king of the Assyrians, so that when those kings have been conquered and overthrown, you may be freed by the presence of Emmanuel. The Seventy rendered this place thus: The Lord will bring upon you, and upon your people, and upon the house of your father, days which have not yet come, from the day on which Ephraim took away the king of the Assyrians from Judah. What sense this has we cannot know, unless perhaps this must be said: that Ephraim, that is, Samaria, by the greatness of its sins first made the onslaught of the Assyrians turn aside to itself. Otherwise: For the meantime now the two kings Rezin and Pekah, who besiege you and hasten to lay you waste, will be overthrown in a short time; but the time of your own laying waste will come when the Assyrian comes, which you had never expected, indeed never feared. By which he teaches that the house of David must fear not Syria and Samaria but the Assyrians. So he frees it from the present dread, and threatens concerning the time to come.
7:18-19
And it shall be in that day, the Lord will whistle for the fly that is at the farthest part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria: and they shall come and shall all rest in the torrents of the valleys, and in the caves of the rocks, and in all the thickets, and in all the holes. When the land of the two kings, Damascus and Samaria, which you now abhor and fear, has been deserted, then, O house of Judah, the Lord will bring upon you and your people days such as you have never seen before, and the king of the Assyrians. In vain, therefore, do you fear things present, half-burnt brands that have no fire at all: for you ought to know that with his whistle the Lord is going to call the flies of Egypt and of its rivers, by which without doubt he means the seven διωρυχὰς of the Nile, and the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And he calls the Egyptians flies on account of the filth of idolatry and because they were an unwarlike people; and the Assyrians a bee, whose kingdom at that time was the most powerful and the readiest for wars; or for this reason, that almost the whole region of the Assyrians and of Persia made use of arrows. These, then, will all come and occupy your land, in the torrents of the valleys, and the caves of the rocks, and in all the thickets and holes, and in the leafy woods. These things are said by metaphor, so that, since he had once named flies and bees, he might keep the figure in the rest. Let us read the books of Kings and Chronicles, and we shall find that the holy king Josiah was slain by the Egyptians, and the people of Israel subjugated to the Egyptian power (2 Kgs 23; 2 Chr 35), so that it appointed a king for them. And not long after, Nebuchadnezzar came with a countless multitude of warriors, and having taken Jerusalem and torn down the other cities of Judea, he burned the Temple and settled Assyrian inhabitants in Judea (2 Kgs 24).
7:20
In that day the Lord will shave with a hired razor, by those who are beyond the river, by the king of the Assyrians, the head, and the hair of the feet, and the whole beard. Some think that this is prophesied of the Assyrians, who for thirteen hundred years before they overthrew Jerusalem possessed the kingdom of Asia, of Egypt and of Libya: that they were to be conquered by the Medes and Persians and their empire destroyed. Others, however, judge that the Egyptians were slain beyond the river Euphrates. But we judge that the razor hired for a wage is the Assyrian himself, whom in Jeremiah, for the punishment of the sinful people, he even calls his dove (Jer 25). Indeed in the vision of Tyre too (Ezek 29:18-20), because Nebuchadnezzar had toiled very greatly in building siege-works and in heaping up a mound, and, when they fled by fleet, had been deprived of his wage, Egypt was given to him as the wage for his labor. So with this most sharp razor, and by those who dwell beyond the river Euphrates, namely by the Assyrian king, the Lord will shave from Judea all the hair and the hairs of the whole body from head to feet, and the comeliness of the beard, which is the mark of manhood, so that nothing strong, nothing beautiful may remain in it, but they may be compared to effeminate men, or rather to disgraced women.
7:21ff.
And it shall be in that day, a man shall rear a cow of the herd and two sheep, and for the abundance of milk he shall eat butter: for everyone who is left in the midst of the land shall eat butter and honey. And it shall be in that day, every place where there were a thousand vines at a thousand pieces of silver shall become thorns and briers. With arrows and bow they shall go in there: for briers and thorns shall be in all the land. And all the mountains that shall be hoed with the hoe, the terror of thorns and briers shall not come there: and it shall be for the pasture of the ox and for the treading of the flock. After the overthrow of Jerusalem, and the captivity of the people, and the burning of the Temple, Nebuzaradan the chief of the soldiery, whom the Seventy call ἀρχιμάγειρον, left in the land a few of the people, and those poor, to till the vineyards and fields. Then Gedaliah, who, left from the royal line, had been set over them, exhorts them and says: Do not fear the Chaldeans: dwell in the land, and serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you (2 Kgs 25:24). In that day, then, that is, at that time, when all the wealth of the Jews has been carried off into Chaldea, so great will be the desolation in the land of Judea, and so incredible the devastation, that they will by no means have herds of oxen, nor flocks of sheep, as they had been accustomed to have before; but a rare inhabitant will scarcely be able to rear one cow and two sheep; not for ploughing, but for the food of their milk and the clothing of their fleece. For through the want of grain and of everything that the earth brings forth for eating, they will feed on milk and butter and wild honey. And what he says, For the abundance of milk he shall eat butter, signifies this: that the land, through the scarcity of tillers, is more fertile and better suited for pastures. At that time, through the fewness of men, so great will be the want of wine, the vineyards being deserted and by no means pruned for fear of the enemy, that single vines will scarcely be bought for single silver shekels. For the whole land will be reduced to briers and thorns; and so great will be the dread, with swords raging everywhere, that no one will dare to visit his own field without bow and arrows, and, abandoning the places in the plains, they will flee to the mountains, and there, protected by the difficulty of the places, they will scarcely dig the rough mountains by hand: because they will not have oxen, ploughs and ploughshares. Wherever, then, a rare tiller is found in the mountains, they will sustain a miserable life from there. But the rest will lie open to pastures, and will be trodden down by brute animals without any keeper. Would that we did not know that these things are wont to happen after a captivity! But now a great part of the Roman world is like Judea of old: which we do not think has come about without the wrath of God, who avenges contempt of himself not through Assyrians and Chaldeans, but through savage nations, once unknown to us, whose countenance and speech alike are terrible, and who, displaying womanish and shaven faces [he means the Goths, who shaved their beards], stab the fleeing backs of men, and well-bearded men at that. I know that I have read in these places a very broad and inextricable tropology: that all the things we have set out according to the history happened spiritually to the Jews, who scarcely have one cow and two sheep, that is, clean animals: so that they are nourished not on solid food but on the milk of infancy, and eat the honey of words that drips from the lips of the harlot woman; and they do not have wine, which gladdens the heart of man, but all their works are reduced to thorns, so that they are wounded by adversaries who shoot in the dark at the upright of heart (Ps 10 [11]). And if at any time they wish to be wise in something higher, and, sweating with excessive labor, to find something mystical in the holy Scriptures, nonetheless they bring forth no fruits of doctrine, but are filled with briers and thorns, which spring up in the hands of a drunkard. And their land and doctrine is trodden down not by men, rational living beings, but by oxen, for whom God has no care, and by brute animals.
8:1, 4
And the Lord said to me: Take for yourself a great book, and write in it with the pen of a man: Swiftly strip the spoils, quickly take the prey. And I took to me faithful witnesses, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of Barachiah, and I went in to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said to me: Call his name, Make haste, strip the spoils, hasten to take the prey: for before the child knows how to call his father and his mother, the strength of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria shall be taken away before the king of the Assyrians. The Seventy, for a great book, translated a new and great book. And in place of what is found in the Hebrew, I took to me faithful witnesses, they said: for it is at hand, and make faithful men witnesses for me. And for Uriah the Priest, only Uriah; the rest likewise. First the Prophet was sent to Ahaz (Isa 7), to foretell to him what the Scripture records: when he would not listen, the Lord himself speaks to Ahaz, and commanded him to ask for himself a sign in the depth or in the height. When he answered, I will not ask, and I will not tempt the Lord, the impious king is dismissed and the words of God are turned to the house of David, and there is promised to it a Virgin who will bear a son, whose name is to be Emmanuel, that is, God with us. If he is called upon often, Samaria and Syria will be overthrown: overthrown, however, by the king of the Assyrians, who is afterward to capture Judah itself too; so that the whole land of Judea is turned into a wilderness. So again, under another figure, the virginal birth is described. And the Lord told the Prophet not at all to bring out the secret of the new birth among the peoples, but to write it in this great volume which we now read. And, that it may be the more marvelous, to comprise the mysteries of God in human words, and with the pen with which men are accustomed to write. And what is it that is written with a human pen? That the child who is born should swiftly strip the spoils and quickly take the prey, that is, that he should no longer suffer the devil to reign; nor send Angels nor Prophets, but himself come down to save his creatures. So the Prophet does what was commanded, and takes to himself two faithful witnesses: Uriah the priest, who is a teacher of the law, as Malachi says: The lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law from his mouth, for he is the Angel of the Lord of hosts (Mal 2:7); and Zechariah the son of Barachiah, who, there is no doubt, was a Prophet. We read that in the reign of Ahaz, Uriah was priest of the Temple of the Lord (2 Kgs 16), whom Ahaz commanded to make an altar like the altar of Damascus. And the book of Days relates (2 Chr 29) that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz sought the Lord in the days of Zechariah, who was instructed in the fear of God. And Isaiah showed himself worthy of the prophetic spirit, and offered himself to the prophetess, that is, to the Holy Spirit, which in the Hebrew speech is called in the feminine gender RUA (רוה), according to what is written: Draw near to the Lord, and be enlightened (Ps 33 [34]:6). So the Lord was conceived of the Holy Spirit. And although human speech cannot unfold the mysteries of his birth, yet Gabriel speaks to the Virgin herself who conceived: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you: therefore the holy thing that will be born of you will be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35). Some interpret the prophetess as holy Mary, who, there is no doubt, was a prophetess: for she herself says in the Gospel: For behold, from henceforth all generations will call me blessed: for he who is mighty has done great things for me (Luke 1:48-49), and the rest. And Isaiah is commanded to call that very child, who before was called Emmanuel, now Make haste, strip the spoils, hasten to take the prey. For ascending on high he led captivity captive; he received gifts for men (Ps 67 [68]; Eph 4:8). And before he took a human body and, in the manner of infancy, called God his father and Mary his mother, the strength of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria will be taken away by the king of the Assyrians: so that, not yet born, he might save his people, the house of David, by invocation alone. Uriah is interpreted light of the Lord; Zechariah, memory of the Lord; and Barachiah, blessing of the Lord: by these witnesses the birth of Christ is proved. For he himself in the Gospel, to the two who were going to Emmaus (Luke 24), beginning from Moses and the Prophets, set out that all things had prophesied of him. According to tropology, in a virginal soul, stained by no filth, the word of God, conceived of the Holy Spirit, swiftly strips the spoils from the adverse powers and makes all things serve him. And since it now sees in part and prophesies in part (1 Cor 13), before it can be perfect and rightly call God its Father and the heavenly Jerusalem its mother, while still set in infancy and in progress, it will overcome the strength of Damascus, namely the doctrine of secular wisdom; and will take away the spoils of Samaria, with which the heretics have despoiled the Church, saying: We have no portion in David, nor inheritance in the son of Jesse (1 Kgs 12:16), in the presence of the king of the Assyrians himself, the devil, who will not be able to help them. And such sons are borne not only by Mary, the perpetual Virgin, to the Prophets, but also by holy women to the patriarchs: Sarah, which is interpreted ἄρχουσα, that is, princess; and Rebecca, which in our language sounds patience.
8:5ff.
And the Lord spoke to me yet again, saying: Because this people has cast away the waters of Siloam that go in silence, and has rather taken up Rezin and the son of Remaliah: therefore behold, the Lord will bring upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, the king of the Assyrians and all his glory: and he shall come up over all his channels, and shall flow over all his banks. And he shall go through Judah overflowing, and passing through he shall come up to the neck, and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of your land, O Emmanuel. He had said above that the strength of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria were to be taken away in the sight of the king of the Assyrians, and that the two kings would be captured when the Assyrian made war: now God speaks to the Prophet in the customary character of the Scriptures, by a figure of Siloam, the spring of Jerusalem, and of the most violent Assyrian river, that it would flood the whole land of Israel with its waters, and go out over the banks of its bed, and be borne with such force that, after it had occupied the land of the ten tribes, it would reach Judah and, passing through, would extend up to the neck: by which he signifies the captivity close at hand. For Judah was not captured at that time, but when all the cities of the two tribes had been subjugated, Jerusalem alone remained, which was freed by the incredible mercy of God. So the might of the Assyrian and of his countless army, which he had described under the flooding of a river, he now shows by another figure: that with his wings, that is, his generals and boundless multitude, he covered the land of Emmanuel, that is, of God who defends it, but yet did not possess it; although Emmanuel is fitted by the Seventy to the following section, not with its proper name, as it is called among the Hebrews, but translated, that is, God with us. And that Siloam is a spring at the roots of Mount Zion, which bubbles up not with continuous waters but at certain hours and days, and comes through hollows of the earth and caves of the hardest rock with a great sound, we cannot doubt, we especially who dwell in this province. And the sense is: because the people of the ten tribes preferred to be subject to Rezin and the son of Remaliah, that is, to the kings of Damascus and Samaria, rather than to the stock of David, which began to reign by my judgment, I will make it serve not at all these kings whom it has taken up, but the Assyrian king, whose might as it occupies the land of Samaria is compared to the flooding of a river. And an apostrophe is made to Emmanuel, that is, to God present, because the Assyrian raised himself up so far as to try to possess even his land, Judah. According to the anagogy, every heretic who joins secular wisdom to his help and seeks to attack Jerusalem, that is, the Church, forsaking the waters of the spring Siloam (John 9), which is interpreted sent, and which leaps up to eternal life, will be handed over to the prince of the Assyrians (whom we shall read of later as the great mind), and, handed over to his power, he will come into the depth of sins. For he is of such arrogance that he dared to show the Savior all the kingdoms of the earth and to say: All these have been handed over to me (Matt and Luke 4). He will try also to enter Judah, that is, the house of confession, and often, through those in the Church who are negligent, he will come up to the neck, desiring to choke those who believe in Christ, and he will stretch out his wings, filling the whole region of Emmanuel; but he will not be able to prevail, because Judah has God present. We read in the Gospel according to John (John 9) that the Lord sent the man blind from birth, whose eyes he had anointed with clay made from his spittle, to the waters of Siloam, and when the blind man had washed off the clay in them, his blindness was wiped away and he received the clear light of his eyes: which, beyond the greatness of the sign, indicates that the blindness of the Jews and of every unbeliever cannot be healed otherwise than if the darkness of former error is put to flight by the doctrine of the waters of Christ, which flows gently without the din and clamor of words. This which is read in the Seventy: And he will walk over all your wall, and will take away from Judea the man who can lift up his head or perhaps do anything, is not found in the Hebrew, and in the Greek codices it has been pierced through with ÷ the slaying spit.
8:9-10
Gather together, O peoples, and be conquered, and hear, all you lands far off: take strength, and be conquered. Gird yourselves, and be conquered: take counsel, and it shall be scattered: speak a word, and it shall not be done, for God is with us. For gather together, or be weak and be broken, as others interpreted, the Seventy set know. For the Hebrew word ROU (רעו), because of the likeness of the letter RES (ר) and DALETH (ד), they understood as DOU (דעו). So, O peoples of Samaria and Syria, know that you are weak and feeble, and that with Emmanuel present you can do nothing against Jerusalem, the city of God: and let not only you, who are neighbors, know this, but the whole land far off. For although you gather an army and gird yourselves for battle, and the number of the besiegers is greater than that of the besieged, yet not once but a second time I will say: you are conquered. And whatever counsel you take against Jerusalem will be scattered. And although you said above (Isa 7:6): Let us go up to Judah, and rouse it up while it is at rest, and set over it as king the son of Tabeel, you speak a word indeed, but it will not be done, because God is with us, that is, Emmanuel. We can use this testimony against the gentiles too in time of persecution: that although they seem strong and to overcome us in those who have lapsed, yet they are conquered in those who have shed their blood for Christ, and that after wars peace is restored to the Churches, and all their counsels against Emmanuel are scattered, because God is with us. Those who contradict the truth will also profitably hear it, so that at last they may be overcome by reason, and may not wish to win in falsehood, because whatever they say, perversity can never overcome what is right.
8:11ff.
For thus the Lord says to me: As with a strong hand he instructed me, that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying: Do not say, A conspiracy; for all that this people speaks is a conspiracy: and do not fear its fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself: let him be your dread, and let him be your terror. And he shall be for a sanctification to you, but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offense to the two houses of Israel: for a snare and for a ruin to those who dwell in Jerusalem; and very many of them shall stumble, and shall fall, and shall be broken, and shall be ensnared, and shall be taken. The Seventy translated this place thus: Thus says the Lord: With a strong hand they have withdrawn from the journey of the way of this people, saying: Lest perhaps they say, It is hard. For all that this people speaks is hard; but do not fear its fear, nor be troubled. Sanctify the Lord of powers himself, and he shall be your fear, and if you have trusted in him, he shall be for a sanctification to you, and you shall not run against him as against a stone of stumbling, nor as against a rock of ruin. But the house of Jacob shall be in a snare and in a valley for those who sit in Jerusalem: therefore very many among them shall be weak, and shall fall and be broken, and shall draw near, and shall be taken. And what follows, men in safekeeping, is to be marked in front with an obelus. Because the Hebrew and the common edition differ much from each other, we have therefore set down both. And first we must discuss the Hebrew. Thus the Lord spoke to me. Who, on account of good works, and the grace which on account of good works I have obtained; or with his strong hand instructed and trained me, that I should not walk in the way of this people and be held in the same error; or certainly he made me withdraw from the most evil way of this people, and said to me: do not fear the conspiracy of the two kings; but consider this rather, that all that this people speaks against me is a conspiracy; and, according to Symmachus, who interpreted ἄνταρσιν, has risen up against me in rebellion. But you, Prophet, and those who are with you, do not fear the plots of the people, but fear the Lord, and let him be your fear. For the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1:7; Ps 110 [111]:9). He will be for a sanctification to believers, but to unbelievers for a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, that is, to the two houses of Judah and Israel; and especially for a snare and a ruin to those who dwell in Jerusalem, on whom very many will strike, and will fall, and will be broken, and, ensnared in the chains of their sins, will be led into captivity. The two houses the Nazaraeans (who receive Christ in such a way that they do not give up the observances of the old Law) interpret as two families, Shammai and Hillel, from whom arose the Scribes and Pharisees, whose school Akiba took over, whom they assert to have been the teacher of Aquila the proselyte, and after him Meir, whom Johanan the son of Zakkai succeeded, and after him Eliezer, and in order Telphon, and again Joseph the Galilean, and up to the capture of Jerusalem Joshua. So Shammai and Hillel arose in Judea not long before the Lord was born, of whom the former is interpreted scatterer, the latter profane: because by their traditions and δευτερώσεις they scattered and defiled the precepts of the Law. And that these are the two houses which did not receive the Savior, who became for them a ruin and an offense. According to the Seventy, the people resisted the will of God with a strong hand, and says that all that the Lord has commanded is hard, according to what we read in the Gospel: This saying is hard; who can hear it (John 6:61)? Hence they are commanded to hear the Lord and to fear him alone. For if they have trusted in him, they will have him for a sanctification, and will not strike against him as against a stone of offense and as against a rock of ruin. From this place the Apostle too takes a testimony, that Christ became an offense to the Jews, but to the Gentiles foolishness (1 Cor 1:23). And again: Israel, by pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness (Rom 9:31). Why? Because not from faith, but as if from the works of the law, they stumbled against the stone of stumbling, as it is written: Behold, I will lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense: everyone who believes in him shall not be put to shame (ibid., 33). So those who did not receive Emmanuel, but for whom he became a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, will be broken and led captive. And what he says, But the house of Jacob shall be in a snare and in a valley for those who sit in Jerusalem, signifies this: that they do not dwell on the mountains, nor move in the lofty places of the Scriptures, but always understand lowly things, joining sins to sins, and bound by the snares of their offenses.
8:16-17
Bind up the testimonies, seal the law among my disciples, and I will wait for the Lord, who hides his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him. The voice of the Lord speaking to the Prophet: Because, he says, the Lord has become a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to the two houses of Israel, and they would not receive Emmanuel sent to them: Bind up the testimonies of the old Instrument, and hand them over to my disciples, who have received the Gospel, namely the Apostles, or apostolic men. Or certainly, let the law and the prophecy until John be bound up among them (Matt 11), and be shut and sealed, so that what they read they may not understand. For in place of disciples, according to the ambiguity of the Hebrew speech, we can also interpret doctrines. Hence the Prophet answered: Because, the Gospel taking its place, the Law has been shut and sealed among the Jews, and you command that it be assigned not at all to the Jews but to the nations: therefore I will wait for Emmanuel, whom you promise is to come, of whom you said above that he himself is our dread and he himself our terror, and that he is for a sanctification to us; and I will look for the Lord who hides his face from the house of Jacob, that is, from the Jews, because they would not receive him. The Seventy translated this place thus: Then they who are sealed shall be manifest, that they may not learn the law. Which has this sense: when very many have fallen and been broken, and have struck against the stone of stumbling and the rock of offense, then those who are sealed among the people will be manifest, so that they may by no means learn the law of Moses, but obey the precepts of the Gospel.
8:18
Behold, I and my children, whom the Lord has given me for signs and portents of Israel, from the Lord of hosts who dwells on Mount Zion. The Lord, he says, commanded me to bind up the testimony among the Jews and to hand over and seal the law for his disciples, because he had hidden his face from the house of Jacob: therefore I will look for him and wait for my Lord, and not only I, but also the children whom the Lord has given me, namely the other prophets and the sons of the prophets, who were born not of the will of the flesh and of blood, but of God (John 1:13). Of whom the Apostle too spoke: My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you (Gal 4:19). And these children, that is, the prophets, were given for signs and for portents to Israel, according to what we read in Ezekiel: And Ezekiel shall be for a sign to you (Ezek 24:24). In Zechariah too, holy men and disciples of the prophets are called τερατοσκόποι, that is, watchers of portents and signs, because the Prophets always went before as a sign of things to come (Zech 3:8). This much meanwhile according to the letter. But the blessed Apostle, in the Epistle which is written to the Hebrews (though Latin custom does not receive it among the canonical Scriptures), teaches that this testimony ought to be understood in the person of the Lord and Savior: For which reason he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying: I will announce your name to my brothers, in the midst of the Church I will praise you (Heb 2:12); and again: I will put my trust in him (ibid., 13); and once more: Behold, I and my children, whom God has given me. Since, then, the children have shared in flesh and blood, he himself likewise became partaker of the same sufferings (Isa 8:18). And how these children were for a sign and a portent to the wisdom of the world and to the pride of the Jews, the same Apostle teaches, who says that the Lord and Savior chose the foolish and weak things of the world, to confound the wise and the strong things (1 Cor 1). Hence the Savior too said to the Apostles: Unless you are converted as one of the children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matt 18:3). And the preacher of the new Gospel becomes a child, who puts off the old man, who is corrupted in the desires of seduction, and puts on the new, who is renewed unto knowledge after the image of the Creator. And that the Lord of hosts dwells on Mount Zion, the same Apostle writes: You have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22). Hence I wonder at a certain one of our people who understands these children as the two sons of Isaiah, whom he begot from the conception of the prophetess his wife, namely Jasub and Emmanuel: of whom the former went before as a sign of the rejection of the former people, the latter of the taking up of the nations. Whoever accepts this will consequently also affirm that the prophet Hosea truly had a harlot for a wife.
8:19ff.
And when they say to you, Seek from the Pythons and from the diviners, who hiss in their incantations: does not a people inquire of its God? on behalf of the living, of the dead? To the law rather and to the testimony. But if they do not speak according to this word, there will be no morning light for them. And it shall pass through it: it shall fall and shall hunger: and when it hungers, it shall be angry, and shall curse its king and its God. And it shall look up above, and shall gaze at the earth, and behold, tribulation and darkness, dissolution, distress, and pursuing gloom: and it shall not be able to fly away from its distress. If it is the voice of the prophet Isaiah, as the Jews judge: Behold, I and my children, whom the Lord has given me for a sign and for a portent of Israel, then these things that follow too must be believed to be said by him to his disciples. When, he says, the nations and peoples say to you, those of whom it was read above: Be weak, O peoples, and be conquered, why do you want to listen to prophets, why are you deceived by the words of Isaiah and think that he knows the things to come? Seek rather from the Pythons and from the diviners, who hiss in their incantations. In place of which the Seventy translated: Who speak from the earth, who cry out from the belly. For everyone who is of the earth speaks of the earth (John 3:31). And he whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in his shame (Phil 3:19), must be believed to cry out from the belly. Do you answer them and say: Does not a people inquire of its God? on behalf of the living, of the dead? If you, he says, in keeping with the variety of your idols (for you have not one god but many), consult those whom you judge to be gods, and inquire of the dead, or of the images of dead men, about the living: how much more ought we to hear our God through the prophets? So he teaches the disciples, and adds: to the law rather and to the testimony. If, he says, you are in doubt about anything, know that it is written: The nations which the Lord your God will destroy before your face listen to dreams and to diviners; but to you the Lord your God has not so delivered: The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet from your brothers, like me; him you shall hear (Deut 18:15). Hence, if you wish to know things that are doubtful, give yourselves rather to the law and to the testimonies of the Scriptures. But if your congregation will not seek the word of the Lord, it will not have the light of truth, but will move about in error and darkness. The light will pass through it, that is, through your congregation, or land, and you will fall, and you will hunger, and when you hunger you will be angry, according to what is written: And if they are not filled, they will murmur (Ps 58 [59]:16): and you will curse God your king, and in your necessities you will look up above to heaven and down to the earth: and behold, tribulation and darkness, dissolution of the knees, and distress of mind, and gloom of the eyes, and you will not be able to be rescued from the distress. This according to the Hebrews. But, as we said above, if it is the person of Christ saying: Behold, I and my children, whom God has given me, then he himself also speaks these things to the Apostles and to the believers from the nations who have received his Gospel. If, he says, your fathers whom you have left say: seek the ventriloquists, whom we understand as pythons (such as the slave girl we read of in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 16), who was a source of gain to her masters), and those who speak from the earth, which the magi promise to do in the calling up of souls, and the other kinds of evil arts: you ought to know this, that each nation consults its own gods and questions the dead about the welfare of the living. But to you God has given the law as a help, so that you can say: the divination of the heathen, who often deceive their worshippers, is not such as ours, which is brought forth from the law without any payment. Hence the Seventy translated: Not as this word, for which there is no giving of gifts. For freely, he says, you have received, freely give (Matt 10:8). But upon the unbelievers will come a most grievous famine, not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of God (Amos 8). And when you hunger you will be saddened, and will curse your prince and your fathers' traditions, that is, the devil and your ancient errors. And he says this to those who have suffered famine of the truth, and will look up above to heaven and down to the earth, and will be in distress, in darkness, and in tribulation: so that they may not see until the time when they too are converted to the Lord. These places call for a broad explanation, but we spare the size of the books, to remove the reader's weariness. These things we have touched on in part according to the translation of the Seventy, which in very many places is out of tune with the Hebrew. But the Nazaraeans set out this place thus: When the Scribes and Pharisees tell you to listen to them, who do everything for the sake of the belly, and in the manner of magi hiss in their incantations so as to deceive you, you ought to answer them this: It is no wonder if you follow your traditions, since each nation consults its own idols. So we too ought not to consult you, the dead, about the living: rather God has given us the law and the testimonies of the Scriptures; and if you will not follow them, you will not have light, but gloom will always oppress you, which will pass through your land and doctrine: so that when those deceived by you see themselves in error and suffering a famine of truth, then they will be saddened, or angry, and will curse you, whom they used to think of as their gods and kings. And in vain will they look back to heaven and earth, since they are always in darkness and cannot fly away from your snares.
9:1ff.
At the first time the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali was lightened: and at the last the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, of Galilee of the nations, was made heavy. The people that walked in darkness has seen a great light: to those dwelling in the region of the shadow of death, light has risen upon them. LXX: Drink this first, act quickly, region of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, and the rest of you who are by the sea beyond the Jordan, of Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness has seen a great light: you who dwell in the region and shadow of death, light shall rise upon you. We have set down the double edition because the testimony is well known and was used by the Evangelist Matthew: so that either the difference of the translation or the likeness may be recognized. And first it must be noted that the Evangelist Matthew set down this testimony not according to the Seventy but according to the Hebrews. For the Gospel word says: Now when Jesus heard that John had been delivered up, he withdrew into Galilee, and leaving Nazareth he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea in the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali: that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, saying: The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations: the people that sat in darkness has seen a great light; to those sitting in the region of the shadow of death, light has risen upon them. From that time Jesus began to preach and to say: The kingdom of heaven has drawn near (Matt 4:13ff.). And John the Evangelist relates that Jesus, invited with his disciples to a wedding at Cana of Galilee, did his first sign there, turning water into wine: This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee: and he manifested his glory: and his disciples believed in him (John 2:11). Hence too it is said in the Seventy: Drink this first, act quickly: because the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali first saw the miracles of Christ: so that the land which had first seen the Lord doing signs might first drink the draught of faith. And according to the Hebrew it is said to have been lightened at the first time of the burden of sins: because the Savior first preached the Gospel in the regions of the two tribes. Hence too it is said in the sixty-seventh Psalm: Bless the Lord from the fountains of Israel. There is Benjamin the younger (Ps 67 [68]:27-28; Acts 9); Paul the apostle, in ecstasy of mind, who also said elsewhere: whether we are beside ourselves, it is for God (2 Cor 5:13): The princes of Zebulun, the princes of Naphtali, their leaders; because in these tribes were the little villages from which our leaders the Apostles believed. And they believed, according to Symmachus, swiftly, so that, hearing: Come, and I will make you fishers of men (Matt 4:19), they at once left both their father and their boat. But at the last time their faith was made heavy, since very many of the Jews remained in error. And here he calls the sea the lake of Gennesaret, which is formed by the inflowing Jordan; on whose shore Capernaum and Tiberias and Bethsaida and Chorazin are situated: in which region above all the Lord stayed; so that the people which either sat or walked in darkness saw a light, by no means a small one, like that of the other prophets, but a great one, like that of him who says in the Gospel: I am the light of the world (John 8:12). And those who dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, light has risen upon them. Between death and the shadow of death I think the difference is this: that death belongs to those who have gone down to the underworld with dead works: For the soul that sins, it shall die (Ezek 18:20); but the shadow of death belongs to those who, while they sin, have not yet departed from this life: for they can, if they will, do penance. For Galilee of the nations Aquila translated θῖνας of the nations, Symmachus borders of the nations; and by θῖνας we understand mounds of sand, which are either on the shores or on the banks. The Hebrews who believe in Christ set out this place thus: At the first time these two tribes, Zebulun and Naphtali, were captured by the Assyrians and led into the enemy's land; and Galilee was deserted (2 Kgs 15), which the prophet now says was lightened, because it bore the sins of the people. But afterward not only the two tribes, but also the rest, who dwelt beyond the Jordan and in Samaria, were led into captivity (2 Kgs 17 and 18). And this, they say, is what the Scripture now says: that the region whose people was the first to be led into captivity and began to serve the Babylonians, and which before was moving in the darkness of error, itself first saw the light of Christ preaching, and from it the Gospel was sown into all the nations. The Nazaraeans, whose opinion I set down above, try to explain this place thus: When Christ came and his preaching flashed forth, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali was the first to be freed from the errors of the Scribes and Pharisees, and shook off from its neck the most heavy yoke of the Jewish traditions. But afterward, through the Gospel of the Apostle Paul, who was the last of all the Apostles, the preaching was made heavy, that is, multiplied; and the Gospel of Christ shone into the borders of the nations and the way of the whole sea. Finally, the whole world, which before walked or sat in darkness and was held by the chains of idolatry and of death, beheld the clear light of the Gospel.
9:2, 4
You have multiplied the nation, you have not magnified the joy: they shall rejoice before you, as they rejoice in the harvest, as victors exult when the prey is taken, when they divide the spoils. For the yoke of its burden, and the rod of its shoulder, and the scepter of its oppressor you have overcome, as in the day of Midian. For every violent plundering is with tumult: and the garment mixed with blood shall be for burning and food for the fire. LXX: The greatest part of the people you have led down in your joy: and they shall rejoice in your sight, as they are wont to rejoice in the harvest, and as those who divide the spoils: because the yoke that was set upon them has been taken away, and the rod from their neck. For the rod of the oppressors shall be scattered, as in the day of Midian. For every robe gathered by deceit, and the garment of exchange, they shall restore: and they shall wish that they had been burned with fire. In obscure places we set down both editions, so that the diligent reader may recognize how far the common translation differs from the other editions and from the Hebrew truth. An apostrophe is made to the light itself, which appeared to the people set in darkness, that is, to the Lord and Savior. And it is said to him: You have multiplied the nation, that is, you have filled all the nations with the knowledge of you; but you have not magnified the joy. In accordance with which the Apostle says that he has unceasing sorrow for his brothers who are Israelites (Rom 9). And Jonah is saddened that the Ninevites were saved in such a way that the gourd, or CICEION (קיקיון), withered (Jonah 4). And the Lord himself says in the Gospel: I did not come except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 15:24). And in the passion: Father, if it be possible, he says, let this cup pass from me (Matt 26:39). This place has this sense: If it can be that the multitude of the nations believe without the destruction of the Jews, I refuse the passion. But if they are to be blinded so that all nations may see, Father, let your will be done. So when Christ has come, and the nation of Christians has been gathered from all nations, then the Apostles will rejoice as reapers rejoice in the harvest, of whom the Lord spoke: The harvest indeed is great, but the laborers are few (Matt 9:37). And as victors exult who divide the captured prey. For when the strong man has been captured and bound, all his house is plundered and the spoils are divided (Matt 12). But you, O Lord and Savior, have pulled from their shoulders the yoke of his burden, that is, of the devil, who before exulted in the world, who ruled over all nations, who pressed down the necks of all with the most heavy yoke of slavery; and the rod with which he struck all men and compelled them to render him their sins as a kind of tribute; and you have made those freed serve you, without any army and without shedding of blood, by a hidden hand: as once under Gideon you gave the people of Israel victory over the Midianites (Judg 7). For just as a garment that has been bloodied with human blood cannot be washed, but, stained with blood, is burned with fire, so that the stains of the foul gore perish along with the garment: so the violent plundering of the devil, and the tumult and crowds by which he had subjected the human race to himself, have been assigned to the fires of Gehenna. The Seventy signify that not all but a certain part of the people believed: although for what they said, you have led down in joy, others have interpreted you have magnified. And while in the rest they hold the same sense, they add that he, that is, the devil, will restore the robe gathered by deceit and the exchanged garment: namely, that he is going to restore with their former ornaments all the souls which he had stripped of God's help; and not he alone, but also his satellites, the demons: who, if the choice were given them, would rather choose to perish in flames than to lose their prey.
9:6
For a little child is born to us, a son is given to us: and the government is upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, God, Mighty, Father of the age to come, Prince of peace. His dominion shall be multiplied, and of peace there shall be no end: upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it and strengthen it in judgment and righteousness, from henceforth and for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. LXX: For a little child is born to us, a son is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder: and his name is called messenger of great counsel. For I will bring peace upon the princes, and his health: great is his government, and of peace there is no bound, upon the throne of David and his kingdom: to set it right and to help in judgment and righteousness: from this time now and for ever. The zeal of the Lord Sabaoth will do these things. Therefore the devil, and all his violent plundering, by which he had oppressed the human race and mingled blood with blood, will be for burning and food of the eternal fire: because a child is born to us of a Virgin, of whom it was said above: Before the child knows to refuse evil and to choose good (Isa 7:16); and afterward, in the begetting by the Prophetess: Before the child knows how to call his father and his mother (Isa 8:4). This child, then, who was born of the Virgin, is called Emmanuel, that is, God with us; and, begotten of the Prophetess, that is, of the Holy Spirit, he was named Make haste, strip the spoils, hasten to take the prey: now he is called by many names. And although from what he had said above, Emmanuel, that is, God with us, he showed that he is God; yet now he says that his government was set upon his shoulder, either because he himself carried his cross, or, by the shoulder, showing the strength of his arm, as the same Isaiah says: The Lord God has revealed his holy arm to all the nations (Isa 52:10). And again: Lord, who has believed our report: and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed (Isa 53:1)? So after two names he will be called by six other names: Wonderful, Counselor, God, Mighty, Father of the age to come, Prince of peace. For not, as most think, are the names to be joined in pairs, so that we read Wonderful counselor, and again, Mighty God; but Wonderful is to be read separately, which in Hebrew is said PHELE (פלא); and Counselor apart, who in their tongue is called IOES (יועץ); and God separately, who in Hebrew is said EL (אל). Indeed, in what follows, where we read: For you are God, and we did not know; and again: I am God, and there is no other besides me (Isa 45:5), and many things like these: in place of what is said in Latin, God, in the Hebrew EL is written. And what follows, Mighty, is called in Hebrew GIBBOR (גבור). Hence too in the place where the same prophet records: They shall trust upon God, the holy one of Israel, in truth: and what is left of Jacob upon the mighty God (Isa 10), for mighty God the Hebrew has written EL GIBBOR. And the Father of the age to come and of the resurrection, which is fulfilled in our calling; and the prince of peace, who said to the Apostles: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you (John 14:27): no one will doubt this who has read, according to the apostle Paul, that the Savior is our peace. Terrified by this majesty of names, I think, the Seventy did not dare to say of a child that he was openly to be called God, and the rest; but in place of these six names they set what is not found in the Hebrew, Angel of great counsel, and I will bring peace upon the princes, and his health. Which seems to me to have this sense: He is the Angel of great counsel who announced to us that Israel was to be cast off for a time and the nations to be saved; and he gave peace to his princes, the Apostles and apostolic men, and left the health of his teachings to believers. And what follows: His dominion shall be multiplied, and of peace there shall be no end, in place of which the Seventy translated: Great is his government: we ought to know that the Hebrew word MESRA (משרה), both here and above, the Seventy interpreted ἀρχὴν, that is, government. In place of which we rendered government above, here dominion. But Aquila, deceived by the ambiguity of the word, interpreted μέτρον, that is, measure, which is called by the same name in Hebrew and in Latin. Nor can anyone doubt about the manifold dominion of the Savior and his peace, which has no end, who has read in the Psalms: Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession (Ps 2:8); and again: And abundance of peace, until the moon be taken away (Ps 71 [72]:7), that is, until the consummation of the age. And his government and dominion will be upon the throne and kingdom of David, which after the Babylonian captivity had been broken up, to establish it and strengthen it, and to teach that it is perpetual (lest the promise of God should seem empty), from the time of the Incarnation and for ever. And the zeal, that is, the jealousy, of the Lord of hosts did this for this reason, because they provoked him to jealousy with those who were not gods, and he provoked them to jealousy with a nation that was not a nation (Deut 32). The prophecy of Emmanuel and of the child to be born of a Virgin, begun at the place where it is said to Ahaz: Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, is ended with this little verse, in which is added: The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this (Isa 7:11). Now let us pass on to the rest.
Book Four
We dictate books of unequal length, and according to the diversity of the visions and of their senses one is drawn in, another drawn out. So, having finished the third volume, we pass to the fourth, which is smaller than the former by a third of the measure of its lines, especially since the fifth, which we have placed after this book, is of historical explanation and has nearly double the number. For while we are unwilling to divide what is joined, and to pass over what was interpreted long ago, we have steered our little boat as if between the two συμπληγάδας of the Pontic sea; and it, with the Holy Spirit blowing and the Lord Savior directing our course, slips out into the open sea, while you, virgin of Christ Eustochium, say: Come from the four winds of heaven, O spirit, and give life to the dead bones (Ezek 37:9): so that those which lay in the dust of the earth may be raised up as the Lord breathes upon them.
9:8ff.
The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it fell upon Israel. And all the people of Ephraim shall know it, and those who dwell in Samaria, saying in pride and greatness of heart: The bricks have fallen, but we will build with squared stones; they have cut down the sycamores, but we will change them for cedars. And the Lord shall raise up the enemies of Rezin against him, and shall turn his foes into tumult, Syria from the East, and the Philistines from the West, and they shall devour Israel with whole mouth. For all this his fury is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out, and the people has not returned to him who strikes it, and they have not sought the Lord of hosts. We read above (2 Kgs 16) that in the days of Ahaz son of Jotham, son of Uzziah king of Judah, Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel went up to Jerusalem to take it by storm. And (Isa 7) that Isaiah the prophet was sent to meet Ahaz with Jasub his son, to tell him not to fear, and that his heart should not be afraid of the two tails of smoking firebrands, because in them the rule of Syria and of Israel was to be brought to an end. When he did not believe, because of the greatness of the matter and the present danger, he is bidden to ask a sign for himself. And because he was an idolater, he refused to do even this: therefore the Lord gives a sign, not to the king himself, but to the house of David, the sign of his Son who was to be born of the Virgin, at whose invocation they were to be freed from the imminent danger, and the rest, which we have interpreted up to the present place. So, many mysteries having been set in between, he now returns to what he had begun, and prophesies the overthrow of Rezin and Ephraim, that is, of Syria and Samaria: A word, he says, the Lord sent into Jacob, and it fell upon Israel. Among the Hebrews DABAR (דבר), which is written with three consonant letters, DALETH, BETH and RES, according to the nature of the passage signifies word if it is read DABAR, and if DEBER, death and pestilence. For this reason many, deceived by the ambiguity of the term, say that not a word was sent, but death. So the Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it fell upon Israel. He willed that Judah should reign, as Jacob prophesies in Genesis (ch. 49); and Israel, that is, the ten tribes, claimed the rule for themselves, of whom it was said: They have reigned, and not through me (Hos 8:4). So the dignity of rule, which had begun in David at Samuel's anointing after Saul was cast off, sent into Jacob, that is, into the twelve tribes, which were once called Jacob, fell upon Israel: not, as the Seventy translated, came: for what had been appointed and directed to the saints fell among the wicked. So the people of Ephraim and those who dwell in Samaria shall know, who because of their multitude are lifted up into pride and say: The kingdom of Judah is small, and in comparison with ours most worthless. So, while they collapse like bricks, let us build ourselves a house of squared stone. When their sycamores, which are cheap wood, have been cut down by hostile incursion, we will build up our rule with cedars, which do not rot, so that they may signify an everlasting kingdom. Let all the people of Ephraim, then, and those who dwell in Samaria know this: that the Syrian, who is now its help, will go over to the enemy. Or certainly, that against the Syrian himself sudden wars of adversaries arise, and all are turned into tumult: so that against Israel Syria moves from the East, and the Philistines, that is, the Palestinians, from the West, and together they devour Israel. And when they have done these things, my hand is nonetheless stretched out, or lifted high, over Israel, and does not cease to strike them. And struck by God they will not return to him who strikes them, nor will they seek the Lord of hosts, worshiping golden calves in place of God. According to the anagogy, our writers expound this passage thus: God sent his Son to Jacob, that is, to the Jews; and he came to Israel, that is, to the people of the nations, whom the Apostle too says are called Israel (Rom 9). Others, however, thus: The Lord sent his Word to the Church, which supplanted the former people, and it fell upon Israel, that is, upon the heretics, who boast that they see God. So let their leaders know, and all who dwell in Samaria, that is, who say that they keep the law of God, and are in an abundance of virtues, and bear the fruits of righteousness (for this is what Ephraim means), who in the pride of their heart despise the Church, and, thinking its simplicity to be want of skill, say: In place of its bricks we will build our churches with squared and very strong stones, and in place of unfruitful trees, soon to perish, we will raise up the loftiest cedars; cedars which the Lord will crush, and which the righteous man, in the person of the wicked, relates that he saw, and their place was not found (Ps 36 [37]). So the Lord says that Rezin, which means worldly wisdom, whose help Ephraim used, will be turned against him, and all his enemies will fight against him, and he will be assailed both from the East and from the West, and they will devour Israel with whole mouth. In place of which the Seventy translated: And let us build ourselves a tower: and God will dash down those who rise up against mount Zion, and will scatter his enemies. For they desire to build themselves a temple in Samaria too, in the likeness of the Temple of God; but although they have moved their feet from the East and said: Come, let us build a tower, and make ourselves a name before we are scattered (Gen 11:4), with the Lord fighting against them their agreement will be dissolved and scattered, and their tongues will be divided against one another, lest by agreeing they become worse; rather they will be destroyed by one another. And when they have been so struck and devoured by their enemies, still they will not return to the Lord; but his hand is still ready to strike, according to what we read in Jeremiah: In vain have I struck your sons: you have not received discipline (Jer 2:30).
9:14ff.
And the Lord will destroy from Israel head and tail, bending and perverting, in one day. The aged and honorable, he is the head; and the prophet who teaches falsehood, he is the tail. And those who call this people blessed shall be leading it astray, and those who are called blessed shall be cast headlong. Therefore the Lord will not rejoice over its young men, and he will not have mercy on its orphans and widows, because every one is a hypocrite and wicked, and every mouth has spoken folly. For all this his fury is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out. For impiety is kindled like a fire: it shall devour brier and thorn, and shall be kindled in the thicket of the forest, and shall be rolled together in the pride of smoke. In the wrath of the Lord of hosts the earth has trembled, and the people shall be like food for the fire. A man will not spare his brother, and he will turn aside to the right and be hungry, and he will eat on the left and not be filled: each one will devour the flesh of his own arm. Manasseh Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh, and they together against Judah. For all this his fury is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out. Not only will the Lord raise up the enemies of Rezin against him, and turn his foes into tumult, Syria from the East and the Philistines from the West, so that they devour Israel with whole mouth; but because it has not returned to him who strikes it, nor sought the Lord of hosts, he will stretch out his hand to strike, so as to destroy from Israel the head, and the tail bending and perverting, namely him who perverts what is right (Jer 2). Who the head is, he himself has interpreted: the aged and honorable. And who the tail is: The prophet, he says, who teaches falsehood, that is, the false prophet. He has spoken of the leaders; now he joins the people as well to the nobles, because teachers and disciples, the learned and the unlearned crowd, will perish alike. For those who called the people blessed are seducers; and those who were called blessed, not for virtue but for gifts, will be cast headlong into death. Hence also we read above: My people, those who call you blessed lead you astray, and trip up the paths of your feet (Isa 3:12). In such a people God will have mercy on no person: not on the orphan, not on the widow, because every one is a hypocrite, pretending one thing and doing another: promising chastity and living luxuriously, making a show of poverty and filling the purse. Hence he adds and says: And every mouth has spoken folly. For all these things the Lord does not cease to be angry, but still raises his hand to strike. And because they have done these things, impiety will be kindled like fire, so that the ravening flame devours not the tilled field but briers and thorns, and consumes not fruit-bearing trees but the unfruitful forest in which wild beasts dwell. For this reason it is said that the thicket of the forest, when fire is set beneath it, is rolled together in the pride and height of the smoke. For everything that is lofty and rises up on high can be called proud. In place of which the Seventy, meaning I know not what, translated: and it will devour all things round about the hills. Hence also at the wrath of the Lord the earth trembled, and the people became fodder for the fire, because there was such cruelty in it that it did not spare even the dearest name of brotherhood, but, deserting and despising the right, it was sated with the things that were on the left, while it hungers for pleasures and evils, and always longs to join worse things to evil ones. Manasseh and Ephraim too, who were born of one womb and begotten of the same parent, broke out into such madness that they were at odds with one another in hostile hatred. Let us read the volumes of Kings and Chronicles, and we shall find the civil wars of Samaria among themselves, while some fight for one king and others for another, and how, when their own kings had been killed, they agree on attacking Judah. According to tropology, the Lord will take away head and tail, the greater and the lesser alike. By naming the tail, he shows that the heretics are not men but beasts of burden, which use this member to cover their dung and to keep off small creatures. And after the head he adds the tail bending and perverting, because they overturn the precepts of the law and pervert the right way. He will also destroy the aged man, because he is the head, and the false prophet, who is set in the tail, both teachers and disciples alike: the one sort who for gifts praise sinners, the other who, being praised, do not perceive their own evils nor do penance. Therefore the Lord will not rejoice in their young men: For woe to the city whose king is a youth (Eccl 10:16). And those who have lost God as Father, or the true Lord, will not obtain mercy. For every heretic is a hypocrite, doing one thing and pretending another, and whatever he says, though it may seem to be wisdom, is nevertheless folly. For these things he stretches out his hand to punish, and the devouring flame will consume all their impieties like thorns. And words without virtues, which are compared to an unfruitful forest, will be wrapped in the pride of smoke. At their punishment all the ground will tremble, and the deceived peoples will be handed over to everlasting burnings, because for the sake of shameful gain they do not spare even their own, but vie with one another in taking plunder from the peoples they have deceived, leaving good things and lingering in the worst. And though they always find what is on the left, yet they are never sated with their errors, devouring the flesh of their own arm, and fighting against the Church with equal zeal. On account of luxury and pleasures and gains from the peoples they have discord among themselves, so that from one heresy two arise, and these in turn are divided into parts, so that they may lead away flocks of their own and devour the houses of widows and of sinful women, always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim 3). In all these things the fury of the Lord will not be turned away, consuming and overthrowing vices; but the more they advance in sinning, the more he stretches out his hand for punishment.
10:1ff.
Woe to those who make unjust laws, and who in writing have written injustice, to oppress the poor in judgment, and to do violence to the cause of the humble of my people, that widows might be their prey, and that they might plunder the orphans. What will you do in the day of visitation, and of the calamity coming from afar? To whose help will you flee? And where will you leave your glory? that you may not be bowed down under the chain, and fall with the slain. For all these his fury is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out. Most think that these things too are still said against the ten tribes which dwelt in Samaria, because they joined these as well to their former crimes. To us, however, it seems that the prophetic word cries out against the judges of the tribe of Judah and of Jerusalem, namely the scribes and the δευτερωτὰς, because they wrote unjust laws against the law of God, and by their traditions overturned the truth of judgment. For when God says: Honor your father and mother (Exod 20:12), they on the contrary taught sons to say to their parents: Whatever gift comes from me will profit you, so that they do not honor father and mother (Matt 15:5-6; Mark 7:11), and other things like these. And they wrote these most evil laws for this purpose, to oppress the poor and the humble of the people, to make plunder of widows and to despoil orphans. They are asked what they will do when the day either of captivity or of judgment has come, and of the calamity coming from afar, which was foretold long before. To whose help, he says, will you flee, when you have offended God, who is the true helper, and where will you leave your glory? For riches will not profit in the day of wrath, to keep the Assyrian from leading you in chains into the enemy's land, to keep you from falling in battle (Prov 11:4). And finally, just as in the preceding passages he had often said against Samaria: For all these his fury is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched out, he speaks so against Judah too, because the final captivity is not the end of their evil, but even in the enemy's land the sword of the Lord will pursue them. According to the anagogy, every heretic writes iniquity in order to deceive the poor and humble of the people and to despoil widows and orphans. For the rich man, of whom we read: A man's own riches are the redemption of his soul (Prov 13:8), does not endure threats, is not quickly caught by them. But the poor man, and he who is humble and small among the peoples, is quickly made to stumble by them. The widow too, who has lost God her husband, and the orphan who has lost his father the Creator, of whom it is written: You have forsaken God who begot you, and have forgotten God your nourisher (Deut 32:18), are easily tripped up. What then will they do in the day of judgment, when they have deceived so many, and of the calamity coming from afar? For just as it is said to the righteous man: The word is near, in your mouth and in your heart (Rom 10:8); and in another place: The kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21); so the calamity of the heretics will come from afar, prepared for them over a long time. To whom will they flee for refuge, when the God they have is a fiction? To whom will they hand over their glory, when everything is feigned? Nor will they be able to escape the chain with which they have bound very many. Hence also in the vision of the valley of Zion, which, forsaking the height of God, has been deceived by heretical lowliness, it is said of the teachers of knowledge falsely so called: All your princes have fled, and those who were captured were harshly bound (Isa 22:3); and that they fall with the slain one by one, and perish themselves in the slaughter of others, and though they suffer many things, and the day of visitation has come, their destruction is not their end: but they are ever to tremble at the hand of the Lord hanging over them. Up to this point is God's threat against the ten and the two tribes, that is, against Samaria and Jerusalem, which began among the people while Ahaz was still reigning: of these, two and a half tribes were taken captive under him, and the rest under Hezekiah, who succeeded Ahaz in the kingdom (2 Kgs 16:17). The following prophecy is written against the Assyrians.
10:5ff.
Woe to Assur, the rod of my fury, and he is the staff; in their hand is my indignation. Against a deceitful nation I will send him, and against the people of my fury I will give him charge, to take spoils and to seize prey, and to make it a thing trodden down like the mire of the streets. But he does not think so, and his heart does not reckon so, but his heart will be set on crushing, and on the slaughter of very many nations. For he says: Are not my princes all of them kings? Is it not: as Carchemish, so Chalanno and as Arpad, so Hamath? Is it not: as Damascus, so Samaria? As my hand found the kingdoms of the idol, so also their images from Jerusalem and from Samaria. Shall I not, as I did to Samaria and to her idols, so do to Jerusalem and to her images? Let us set down in this place the translation of the Seventy, which disagrees with the Hebrew in very many things. LXX: Woe to the Assyrians: the rod of my fury is he, in their hands; my wrath I will send against a lawless nation, and to my people I will give command to make spoils and prey, and to trample the cities, and to lay them in the dust: but he did not so think, and did not so reckon; but his mind is to crush, and to destroy very many nations. And if they say to him: You alone are prince, he will answer: I have not taken the region which is above Babylon, and Chalane, where the tower was built. But I have taken Arabia, and Damascus, and Samaria: as I have taken these, so I will take all kingdoms. Howl, you carved images in Jerusalem and Samaria; for as I did to Samaria and to her idols, so I will do to Jerusalem and to her images. First it must be known that in the Hebrew it does not have Chalane, but CHALANNO (כלנו). For the last letter of this name is not IOD, as they supposed, but VAU, letters which differ from each other only in size. Now the tower was built in the plain of Shinar, in which were Erech, Accad, and Chalanne, and Babylon, which received its name from the confusion of tongues (Gen 11). Arabia, moreover, is not found in the Hebrew, but Hamath, which the Syrians to this day call Epiphania. Howl too, you carved images in Jerusalem, they added of their own. And what is written above: If they say to him, You alone are prince, he will answer, I have not taken the region this one and that one, but I have taken Arabia, and Damascus, and Samaria, suggests this sense: When, he says, those who have been taken captive say to the Assyrian, You are prince of all, he, still feeling himself to be weak, will answer: How do you call me prince, when I have taken only Arabia and Damascus and Samaria, and have not yet brought under my power the nations set far off beyond Babylon? But as I took Arabia, Damascus and Samaria, so I will lay all kingdoms beneath me. Let us pass to the Hebrew, and briefly note what seems right to us. Woe to the Assyrian, that is, Sennacherib, because he is the rod and the staff of my fury, for in his hand is my indignation, and through him I will strike a most deceitful nation, which has always limped between me and the idols, which lied that it would do my precepts; and against the people of my fury I will command him to despoil it and plunder it, and to reduce it to dust, and to trample it like the mire of the streets, that is, to strike it and not kill it, to wound it and not take away its life. But he went beyond the measure of my anger, and raged not only against Israel, against which he had been directed, but against very many nations, so as to crush all the kingdoms round about, and his sword raged even to the slaughter of very many nations. For, lifted up into pride, he dared to say this: My captains are kings of other nations, and, being subject to me, they will rule all nations. As I took Carchemish, so I took Chalanno too; as Arpad, so I gained Hamath too; as Damascus, so I subjected Samaria to myself too. As I have put under my feet the other kingdoms which served the worship of idols, so I will subject to my power Jerusalem too, and Samaria, in which are the same idols. As I took Samaria with its idols, so I will take Jerusalem too, because it worships the same gods. For Carchemish, however, the Seventy, adding of their own, translated the region beyond Babylon, and Chalane where the tower was built, leaving out Arpad altogether. But according to their translation, and with the freedom of tropology, provided it is pious, from what he says, and I will give command to my people to make spoils and prey, and to trample the cities, and to lay them in the dust, we can say this too: that the Lord daily commands his people to reduce to dust the cities of the adversaries, which are raised up against the knowledge of God and have been built by the heretics with enormous labor, and to show that they are nothing. And he, understanding the weakness of the human heart, and that, surrounded as he is with mortal flesh, he cannot have a perfect victory of the virtues nor take all the nations, though others admire him and say: You alone are prince, will answer them: There are many things that I ought to destroy, and have not yet been able to destroy: I know that I do not know. And although I have overcome many arguments of the adversaries, yet there are very many which are still to be overcome. And at the same time, in hope of what is to come, from those which he has overcome he promises himself the victory over the rest as well. Now the images of Jerusalem and of Samaria are bidden to howl: not the things themselves which were fashioned, but those who fashioned them: μετωνυμικῶς, those who made them, by the things that were made: so that not only those who have fabricated idols in the heresies, but those who in the Church through ignorance defend a lie for the truth, may testify by howling and penitence that they have erred.
10:12, 14
And it shall be, when the Lord has accomplished all his works on mount Zion and in Jerusalem, I will visit upon the fruit of the proud heart of the king of Assur, and upon the glory of the haughtiness of his eyes. For he said: By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom I have understood, and I have removed the bounds of the peoples, and I have plundered their princes, and like a mighty one I have pulled down those who sat on high; and my hand has found the strength of the peoples as a nest; and as eggs are gathered which have been left, so I have gathered all the earth, and there was none who moved a wing, or opened the mouth, or chirped. For fruit the Seventy translated sense, or great mind. After the captivity of Samaria, and the victory of the Assyrians, and the threat against Jerusalem, that, because it had imitated the images of Samaria, it must be struck with a like sentence, the Prophet now speaks against the Assyrian himself, who was lifted up into pride and thought that what he conquered was the work of his own strength. For the Assyrian, boasting in the swelling of his heart, said that by the strength of his hand he had conquered all the nations, and by incredible wisdom had taken possession of the bounds of all. And according to the Seventy he was of such power that he overthrew from their foundations the cities of warlike men, and seized the whole world like a nest, and made it his prey like eggs abandoned by their mothers. And because he had once taken a metaphor from birds, from the nest and the eggs, he kept it in the rest, so as to say: There was none who moved a wing, or opened the mouth, or chirped. So great, he says, was the terror of my strength and victory, that the conquered did not freely utter even weeping and groaning. There are those who think these things are said generally against the kingdom of the Assyrians: that after the Lord has accomplished all his works on mount Zion and in Jerusalem, that is, after Jerusalem has been overthrown, the empire of the Assyrians is destroyed. To me, however, from what follows, the threat seems to be properly against Sennacherib king of the Assyrians. And what he says: After the Lord has accomplished all his works on mount Zion and in Jerusalem, signifies not the overthrow of the city but its siege, when Rabshakeh, Sennacherib's general, came and did the things which the same Prophet records in later chapters (Isa 37:17). According to tropology, when Samaria and Jerusalem have borne the wrath of the Lord, and have perceived that they erred in fabricating idols, then will the great mind be destroyed, the Assyrian, who was puffed up into such pride against the Lord that he reckoned that all things would yield to his wisdom, and that any lofty doctrines, even those fortified by the art of dialectic, were to be shaken and utterly destroyed: so much so that, like the chicks of birds, they would not be able to rise up on high, and, not yet quickened, would be without sense and torpid, which the example of the eggs shows; and that he would not hear anyone so much as mutter or move his tongue against the reason and strength of his discourse.
10:15
Shall the axe boast against him who cuts with it, or shall the saw exalt itself against him by whom it is drawn? As if a rod should lift itself against him who lifts it, and a staff should exalt itself, which is but wood. Against Sennacherib, or, as many think, Nebuchadnezzar, boasting and saying: By the strength of my hand I have done it, by my wisdom I have understood, and the rest, the holy Prophet answered: O most foolish of mortals, do you think the wrath of God to be your own wisdom, and do you ascribe his command to your own strength? It is as if an axe should boast against him who holds the axe, and a saw against him by whom it is drawn, and they should say that all the works done by axe and saw were accomplished by their own skill. And if someone should lift a rod, and raise a staff to strike whom he will, and the rod and the staff themselves should boast and say that he who was struck was struck by them: so you too, though you have been the instrument of God's will, are lifted up into pride, and boast that all that is done belongs to your own power. Whatever is said to the Assyrian can also be referred both to the pride of the heretics and to the devil, who is called in the Scriptures axe and saw and rod, because through him unfruitful trees are cut down and cleft, and the hardness of unbelievers is sawn, and those who do not receive discipline are struck with the rod. The heretics too are those whose mouth is set against heaven, and their tongue passes through the earth, and who abuse the sense which they received from God for good, turning it to the contrary and the perverse, so as to speak against him by whom they were made, and to turn into blasphemy the ministry of the tongue, by which the Lord should be praised (Ps 72 [73]).
10:16ff.
Therefore the Sovereign Lord of hosts will send leanness among his fat ones, and beneath his glory a burning shall be kindled and burn like the burning of fire. And the light of Israel shall be in fire, and his Holy One in flame: and his thorn and his briers shall be kindled and devoured in one day. And the glory of his forest and of his Carmel shall be consumed from the soul even to the flesh, and he shall be a fugitive for terror, and the remnants of the wood of his forest shall be numbered for their fewness, and a child shall write them down. Because you have done these things, and spoken what I related above, therefore the Lord will send his Angel, and in one night a hundred and eighty-five thousand of your army will die: so that all the most powerful, whom he calls fat, are reduced to leanness and to nothing; and, as the Hebrews relate, while the garments of the Assyrians were unharmed, their bodies were burned with a hidden fire: then the light of Israel and his holy one, that is, the angel, will be in fire and in flame, and all the thorns and briers of the Assyrians, that is, their malice, will be consumed, not over a long time, but in one day and moment. And as a forest and Carmel, which is a mountain in Galilee planted with woods, is quickly burned up when fire is set beneath it, so from the soul even to the flesh all the glory of the Assyrian will be consumed. Then the despoiled army will flee, as the same Prophet attests in what follows, and of so innumerable a multitude, which was compared to Carmel and a forest, it will come to such fewness that a little child could number them and write them down. For the Hebrews relate that only ten of his army remained; some of ours will have it that this king is a type of the adverse power. And as in Daniel (ch. 10) we read of the princes of the kingdom of the Persians, and of the kingdom of the Medes, and of the kingdom of the Greeks, so there is also a prince of the Assyrians, who because of his pride is called the great mind, and in the day of judgment will be handed over to the burnings of Gehenna, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. And that the light of Israel and the holy one, that is, the Lord himself, kindles the briers and thorns of the Assyrian, and that all his power and his innumerable peoples are to be brought to nothing. That then he, terrified with fear, like a crooked and fleeing serpent, wishes to escape the punishments hanging over him. And that those who have been able to escape from his forest and confusion and from the wood doomed to perish are worthy to be numbered and written down by the child whose government is upon his shoulders. This same thing can also be referred to the heretics: that after the Church's teaching has shone forth, and all their snares have been laid open, then they come to such desolation that, of the forest and the unfruitful trees and their innumerable multitude, which they had deceived by heretical fraud, scarcely a few remain to follow their error. Where we have rendered, the Lord will send leanness among his fat ones, the Seventy translated, the Lord will send dishonor upon your honor. And where we said: and his Holy One in flame, they rendered: and he will sanctify him in fire: by which some would have it understood that punishments and torments are applied to sinners for this purpose, that they may be purged by divine fire. And where we said: And the glory of his forest and of his Carmel, they translated: The mountains and the hills and the forests shall be quenched, whereby all the brightness and pride and multitude of the Assyrians is quenched and humbled.
10:20ff.
And it shall be in that day, the remnant of Israel, and those who have been saved of the house of Jacob, shall no more lean upon him who strikes them, but shall lean upon the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. The remnants shall be converted, the remnants, I say, of Jacob, to the mighty Lord. For if your people Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant of it shall be converted. The consummation cut short shall overflow with righteousness. For the Lord God of hosts will make a consummation and a cutting short in the midst of all the earth. Where in the Greek it says: The remnants of Jacob shall be converted to the mighty God, for mighty God there is written in the Hebrew EL GIBBOR (אל גבור), two names of the six names by which, as we read above, the little child and son who is given to us was called. And where it is written: The remnants shall be converted, in place of that it is said in the Hebrew in the singular number, what is left shall be converted, that is, τὸ ὑπόλειμμα ἐπιστρέψει; in the Hebrew it is written SAR JASUB (שאר ישוב). And from the occasion of this expression they think that Jasub son of Isaiah went before as a sign of the people that was to be saved out of Israel. So when the light of Israel and the holy one has consumed the forests and briers of Carmel, and the Assyrian king has fled with a few, then the remnant of Israel, who with Hezekiah as their prince, when the other cities of Judea had been taken, were besieged in Jerusalem, will in no way trust in the Assyrian, as they do now under king Ahaz, who sent messengers to the king of the Assyrians, saying: I am your servant; come up and free me from the hand of the king of Syria, and from the hand of the king of Israel, who have risen up against me (2 Kgs 16:7); when he took the gold and silver that was found in the treasuries of the house of the Lord and in the king's house, and sent gifts to the king of the Assyrians, and the Assyrian king hearkened to him, and came to Damascus, and took it, and carried it away, and killed Rezin; but, freed from that very Assyrian, the smiter, who had first been a friend and afterwards proved an enemy, they will lean and rely upon the Lord the Holy One of Israel, not falsely, as they had done under the former kings, but in truth. This we read was done under Hezekiah, so that, forsaking their idols, they were converted to the worship of God. And because he had said that a remnant would be saved, he passes to later times, and says that the full salvation will come under Christ. Understanding this, the apostle Paul too writes to the Romans: But Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant will be saved. For he is finishing the word and cutting it short in equity, because a shortened word will the Lord make upon the earth (Rom 9:27). And as Isaiah said: Unless the Lord Sabaoth had left us seed, we would have become as Sodom, and would have been like Gomorrah (Isa 1:9). Where, then, the authority of so great a man goes before, let every other interpretation cease. And indeed, if we read Josephus (bk. 10, ch. 2), and how great a multitude of men there was in Jerusalem and in Judea when the Lord suffered, we understand that scarcely a few of the Jews were saved, among the Apostles and apostolic men. Now the shortened and perfect word is the word of the Gospel, which in place of all the ceremonies of the long-winded Law gave a very brief precept of love and faith: that what we would not have done to ourselves, we should not do to another. Hence the Lord too in the Gospel: On these two commandments, he says, hangs all the Law and the Prophets (Matt 22:40). Some refer this chapter to those times when under Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua son of Jozadak, and Ezra, and Nehemiah, a part of the people returned to Judea. To them we shall answer that they do not keep the order of the history, especially since the things that follow are said not against the Babylonians, whose king was Nebuchadnezzar, but against Sennacherib king of the Assyrians.
10:24ff.
Therefore thus says the Lord God of hosts: Do not fear, my people, dweller in Zion, because of Assur: he will strike you with the rod, and will lift up his staff over you in the way of Egypt. For yet a little while, and a very little, and my indignation will be ended, and my fury upon their crime. And the Lord of hosts will raise up a scourge against him, like the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb, and his rod over the sea, and he will lift it up in the way of Egypt. And it shall be in that day: his burden shall be taken from your shoulder, and his yoke from your neck, and the yoke shall rot away before the oil. For rock, which Aquila translated according to the Hebrew, Symmachus and Theodotion set down the Hebrew word itself, SUR OREB (צור עורב). In place of which the Seventy translated place of tribulation: of which we shall speak in its own place. It seems hard to you, he says, O dweller in Zion, that when all the nations round about have been subjugated by the Assyrian, you alone should be freed from his hands. Listen to what I say: do not fear, my people, that you will be taken when Assur conquers. For although in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18) Sennacherib king of Assyria is to go up against all the fortified cities of Judah, to take them, and to send Rabshakeh to terrify the people besieged in Jerusalem, yet you must know this, that he will strike you not with the sword but with the rod, and, marching against Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, and against the Egyptians and the Red Sea by the way of Egypt, he will only lift his staff against you, and will not be able to strike. For yet a little while, and when he has returned from Egypt with an infinite multitude of his army, and wishes to besiege you, he will at once be struck by my indignation, and by that scourge which I once raised up against the Midianites under Gideon (Judg 7), who by another name was called Jerubbaal: when Oreb and Zebah, princes of the Midianites, were slain upon a very hard rock, that is, flint, which in Hebrew is called SUR (צור), so that the place received the name rock of Oreb from the rock and from the king who was slain upon it. So he will lift his rod over the Red Sea when he marches against the Ethiopians, and will lift it when he returns to you by the way of Egypt: but as soon as he has come from Egypt, the burden will be taken from your shoulders, and the yoke of his rule, and you will cease to serve. And this yoke, that is, the power of the Assyrian, will rot away before the oil, that is, the mercy of God. But we can also understand what he said: He will strike you with the rod, and will lift up his staff over you in the way of Egypt; and again: And his rod over the sea, and he will lift it up in the way of Egypt, in this way too: that he struck very many of the tribe of Judah, and took the cities round about the kingdom of Jerusalem, for this reason, because they had their trust not in God but in the Egyptians. Hence Rabshakeh too reproaches them, saying: Behold, you trust upon a broken staff of reed, upon Egypt. If a man lean upon it, it will go into his hand and pierce it (2 Kgs 18:22): so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. The history of the Midianites is written in the book of Judges (Judg 7), and we read it also in the Psalm: Make their princes like Oreb, and Zeeb, and Zebah, and Zalmunna (Ps 82 [83]:12). They err, therefore, who think that the time is signified when in the book of Numbers (ch. 25) the Midianites are reported to have been slain by Israel from the desert of Sur to Oreb, the mountain of God: for these are written among the Hebrews with other letters, and at that time they were not at mount Oreb, but in the wilderness of Shittim. According to the anagogy, the people that dwells in the Church is commanded not to fear the adversaries, who are always ready to fight and have overturned souls by their much disputation. For they receive a little power against the people of God, and strike not so much with the sword as with the rod, that is, not to kill but to threaten, for this reason, because the people have walked in the way of Egypt and have not trusted in the Lord. But when they have returned to God and have left the road of Egypt, then the scourge of God is to be raised up by his judgment against the adversaries. For Midian means from judgment: so that by the spirit of his mouth and by the oil of mercy the yoke of the enemies may rot away.
10:28ff.
He will come into Aioth, he will pass into Magron: at Machmas he will deposit his baggage. They have passed over in haste; Gabee is our lodging (or, as we have found it written elsewhere: they have lodged a lodging); Rama was astonished, Gaba of Saul fled. Neigh with your voice, daughter of Gallim; give heed, Laisa, poor little Anathoth: Medemena has departed: inhabitants of Gebim, take courage. There is still day enough for a halt at Nob: he will shake his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. LXX: For he will come into the city of Aggai, and will pass into Mageddo: and at Machmas he will set down his baggage: and he will pass through the valley, and will come into Aggai. Fear will seize Rama, the city of Saul: the daughter of Gallim will flee: give heed, Laisa: it will be heard in Anathot: Medemena was astonished, and the inhabitants of Gebim. Be comforted today in the way, so that he may remain: comfort the mount of the daughter of Zion, and the hill of Jerusalem. In this place the Seventy differ much from the Hebrew: for this reason we have set down both editions, so that, with Christ inspiring us, if we have deserved it, we may say what seems right to us on each point. The prophetic word describes the march and the pomp of the Assyrian as he returns from Egypt to Jerusalem, and with how great a din and how great speed he will come to attack it. And first, he says, he will come into Aioth, where, in his excessive haste, unwilling to stay, he will pass into Magron, and he will have such confidence of taking the city that he will leave his packs at Machmas, as one who will soon return when the city has been overthrown: having laid them down, he will pass it in haste; and in Gabee he will have his lodging: and while he halts there a little, to refresh his weary army, Rama, a neighboring city, will be terrified: Gaba, once the city of Saul, will flee. Then the daughter of Gallim too, which in Hebrew is called BETH GALLIM (בת גלים), will wail so that you would think it the neighing of horses. Therefore, O Laisa, and you, poor, or obedient, or humble Anathoth (for it can be interpreted in three ways), take careful heed, and turn aside from the onrush of the runner, if you can: for the city of Medemena has already departed from its seats. But you who dwell in the hills, which is what Gebim means, safe in the height of your places, take courage, that is, seize your arms. There still remained so much of the day that, standing in the little town of Nob, and looking at the city of Jerusalem from afar, he shook his hand and brandished it over mount Zion, either looking down on it and despising it, or insulting and threatening it, and marveling that, when the whole East had been subjected to him, so small a city should dare to resist his power. These things according to the Hebrews, as they were handed down to us by them, we have touched on in brief discourse. Now let us add what the churchmen think about this place according to the edition of the Seventy. When the yoke of the Assyrian, or, as some wrongly think, of the Babylonian, has been taken from your shoulders and broken, the Assyrian Sennacherib, fleeing with a few survivors, will come into Aggai, which is not found in the Hebrew. And so great will be the panic of the fugitive that he will not dare to remain there, but will pass into Mageddo, which the Scripture itself does not contain either. And because, hampered by his packs, he will not be able to flee more swiftly, he will lay down his baggage in Machmas, and with hurried step will pass through the valley, which the Hebrew text does not have either: and he will come again into Aggai, which is set twice in this place and is not found in the Hebrew. At the sound of his flight Rama, the city of Saul, will tremble: which is plainly false. For the city of Saul is called Gaba, as is contained in the Hebrew. Then he will come into Gallim: Laisa will hear, Anathoth will hear, Medemena will tremble. But the inhabitants of Gebim, and the hills which are in Jerusalem, that is, all the lofty men, are called upon to console Jerusalem: not after a long time, but at the present moment, and on the same day, while the Assyrian is on the way; so that they may remain in their places, and, though disturbed by fear, may in no way flee. This according to the letter. But a certain writer in this place, since he could not find the ἐτυμολογίας of the false names according to the Seventy, and testifies that he could not find them in the book of Hebrew Names, sends us off into uncertainty, so as to say that at the last time of the world, and at the consummation of this age, when punishments are imminent, the great mind, the prince of the Assyrians, will flee, and through various places and by varied journeys will desire to flee from the wrath of God. And when he has fled, the inhabitants of Gebim, that is, all the lofty powers, are called upon by the prophetic word to console the fugitive, and to teach him not to flee but to remain on the way and wait for the mercy of God; and not only to console the fugitive, but by good works to call back the daughter of Zion from mourning and to summon her to the salvation of penitence; and that these are the hills in Jerusalem of which we read in the latter part of this prophet: Comfort, comfort my people, O priests: speak to the heart of Jerusalem (Isa 40:1). This he said because, constrained by the truth of the matter, he had nothing else to say.
Behold, the Sovereign Lord of hosts will break the little flask in terror, and the lofty of stature will be cut down, and the high will be humbled, and the thickets of the forest will be overturned with iron, and Lebanon with its lofty ones will fall. Some think that this passage is still said of the Assyrian: that when he has been crushed, all the nations round about which lay under his dominion are cut down and humbled, and the densest forest is overturned; by which they would have it that μεταφορικῶς the people and the princes are understood. And that Lebanon too falls with its lofty ones, so that no power at all is left to Assyria. Others, however, would have it that from this place begins the passage concerning Christ: especially since both we and the Circumcision confess that what follows also is written of him. He had told above the name of the child to be born of the Virgin, that he would be called Emmanuel; and afterwards, that the conception of the prophetess's womb would be called hasten, strip the spoils, make haste to plunder (Isa 8:3), and that he himself would be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both houses of Israel: that his government would be upon his shoulder, and he would be called by six names: wonderful, and counselor, and God, and mighty, and father of the age to come, and prince of peace: and that his empire would be multiplied, and of peace there would be no end. Now, in the prologue of his coming, before it is said that he will be born of the stock of Jesse and David, his passion is shown by the figure of the broken flask: that, by God's will, his flesh was handed over to death for this reason, that the loftiness of the Jews might be destroyed, and those once lofty might fall to the earth; and that Lebanon might be cut down with its cedars, of which we read in Zechariah: Open your gates, O Lebanon, and let fire devour your cedars: howl, fir tree, for the cedar has fallen, because the magnificent have been laid waste (Zech 11:1-2). And that he is said to have been crushed and struck by the Father, this too is evidence: I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered (Zech 13:7). And another testimony: For they persecuted him whom you struck (Ps 68 [69]:27). The Hebrew word (פארה) PHURA, which Aquila translated κεραμεῖον, Theodotion and Symmachus rendered ληνὸν, that is, winepress, which itself too, according to the title of three psalms, signifies the Lord's passion, as he himself says in Isaiah: I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the nations there was no man with me (Isa 63:3). But the Seventy, bringing in a new sense, translated glorious ones for winepress.
11:1-2
And there shall come forth a rod from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up from his root: and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and godliness: and the spirit of the fear of the Lord shall fill him. Up to the beginning of the Vision, or burden, of Babylon, which Isaiah son of Amos saw, all this prophecy is about Christ, and we wish to explain it part by part, lest, being set forth and discussed all at once, it confuse the reader's memory. The Jews interpret the rod and the flower from the root of Jesse as the Lord himself: namely, that in the rod the power of one who reigns is shown, in the flower his beauty. But let us understand the rod from the root of Jesse as the holy Virgin Mary, who had no shoot clinging to her; of whom we also read above: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son (Isa 7:14). And the flower as the Lord Savior, who says in the Song of Songs: I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys (Song 2:1). For root, which the Seventy alone translated, in the Hebrew there is written (גזע) GEZA, which Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion interpreted as κορμὸν, that is, trunk. And for flower, which in Hebrew is called (נצר) NESER, they translated sprout, to show that long after the time of the Babylonian captivity, when no one of David's stock possessed the glory of the ancient kingdom, Mary arose as if from a trunk, and Christ from Mary. That saying in the Gospel of Matthew of which all churchmen seek, and do not find, where it is written, For he shall be called a Nazarene (Matt 2:23), the learned among the Hebrews think was taken from this place. But it must be known that this NESER is written with the letter SADE, whose peculiar quality and sound, between z and s, the Latin tongue does not express. For it is a hissing sound, and is uttered with clenched teeth, barely, by the pressure of the tongue: and with it the city Zion too is written. Further, Nazirites, whom the Seventy translated sanctified, Symmachus separated, are always written with the letter ZAIN (ז). Upon this flower, then, which will suddenly rise up from the trunk and the root of Jesse through the Virgin Mary, the spirit of the Lord will rest, because in him it pleased all the fullness of the divinity to dwell bodily: not in part, as in the other saints; but, according to the Gospel written in the Hebrew tongue which the Nazarenes read: The whole fountain of the Holy Spirit shall descend upon him. Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor 3:17). In the same volume of Matthew we read that the words written in what follows: Behold my servant whom I have chosen: my chosen one, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the nations (Matt 12:18), are referred to the understanding of the Savior, upon whom the Spirit of the Lord rested, that is, remained in everlasting habitation: not so as to fly away and descend upon him again; but, according to the testimony of John the Baptist, so as to remain continually; for he says: I saw the Spirit descending like a dove from heaven, and remaining on him, and I did not know him: but he who sent me to baptize in water said to me: He on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, he it is who baptizes in the Holy Spirit (John 1:32-33). Further, in the Gospel which we mentioned above, we find these things written: And it came to pass, when the Lord had come up from the water, the whole fountain of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon him, and said to him: My Son, in all the prophets I was awaiting you, that you might come and I might rest in you. For you are my rest, you are my firstborn son, who reigns for ever. This Spirit is called the Spirit of the Lord and the Spirit of wisdom; for all things were made through him; and without him nothing was made that was made (John 1:3). And in the Psalms it is sung: How magnified are your works, O Lord! You have made all things in wisdom (Ps 103 [104]:24). And the Apostle writes: Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1). And in Proverbs it is read: God by his wisdom founded the earth, and prepared the heavens by prudence (Prov 3:19). And as the same Word of God is called light, and life, and resurrection, so he is named the spirit of wisdom and understanding, and of counsel and fortitude, and of knowledge, and of godliness, and of the fear of the Lord: not that he is different according to the differences of the names, but that he is one and the same fountain and principle of all virtues. Without Christ, therefore, no one can be wise, nor understanding, nor a counselor, nor strong, nor learned, nor godly, nor full of the fear of God. And this is to be noted, that the Spirit of the Lord, of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and fortitude, and of knowledge, and of godliness, and of the fear of the Lord, that is, the sevenfold number, which in Zechariah (ch. 3) are called seven eyes on one stone, rests upon the rod and the flower which rose up from Jesse, and so from the stock of David. But especially the spirit of the fear of the Lord filled him, for the sake of those who have need of the fear of the Lord, because they are little ones; the fear which perfect love casts out. For he who fears has punishment, and is not perfect (1 John 4:18). Hence the Apostle too says to believers: For you have not received the spirit of slavery again in fear: but you have received the Spirit of adoption, in which we cry Abba, Father (Rom 8:15). And in Malachi we read: If I am a father, where is my glory? and if I am Lord, where is my fear (Mal 1:6)? of which fear it is sung in the Psalm: Come, children, hear me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord (Ps 33 [34]:12).
11:3ff.
He shall not judge according to the sight of the eyes, nor reprove according to the hearing of the ears: but he shall judge the poor in righteousness, and shall reprove with equity on behalf of the meek of the earth, and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the spirit of his lips he shall slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faith the belt of his reins. We refer these things to the first coming of the Savior: the Jews contend that they will come to pass at the end of the world. Further, the Seventy translated: He shall not judge according to glory, nor reprove according to speech: but he shall judge with a lowly judgment, and shall reprove the lowly of the earth. For he accepts no one's person in judgment; but to the scribes and Pharisees and rulers he says: Woe to you, hypocrites: and, The kingdom of God will be taken from you, and will be given to a nation that brings forth its fruits (Matt 23:13; 21:43). Nor did he rebuke according to speech and the hearing of the ears. For when they said: Master, we know that you are truthful, and teach the way of God in truth, and you care for no one: for you do not look at the faces of men (Matt 22:16), knowing their malice he answered: Why do you test me, hypocrites? and other things like these. But he judged in righteousness the poor in spirit, whose is the kingdom of God; and he reproved with equity the meek and humble of the earth, saying to the Apostles: Are you also still without understanding? And again: Do you not yet know nor understand? And to Peter in particular: O you of little faith, why did you doubt (Mark 8:17)? Or certainly, on behalf of the humble and meek he reproved others, who were trying to oppress them (Matt 14:31). He also struck all earthly works with the rod, or, as the Seventy translated, with the word of his mouth, saying in the Gospel: Do not think that I have come to send peace upon the earth: for I have not come to send peace, but a sword. And with the spirit of his lips he shall slay the wicked (Matt 10:34; Luke 12:51): of whom we read in Psalm 9: You have rebuked the nations, and the wicked has perished: you have blotted out their name for ever and for ever and ever (Ps 9:6). And Paul the Apostle writes: Whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the spirit of his mouth (2 Thess 2:8; Eph 6). And when the wicked has been struck, the Lord is girded with righteousness and truth and faith. For he himself was made for us by God wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption (1 Cor 1), he who also says in the Gospel: I am the light, and the way, and the truth (John 8:12; 14:6). And of the Psalms it is said: Truth has sprung from the earth: and righteousness has looked down from heaven (Ps 84 [85]:12). Hence the Apostle too exhorts the Ephesians: Stand, therefore, having your loins girded about with truth, and clothed with the breastplate of righteousness (Eph 6:14). But if faith is read in place of truth, this must be said: that the girdle of the Lord, with which Jeremiah was girded (Jer 13), is the faith of believers.
11:6ff.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion and the sheep shall abide together, and a little child shall drive them. The calf and the bear shall feed: their young ones shall rest together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the infant at the breast shall delight over the hole of the asp; and he that has been weaned shall put his hand into the den of the basilisk. They shall not hurt, and they shall not kill in all my holy mountain, for the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters of the sea that cover it. These things too the Jews, and our judaizers, contend will come to pass according to the letter: that in the glory of Christ, who they think will come at the end of the world, all beasts will be brought back to gentleness, and, laying aside their former fierceness, the wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the rest with the rest, which we now see to be opposed to one another. We must ask them whether, if everything in the present place is taken just as it is written, and nothing is referred to a spiritual understanding, according to the saying of the Apostle: Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph 1:3), then the root and the rod and the flower too are not to be referred to a sense; and the earth struck by the word of God, and the wicked slain by the spirit of his lips, are to be understood just as they are written; and whether they will be forced to teach how the reins of the Lord are girded with incorporeal things, righteousness and truth? But let us ask them this too: what is worthy of the majesty of the Lord in the wolf and the lamb feeding together, and the leopard lying down with the kid, and the lion eating straw, and a little child putting his hand into the hole of asps? Unless perhaps, according to the fables of the poets, they will restore to us the golden age of Saturn, in which wolves and lambs will feed together, and rivers will run full of honeyed wine, and the sweetest honey will drip from the leaves of the trees, and all things will be filled with fountains of milk. But if they answer that these things will come about for the blessedness of the times, so that men may enjoy all good things without harm to anyone, let them hear from us that nothing is good except virtue, and nothing evil except vice, as the Psalmist says: Who is the man who wills life, and loves to see good days? Restrain your tongue from evil, and let your lips not speak guile. Turn aside from evil, and do good (Ps 33 [34]:14; 30 [31]:27). Riches, moreover, and health of body, and abundance of all things, and their opposites, poverty, sickness, and want, are reckoned even among the philosophers of the world neither among goods nor among evils, but are called indifferent. Hence the Stoics too, who agree with our doctrine in very many points, call nothing good but honor and virtue alone, and nothing evil but baseness. We have said these things briefly to convict our judaizers of snoring in the heaviest sleep. But according to the life-giving spirit, the understanding is easy. For the wolf, Paul, who at first persecuted and tore the Church, of whom it was said: Benjamin a ravening wolf, dwelt with the lamb, either with Ananias, by whom he was baptized (Gen 49:27; Acts 8), or with the apostle Peter, to whom it was said: Feed my lambs (John 21). And the leopard, who formerly did not change his spots, washed in the fountain of the Lord, lay down with the kid, not the one which is on the left, but the one which is sacrificed in the Lord's pasch. And this is to be noted, that it is not the lamb and the kid that dwell and lie down with the wolf and the leopard, but the wolf and the leopard that imitate the innocence of the lamb and the kid. The lion too, formerly most ferocious, and the sheep, and the calf, will abide together. This we see daily in the Church: rich and poor, powerful and lowly, kings and private men abiding together, and being ruled in the Church by little children, whom we understand as the Apostles and apostolic men, unskilled in speech but not in knowledge. And when they have been bound together by the discipline of the Lord, so that their households too are joined, then will be fulfilled: Their young ones shall rest together. The lion too will eat not flesh but straw, namely, he will feed on simple food. And here it must be observed that it is not the ox that eats flesh, but the lion that eats straw. By straw I think the simple words in the holy Scriptures are understood; and by the wheat and the inner marrow, the sense which is found within the letter: and it often happens that men of the world, ignorant of mystical things, are fed on the simple reading of the Scriptures. The infant too, who is a little one in malice, puts his hand into the hole of the asp, and drives demons out of the possessed bodies of men. But he who has been weaned is no longer nourished on the milk of infancy, but now feeds on solid food. He puts his hand into the den of the basilisk, that is, into the dwelling of Satan himself, and drags him out from there. Hence power was given to the Apostles too to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the strength of the enemy (Luke 10). And the animals that were once venomous will in no way be able to hurt and kill those who dwell on the holy mountain of God, which means the Church, of which it is said in the Gospel: A city set upon a mountain cannot be hidden (Matt 5:14). And lest we think that this is said of mount Zion, according to the error of the Hebrews, in the following verse the mysteries of the Gospel preaching are shown: For the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord: this is what was said more obscurely above: The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and according to their custom the prophetic words are laid open at the end: Like the waters, he says, of the sea that cover. As the waters of the sea cover the depths of the sea, that is, the earth which is covered by the waves, so the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. This joining together of those who were formerly of diverse ways the blessed apostle Peter too testifies that he saw in the linen vessel (Acts 10) which was let down from heaven, having four corners, which we understand as the four quarters of the world, so that we may recognize the earth filled with the knowledge of God: in which vessel there were four-footed beasts, and serpents, and wild beasts, and birds of heaven, so that what the Ark did in the flood, the Church may do in the world.
In that day the root of Jesse, who stands as a sign of the peoples: him the nations shall beseech, and his sepulcher shall be glorious. LXX: And there shall be in that day the root of Jesse, and he who shall rise up to be prince of the nations; in him the nations shall hope, and his rest shall be honor. For his rest, there is set in the Hebrew MNUATHO (מנחתו), which all translated alike. For honor too there is read in the Hebrew CHABOD (כבוד), which plainly means glory. And the sense is: his death shall be glorious, so that what the Savior prays in the Gospel may be fulfilled: Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world was (John 17:5). It has been said of his birth, it has been said of the other mysteries in between: he comes to death, which, not by the customary name used of mortals, but because in Christ there was everlasting life, is called rest. But we, to make the sense plain to the reader, for sleep and rest translated sepulcher, another word but the same sense. At that time, then, when the Gospel of Christ has flashed forth in the whole world, and all the earth has been filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters of the sea covering the earth, there shall be the root of Jesse, and he who shall ascend from its stock as a sign of all the peoples, so that the peoples may see the sign of the Son of man in heaven (Matt 24). He will have horns in his hands, in which his strength will be hidden, so that, being lifted up, he may draw all things to himself (Hab 3). Or, as the Seventy translated, he will rise again from the dead, to be prince of all the nations, and all the nations will hope in him. This Jacob too (Gen 49:10) attests in mystical speech concerning the tribe of Judah: A prince shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up, and he shall be the expectation of the nations. And it shall be in that day, the Lord will set his hand a second time to possess the remnant of his people, which shall be left from the Assyrians, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Ethiopia, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he will lift up a sign to the nations, and will gather the fugitives of Israel, and will collect the dispersed of Judah from the four quarters of the earth: and the jealousy of Ephraim shall be taken away, and the enemies of Judah shall perish. Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not fight against Ephraim. And they shall fly upon the shoulder of the Philistines by the sea, together they shall plunder the sons of the East: Edom and Moab shall be the command of their hand, and the sons of Ammon shall be obedient. In that day, that is, at that time, of which it was said above too, when the root of Jesse has risen as a sign of the peoples, or to rule over the nations, the Lord will set his hand a second time; so that it is not, as our judaizers hold, at the end of the world, when the fullness of the nations has come in, that all Israel will then be saved (Rom 11); but let us understand all these things of the first coming. For we cannot, since one day is spoken of both now and above, refer that one to the first coming and this one to the second: lest through these things which follow, those too which went before should have to be referred to that Christ whom the Jews contend has not yet come but is to come. After the calling of the nations, then, which were once reckoned as the tail, Israel will be reckoned as the tail (above, Isa 10): so that the Lord may set his hand a second time and possess the remnant of his people, concerning which we read above too that not all Israel, but a remnant is to be saved, which shall be left from the Assyrians and from Egypt and from the various nations round about. For first the twelve Apostles, and the seventy, and the hundred and twenty souls, and the five hundred to whom the Lord appeared when they were gathered together, then three thousand and five thousand of the Jews believed in the Lord. James too speaks to the apostle Paul, who was himself also of the remnant: You see, brother, how many thousands of the Jews there are who believe? all these are zealous for the law (Acts 21:20). And in the same volume we read: Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation that is under heaven, who all marveled and said: Are not these Galileans, and how have we heard each one his own tongue, in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and those who dwell in Mesopotamia and Syria, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, and Egypt and Libya, and Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, we have heard them speaking in our tongues the great works of God (Acts 2:5ff.). From all these nations, then, the remnant of Israel will be saved through the Apostles. The histories of the Church relate that the Apostles, dispersed through the whole world, preached the Gospel: so that some penetrated to the Persians and the Indians, and Ethiopia stretched out her hands to God, and from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia gifts were brought from there to Christ. And lest he seem to signify only the eastern peoples, he adds the rest too: And from the islands of the sea. By the islands of the sea he signifies the western region, which is enclosed by the circuit of the Ocean. He will lift up, then, the sign of the Cross over all nations, and will first gather the people of Israel from the synagogues of the Jews, so that the Apostles might fulfill the command of the Savior, who had said: Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 10:6). Finally Paul too speaks to the unbelievers among the Jews: It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you; but since you have rejected it, and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the nations, as the Lord commanded us (Acts 13:46-47). By the four quarters he signifies east and west, south and north, so that through these the calling of the world may be shown. At that time, says Isaiah, Ephraim and Judah, who now, while I prophesy, are at odds with each other in hostile hatred, will in no way be enemies, but according to the prophecy of Ezekiel the two rods will be joined into one rod, and those who were formerly separated will be united in the Church of Christ (Ezek 37), so that they toil with common labor among the nations, and fly upon the shoulder of the Philistines by the sea, that is, first preach to the Palestinians of the coast, and then go by sea with winged course to the other nations. Or, according to the Seventy translators: they will fly in the ships of foreigners, together they will plunder the sea: which we may understand from the example of the one apostle Paul, who through Pamphylia, and Asia, and Macedonia, and Achaia, and various islands and provinces, to Italy too (Acts 28), and, as he himself writes, to Spain, was carried in the ships of foreigners (Rom 15). So Ephraim and Judah, that is, those of the twelve tribes from among the Jews who believed in Christ, will together plunder the East, and will stretch out their hands into Edom and Moab, according to what Christ speaks mystically in the person of David: Into Edom I will stretch out my shoe: foreigners will serve me (Ps 59 [60]:10). For these nations, at the time when Isaiah prophesied, were adversaries of the people of the Jews, and therefore he now says that after the root of Jesse has risen to reign among the nations, and the standard of the Cross has been raised for the salvation of the whole world, then Edom too and Moab and the sons of Ammon, that is, the whole breadth of Arabia, give their hands to the Apostles, and in the places of idolatry churches of Christ are raised up.
And the Lord shall lay waste the tongue of the sea of Egypt, and shall lift his hand over the river in the strength of his spirit, and shall strike it in seven streams, so that men may cross it shod. And there shall be a way for the remnant of my people that shall be left from the Assyrians, as there was for Israel in the day when it came up from the land of Egypt. As Edom and Moab and the sons of Ammon will give their hands to the Apostles, to obey the Gospel preaching, so the Lord himself, who accomplished those things in his Apostles, will lay waste, not the sea, as according to the Seventy, but, according to the Hebrews, the tongue of the sea of Egypt, which formerly blasphemed against the Lord and presided over the Egyptian superstition. Hence also in the Psalms we read: This great and wide sea, there are creeping things without number (Ps 103 [104]:25-26). To which is added: This dragon which you have formed to mock him. He will lay waste, then, or slay, that is, ἀναθεματίσει, as Theodotion, Aquila and Symmachus translated, the tongue of the sea of Egypt, and will lift his hand over the rivers of Egypt in the strength of his spirit, or with a most violent wind, by which we understand the kingdom of the Romans. For in the reign of Caesar Augustus (Luke 2), when the flower ascended from the root of Jesse, and the first enrollment was made in the Roman world, the kingdom of the Egyptians, formerly most powerful, which had endured for many ages, was destroyed by the death of Cleopatra, and the river of Egypt was struck in seven streams, or in seven valleys. For the Nile of many waters, which formerly flowed in one channel and was impassable, was divided and cut up into seven very low valleys and streams, so that it might be crossed with shod feet. And this signifies tropologically that the nation of the Egyptians, so given over to idolatry and the vainest superstition as to consecrate hawks, owls, dogs, and goats, and asses with a divine name, he distributed from the boundless power of a kingdom among the several judges of the Roman empire, so that Thebes has one judge, Libya another, Pentapolis another, Egypt another, Alexandria another, and so the various regions which the Egyptians call νόμους. And for this reason, under the metaphor, the Nile has been divided into parts and split into streams, so that the Gospel word might run about without any impediment and reach the farthest peoples of Egypt. And as in the times of Moses the Red Sea was dried up so that the people might flee out of Egypt, so on the contrary the rivers of Egypt will be dried up, so that the remnant of the people of God, which will be saved from the Assyrians and from various nations, may cross into Egypt, in no way fleeing it, but taking it and treading it under their foot. Let the prudent and Christian reader hold this rule for the prophetic promises: that what the Jews and ours, or rather not ours but the judaizers, contend will come to pass carnally, we teach to have been already accomplished spiritually, lest on the occasion of fables of this kind and of inextricable questions, according to the Apostle (2 Tim 2), we be forced to judaize.
12:1-2
And you will say in that day: I will confess to you, O Lord, for you were angry with me: your fury is turned away, and you have comforted me. Behold, God is my Savior; I will act confidently and will not fear, for my strength and my praise is the Lord God, and he has become my salvation. You who had formerly said in the wilderness, when you came up from the land of Egypt and the Red Sea was dried up: Let us sing to the Lord, for gloriously magnified is he (Exod 15:1), and the rest: now that the tongue of the sea of Egypt has been struck, and its river dried up and cut off and humbled, glorify the Lord and say: I will confess to you, O Lord: because I who deserved your wrath and fury have obtained mercy; for you are my Savior, that is, Jesus, and I have no confidence at all in idols, nor will I fear what is not to be feared; but you are my strength and my praise, who have become my salvation. Let the most wicked heresy hear that the Lord was made so for those who are being saved, and whose Lord he formerly was not, so that we may understand creation and making in the holy Scriptures to mean not always the bringing into being of things which were not, but sometimes the grace toward those who have deserved that God should become theirs.
12:3
You will draw waters in joy from the fountains of the Savior. He whom above he had called Emmanuel, then, Strip the spoils, make haste to plunder, and by the other names, now, lest he seem to be another besides him whom Gabriel announced to the Virgin, saying: And you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people (Matt 1:21), he calls Savior, and proclaims that waters are to be drawn from his fountains, in no way from the waters of the river of Egypt, which have been struck, nor from the waters of the river of Rezin, but from the fountains of Jesus, for so Savior is expressed in the tongue of the Hebrews. Hence he himself also cried out in the Gospel: He who thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture says: Rivers of living water shall flow from his belly. This, says the Evangelist, he said of the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive. And in another place of the Gospel he himself says: He who drinks of the water that I shall give him will not thirst for ever: but the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life (John 7:37-39; 4:13-14). By the fountains of the Savior let us understand the teaching of the Gospel, of which we read in Psalm 67 (68): In the churches bless God the Lord from the fountains of Israel (Ps 67 [68]:27).
12:4-5
And you will say in that day: Confess to the Lord and call upon his name: make known among the peoples his devices: remember that his name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for he has done magnificently: proclaim this in all the earth. These things are commanded by the Apostles and the remnant of Israel to those of the nations who have believed: that they confess to the Lord alone, and, forsaking idols, call upon his name, and proclaim all his works to unbelievers; that they may know that he alone is exalted: to whom they must sing that he has done magnificently, and that his mercy may be proclaimed in all the world.
12:6
Exult and praise, O dwelling of Zion: for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. First it must be said according to the letter: O dwelling of Zion, exult and praise your God, because he who was formerly seen as your God, and was shut within the narrow bounds of the land of Judea, has now filled all the earth with his knowledge, and, rising from death, reigns among the nations, and the nations beseech and adore him; only so, however, that he sets his hand a second time to possess what is left of his people, and to gather the fugitives of Israel, and to collect the dispersed of Judah from the four quarters of the earth: because the seed-bed of the Gospel went forth from the fountains of Israel through the Apostles, who were of the Jews. But it is better that we interpret Zion, that is, a watchtower set on the heights, as the Church, of which Psalm 50 (51) too sings: Deal kindly, O Lord, in your good will with Zion, and let the walls of Jerusalem be built (Ps 50 [51]:20); so that in her the sacrifice of righteousness may become acceptable to God, oblations and holocausts, and the calf which the most merciful father sacrificed for his penitent son (Luke 15).
Book Five
Many years ago I was asked by Amabilis, a bishop of holy memory, to write on the ten Visions of Isaiah, and because of the constraints of that time I touched in brief discourse on what seemed right to me in each one, setting out only the history, which was what he asked for. Now, φιλοπονωτάτη Eustochium, I am compelled to write Commentaries for you on the whole prophet, and meanwhile, through your prayers, I have come as far as Babylon, which is the first of the ten visions about which I have already spoken before. But it seemed superfluous to me either to repeat the same things again or to put forth differing opinions in a single work. Hence this will be the fifth book on Isaiah, the one which was once published on its own; and when it has been completed to the very end, we shall take up the beginning of the sixth volume according to tropology, and, with you likewise praying to the Lord, we shall pursue the heights of spiritual understanding.
"Up to now, Pope Amabilis, pillar and very name of charity, and to me the most loving of all whom the earth has brought forth, you have been demanding by letter that I discuss for you, in a historical exposition, the ten visions which are the most obscure in Isaiah, and that, leaving aside the Commentaries of our writers, who, following various opinions, have composed many volumes, I lay open the Hebrew truth; and as I hung back and put off this most troublesome kind of explanation to another time, you reminded me again and again. But this year you sent our son Heraclius the deacon, to lay hands on me and summon me into court, and to demand the promise at every moment. What, then, am I to do? Shall I take up a work over which most learned men have toiled, I mean Origen and Eusebius Pamphili, of whom the one roams through the free spaces of allegory and, by interpreting the names of individuals, makes his own ingenuity into the mysteries of the Church, while the other, promising a historical exposition in his title, sometimes forgets his purpose and goes over to the tenets of Origen? Or shall I keep silent, and say openly that I do not know an exposition of this kind? And when will I be able to persuade you that I was unable rather than unwilling, the one being a mark of weakness, the other of pride? Driven by these reasons, I have preferred that you should call my ability rather than my willingness into question; and I will briefly note down what I have learned, laying the foundations of the Scriptures. For the rest, if either you wish it, or there is time, and Christ assents to our will, a spiritual building must be raised on top, so that, with the roof set upon it, we may display the finished ornaments of the Church. You have set before me from Isaiah the Vision of Babylon, and of the Philistines, of Moab, and of Damascus, and of Egypt, and of the desert of the sea, and of Edom, and of Arabia, and of the Valley of vision, and of Tyre: if I strive to expound these more broadly, there will be need of many books, and the voyage of my collector will be put off to another year. So, as you wish, I will fit brief little comments to the individual texts, so that I do not so much expound what I think as leave to you, in few words, what you are to think. We are dictating these things, not writing them: the speech runs as the hand of the secretaries runs. For we do not want our own words to be praised, but the Prophet's sayings to be understood; nor do we vaunt eloquence, but we seek the knowledge of the Scriptures. Let us begin, then, with Babylon."
13:1
The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amos saw. The Hebrew word MESSA (משא) can be understood either as burden or as weight. And wherever it is placed at the head, the things that are said are full of threats. Hence I wonder that the Seventy translators chose to put vision in so grim a matter; but of this elsewhere. Now let us carry through what we have begun. Babylon was the metropolis of the Chaldeans, whose king Nebuchadnezzar, having overcome all the nations as far as Ethiopia, laid waste Judea too among the rest, and in the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah took Jerusalem after a long siege; and he led Zedekiah himself captive to Antioch, which was then called Riblah, and there, after his sons had been killed before their father's eyes, he ordered Zedekiah's eyes to be put out, and sent him, blinded, into a cage, and dragged him to Babylon like a wild beast; so was fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah, which sang: You shall enter Babylon, and you shall not see it (Jer 34; 39; 52). For the consolation of the people of the Jews, therefore, the ruin of Babylon is foretold: that just as Nineveh, the metropolis of the Assyrians, whose kings Pul and Tiglath-pileser and Shalmaneser and Sennacherib had captured the ten tribes, was overthrown when the Chaldean laid it waste, so this city too, which had grown proud against God, should be overthrown by the onslaught of the Medes and Persians.
13:2
Upon a misty mountain lift up a signal, raise the voice, lift up the hand. The misty, or dark, mountain, which in Hebrew is called NESPHE (נשפה), understand as Babylon, on account of its pride. These are the dark mountains, bearing gloom and mist before them, of which Jeremiah says: Give glory to the Lord your God, before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains (Jer 13:16). And a command is given either to the angels or to any ministers whatever, that at God's bidding, and with the hand of the messengers raised, the captivity coming upon Babylon should be proclaimed.
13:3-4
And let the leaders enter the gates: I have commanded my sanctified ones, and have called my mighty ones in my wrath, exulting in my glory. The princes and giants of the Seventy translators Eusebius interprets as angelic powers and the worst demons, who were sent to overthrow Babylon. But we, following the order of the history, say that they are the Medes. Of them Scripture testifies more openly in what follows, saying: Behold, I will stir up against them the Medes, who will not seek silver, nor want gold. Nor is it surprising if he calls the Medes sanctified for the overthrow of Babylon, since through Jeremiah he called Nebuchadnezzar himself his servant and his dove, because in destroying transgressing Jerusalem he was serving His command. Further, when he says: My mighty ones, and those exulting in my glory, he shows that it was not by their own strength but by the wrath of God that they overthrew the power of so lofty a kingdom.
13:4-5
The sound of a multitude on the mountains, as of many peoples: the sound of the din of the kings of nations gathered together. The Lord of hosts has given command to the army of war, to those coming from a land far off, from the summit of heaven. The Lord and the vessels of his fury, to destroy the whole earth. The onslaught of the Medes and Persians is described: that, having gathered many auxiliaries with them, with their Lord going before the army, they come to lay Babylon waste, to destroy the whole earth; not that they laid waste the whole world, but the whole land of Babylon and of the Chaldeans. For it is an idiom of Holy Scripture that by the whole earth it signifies the whole of that province about which it is speaking; and some, not understanding this, drag the passage to the overthrow of all lands.
13:6
Howl, for the day of the Lord is near: like a devastation it will come from the Lord. An apostrophe is made to the people of the Chaldeans, that they should make the coming evils resound with their weeping, and not doubt the ruin of their city, since the Lord is coming as its devastator.
13:7-8
Therefore all hands will be loosened, and every heart of man will waste away and be crushed. Gripings and pains will seize them: they will be in pain like a woman in labor: each will be astounded at his neighbor: their countenances are scorched faces. This needs no exposition; but it is briefly indicated that so great a weight of evils will press upon them that the hand of Babylon's fighting men will be loosened, and the heart will languish with fear, and pain will wring their bowels after the manner of women in labor, and each will seek the help of another, carrying about a face sallow with pallor; for it is natural that, when evils are imminent, we think others wiser than ourselves.
13:9
Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel and full of indignation, and of wrath and of fury, to make the land a wilderness, and to crush its sinners out of it. He calls the day cruel, not by its own desert, but by that of the people. For he is not cruel who cuts the throats of the cruel; but he seems cruel to those who suffer. For even the robber hanging on the gibbet thinks the judge cruel. And at the same time the desolation and devastation of the Babylonian land is announced, and the cause of the devastation is set forth: that all these things come about because of its inhabitants.
13:10
For the stars of heaven and their splendor will not spread out their light: the sun has been darkened in its rising, and the moon will not shine with its light. The Hebrew word CHISILE (כסילי) the Seventy translated as ὠρίωνα. The Hebrew whom I used as my teacher interpreted it as Arcturus. We, following Symmachus, have used the general word star. And the sense is this: when the cruel day of the Lord has come and his fury has laid all things waste, through the greatness of their fear everything grows dark for mortals, and the sun itself and the moon and the glowing stars seem to deny their brightness. Hence also heaven is clothed in sackcloth, namely because darkness covers all things, and, under the pressure of evils, men perceive nothing else but what the mind compels them to see.
13:11
And I will visit evils upon the world, and against the wicked their iniquity: and I will make the pride of the unbelievers cease, and will humble the arrogance of the mighty. From this place and from the one above, where it is written that the sun is darkened in its rising, and the moon is filled with gloom, and the stars withdraw their brightness, and the iniquity of the whole world is visited, some think that what is foretold is not the ruin of Babylon but the consummation of the world; whereas, surely, in keeping with what precedes, by the world as well, which in Hebrew is called THEBEL (תבל), and in Greek οἰκουμένη, Babylon is to be understood. For οἰκουμένη in our language means inhabited; and Babylon is called inhabited because of the vast multitude of its people: so that where there had formerly been a countless throng of peoples, there should be desolation and a dwelling of beasts.
13:12
A man will be more precious than gold, and a human being than pure fine gold. The cause is plain why God visits the οἰκουμένην, that is, the evils of Babylon: so that, deserted by its inhabitants, it may be reduced to a wilderness. Now, everything that is rare is called precious; just as above, too, according to the history, we read that because of the scarcity of men seven women take hold of one man, saying: We will eat our own bread, and be clothed with our own garments; only let your name be called upon us; take away our reproach (Isa 4:1). And in the volume of Samuel it is contained: The word of the Lord was precious in those days (1 Sam 3:1), that is, rare. Note that in the Hebrew PHAZ (פז) is written for gold in general, and OPHIR (אופיר) for fine gold.
13:13
Upon this I will trouble heaven, and the earth will be moved from its place, because of the indignation of the Lord of hosts, and because of the day of the wrath of his fury. Either take it in the sense in which we expounded above concerning the stars, and the sun, and the moon, and the world; or ὑπερβολικῶς, that because of the indignation of God both heaven is sad and the earth is moved, and all the elements too acknowledge the wrath of the Creator.
13:14
And it will be like a little doe fleeing, and like a sheep, and there will be none to gather them. He means the Babylonian and Chaldean people: that at the irruption of the Medes and Persians it will flee as fearfully as a little doe and a sheep at the roaring of a lion and the howling of a wolf; and it has no defender or prince whose command it may follow.
Each will turn to his own people, and every one will flee to his own land. After Babylon has been taken and the enemy army has entered through its gates, all the auxiliaries and the troops of the various nations by which the city had formerly been defended will go back to their own provinces.
13:15
Everyone who is found will be slain: and everyone who comes upon them will fall by the sword. He who has not fled will be struck down by the blade; and he who has chosen either to resist or to come back will be of so little use to the captured city that he too will shed his own blood.
13:16
Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes: their houses will be plundered, and their wives will be violated. This is what David prophesies in the spirit: Wretched daughter of Babylon, blessed is he who will repay you your recompense, which you have paid out to us. Blessed is he who will take and dash your little ones against the rock (Ps 136 [137]:8). So great will be the devastation of the city and the savagery of the victors that not even innocent age will be spared, that all the wealth of the houses will be plundered, and the chastity of wives will be violated before their husbands' eyes.
13:17
Behold, I will stir up against them the Medes, who will not seek silver, nor want gold. What lay hidden has been made plain: that the mighty ones and the giants are by no means to be understood as angels and demons, but as the nation of the Medes, whose prince Darius was the first to destroy the empire of the Babylonians, having slain Belshazzar, the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, who was the son of Evil-merodach (Dan 5). And he describes the savagery of the Medes and Persians as so great that, in their ardor to shed blood, they despise gold and silver and count the riches offered to them as mud.
13:18
But with arrows they will kill the little ones, and they will have no pity on the sucklings of the womb, and their eye will not spare the sons. The little ones will be killed, whose wounds will be no smaller than their bodies; and the wombs of pregnant women will be cut open, and the infants dashed out, and the cruel victor will kill the sons pressed to the breasts.
13:19
And Babylon, that glorious one among kingdoms, renowned in the pride of the Chaldeans, will be as when the Lord overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah: it will not be inhabited unto the end, and it will not be founded unto generation and generation. We have heard of the Medes, we have heard of Babylon, we have heard of her who is renowned in the pride of the Chaldeans: and we refuse to understand what was, and seek to hear what was not. And we say this, not because we condemn the tropological understanding, but because the spiritual interpretation ought to follow the order of the history; and many, ignorant of this, wander about in the Scriptures in a frenzied error. To this present day, then, the prophecy concerning Babylon is being fulfilled: and just as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, so this city too, once overthrown, will not be inhabited forever. For in its place they made Seleucia and Ctesiphon the renowned cities of the Persians.
13:20, 22
Nor will the Arab pitch his tents there; nor will shepherds rest there: but beasts will be there, their houses will be filled with dragons, and ostriches will dwell there, and hairy ones will dance there. And owls will answer in its buildings, and Sirens in the shrines of pleasure. Babylon will be so devastated and deserted that it will not be useful even for the pasturing of herds and flocks. For the Arab and the Saracen will not pitch their tents there, nor will shepherds, weary with toil after the tracks of their flocks, rest there; but among the broken walls and the narrow places of the ancient ruins SIIM (ציים) will dwell: which the Seventy alone translated as beasts; the others kept the very name that is written among the Hebrews, wishing kinds of demons or phantoms to be understood. And their houses, he says, will be filled, as we have said, with dragons; as Aquila translated, with typhoons; as Symmachus, OHIM (אחים), expressing the Hebrew word itself; but the Seventy and Theodotion interpreted it as cries or sounds. And as for what follows: Hairy ones will dance there, they understand either incubi, or satyrs, or certain wild men of the woods, whom some call the fig-tree Fauns, or kinds of demons. For owls, too, all kept the Hebrew word itself, IIM (איים); the Seventy alone translated onocentaurs. And the Sirens are called THENNIM (תנים), which we shall interpret either as demons, or as certain monsters, or at any rate as great dragons, which are crested and fly. By all these things the signs of devastation and solitude are shown: that the depopulation of the once most mighty city is so great that, because of the multitude of demons and beasts, none of the shepherds, that is, of those who seek out the desert, dares to enter it. We have learned from a certain brother, an Elamite, who came out of those regions and now lives the life of the monks at Jerusalem, that there are royal hunting grounds in Babylon, and that beasts of every kind are kept enclosed merely by the circuit of its walls.
14:1
Its time is near to come, and its days will not be prolonged. He says that the time is at hand when it is to be taken by its enemies. For after the captivity of Jerusalem, with no long time in between, it too was laid waste by the Medes and Persians.
For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose from Israel, and will make them rest upon their own soil. Of this Zephaniah speaks more fully: Praise, daughter of Zion; shout for joy, Israel; be glad and exult with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem: for the Lord has taken away your judgment: he has turned away your enemies (Zeph 3:14-15). And it signifies the time when Cyrus king of the Persians permitted the captive people to return to Jerusalem. Read the book of Ezra (Ezra 1), Haggai (Hag 1) and Zechariah (Zech 1): when, under Zerubbabel, and Joshua the high priest, and Ezra, and Nehemiah, the altar, the Temple, and the walls of the city were built.
14:2
The stranger will be joined to them, and will cleave to the house of Jacob, and peoples will take them, and bring them into their own place, and the house of Israel will possess them upon the land of the Lord as menservants and maidservants: and they will take captive those who had taken them captive, and they will subdue their taskmasters. We conjecture that many from various nations came to Jerusalem with the people of the Jews, believing in the God of Israel and abandoning the idols of their errors. And that they were brought back by the king's letters, and received gifts and the expenses of the Temple, there is no doubt. The understanding seems to be hemmed in only on this point: how Israel possessed, in the land of the Lord, those who had once been its conquerors, and subdued its taskmasters, and held them as menservants and maidservants. Unless perhaps synecdochically we understand the whole from the part: that they afterwards enjoyed such prosperity that they acquired for themselves households of menservants and maidservants from the various nations round about as well. It can also be understood of the times of Ahasuerus (Esth 9; Jdt 13), when, after Holofernes had been killed, the enemy army was cut down by Israel. That I cling to the letter and, in the manner of the serpent, eat earth, is your will, who have wished to hear only the historical interpretation.
14:3
And it will come to pass in that day, when the Lord has given you rest from your labor, and from your turmoil, and from your hard servitude, because you served before: you will take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and you will say. The discourse is directed to Israel: that after it has returned to Jerusalem and shaken off the yoke of servitude, it should recall the former power of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian summit, and lament him with a pitiful voice, because he has come to such calamity that he seems worthy of pity even to his enemies.
14:4, 7
How has the taskmaster ceased, the tribute come to rest? The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, the rod of the rulers, that struck the peoples in indignation, that subdued the nations in fury with an incurable blow, that persecuted cruelly: it has come to rest and fallen silent: the whole earth has rejoiced and exulted. This is the voice of Israel lamenting and pitying: how one who was once a lord and conqueror of the lands, despoiling everything with tributes, has been crushed and brought to nothing. He, I say, who was the staff of the wicked, who as sceptre and royal rod struck all in his fury, whose blow could not be endured, who cruelly pursued even those who fled: how he has come to rest and been humbled, and at his ruin the whole earth has fallen silent, uttering only the voice of exultant joy!
14:8
The fir trees too have rejoiced over you, and the cedars of Lebanon: Since you fell asleep, no one has come up to cut us down. By the fir trees and cedars of Lebanon understand the princes of the nations, who were cut down when Nebuchadnezzar struck them; and they too, breaking out into a voice of joy, say: Since you were led down to the underworld, no one else could be found to cut down the great and the mighty.
14:9
The underworld beneath you was thrown into confusion, at the meeting of your coming it roused up giants for you: all the princes of the earth have risen from their thrones: all the princes of the nations, every one, will answer and say to you. These things are to be read emphatically and in the manner of a stage scene; not because they happened, but because they could have happened; unless perhaps we believe that the souls of the kings whom he had killed came to meet the Babylonian king, mocking him. For it is a solace in evils when men see their enemies suffer the same things:
14:10-11
And you too have been wounded as we were, you have become like us: your pride has been dragged down to the underworld: there has fallen your corpse; beneath you the moth will be spread, and worms will be your covering. The speech of the mighty ones and princes of the earth, whom he had called cedars and fir trees above, is addressed to the Babylonian king, now placed in the underworld. We no longer grieve that we were cut down, since you too have fallen by the same axe. All your power, and your pride lifted up to heaven, has been dragged down to the earth. So will your corpse too feed the moth, and a multitude of swarming worms cover it? Through death you will feel the worthlessness of man, you who displayed the power of God in yourself.
14:12, 14
How you have fallen from heaven, Lucifer, who rose in the morning: you have crashed to the earth, you who wounded the nations: who said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of God I will exalt my throne, I will sit on the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the North; I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. In place of what we have translated, for ease of understanding, How you have fallen from heaven, Lucifer, who rose in the morning, in the Hebrew, to render it word for word, one reads: How you have fallen from heaven, howl, son of the dawn. Now in other words Lucifer is meant; and he is told that he ought to weep and mourn, he who was once so glorious that he was compared to the brightness of the morning star. Just as, he says, the morning star, scattering the darkness, shines forth burning and ruddy, so your progress too among the peoples and in public seemed like a bright star; but you have fallen to the earth, you wounder of nations, who in your pride said: I have attained such power that heaven remains for me, and the stars, so that the things on high must lie beneath my feet. The Jews, however, would have heaven and the stars of God understood of themselves, on the strength of what follows: I will sit on the mountain of the covenant, that is, in the Temple, where the ordinances of God are laid up, and in the sides of the North, that is, in Jerusalem. For it is written: The mountains of Zion, the sides of the North (Ps 47 [48]:3). Nor had it been enough for his pride to desire heavenly things, unless he had burst out into such madness as to claim for himself the likeness of God.
14:15
But you will be dragged down to the underworld, into the depth of the pit. He who in his pride had said: I will ascend into heaven, I will be like the Most High, is dragged down not only to the underworld but to the lowest underworld. For this is what the depth of the pit signifies, in place of which we read in the Gospel of the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (Luke 13:28).
14:16-17
Those who see you will bend down toward you and gaze at you (understand: saying): Is this the man who troubled the earth, who shook kingdoms, who made the world a desert and destroyed its cities; who did not open the prison to his captives? This too is the voice of those who mock and marvel, how the devastator of all has himself been devastated. And when he says: Who did not open the prison to his captives?, the greatness of his cruelty and impiety is expressed: that he kept even men in chains in prison, and chains were not enough for the wretches unless the horror of darkness also shut them in.
14:18-19
All the kings of the nations, every one, have slept in glory, each man in his own house. But you have been cast out of your tomb like a useless shoot, defiled and wrapped up with those who were slain by the sword, and went down to the foundations of the pit; like a rotting corpse you will have no fellowship, not even with them in burial. The Hebrews tell a fable of this kind. Evil-merodach, who had reigned earlier while his father Nebuchadnezzar lived for seven years among the beasts, was kept in chains together with Jehoiachin king of Judah, after his father had been restored to his kingdom, until his father's death; and when his father died and he succeeded to the kingdom again, and was not accepted by the princes, who feared that the man said to be dead might be alive, then, to give proof that his father was dead, he opened the tomb and dragged out his corpse with a hook and ropes. And the sense is: While all who were killed by you are buried, you alone will lie unburied. Others, however, interpret this place thus: All souls in the underworld will receive some rest; you alone will be bound fast in the outermost darkness. For you will be covered with the blood of all, and the gore of everyone will weigh upon you, as one wrapped in the putrid matter of the dead. Symmachus translated this place thus: Not even with those who are slain in war will you deserve to share in burial. And for what we have said, like a useless shoot, where in the Hebrew one reads CHANESER NETHAB (כנצר נתעב), Aquila translated like defiled putrid matter. Now NESER (נצר) properly denotes a sucker that springs up at the roots of trees and is cut off by farmers as useless; we can understand this very thing as putrid matter and corruption. And at the same time we learn that the underworld is beneath the earth, since Scripture says: To the foundations of the pit.
14:20
For you have destroyed your own land, you have slain your own people. According to the Seventy interpreters, who said: Because you have destroyed my land, and slain my people, there is no doubt what they mean. For Nebuchadnezzar slew and destroyed the land of Judea and its people Israel. According to the Hebrew the understanding is difficult: how he destroyed his own land and slew his own people; unless perhaps it is to be taken in this sense: those whom God had given you for chastening, you have utterly destroyed. Or otherwise: the ancient kingdom of the Assyrians, through your great pride and your lifting up your neck against God, has been utterly destroyed. For had you behaved humbly and known your own measure, the Assyrian and the Babylonian would be reigning to this day. Or in this way: you were so cruel toward foreigners that in your fury you oppressed even the peoples subject to you.
14:21
The seed of the most wicked will not be named forever. Prepare his sons for slaughter in the iniquity of their fathers: they will not rise up, nor inherit the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities. All the histories agree that, after Belshazzar the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar was slain and Darius succeeded to the kingdom of the Chaldeans, no one of Nebuchadnezzar's stock reigned thereafter. This, then, is what Scripture foretells: that Babylon will come to such devastation that not even of the royal seed will anyone remain, but on account of the father's impiety all his offspring will be wiped out. And for what we translated in the last part of the sentence, nor fill the face of the world with cities, there is written in the Hebrew, for cities, ARIM (ערים), which we can also translate as adversaries; so that the sense is: no one of your seed will be raised up as an adversary who desires to restore the kingdom. According to the Seventy interpreters, who said: Most wicked seed, prepare your sons for slaughter because of the sins of your father, what sense it has I am unable to know.
14:22-23
And I will rise up against them, says the Lord of hosts: and I will destroy the name of Babylon, and the remnant, and the offshoot, and the progeny, says the Lord. And I will make it a possession of the hedgehog, and pools of water: and I will sweep it with a broom, grinding it away, says the Lord of hosts. That Babylon was most mighty, and that, set foursquare on the plains, it extended sixteen thousand paces from corner to corner of the wall, that is, sixty-four thousand in all around its circuit, is reported by Herodotus and many others who have written Greek histories. And its citadel, that is, the Capitol of that city, is the tower which was built after the flood, and is said to reach four thousand paces in height, narrowing little by little from broad to narrow, so that the overhanging weight may be borne more easily by the broader parts. They describe marble temples there, golden statues, streets gleaming with stones and gold, and many other things that seem almost incredible. We have recounted all this to show that before the wrath of God all power is dust, and is to be compared to embers and ashes. If it were permitted to go into the barbarian nations and see the last traces of so great a city, we would see the possession of the hedgehog and the pools of water, and that what is now sung by the voice of Isaiah has truly been fulfilled: I will sweep it with a broom, grinding it away; for apart from the walls of baked brick, which are repaired after very many years in order to shut in the beasts, the whole space in between is a wilderness.
14:24-25
The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying: If it is not so, that as I have thought, so it will be, and as I have pondered in my mind, so it will come to pass, that I will crush the Assyrian in my land, and tread him down upon my mountains: and his yoke will be taken from them, and his burden will be removed from their shoulder. He returns to the present, that is, to Sennacherib king of the Assyrians, who laid waste Samaria and Judea and, Jerusalem excepted, destroyed everything round about; and he joins things near at hand to things that are to come long afterward, so that the fear hanging over them may be removed: because those who heard could say: We are enduring a siege now, and this man promises things that will come many ages later. This, then, is the order of the prophecy: although Babylon is to be destroyed after very many years, and the whole seedbed of the stock of the Assyrians and of Chaldea is to be utterly destroyed, nevertheless, so that you may not fear the captivity close at hand, the Lord swears (who is to be believed even when he does not swear) that his judgment is not mistaken, and that what he has conceived in his mind will not be made void. And he speaks this with human feeling, namely that he who cannot be deceived is not deceived: I will crush, he says, the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains I will tread him down. For in one night one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the army of the Assyrians were destroyed, the Angel laying them waste (2 Kgs 19). And from those who were besieged in Jerusalem his yoke will be taken away, and the heavy dominion that hung over all, and the weight by which they were pressed down, will rather be thrust back upon himself. For when the king of the Assyrians fled into his own land, Hezekiah went out free with the remnant of the people.
14:26-27
This is the counsel that I have devised upon the whole earth, and this is the hand stretched out upon all the nations. For the Lord of hosts has decreed, and who will be able to weaken it? And his hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? In this place some think that the prophecy is general, against the whole world, and that the devastation of Babylon and of the Assyrian city is a type of the consummation of the world. We by no means contradict them, so long as we know that here the whole land of the Assyrians is properly signified, and that all the nations allied with the Assyrian king are pointed out. Whatever has been decreed by the Lord is prevented by no one's power. And his hand, stretched out and ready to strike, no one will be able to hold back.
14:28
In the year in which King Ahaz died, this burden came. We read that four kings of Judea are placed at the head of the Prophet's title: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, each succeeding the other in order and by descent; of whom we read above that Uzziah had died, as Isaiah relates: In the year in which King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up. From this we understand that both the Vision of the Lord seated and the things enjoined upon the Prophet, up to the place where it is written (Isa 6): Like a terebinth and like an oak that spreads out its branches: the holy seed will be its shoot, were prophesied under King Jotham (ibid., 7). The third to succeed is Ahaz, son of Jotham, son of Uzziah king of Judah, under whom Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to make war against it, and the rest that Scripture records. We know, therefore, that all that is placed in between, up to the present place which we are now striving to expound, was prophesied under Ahaz; and when he died, the fourth, that is, the last, Hezekiah, succeeded, under whom the whole book is woven to the end.
14:29
Do not rejoice, all you Philistia, because the rod of him who struck you has been broken: for out of the root of the serpent will come forth a regulus, and its seed swallowing the bird. What we say is natural: when the king of a hostile nation dies, his enemies always rejoice, expecting from the new state of things civil wars and seditions and inexperience in ruling. When Ahaz the sinner died, therefore, who had walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and had been joined to them by kinship, we understand that the Philistines, from close by, rejoiced and mocked Israel, because, having lost a king of mature years, they were subject to the young Hezekiah. Now by Philistines, as we said above, he means the Palestinians, whom the common edition writes as foreigners, although this is the term not for one nation but for all foreign nations. Do not, he says, rejoice, O Philistia, do not mock my people because the rod of Ahaz who struck you has been broken; because the staff which used to strike you seems crushed by death; because the serpent has been slain. For in his place a more harmful one will be born, Hezekiah the regulus, which the Greeks call the basilisk, who will kill you with his gaze and slay you with the breath of his mouth. For just as no bird can pass the gaze of the regulus unharmed, but, however far off it may be, is sucked into its mouth, so you too will perish wholly at the sight of King Hezekiah. And he has kept the metaphor beautifully: for since he had named a serpent and a regulus, he says that birds are devoured by its mouth and breath. And that none of the kings of Judah struck the Philistines as Hezekiah ravaged them, hear the book of Kings: He struck the Philistines as far as Gaza, and as far as its borders: from the tower of the watchmen to the fortified cities (2 Kgs 18:8). And for what we have translated swallowing the bird, where in the Hebrew is written SARAPH MOPHETH (שרף מעופת), it can be interpreted a flying serpent: so that the sense is: from the root of the serpent a regulus will be born, and its fruit, that is, the regulus's, a flying serpent, so that you understand a flying dragon.
14:30
And the firstborn of the poor will feed, and the poor will rest in confidence. When the regulus has struck you, and the flying dragon has laid waste your borders, you will by no means lie in wait for Judah, nor terrify my poor little people with your treachery; but, hard pressed by your own straits, you will weep over your calamity. And the humble and the poor, who trusted not in riches and in power but in my name, will rest in secure peace, and will dread the onslaught of no enemy.
And I will make your root perish by famine, and I will slay your remnant. He speaks entirely in figures. And the sense is that, while the people of God rest in confidence, the root of the Philistines is dried up, and all its remnant will be consumed.
14:31
Howl, O gate, cry out, O city, all Philistia is laid low: for smoke will come from the north, and there is none who escapes its column. He says the gate for those who are in the gate, and the city for the inhabitants of the city. And he directs his speech to the cities of the Palestinians, that they should wail and mourn as Sennacherib comes and lays everything waste like a torrent. For under King Hezekiah the Assyrian came, and among the other nations laid waste the Philistines. To them Jeremiah speaks: Behold, waters will rise up from the north, and they will be like an overflowing torrent: and they will cover the land and all that fills it, the city and its inhabitants (Jer 47:2). For from the north came the Assyrian, and those who went forth from its heat, subjugating Nineveh and the other nations. At the time when these things were being sung, the smoke was rising on high, that is, a rumor was spreading among the peoples, through the whole range of the nations, that the Phoenicians too and the Palestinians were to be laid waste.
14:32
What will be answered to the messengers of the nation? That the Lord has founded Zion, and in her the poor of his people will hope. Because he had said, There is none who escapes its column, Judah too seemed to be included in the general statement. If, he says, the messengers of the Assyrian nation ask why Judah alone has escaped, answer them that the Lord has founded Zion, and has himself protected the humble people by his power. For messengers (מלאכי) the Seventy translated kings (מלכי), misled by an error over a single letter, ALEPH.
15:1
The burden of Moab: because in the night Ar was laid waste, Moab has fallen silent: because in the night the wall was laid waste, Moab has fallen silent. Let it suffice to have spoken once about burden and weight. I give only this brief reminder: that sad things always follow a burden, whereas a vision is followed either by glad things at once, or by glad things at the end after the sad. Moab is a province of the Arabs, in which was Balak son of Beor (Num 22), who hired the soothsayer Balaam from Mesopotamia to curse Israel; where also the people were initiated into Baal-peor (ibid., 25). Its metropolis is the city AR (ער), which today is called Areopolis, a name compounded from the Hebrew and the Greek tongue; not, as many suppose, because it is the city of ἄρεος, that is, of Mars. And Ar also means ἀντίδικος, that is, adversary. How great its power was, Jeremiah testifies (Jer 48:2, 7ff.), saying: There is no more exultation in Moab. And again: You have trusted in your fortifications and in your treasures. And again: Moab has been fruitful from his youth, and has rested on his lees, and has not been poured from vessel to vessel, and has not gone into exile; and therefore his taste has remained in him, and his scent has not been changed. And in another place (ibid., 17): How has the strong rod been broken, the glorious staff? And a little later: We have heard of the pride of Moab; he is exceedingly proud. His loftiness, and arrogance, and pride, and the haughtiness of his heart I know, says the Lord, and his boasting. Just as, therefore, the Prophet prophesied against Babylon and the Philistines because they had oppressed the people of the Jews, so now the devastation of the Moabites, that is, of Arabia, by the Assyrians and the Babylonians is foretold. For they were laid waste by both nations, at the time when Sennacherib led Israel captive, and when Nebuchadnezzar overthrew Jerusalem (2 Kgs 17 and 25). For at the coming of each enemy he had mocked Ephraim and Judah, as Jeremiah says: Moab will strike his hand in his vomit, and he too will become a derision. For Israel was a derision to you, as though you had found him among thieves (Jer 48:26-27). Because of your words, therefore, which you have spoken against him, you will be led captive. And when he says: In the night AR was laid waste, Moab has fallen silent, it is a fitting beginning for the invective, that he who was conceived at night from his father's incest should be laid waste in darkness. Unless perhaps we take night for the greatness of the terror; and it is to be believed that, because the city trusted in its walls, it was overcome by stratagems and mines. I have heard a certain man of Areopolis say, and indeed the whole city is witness to it, that in a great earthquake in my infancy, when the seas passed over the shores of the whole world, the walls of this city collapsed on that same night.
15:2
The house has gone up, and Dibon, to the high places to lament over Nebo, and over Medeba Moab will howl. Do not let it be irksome to you that I walk along the road of the history; for you yourself wished me to do this. Now what is understood is the royal house; and the city of Dibon goes up to the idols set on the heights: over Nebo and over Medeba, noble cities, the whole province will howl. For in Nebo was consecrated the idol Chemosh, which by another name is called Baal-peor.
On all its heads baldness, every beard will be shaved. Among the ancients the shaving of the beard and the head was a sign of mourning. By these things, therefore, the greatness of the grief is shown, as Jeremiah cries out the same things against Moab: Every head baldness, and every beard will be shaved, and on all hands a binding, and on every back haircloth (Jer 48:37).
15:3
In its crossroads they are girded with sackcloth; on its roofs and in its streets all howling will go down into weeping. The tears will not be private; public laments will resound for a public grief; neither matrons nor virgins, nor the tender age of children, nor the broken steps of old men will be kept within doors: the extremity of captivity will know neither shame nor weakness.
15:4
Heshbon and Elealeh will cry out. These are names of cities of the province of Moab, of which Heshbon was once the city of the king of the Amorites, about which the same Jeremiah says: Fire has gone forth from Heshbon, and flame from the midst of Sihon. Now Heshbon means thought, and so Jeremiah, alluding to the name: Against Heshbon, he says, they have thought evil things (Jer 48:2).
Even to Jahaz their voice has been heard. The city of Jahaz overlooks the Dead Sea, where the border of the province of the Moabites lies. This, then, indicates that the howling of the province will resound to its farthest borders. Hence Jeremiah too says: From the cry of Heshbon, up to Elealeh and Jahaz they have uttered their voice (Jer 48:34).
Over this the lightly armed of Moab will howl, its soul will howl for itself. The Hebrew word ELUSE (חלוצי), for which Aquila translated ἐξώμους, that is, lightly armed and with shoulders bared, and Symmachus girded, some think is to be understood not of men but as the name of a city, which today is called Eluza and is situated in the region of Moabitis. But we can also say this: that the whole strength of the fighting men has collapsed, and the whole land has resounded with their weeping for one another. If, however, ELUSE is understood, as Aquila would have it, as with shoulders bared, this sense is suggested to us: that all have bared their breasts to beat them in mourning.
15:5
My heart will cry out to Moab. The Prophet speaks with the feeling of one who grieves, either because the enemies too, upon whom so many evils come, are God's creatures, or because they were to be crushed by such great calamities that they become pitiable even to their enemies. Jeremiah says the very same: Therefore my heart will sound for Moab like a flute.
Its bars, as far as Segor, a heifer of three years. And Jeremiah: From Segor, he says, as far as Horonaim, a heifer of three years. Of this city we have spoken in the books of Hebrew Questions as well, and now we note briefly that it is the fifth city after Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which, being small, was preserved at the prayers of Lot. And it is called Bala, that is, swallowed up, the Hebrews relating that it was overthrown by a third earthquake. It is the city which today in the Syrian tongue is called Zoora, in the Hebrew Segor: in both, the little one. We can take the heifer of three years as signifying full age. For as the thirtieth year is the strongest in men, so the third is in cattle and beasts of burden. Understand the bars, too, as borders and strength, because Segor is situated at the borders of the Moabites, dividing the land of the Philistines from them.
For by the ascent of Luhith he will go up weeping. And Jeremiah: By the ascent of Luhith, weeping, he will go up in tears. We understand it to be the slope of the road that leads to the Assyrians, and by this captivity is signified.
And on the road to Horonaim they will raise a cry of crushing. Again Jeremiah: The voice of a cry from Horonaim, devastation and great crushing. It would take long if I wished to speak about each one, since it is plain that these are the names either of cities in Moab or of places which those who are carried away into exile are leaving.
15:6
For the waters of Nimrim will be deserted. This town lies above the Dead Sea, with salt waters, and barren for that very reason. And either he has alluded to the name, or what had not been so before came about after the devastation: that even the waters were turned to bitterness.
For the grass has withered, the shoot has failed, all greenness has perished. It is not, as some think, that all the grass truly dried up because of the barren waters of Nimrim; rather, Scripture is speaking by metaphor. And the sense is: in all Moab there will be the salt and bitter waters of Nimrim; as no grass springs up there, so drought will overtake the whole province, that is, from Segor to Horonaim, from border to border. Jeremiah says the very same: The waters of Nimrim will be very bad (Jer 48:34).
15:7
According to the greatness of the work, so also their visitation: they will lead them to the torrent of the willows. For willows we read in the Hebrew ARABIM (ערבים), which can also be understood as Arabs, and can be read ORBIM (עורבים), that is, a village situated on their borders, whose inhabitants are said by many to have provided food for Elijah on Mount Horeb: a name which, because of its ambiguity, is also translated as ravens, and as the West, and as level places. And the sense is: the visitation will be according to the greatness of the disease. Take visitation here not as a remedy but as a blow. I will visit, he says, their iniquities with the rod, and their sins with stripes (Ps 88 [89]:33). The torrent of the willows understand as the rivers of Babylonia, of which David says: On the willows in the midst of it we hung up our instruments (Ps 136 [137]:2); or else as the valley of Arabia through which one passes to the Assyrians.
15:8
For the cry will go round the border of Moab, its howling as far as Eglaim, and its cry as far as the well of Elim. Jeremiah too writes almost all the same things. And these are cities and places of the Moabites, in which the crying and wailing of the captive people is described.
15:9
For the waters of Dibon are filled with blood. Where formerly there was luxuriance because of the watered fields and the ever-flowing springs, there, because of the multitude of the slain, streams of blood will flow.
For I will set additions upon Dibon: for those who flee from Moab, a lion, and for the remnant of the land. Lest anyone think it a fault of the scribe and, in wishing to correct an error, make one, the one city is written both with the letter M and with the letter B: of these, Dimon is interpreted as silence, Dibon as flowing. Both names having been given it because of the waters that flow silently, to this day this little town is called indifferently both Dimon and Dibon. And as for his saying: I will set additions upon Dibon, since it seemed to raise the question what these might be, he showed it in the following line, saying: For those who flee from Moab, a lion, and for the remnant of the land: so that even those who have slipped away in flight are consumed by beasts. Although by metaphor we can also understand the lion as the king of the enemies, so that no one can escape his power, as though it were a roaring.
16:1
Send forth the Lamb, the ruler of the earth, from the rock of the desert to the mountain of the daughter of Zion. What we are interpreting is not history but prophecy. And every prophecy is wrapped in enigmas, and with abrupt sentences passes, while speaking of one thing, to another: lest, if Scripture kept to order, it should be not prophecy but narrative. And the sense is: O Moab, upon whom the lion is about to rage, and from whom not even a remnant will be able to be saved, have this consolation: from you will go forth the spotless Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, who will rule over the whole world. From the rock of the desert, that is, from Ruth, who, widowed by the death of her husband, bore Obed by Boaz, and from Obed came Jesse, and from Jesse David, and from David Christ. And the mountain of the daughter of Zion we shall interpret either as the city of Jerusalem itself, or, according to the sacred understanding, as the Church, which is set upon the summit of the virtues.
16:2
And it will be: as a bird fleeing, and young ones flying away from the nest, so will the daughters of Moab be at the crossing of the Arnon. He returns to the order he had begun: When I have set, he says, a most savage lion upon those who flee from Moab, and upon the remnant of the land, to break their limbs and bones, then they will fly away in terror, and all the daughters, that is, the villages and cities of the province of Moab, will migrate at the crossing of the Arnon, which is the border of the Amorites and the Moabites. And by putting crossing here too, he signifies captivity.
16:3-4
Take counsel, call a council: make your shade like night at midday, hide the fugitives, and do not betray the wanderers. My refugees will dwell with you: Moab, be their hiding place from the face of the devastator; for the dust is at an end, the wretched one is finished, he who trampled the land has failed. For wretched one in the Hebrew one reads SOD (סד), which can also be understood as devastator. And he speaks to Moab, that it should find counsel for its safety, and, gathering its elders, convene a council for its salvation. Do you wish, he says, to be saved and to merit the mercy of God? In the clear light and the open flight of my people, be like night and shade; take in the fugitives, and do not betray the wanderers. And why he said this he adds at once: My refugees will dwell with you. For when Jerusalem has been laid waste, and all Judea, which borders on the Moabites, my people will migrate to you. Be therefore their hiding place, and do not fear the onslaught of the devastator, because he will quickly pass like dust; and the despoiler of the whole land, who trampled it and subjected it under his feet, will perish as a breeze blows. Some wrongly interpret this place of the Antichrist, so as to suppose that at that time the saints will cross over to the Arabs because of their nearness to the city of Jerusalem, and that the Arabs are now commanded not to betray those who flee to them.
16:5
And a throne will be prepared in mercy, and he will sit upon it in truth, in the tabernacle of David, judging and seeking judgment, and swiftly rendering what is just. The Hebrews interpret this place thus: When the Assyrian has been put to flight, Hezekiah, a righteous man, will reign over Judah and will hold the throne of David, judging in truth the people of God subject to him. Others understand it of Christ: when the dust of the Antichrist is at an end, and the devastator who trampled the whole earth has been taken away, Christ the king will come, who will sit in the tabernacle of David, and in the day of judgment will render to all according to their works. Nor is there any doubt that this passage prophesies of Christ. But we can understand the same thing of his first coming, and show it in the tabernacle of the Church: that throughout the whole land of Moab the trophies of the Churches as they rise bear witness to the dominion of Christ.
16:6-7
We have heard of the pride of Moab, he is exceedingly proud: his pride, and his arrogance, and his indignation are greater than his strength. Therefore Moab will howl to Moab, all of it will howl: to those who rejoice over the walls of baked brick, tell of its wounds. Again he returns to the present, and accuses Moab of pride, because it was lifted up far more than its strength warranted; and because of this pride Moab will howl to Moab, that is, the people to the city, or the metropolis to the province, and the whole land will resound with howling over the walls of baked brick, of which Jeremiah too says: Therefore I will wail over Moab, and to all Moab I will cry out, to the men of the earthen wall, lamenting (Jer 48:31). And by these things he shows both the power of its former prosperity and the wounds of its sudden overthrow.
16:8
For the suburbs of Heshbon are deserted: the vine of Sibmah. Between Heshbon and Sibmah there are scarcely five hundred paces; and by the metaphor of the vine he signifies the devastation of the whole province.
The lords of the nations have cut down its shoots. He keeps the metaphor he had begun, showing that the kings of the nations who had laid Moab waste ravaged all its hamlets and fortresses.
They have reached as far as Jazer: they have wandered in the desert: its offshoots have been left behind: they have crossed the sea. Understand the shoots and offshoots as its people and its fugitives; and the crossing of the sea as the captivity into Babylon, about which we shall read later: The burden of the desert of the sea.
16:9
Therefore I will lament with the weeping of Jazer, the vine of Sibmah: I will drench you with my tears, Heshbon and Elealeh. This is the voice of the Prophet lamenting, and attesting the greatness of the devastation by the greatness of his tears, and weeping for the vine of Jazer and of Sibmah, and for Heshbon and Elealeh, cities once most strong, cut down as the Assyrian pruned them.
For upon your vintage and upon your harvest the voice of the treaders has burst in. Understand the treaders of the grapes, gathering in the joy of the vintage, as the armies of the enemies; and that in the very season of joy the season of captivity has come.
16:10
And joy and exultation will be taken away from Carmel. It is an idiom of the Scriptures always to liken Carmel, a rich and wooded mountain which overlooks Ptolemais and on which Elijah prayed, to fertility and abundance; and by this it signifies that all joy and fertility are to be taken away from cities once most fruitful.
And in the vineyards he will not exult, nor shout for joy. What is understood is the former vintager, that is, the husbandman of the province of Moabitis. Accordingly he immediately added:
He who used to tread will not tread wine in the press: I have taken away the voice of the treaders. By no means will the joyful vintager sing the vintage shout at the vintage; but everywhere hostile devastation and the clamor of the victors will arise.
16:11
Therefore my belly will sound for Moab like a harp, and my inmost parts for the wall of baked brick. Lest anyone should think the Prophet's lament a sign of exultation, by which he rejoiced that the enemies of the people of Israel were captives, he says that it is out of affection, and out of the inmost grief of his heart, that he mourns the overthrow of a city once most mighty.
16:12
And it will come to pass, when it has become apparent that Moab has labored over its high places, it will enter its sanctuaries to pray, and it will not prevail. It is the last misery not to have help even in those whom it has always worshiped. Deserted, he says, by your own strength, and with all your defenders slain, you will go to the idols, you will venerate the shrines, and you will find no help in those upon whom the devastation will come together with you.
16:13
This is the word which the Lord spoke to Moab from that time. From what time, do you suppose? Clearly from the time when Moab was created. And the Lord says: The Moabites and the Ammonites shall not enter into the Church of God (Deut 23:3). Or we may understand from that time as of ancient time: that these things were decreed long ago by the divine sentence; not that the foreknowledge of God brought about the cause of the devastation, but that the future devastation was known beforehand to the majesty of God.
16:14
And now the Lord has spoken, saying: In three years, like the years of a hireling, the glory of Moab will be taken away, above all its great people, and it will be left small and slight, by no means many. This prophecy, as we said above, is directed against the Moabites after the death of Ahaz, in the reign of Hezekiah, under whom the ten tribes were led into captivity by Sennacherib king of the Assyrians. So, just as a hireling waits for the setting of the sun, and day and night looks for the end of his work so as to receive his fixed wage, so too after three years Moab will be destroyed when the Assyrian comes, and scarcely a few will be left in the land to inhabit the overthrown cities and to till the deserted fields. It can also be a prediction about the Babylonian captivity: that after Jerusalem had been taken and three years had passed, Moab was to be laid waste by the Chaldeans; or else that within the space of three years no rest was to be given them.
17:1
The burden of Damascus: Behold, Damascus will cease to be a city, and it will be like a heap of stones in ruin. The cities of Aroer, abandoned, will be for flocks, and they will rest there, and there will be none to frighten them. And help will cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria will be like the glory of the sons of Israel, says the Lord of hosts. After Babylon and the Philistines and Moab, the discourse turns to Damascus, that is, Aram, which itself was once a royal city too, and held the primacy in all Syria: Antioch and Laodicea and Apamea were not yet flourishing, cities which we know to have grown after Alexander and the empire of the Macedonians. Because, then, it always gave help to the ten tribes against Judah, as the history of Kings and Chronicles relates, he signifies that devastation by the Assyrians is drawing near to them too, as the king of the Assyrians says: I have taken Arabia, and Damascus, and Samaria. For as I have taken them, and all kingdoms, I will take you too. And in the volume of Kings we read: The king of the Assyrians went up to Damascus, and took it, and carried it away to Cyrene (2 Kgs 16:9). He also slew Rezin, who was king of Damascus: all of which it suffered while Hezekiah reigned in Jerusalem. Behold, he says, Damascus will cease to be a city: already captivity is near, already the Assyrian has set his army in motion. And it will be like a heap of stones in ruin, so that only broken walls and traces of its former power are to be seen in the vastness of the ruins. The cities of Aroer, abandoned, will be for flocks. Aroer means tamarisk, which is properly a tree that grows in the wilderness and in salty soil; and by this the devastation is shown. They will rest there: the flocks is understood; and there will be none to frighten them. For the solitude will be so great that not even a robber lying in wait is to be feared. And help will cease from Ephraim: by no means will the ten tribes have help in it against Judah. And the kingdom from Damascus: ἀπὸ κοινοῦ [from the common or popular edition] will cease is understood. But when he says that the kingdom ceases and rests, he does not signify a perpetual devastation, but takes away for the present the power by which it formerly reigned in all Syria. And the remnant of Syria will be like the glory of the sons of Israel, says the Lord of hosts. As, he says, the ten tribes were destroyed when the Assyrian ravaged them, and all their glory was led into captivity, so the few who remain in Damascus will imitate them, and will have the glory of their allied nation. Take glory as said by irony, for ignominy. And all this will happen because the Lord has spoken, whose words cannot be made void. Some think that this prophecy is the same as the one we read in Jeremiah: Damascus is dissolved, it has turned to flight, trembling has seized it, anguish and pains have held it like a woman in labor (Jer 49:24, 27). And again: I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it will devour the ramparts of Ben-hadad. But it must be known that Jeremiah describes the Babylonian captivity of the city of Damascus, that is, of the few whom the king of the Assyrians had left in it; whereas Isaiah announces the captivity by the Assyrians that is close at hand. Others suppose that the Roman captivity is foretold, since the people of the Jews too was taken captive, and Damascus, over which Aretas ruled, endured a like servitude: so that all that is written about it is to be transferred to the time of Christ and to the mysteries of the Apostles.
17:4
And it will come to pass in that day, the glory of Jacob will be made thin, and the fat of his flesh will waste away. When, he says, Damascus has been taken and has ceased to be a city, and such glory has crowned it as crowned Israel, that is, the ten tribes, then all the defense, and the fattest flesh, and the refuge of Jacob will waste away: for by no means will he have allies to join with him in laying Jerusalem waste. We have read above that Rezin king of Syria and Pekah son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to make war against it, and that it was announced to the house of David: Syria has rested upon Ephraim; of whom the Prophet speaks to Ahaz: Do not fear, and let not your heart be afraid of these two tails of smoking firebrands, in the wrath of the fury of Rezin king of Syria and of the son of Remaliah, because Syria, Ephraim and the son of Remaliah have taken most evil counsel against you.
17:5-6
And it will be like one gathering in the harvest what has remained, and his arm will gather the ears: and it will be like one seeking ears in the valley of Rephaim. And there will be left in it as it were a cluster, and as at the shaking of an olive tree two or three olives at the top of a branch, or four or five on its topmost boughs, its fruit, says the Lord God of Israel. Those who understand the present devastation of Damascus as under the Roman empire maintain that these words signify the Apostles: that just as a few ears and olives are wont to remain in the field or on the trees, so the remnant of Israel is saved; especially since there follows: In that day man will bow down to his maker, and his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel, that is, to Christ. The two olives, and three, and four, and five they interpret as fourteen Apostles: that is, the twelve who were chosen, and a thirteenth, James, who is called the brother of the Lord, and also Paul the Apostle, the vessel of election (Acts 9:15). But those who think that what was said was fulfilled in the times of the Assyrians would have it understood thus: that under the Assyrian captivity Damascus was not entirely destroyed, but, when some had been carried away to Cyrene, another part of the tillers of the land was left behind, which itself was afterwards destroyed when the Babylonian laid it waste; until under the Macedonians and the Ptolemies it was restored again, and at the coming of Christ it was indeed a city, but not of such power as it had been before. And the sense is: as few will remain in Damascus as the few ears that commonly remain after the reapers, which the poor are wont to glean in the very broad and very rich valley of Rephaim; or the few olives on the olive tree that have escaped the diligence of the gatherer.
17:7-8
In that day man will bow down to his maker, and his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel. And he will not bow down to the altars which his hands have made, and which his fingers have wrought: and they will not look to the groves and the shrines. They think that this was fulfilled in the times of Christ, when, the kingdom of Damascus having been destroyed, the everlasting empire of the Savior succeeded, and the error of idolatry was diminished. The intention of these interpreters is indeed pious, but it does not keep the order of the history. We, however, say that, when Damascus had been overthrown and the ten tribes had been led away to the Assyrians, those who were left of the tribes that belonged to Israel turned, at Hezekiah's letters, to the worship of God, and came to the temple at Jerusalem, as the history of Chronicles relates (2 Chr 30). When Damascus has been destroyed, therefore, men will turn to their maker, that is, to him who created them, and their eyes will look by no means to the idols which they had made in Bethel and in Dan, but to God, despising the shrines and altars which their fingers had wrought.
17:9
In that day the cities of its strength will be abandoned like ploughs, and the crops that were abandoned before the face of the sons of Israel, and it will be deserted. He does not say this against Damascus, but against the ten tribes, which were called Israel: that just as, at the coming of the people of God out of Egypt, all the nations that inhabited the land of promise, struck with sudden terror, abandoned their ploughs and the heaps of grain and their work half done, seeking safety in their feet, so the land of Israel too should remain desolate for a long time. Hence I wonder that for ploughs and heaps of grain Aquila chose to translate potsherd and Emir; Symmachus, forest and Amir; the Seventy, the Amorites and the Hivites. Theodotion alone set down the Hebrew word, ARS ET EMIR: which among them is read more correctly HORES (חרש) ET AMIR (והאמיר), that is, ploughshares and heaps of crops.
17:10
Because you have forgotten God your Savior, and have not remembered your strong helper. These things, he says, you will suffer, O Israel, because you have abandoned God your Savior, who freed you from Egypt, who subjected hostile nations to you: and you have not remembered your helper.
Therefore you will plant a faithful planting, and you will sow a foreign shoot. This is to be read more pointedly and as irony. Because, he says, you have forgotten God your Savior, and have not remembered your strong helper: will you on that account have to plant a faithful planting, and not rather sow a foreign shoot, for the enemy to snatch away? Or certainly thus: my sons, who were begotten from the stock of my people, you have established in the land for this purpose, that you might make them foreign and most wicked.
17:11
In the day of your planting, wild grapes, and in the morning your seed will flower. The harvest has been taken away in the day of inheritance, and it will grieve grievously. These, he says, are the fruits of your works that you will reap: your vine of Sorek will degenerate into wild grapes, your seed will hold out hope in the blade; but when ripeness has come, it will be reaped by another. And then you will grieve grievously, when you lose what you hoped for and almost already held.
17:12, 14
Woe to the multitude of many peoples, like the multitude of the roaring sea: and the tumult of crowds, like the sound of many waters: the peoples will roar like the sound of flooding waters: and he will rebuke him, and he will flee far off: and he will be snatched away like the dust of the mountains before the wind, and like a whirlwind before the storm. At eventide: and behold, confusion in the morning, and he will not endure. This is the portion of those who have laid us waste, and the lot of those who plunder us. Those who suppose that the earlier captivity of Damascus was brought on by the Romans refer this also that is written: Man will bow down to his maker, and his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel, to the times of Christ and of the Apostles. And what follows as well: You will plant a faithful planting, and you will sow a foreign shoot: in the day of your planting, wild grapes, and the rest, they take to concern the unbelief of the Jews. And this passage which we have now set out they interpret of the heathen, who persecute the Church. What follows too, He will rebuke him, and he will flee far off, they take of the devil, showing by a tropological interpretation the devastation of the persecutors and of the demons. But we follow the order we have begun, and cover historical foundations with a historical roof. Woe, he says, to all the nations that have made war against my people, whose onslaught was so great that it must be likened to the waves of the sea. But when they have come raging and have flooded my land, then their prince Sennacherib will flee from him, rebuked; and as dust is scattered when the wind snatches it, and a whirlwind is rolled on high in a storm, so he will indeed approach Jerusalem, besieging it, but he will be struck by the Angel; he will come in the morning, and will see the army of his power destroyed. And this will be the portion of those who have laid us waste. The Prophet says this either in the person of the people, or joining himself to his nation (2 Kgs 19:35-36). Afterwards we read: The Angel of the Lord went out, and struck in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand: and they arose in the morning, and behold, all were the corpses of the dead. And Sennacherib king of the Assyrians went out, and departed, and returned, and dwelt in Nineveh.
18:1
Woe to the land, the cymbal of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia. The Hebrew word SELSEL (צלצל), which Symmachus interpreted as sound and Theodotion as birds, we have rendered as cymbal. Aquila translated double shadow. But it must be known that a shadow is called SEL (צל), and here the syllable itself is doubled. From this we can understand the saying thus: Woe to the land that promises help in the shadow of its wings. And whereas Scripture says: He who dwells in the help of the Most High will abide in the protection of the God of heaven (Ps 90 [91]:1), for which in the Hebrew is written, He will abide in the shadow of the Almighty, this land, boasting that it has the very likeness of God, promises, though itself set in dangers, to give support to others. And it signifies either No, the city of Egypt which is now called Alexandria, or Egypt, on which Jerusalem always leaned as on a shaken reed, which, when it breaks, pierces the hand of the one who leans on it. And here the order is most beautiful: that just as in the former Vision the prophetic word threatened Damascus, because the ten tribes had help in it, asking God's mercy, so now too devastation is foretold to Egypt, for the sake of whose help the invocation of God was neglected. For this is the land which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, that is, beyond the streams of the river Nile, which no one doubts flows from Ethiopia into Egypt. Egypt can be called the cymbal of wings because of the swiftness of its crops: for the swift and rapid flight of birds gives back the sound of a cymbal. Some, from what follows: Who sends envoys by sea, and in vessels of papyrus upon the waters, understand the Roman empire, and refer the whole history to the times of Vespasian and Titus, by whom Jerusalem was overthrown. But it does not accord with our faith that the Lord should threaten the Roman empire for having overthrown an impious nation, and then say that gifts are to be brought to Mount Zion; unless perhaps we take these things too spiritually, of the Church.
18:2
Who sends envoys by sea, and in vessels of papyrus upon the waters. Go, swift messengers, to a nation convulsed and torn apart, to a terrible people, after whom there is no other, to a nation waiting and trampled down, whose land the rivers have plundered. Among the Hebrews Egypt, and the Egyptian, and the Egyptians are all called by one word, MESRAIM (מצרים). Let this be said lest anyone stick at the word when he finds the masculine in place of the feminine, that is, the man in place of the land; for now too it is said: Who sends envoys by sea, that is, Mesraim herself, the Egyptian himself: because from Alexandria, which was then, as we have said, called No, envoys were sent to Jerusalem, and, in vessels of papyrus, that is, in letters, or else in ships, promising them their help, they said: Go swiftly to the Jews' convulsed nation, torn by the attack of the Assyrians: to a people once terrible, which enjoyed the command of God, to whose power no other is to be compared: to a nation which always waited for the help of God, and nevertheless is trampled down by men: whose land the rivers, that is, various kings, have ravaged. Others, however, think that the apostrophe is directed to the Lord, and that the sense is: O God, who send the Prophets into the sea of this world, and, admonishing the people through letters as if by men under sail, command your messengers: Go swiftly to my nation, torn and convulsed, to a most mighty people, which was once a terror to all the nations round about, which always waited for the help of God, and, because of the greatness of its sins, does not deserve to receive what it hopes for: whose land the kings of various nations have laid waste, and the rest that follows. Eusebius of Caesarea, promising a historical interpretation in his title, wanders off into various senses; and when I read his books, I found something very different from what he promised in the heading. For wherever the history fails him, he passes over to allegory, and joins together things so far apart that I marvel at his combining stone and iron into one body by a new architecture of speech. I have given this brief warning lest anyone think that we have borrowed what we say from his springs; for in the present passage too he says that the prophecy is directed against the Jews and Jerusalem, because at the beginning of the Christian faith they sent letters to all the nations that they should not accept the passion of Christ, and sent them as far as Ethiopia and the Western region, and filled the whole world with the spreading of this blasphemy.
18:3
All you inhabitants of the world who dwell on the earth, when the signal has been raised on the mountains, you will see, and you will hear the blast of the trumpet. All you nations round about, he says, when you hear my command like a signal raised on the mountains, and my order like the blast of a trumpet resounding on high, then you will see what I have commanded.
18:4
For thus says the Lord to me: I will rest, and I will consider in my place. What is it that the Lord spoke to the Prophet? What follows: until the things I have commanded come about, I will rest in my seat: as the Jews think, in the Temple; as we think, in the heavens. And I will consider, he says, what end of things is coming.
As the noonday light is clear, and as a cloud of dew in the day of harvest. Just as in the whole day nothing is clearer than noon, when the sun glows from mid-heaven and lights up the whole world alike; and just as in the heat and scorching warmth, when the naked reaper is baked and his panting attests the greatness of his labor, the coolness of the dew is most welcome, if the morning moisture makes the dry stalks easy to cut: so my word, which I will consider in my place, will come welcome to all who believe in me.
18:5-6
For before the harvest it has wholly blossomed, and an unripe perfection has budded, and its little branches will be cut off with pruning hooks, and what is left will be cut away and shaken off. And they will be left together to the birds of the mountains and to the beasts of the earth, and the birds will be upon it all summer long, and all the beasts of the earth will winter upon it. Because he had spoken of noon, and had mentioned beforehand a cloud of dew in summer and harvest, and had taken his metaphor from husbandry, he keeps it in the rest, describing the pride of Egypt and the devastation of its people, and the corpses throughout the whole province which are to be devoured by birds. For as crops that burst forth before ripeness quickly perish, and, budding before the fullness of their time comes, are useless, so, he says, the peoples of Egypt will be cut off with pruning hooks like useless branches, and all the offshoots will be stripped bare. And lest you should think he speaks of a vine and not of men, he turns the metaphor into the truth of history: And they will be left, he says, together to the birds of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth. For birds and beasts devour not the cut branches of trees, but corpses. Let us read Ezekiel more fully, where he prophesies against Pharaoh and against Egypt, and we shall find all these things written most plainly (Ezek 29). And when he says: The birds will be upon it all summer long, and all the beasts will winter upon it, he either truly signifies the multitude of the slain, or shows through the same metaphor that it is to be laid waste by all the nations.
18:7
At that time a gift will be brought to the Lord of hosts from a people torn away and torn apart, from a terrible people, after whom there has been no other: from a nation waiting, waiting and trampled down, whose land the rivers have plundered, to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, Mount Zion. After the devastation of Egypt and the destruction of its empire, Israel will by no means trust in the vanity of its shadow, but will return to the Lord, and will bring its gifts to Mount Zion, that is, to his temple, entreating him alone, whose protection is true and eternal. And we understand this to have been done under Zerubbabel and Joshua, and Ezra and Nehemiah. The Seventy, for what we have said, waiting, waiting, where in the Hebrew is written hoping, hoping, translated to the contrary ἀνέλπιστον, that is, not hoping. And for this reason they gave Eusebius occasion to think that this is to be understood of the nations, which have neither hope, nor the Testament of God, nor the Prophets, rather than of the Jews: that gifts were afterwards to be sent by them to the Church, which is set upon a watchtower, and spiritual victims offered.
19:1
The burden of Egypt. Behold, the Lord will ascend upon a light cloud, and will enter Egypt, and the images of Egypt will be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt will waste away in its midst. It is the custom of the Scriptures to append plain things to obscure ones, and to bring out in open speech what they had first said in enigmas. Hence in the present place too, because he had threatened Egypt: Woe to the land that overshadows with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, and the rest that the prophetic discourse wove together, he now makes the understanding plainer, and speaks with threats to Egypt itself: that not through angels but the Lord himself comes upon a light cloud, that is, a swift one, and enters Egypt, and the idols of Egypt tremble, and the heart of the strong wastes away, and the prophecy of Ezekiel is fulfilled: I will destroy the images, and I will make the idols cease from Memphis (Ezek 30:13). Some refer this whole prophecy to the times of the Savior, when he entered upon a light cloud, that is, the human body which he had taken from the Virgin, weighed down by no seed of human intercourse; or that he was carried by a light cloud, that is, by the virginal body, and at his entry all the demons trembled, and then came the first ruin of the idols, unable to bear the presence of the Lord.
19:2
And I will make Egyptians rush against Egyptians, and a man will fight against his brother, and a man against his friend, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom. When the Lord has entered Egypt and destroys a most powerful nation by his presence, the first victory will be that Egyptians fall out with Egyptians and fight one another with rebellious hatred: which, it is clear, came about in the times of the Assyrians and of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, some sitting still and others resisting. And that he foretells these things of the Babylonian captivity, Jeremiah is witness, saying: Egypt is a choice and beautiful heifer; a goader will come to her from the North. And again: The daughter of Egypt has been put to shame, and delivered into the hand of the people of the North (Jer 46:20, 24). Ezekiel too, agreeing with equal authority of prophecy: And I will make the multitude of Egypt cease, he says, by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. And again: I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and I will put my sword into his hand, and I will break the arms of Pharaoh. And they will know that I am the Lord, when I have put my sword into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he has stretched it out over the land of Egypt, and I will scatter Egypt among the nations (Ezek 30:10, 24ff.). But if we refer these things to the times of the Savior, let us take this example from the Gospel: Do not think that I have come to send peace upon the earth: I have not come to send peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his neighbor, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be those of his own household (Matt 10:34ff.). And again in another place: Two will be divided against three, and three against two: father against son, and mother against daughter, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law (Luke 12:52-53).
19:3
And the spirit of Egypt will be broken in its inward parts, and I will cast down its counsel: and they will consult their images and their diviners, and those with pythonic spirits, and the soothsayers. When sedition has arisen in Egypt, some desiring to serve the Babylonian, others unwilling to submit their necks to his yoke; or else some believing in Christ, and others resisting, the spirit of Egypt will be broken and torn apart, since not all wish the same things, and all their counsel will be brought to nothing. Then they will go to their images; and they will ask the diviners, and the soothsayers, and the seers, and those schooled in the magic arts, why these things have happened.
19:4
And I will deliver Egypt into the hand of cruel masters, and a mighty king will rule over them, says the Lord God of hosts. We follow a twofold understanding: either of the Chaldean times, when Egypt was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar; or of the Roman empire, when, after Antony and Cleopatra had been overcome, Augustus Caesar subjugated Egypt. That the Babylonians were cruel all Scripture testifies: they did not spare little ones, and wounded them with their darts, and had no pity on pregnant women. And that the Roman kingdom was most mighty the Scripture of Daniel also testifies (Dan 7), setting forth the fourth beast, which has teeth and claws of iron.
19:5, 7
And the water will dry up from the sea, and the river will be desolated and dried up, and the streams will fail; the channels of the embankments will be diminished and dried up. The reed and the rush will wither, the bed of the stream will be laid bare from its source, and every watered sowing will be dried up, will wither, and will be no more. It is natural that, when captivity has come through the wrath of God, pestilence should follow upon his indignation, and all the elements together should rage against those who have offended God. Hence it is written in another Prophet (Jer 12) that both the birds in the air and the fish in the waters fail, so that all things are withdrawn from human use. This we say if we choose to take it simply of a drought of the river Nile and its streams. But if by metaphor: in the river we understand the kingdom, and in the streams its leaders; and in the greenery, the rush and the papyrus the whole abundance of Egypt, so that through these things the riches of Egypt are described, in which Egypt is most fertile. Let us read Ezekiel, where King Pharaoh is described as a great dragon dwelling in the rivers, and he says: The river is mine, and I made myself. And he hears: I will put a bridle in your jaws, and I will make the fish of your rivers stick to your scales, and I will draw you out of the midst of your rivers, and all your fish will cling to your scales, and I will cast you into the desert (Ezek 29:3-4). At the coming of Christ, however, all these things are to be understood τροπικῶς, in keeping with what we read above: The Lord will make the sea of Egypt desert. And again: The Lord will lay his hand upon the violent river of Egypt, and will strike it in seven valleys, so that one may pass over it with shod feet: namely, that all the error of the Egyptian waters, and the evil arts by which they deluded the peoples subject to them, are dried up at the coming of Christ. And as for his saying: The water will dry up from the sea, we can also take it historically: that what is signified is not the great sea, but Lake Mareotis, because Scripture calls all gatherings of waters seas. These things can also be understood as said hyperbolically. And what follows: The bed of the stream will be laid bare from its source, describes the stream and the source drying up together.
19:8, 10
And the fishermen will mourn, and all who cast a hook into the river will lament, and those who spread a net upon the face of the water will waste away. And those who work flax will be confounded, plaiting and weaving fine things: and its watered places will be withered: all who made pools for catching fish. Take this too in two ways: that when Egypt has been laid waste and the whole province dried up with drought, the fishermen mourn, and those who used to cast a hook into the river lament, and those who worked nets and dragnets and wove little vessels of various kinds out of rush, that is, the princes and those of royal stock, and the rulers; and that at the coming of Christ all the fishermen of a perverse kind, who, contrary to the apostolic discipline, caught men for perdition, and with a foolish wisdom wove nets and dragnets in which to ensnare the lost, were confounded, and that there is no such fisherman, or a rare one, in the land of Egypt. We see this fulfilled in fact, in that the trophies of the Churches are rising, and throughout Egypt the idols have fallen.
19:11, 13
The princes of Tanis are foolish; the wise counselors of Pharaoh have given foolish counsel: how will you say to Pharaoh: I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings? Where now are your wise men? Let them announce to you and show what the Lord of hosts has purposed concerning Egypt. The princes of Tanis have become fools, the princes of Memphis have withered: they have deceived Egypt, the corner of its peoples. That Tanis was the metropolis of Egypt the Psalmist also declares, because Moses worked there the many signs which are described in Exodus: He set his signs in Egypt, and his wonders in the plain of Tanis (Ps 77 [78]:43). That Memphis too was given over to the magic arts, the traces of its old error show to the present time. And this is briefly indicated: that when the Babylonian devastation came, all the counsels of the Magi and of those who promised knowledge of the future were convicted of folly; and that at the coming of Christ all were brought to nothing, since the seers of Egypt could find no counsel how to suppress the Christian doctrine. It is an idiom of the Scriptures to put corner for kingdom, because it holds the peoples together, and is, as it were, the strongest part of the whole house. Hence Christ too, who holds together the walls of the two peoples, is called the corner stone (Eph 2). And his adding: How will you say to Pharaoh, I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings, signifies that the Egyptians feign heroes and gods as the founders of their race: Horus, and Isis, and Osiris, and Typhon.
19:14-15
The Lord has mingled in its midst a spirit of giddiness: and they have made Egypt err in all its work, as a drunken man errs and vomits: and Egypt will have no work to do, head and tail, bending and bridling. Let us speak first of the translation, and afterwards we shall discuss what is written. For spirit of giddiness one can also translate spirit of error. In what we have translated, bending and bridling, we can also say bent and wanton, so that we understand the old man and the boy. For we, while translating what is written in haste, misled by its ambiguity, rendered the Hebrew word AGMON (אגמון) as bridling, which Aquila translated more expressively στρεβλοῦντα, that is, one who does nothing rightly but everything perversely, so as to signify a boy. The sense, then, is: The princes of Tanis have become fools, and the wise counselors have given Pharaoh foolish counsel, and the princes of Memphis have withered, and they have deceived Egypt, the corner of the peoples, because the Lord has mingled in them a spirit of error and giddiness, so that they do not know what they are saying, and make Egypt err. And as a drunken man, vomiting, brings up what he had taken in, and does not know where he is, but lies out of his mind: so Egypt will have no work or counsel that has either a head or an end, or that suits either the old or the young, of whom the former, through excess of age, are foolish and rave, and the latter, through wantonness and infancy, do not know what they are doing. And whether you wish to take this of the Babylonian devastation or of the coming of Christ, both according to the letter and according to the spiritual understanding, it will hold together.
19:16-17
In that day Egypt will be like women, and they will be astonished and afraid before the shaking of the hand of the Lord of hosts, which he will shake over it. And the land of Judah will be a festival to Egypt: everyone who remembers it will tremble before the counsel of the Lord of hosts, which he has devised against it. I think it better even to censure one's own error than, while blushing to confess one's inexperience, to persist in error. In what I translated, And the land of Judah will be a festival to Egypt, for festival one reads in the Hebrew AGGA (חגה), which can be interpreted both as festival (whence Haggai too is rendered festive) and as fear; this Aquila translated more expressively γύρωσιν, as when someone, afraid and trembling, casts his eyes about and dreads the approaching enemy. If, then, we choose to take it in a good sense, that the remembrance of Judah is a joy to Egypt, it is rightly called a festival. But if, as I judge, festival is turned into fear, let us understand dread or terror: that when Nebuchadnezzar has come, and all the hands of the brave men have been loosened like those of women, even the name of Judah is a terror to Egypt, because, in wishing to bring it help, it has suffered such great evils. Concerning our own times no one doubts that, in comparison with the Christians, all the heathen are like women, holding feeble opinions, and that whatever they say is turned into folly, while they are astonished at so great a conversion of the nation, and marvel at and understand the hand of the Lord; and whoever of the Gentiles remembers the Christian name confesses with fear the weakness of idolatry.
19:18
In that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt speaking the language of Canaan, and swearing by the Lord of hosts: one will be called the city of the sun. For city of the sun the Seventy, meaning I know not what, translated asedec, which one of our writers interprets as city of righteousness; and, led astray by error, because according to the Hebrew ARES (חרס) is written, he thinks it means earth, which is written with other letters. Symmachus, then, translated better: one will be called the city of the sun; for ARES, an ambiguous word, means both potsherd and sun, because both are parched and dry. Onias, not understanding this place, built a temple in Egypt in the town of Ἡλιοπόλεως. Read the Histories of Josephus (Josephus, book 12, chapter 9). Others would have Ares, that is, ὄστρακον, that is, potsherd, understood as the city of Ostracine, and the other cities near Rhinocorura and Casium, which, it is clear, speak to this day in Egypt the Canaanite tongue, that is, Syriac; and they think that Syrians and Arabs from the neighborhood were transported into that land by Nebuchadnezzar. Further, those who expound the prophecy of the coming of Christ and of the Roman empire take the five cities either as the law of the Lord, which was first translated in Alexandria, or as the five orders of the Church: bishops, presbyters, deacons, the faithful, catechumens; or certainly as the spiritual understanding of the law, of which the Apostle too says: I would speak five words in the Churches with my understanding, rather than ten thousand words in a tongue (1 Cor 14); and they take it that one of the five cities is called the city of the sun, namely of righteousness, in whose wings is healing.
19:19, 21
In that day there will be an altar of the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and an inscription to the Lord at its border. And it will be for a sign and for a testimony to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt. For they will cry to the Lord because of the oppressor, and he will send them a Savior and a defender to free them. And the Lord will be known by Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day, and will worship him with victims and gifts, and will vow vows to the Lord and pay them. From this place to the end of the Egyptian Vision, or Burden, both the Jews and our writers would have it understood of the coming of Christ; but they put off their hopes into the future, while we hold them as already accomplished. Take day for time: although Josephus maintains that these things were done under Onias, who, fleeing into Egypt with a very great crowd of Jews, built a temple and an altar, and with vain rashness tried to fulfill the prophecy of Christ. But one altar is spoken of in the way that there is one faith, and one baptism, and one Church. And an inscription to the Lord at its border: there is no doubt that this signifies the Gospel and the writings of the Apostles. For just as above, according to the tropological understanding, the land of Judah, fearful or festal to Egypt, is understood as the Old Testament, so too the inscription at the borders of Egypt is shown to be the history of the Gospels. Next he adds: And it will be for a sign and for a testimony, namely of the Lord's passion. Then those who have believed, when Egyptians rush against Egyptians, and a man fights against his brother, and city battles against city, when the time of persecution has broken upon them, will implore the mercy of the Lord, and at once the Savior will come, that is, Jesus, for that is what it means in our language. And the Lord will be known by the Egyptians, and they will know him, whether the persecutors who have been overcome, or the believers set free by his present help. And they will worship him with victims and gifts, and will vow vows to the Lord and pay them. Let the Jews answer: It is commanded in the Law that no altar be made except in the one place which the Lord God has chosen, and that victims be sacrificed only by priests of the Levitical race (Deut 26). Behold, Isaiah teaches openly that the Egyptians know the Lord and worship him, and offer victims and gifts, and vow vows and pay them. If the Egyptians have a priesthood, the testimony of Paul is fulfilled in them as well, who says: When the priesthood is changed, there must of necessity be a change of the law (Heb 7:12).
19:22
And the Lord will strike Egypt with a blow, and will heal it: and they will turn to the Lord, and he will be appeased toward them, and will heal them. For whom the Lord loves he rebukes, and he chastises every son whom he receives. Persecution serves not for the denial of believers, but for their proving and their crown.
19:23
In that day there will be a road from Egypt to the Assyrians, and the Assyrian will enter Egypt, and the Egyptian the Assyrians: and the Egyptians will serve Assyria. Before the coming of Christ each nation had its own king, and no one could go from one nation to another; but in the Roman empire all things have been made one. Let the learned reader turn over the ancient histories, and he will find that the whole region from the Euphrates to the Tigris, and all between, belonged to the Assyrians. Those, therefore, whom the ancients called Assyrians we now call Syrians, naming the whole from the part. And when it is said: The Egyptians will serve the Syrians, it is to be taken either thus: that Roman legions furnished with Syrian soldiers guard Egypt; or that the two nations trade with each other, and the cities of Syria receive the abundance of Egypt, just as, conversely, Egypt is watered with the goods of Palestine and Phoenicia. Some of our writers wrongly refer these things to the thousand years, and in the Jewish manner declare that they will come to pass at the consummation of the world, when the Antichrist, coming from the Assyrians, has taken possession of Egypt and Ethiopia.
19:24-25
In that day Israel will be the third with the Egyptian and the Assyrian, a blessing in the midst of the earth, which the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying: Blessed is my people of Egypt, and the work of my hands to the Assyrian: but my inheritance is Israel. By no means will Israel be crushed in the middle between Egypt and the Assyrian, now with the Antiochi and Demetrii dragging the kingdom of Judah to themselves, now with the Ptolemies claiming its possession for themselves; but it too, established under the Roman empire, and through this under the empire of Christ, will be of the same condition as Egypt and the Assyrians, and will be blessed in all the earth. For out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Then it will be said by the Lord: Blessed is my people of Egypt: when, led not by Moses but by Christ the Lord, countless thousands of men have filled the deserts and, with Pharaoh drowned, have said in the desert: Let us sing to the Lord, for he has been gloriously magnified: horse and rider he has cast into the sea (Exod 15:1). Then also the work of the hands of the Lord will be among the Assyrians; for these nations above all, Egypt and Mesopotamia, flourish with swarms of monks, and vie with one another in equal piety. And the inheritance of Christ is Israel, that is, the places of his nativity, and of his cross, and of his resurrection and ascension, to which men flock from the whole world.
20:1
In the year in which Tartan came into Azotus, when Sargon king of the Assyrians had sent him, and he had fought against Azotus and taken it. At that time the Lord spoke by the hand of Isaiah son of Amos, saying: Go and loose the sackcloth from your loins, and take your shoes from your feet: and he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said: As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot, a sign and portent of three years will be upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia. So will the king of the Assyrians drive off the captivity of Egypt and the exile of Ethiopia, young and old, naked and barefoot, with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. And they will be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia their hope, and of Egypt their glory. And the inhabitant of this island will say in that day: Behold, this was our hope, those to whom we fled for help, to free us from the face of the king of the Assyrians; and how shall we be able to escape? We have set down the whole content of this passage so that we may discuss each point part by part. Azotus, which in Hebrew is called ESDOD (אשדוד), was a most powerful city of Palestine, one of the five cities: Sargon king of the Assyrians, who is called by seven names, sent the commander of his army, whose name was Tartan, and took it and held it. At the time, then, when the neighboring city was taken, Isaiah is commanded to lay aside his tunic of sackcloth (for this was the garb of the prophet lamenting the sins of the people), and the shoes from his feet, which the Seventy call caligae, and to go about naked and barefoot, presenting a type of the captivity of the Egyptians and of the Ethiopians, who had been a help to the Egyptians: that just as Isaiah walked naked and displayed his unsightliness to the onlookers with bare buttocks, so all Egypt and Ethiopia, when the Assyrian ravaged them, should become naked, and nothing at all should remain in the land. And let no one think this contrary to the prosperity promised above to the Egyptians: for there, after the evils, future blessedness is foretold; whereas here the present captivity is narrated, in which, having destroyed Israel and Damascus and the Philistines, he went straight on to Egypt, and overcame them and the Ethiopians alike. And lest this seem doubtful to anyone, let us set down the testimony of Isaiah himself: And Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of the Assyrians fighting against Libnah: for he had heard that he had set out from Lachish: and he heard men saying of Tirhakah king of Ethiopia: He has come out to fight against you (2 Kgs 19:8-9). And at the same time we learn the obedience of the prophets: that a man of noble birth (for the Hebrews relate that Isaiah was the father-in-law of Manasseh son of Hezekiah king of Judah) did not blush to go about naked, but, judging nothing more honorable than the commands of God, laid aside the sackcloth, and when it was thrown off he was naked, having had before only one tunic, and that of haircloth. And when it is said: A sign and portent of three years will be upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia, this signifies that Egypt and Ethiopia were to be laid waste by the Assyrians for three years. Then, he says, the inhabitant of this island will say, that is, Jerusalem, which is beaten by the waves of the neighboring nations: Was this our hope? And did we flee to these to give us help, who could not rescue themselves from the evil of captivity? This, then, is the order of the providence of God, who disposes the whole race of men by his ineffable judgment. Against the wrath of God Israel hoped in Damascus: let the city be destroyed which, against his will, gives help to the impious. Judah hoped in the Egyptians: let Egypt too be destroyed. The Egyptians trusted in the Ethiopians: let the Ethiopians too be conquered by the Assyrians. The Assyrians grew proud, thinking the victory to be not God's but their own strength's: let them too be conquered by the Babylonians. Babylon lifted up its head against God: let it too be overcome by the Medes and Persians. The Persians and Medes in part persecuted the people of God, and the most savage ram tossed all the peoples toward the East and the West: let the he-goat Alexander come and trample him under his feet. And let him who was lifted up beyond measure perish by poison, and his kingdom be divided into parts; and when it has long been dashed against itself, let it be ravaged as the Roman conquers. The Roman himself has torn the flesh of the saints with iron teeth and claws and with bloody mouth: let a stone be cut from the mountain without hands, and let it crush like potsherds the kingdom that was first most mighty and of iron, and then brittle and weak (Dan 2).
21:1
The burden of the desert of the sea. If I did not read in what follows in this chapter: Babylon, my beloved, has become a wonder to me; and again: Fallen, fallen is Babylon, and all the graven images of her gods are broken on the ground; and above: Go up, Elam, and besiege, O Mede, I would be in doubt what this Burden is that is laid upon the desert of the sea. It is plain, therefore, that Babylon is called the desert of the sea, as Jeremiah says in the person of God: And I will make her sea desert, and I will dry up her land, and Babylon will become heaps of sand (Jer 51:36-37). And it is called sea because of the multitude of its inhabitants. Hence above, too, the multitude of Egypt was compared to the sea: The Lord will make the sea of Egypt desert. And that the Medes and Persians fought against Babylon and overthrew it, we read in the aforesaid Jeremiah: Sharpen the arrows, fill the quivers. The Lord will rouse the spirit of the kings of the Medes, and his mind is against Babylon, to destroy it, for it is the vengeance of the Lord, the vengeance of his Temple. Upon the walls of Babylon lift up a signal, strengthen the watch, set up watchmen, prepare ambushes: for the Lord has purposed, and has done all that he spoke against the inhabitants of Babylon. And again: Lift up a signal in the land, sound the trumpet among the nations, sanctify the nations against her, proclaim against her to the kings of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz, number Tapsar against her, bring up the horse like the stinging locust. Sanctify the nations against her, the kings of Media, its leaders and all its magistrates, and all the land of its dominion. And the land will be shaken and troubled, because the thought of the Lord has kept watch against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon desert and uninhabitable (Jer 51:11ff.).
21:1-2
As whirlwinds come from the southwest, it comes from the desert, from a terrible land. A hard vision has been announced to me. The voice of the Babylonian people in fear is brought in, or of Babylon itself, because it hears that the Medes and Elamites are preparing an army against it and are coming from the wilderness; and it sets forth an example by way of comparison. As, it says, a violent storm usually comes from the southwest wind, so devastation comes upon me from the wilderness, from a terrible land, whose very name I cannot hear without dread. A hard vision has been announced to me: for what is harder than captivity at hand?
He who is unbelieving acts faithlessly: and he who is a despoiler lays waste. In the Hebrew it can be read thus: You who slay, slay; and you who lay waste, lay waste, so that the prophetic utterance is directed to the Elamite and the Mede himself, urging him to accomplish what he has begun, to go up fearlessly, to besiege the most mighty city. But if it is read as we have translated, as though spoken of a third person, he who is unbelieving acts faithlessly: and he who is a despoiler lays waste, it is to be joined with what precedes, in which Babylon declares that a hard vision has been announced to it.
Go up, Elam, besiege, O Mede: I have made all its groaning cease. Do not fear, he says, O Persian and Mede, the multitude of Babylon; do not dread its past power: I have made to cease all its groaning and the weight with which it used to oppress you before; either because no one now groans and grieves, oppressed by the power of Babylon; or because Babylon itself is oppressed by such great evils that it does not even have freedom to groan.
21:3-4
Therefore my loins are filled with pain: anguish has possessed me, like the anguish of a woman giving birth: I fell down when I heard, I was troubled when I saw. My heart has withered, darkness has stupefied me. Babylon, my beloved, has been made a wonder to me. The Prophets are obscure for this reason, that the persons in them change very often. So now too the voice of Isaiah is brought in, lamenting Babylon in the prophetic spirit: that such great evils are to come upon it that he who tells of them, overcome by fear, cannot burst out into words, seeing the blood of so great a multitude shed; and, moved by the feeling of pity (for he is a man speaking of men), he grieves no less than a woman is wont to howl in childbirth; but, troubled and trembling, and falling to the ground, with his eyes darkened, he does not know what he is saying. And for what we have rendered: Babylon, my beloved, in the Hebrew one reads NESEPH ESCI (נשף השקי); and it is the very word which we set down at the beginning of the Babylonian Burden, upon a misty mountain: for there Neseph is written for misty or dark. And this city is properly so called because of its height and the summit of its pride raised up to heaven.
21:5
Set the table, watch in the watchtower those eating and drinking: arise, princes, seize the shield. This place is taken in two ways. O Medes and Elamites, to whom I said above: Go up, Elam, besiege, O Mede, take food, prepare yourselves for the coming battle, lest, when the time of fighting has come, weariness hold you back. And when you have eaten and drunk, arise, seize your arms, vanquish the Babylonian. And his saying, watch in the watchtower, is read in this sense: look out diligently for what is to come. It can also be understood thus: O Babylon, prepare a table and a banquet for Belshazzar your king, son of Evil-merodach, grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, and see what happens after the meal, at which he will drink toasts to harlots and concubines from the vessels of the Lord. O princes, who recline at table with the king (and he means the Medes and Persians), arise and seize your arms to kill the king. We learn this more fully in the volume of Daniel (Dan 5).
21:6ff.
For thus the Lord said to me: Go and set a watchman, and let him announce whatever he sees. And he saw a chariot of two horsemen, a rider on an ass, and a rider on a camel. And he gazed diligently with much attention, and the lion cried out: Upon the watchtower of the Lord I stand continually by day, and upon my watch I stand whole nights. Behold, there comes this rider, a man of the two-horsed chariot; and he answered and said: Fallen, fallen is Babylon, and all the graven images of her gods are broken on the ground. My threshing, and son of my threshing floor, what I have heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I have announced to you. He gives the reasons for the fear above: why anguish possessed him like a woman in labor, and he fell down on hearing, and was terrified and surrounded with dark horror. Thus, he says, the Lord said to me: Go and appoint a watchman, to foretell the future to you in the prophetic spirit; and when I had set him in the watchtower, he saw a two-horse chariot coming, and a charioteer upon it, and an ass and a camel drawing the chariot. And he signifies Cyrus king of the Persians and of the Medes, coming with a small and a great empire. For before Cyrus the Persians were obscure, and were held of no account among the nations; the Medes were always most mighty. This one rider, then, supported by the army of two nations, comes against Babylon: and that watchman who had been set to look out for what was to come cried out like a lion; or else the prophet himself is called a lion. And because there was doubt about the person of the watchman who had seen Cyrus coming up, he himself explains it more plainly, and says: Upon the watchtower of the Lord I stand continually by day, declaring himself to be the watchman of the Lord, who, always set in the prophetic office, and obeying the command of the Lord by day and by night, speaks whatever he commands. What, then, did the lion cry out? Behold, there comes this rider, a man of the two-horsed chariot: there is no doubt that Cyrus is indicated. And the lion himself, who had cried out above, answered and said: Fallen, fallen is Babylon, and all the graven images of her gods are broken on the ground. For when the rider of the two-horse chariot laid it waste, Babylon was destroyed forever, and the temple of Bel and all the idols were leveled to the ground. And in what follows: My threshing, and son of my threshing floor, he makes an apostrophe to Jerusalem, and to the Temple which stands on the threshing floor of Ornan, and says to her: O Jerusalem, and you people, son of my Temple, let not what I have said seem incredible to you: for they are not my words but the Lord's, and it is his words that have resounded through my mouth. Some think, but wrongly, that this is said not to Jerusalem but to Babylon, of which he said above as well: Babylon, my beloved, has been made a wonder to me; and that the sense is: You who have crushed me will yourself be crushed too, not by my word, but by the power of the Lord, which foretells to you that these things will come. But what the Seventy interpreters meant in this place, in translating uriam for lion, which in Hebrew is called ARIA (אריה), I do not well understand, especially since the aforementioned priest Urias, who is called to bear witness, is written with other letters.
21:11-12
The burden of Duma. He calls to me out of Seir: Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? And the watchman said: The morning comes, and the night: if you seek, seek; turn, come. For Duma the Seventy put Idumaea. But Duma is not the whole province of Edom, but a certain region of it which lies toward the south, and is twenty miles distant from the city of Palestine which today is called Eleutheropolis: near it are the mountains of Seir, which took their name from their founder; for Seir means shaggy and hairy, which Esau was. In the prophet Obadiah we have discussed this nation more fully: there it was necessary to go over the ancient history, and to draw in as testimony the same Visions of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, and especially the prophecy against Mount Seir (Ezek 25 and 35; Jer 49); and that saying from the Psalms: Into Edom I will stretch out my shoe; and elsewhere: The tents of the Edomites and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagarenes, Gebal and Ammon and Amalek (Ps 59 [60]:10; Ps 82 [83]:7-8). Amos also says: For three crimes of Edom, and for four, I will not turn him back, because he pursued his brother with the sword, and violated his mercy (Amos 1:11), or, as Symmachus translated, his bowels: because he dared to fight against kindred peoples, and to be at variance with them in hostile hatred. Now the region of Esau was in the region of Duma, that is, in the mountains of Seir. We believe that this, as a metropolis, in keeping with the order of the preceding Visions, was conquered by the Assyrians or by Nebuchadnezzar, and that, mindful of its former stock, since it was begotten of the line of Abraham and Isaac, it implored the help of God, and under the compulsion of necessity begged for his clemency. Now, therefore, the Lord recounts: He who is besieged in Seir and surrounded by enemies implores my help, and says: O watchman of Israel, who guard your people with an everlasting watch, and, as it were in the night, keep vigil while they sleep, lest the enemy break in, why do you not protect us also, who are of his seed, with like clemency? To them I reply, the watchman and keeper of whom it is written: He who guards Israel will not slumber nor sleep (Ps 120 [121]:4). Morning comes for my people, and night for the nation of the Edomites; to them I will give light, you I will leave in darkness. Or certainly thus: the light has come, the night being past; if you call upon my help, and are of the stock of my servant Abraham, do not seek me only in your necessities, but turn to me with your whole mind. Come, and I will receive you as penitents. Let this be said according to the history. For the rest, because of the similarity of the letter, and because RES and DALETH differ little from each other, some of the Hebrews read Roma for Duma, wishing the prophecy to be directed against the Roman empire, by the frivolous persuasion by which they always think that the Romans are pointed out under the name of Edom: but Duma means silence.
21:13ff.
The burden in Arabia. In the forest at evening you will sleep, in the paths of Dodanim. Meeting the thirsty, bring water: you who dwell in the land of the south, meet the fugitive with bread. For they have fled from the face of the swords, from the face of the threatening sword, from the face of the bent bow, from the face of grievous battle. For thus says the Lord to me: Yet in one year, as in the year of a hireling: and all the glory of Kedar will be taken away, and the remnant of the number of the mighty archers of the sons of Kedar will be diminished: for the Lord God of Israel has spoken. As I sought, and long turned over with deliberation, what Arabia this was to which the prophetic word is directed, whether the Moabites, or the Ammonites and Edomites, and all the other regions which are now called Arabia, what follows in this same Vision gave me occasion to see that the Ishmaelites must be understood: All the glory of Kedar will be taken away, and the remnant of the number of the mighty archers of the sons of Kedar will be diminished (Isa 21:16-17). The book of Genesis teaches that from Ishmael were born Kedar and the Hagarenes, who by a perverted name are called Saracens. These dwell throughout the whole wilderness; of them, I think, the poet too speaks: And the Barcaei, roaming far and wide (Virgil, Aeneid 4); and the aforesaid volume: He will dwell over against the face of all his brothers (Gen 16:12): because a very broad desert stretches from India as far as Mauretania and the Atlantic Ocean. This, I think, is what the title in Jeremiah expresses: To Kedar and to the kingdoms of Hazor, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon struck (Jer 49:28); and at once there follows: Thus says the Lord: Arise and go up to Kedar, and lay waste the sons of the East: they will take their tents and their flocks; they will carry off for themselves their skins and all their vessels and their camels (ibid., 29); and again: For Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has taken counsel against you, he has devised plans against you. Arise and go up against a nation at ease, dwelling confidently, says the Lord: no doors, no bars for them: they dwell alone. And their camels will be for plunder, and the multitude of their cattle for a prey. And I will scatter to every wind those who have the hair of their head cut round: and from all their borders I will bring destruction upon them, says the Lord: and Hazor will be a dwelling of dragons, deserted forever; no man will remain there, nor will a son of man inhabit it (ibid., 30ff.). I have set down the whole testimony of the prophecy from Jeremiah, so that you may understand without doubt what Kedar is. And consider how he has described exactly the nation of the Ishmaelites, that is, of the Saracens: because they dwell in tents; they hold whatever abodes the night drives them to; they have herds, and flocks, and droves of camels; they have neither doors nor bars, for they do not live in cities but dwell in the wilderness. These too, then, were destroyed by the Babylonians, in that they overthrew to the ground the city of Hazor, which was the metropolis of that nation in the desert; and yet, though their droves of camels and sheep were taken, and their skins and tents divided by lot, the destruction of that whole nation is not signified, because on dromedary camels they are wont to flee a hundred miles and more in a single day through the vast wilderness. All the glory of Kedar, he says, will be taken away; and when the number of the archers has been diminished, since they excel above all in that art of fighting, the rest who have fled will remain. Since we have understood what Kedar is, and what Arabia, and what Hazor, let us see what the prophet Isaiah says: In the forest at evening you will sleep, in the paths of Dodanim. The word ARAB (ערב), as we have often said already, is used for evening, and Arabia, and raven, and plain, and the West. And for what we, following the Seventy, have translated you will sleep, one can render you will stay or you will dwell, that is, αὐλιθήσεσθε, which in Hebrew is THALINU (תלנו). DODANIM (דדנים) too is rendered as kinsmen and relatives. So it is now foretold to the Jews who have been able to escape the Babylonian siege, and to cross from the devastation of the whole province to the neighboring desert, that they will dwell in the wilderness of Arabia, on the road that leads to their brothers. And again the discourse turns to the Ishmaelites, and urges them to mercy: Run, and go to meet your brothers, weary and in peril from burning thirst, and bring them water: for so great is the heat of the sun that, unless you come to their aid, they will perish in the wilderness; and bring not only water but bread too to the fugitives, so that your clemency may relieve those whom the siege has worn out. And at the same time he gives the reason why he commands this to be done, saying: They have fled the Babylonian sword, they have fled the bows of the Elamites, they have fled the threatening battle. And do not despise the wretched: your captivity too will come quickly. For as the hireling's year is swift, and he thinks all labor short until he reaches the wage he longs for, so all the glory of the sons of Kedar will be taken from you, and your arrows will be broken, and a small number of fighters will remain. Some, from the words yet in one year, and all the glory of Kedar will be taken away, would have it that what is foretold is not the Babylonian captivity, of which Jeremiah too speaks, but that of the Assyrians, who, one year after the devastation of Judea, pursued the Saracens far and wide. Moreover, that place in which we have translated: You who dwell in the land of the south, meet the fugitive with bread, and have read it in the imperative mood, as if in the person of the Lord, they affirm can be read in the Hebrew thus: Those who dwell in the land of the south met the fugitive with bread; so that, when God had said to them, Meeting the thirsty, bring water, they with hostile mind brought bread without water, to increase their thirst with food.
22:1
The burden of the valley of Vision. The Seventy, although it is not found in the Hebrew, translated more plainly, the word of the valley of Zion. For this city is the seedbed of the prophets, in which the Temple was built and the Visions of the Lord were multiplied. Because, then, it is placed among the other nations and reckoned as one of many, it is by no means called a mountain, according to that prophetic saying: Its foundations are on the holy mountains: the Lord loves the gates of Zion above all the tents of Jacob (Ps 86 [87]:1); but a valley, because it has been humbled. Jeremiah says this very thing in other words, when he receives the cup full of wine and gives it to all the nations, and last of all holds it out to Jerusalem, that it may drink and vomit and fall and go mad: signifying that it too was to be laid waste by the Babylonians (Jer 25). The history of Kings and of Jeremiah tells this more fully. From this we understand that God is equally the creator of all, and disposes all things by the same judgment, according to what he himself says through Amos: Are you not to me as the sons of the Ethiopians, O sons of Israel? says the Lord. Did I not bring Israel up out of the land of Egypt, and the Palestinians from Cappadocia, and the Syrians from Cyrene? Behold, the eyes of the Lord are upon the sinful kingdom (Amos 9:7). Lest the Jews should think that they had a privilege of merit because they had been led out of Egypt, he says that the other nations too had been transferred to other lands by his command.
What is it with you too, that you also have gone up, all of you, onto the housetops, full of clamor, a crowded city, an exultant town? A Hebrew used to tell me that the present Vision does not belong to the time when Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem and led Zedekiah, bound and deprived of his eyes, to Babylon, but to the times of Sennacherib, when Shebna the high priest betrayed a great part of the city, and only Zion, that is, the citadel and the Temple, and the nobles remained, after the example of the city of Rome, which, when the Gauls burst in, preserved its patricians and the flower of its youth in the citadel. But we can also speak of it as of the Babylonian captivity; although Eusebius refers everything to the coming of Christ, and thinks it was fulfilled in the times of Vespasian and Titus. Let us then pick out each point, touching briefly on the threefold exposition. What is it with you too? What do you have, he says, O Zion, that you too have gone up, all of you, onto the housetops? When he says, you too, he shows that the others had gone up before. Have you also been reckoned among the nations, that you are besieged by enemies and climb onto the housetops, full of the howling and lamentation of wretched women, you who were once a royal city?
22:3
Your slain are not slain by the sword, nor dead in war. All your princes have fled together, and have been harshly bound. All who were found have been bound together: they have fled far away. If you refer it to the times of Sennacherib, when the city was partly taken, they are rightly said not to have been conquered by the sword nor slain in war, but by treachery, some fleeing from the city, and others, whom the enemy overpowered, bound in chains. But if to the Babylonian captivity, which is also the truer view, we shall say that they were overcome not by battle but by siege. And if you wish to understand it tropologically, with Eusebius, of the coming of Christ, you will say that they were slain not by the sword but by unbelief, and that all their princes withdrew from God and were bound with the cords of sins, and that there was none of the Pharisees who was not bound in the nets of the devil.
22:4
Therefore I said: Depart from me, I will weep bitterly: do not press to console me over the devastation of the daughter of my people. If at the devastation of Babylon the Prophet weeps with the feeling of a mourner, and says: Anguish has possessed me, like the anguish of a woman giving birth: I fell down when I heard, I was troubled when I saw, my heart has withered, darkness has stupefied me: Babylon my beloved has been made a wonder to me, how much more now, at the ruin of his own city, can he accept no consolation, giving himself wholly to lamentation!
22:5
For it is a day of slaughter, and of trampling, and of weeping, for the Lord God of hosts in the Valley of vision. He gives the reasons, according to the threefold understanding, why he said: Depart from me, I will weep bitterly: because Zion has been trampled down, once the mountain of visions and now the valley of weeping.
22:6
Searching the wall, and magnificent upon the mountain: and Elam took up the quiver, the chariot of a horseman, and the shield laid bare the wall. The army of Babylon is described entering the city, occupying the temple, and proudly driving through the streets in four-horse chariots. And that the shield, which is wont to cover other things, laid bare the gilded doorposts and the walls clad with marble facing, sounds elegantly in the Hebrew, and the sense is most beautiful: that the shield protected no one, but laid bare, since all the riches were torn out by the strength of the soldiers. If, however, the Elamites are set in the battle, Elam being a city of the Assyrians, it cannot be referred to the times of the Roman overthrow, unless perhaps we interpret everything allegorically.
22:7, 9
And your choice valleys will be full of chariots, and the horsemen will set their seats at the gate. And the covering of Judah will be uncovered, and you will see in that day the armory of the house of the forest, and you will see the breaches of the city of David, that they have been multiplied. He plainly describes the captivity which took place in the eleventh year of King Zedekiah, of which Jeremiah too speaks: Behold, I will call together all the families of the kingdoms of the North, says the Lord, and they will come, and each will set his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, and upon all its walls round about (Jer 1:15). And lest we should think this foretold in word and not fulfilled in deed, the same Jeremiah says: In the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, on the fifth of the month, the city was opened, and all the princes of the king of Babylon entered, and sat in the middle gate (Jer 39:2). Then, therefore, a countless army was poured out round about the city of Jerusalem, and the Holy of holies was opened, and the armory, which was planted with a grove, was thrown open by the enemy's ravaging, and, the walls having been breached, the enemy entered through all parts of the city.
22:10-11
And you gathered the waters of the lower pool, and you numbered the houses of Jerusalem, and you destroyed houses to fortify the wall. And you made a reservoir between the two walls, and the water of the old pool: and you did not look up to him who had made it, and you did not see its maker from afar. He relates how they prepared the city for the siege: they transferred the waters of the lower pool, which could be captured, to the upper fortification; they destroyed houses and built walls; family by family they reckoned up how much water each house should receive; they made a cistern between the two walls, and restored the old pool to store the waters; and they did not rather call upon the help of God, who is the founder of the city and the Lord of the pool; as if he had said in other words: You have placed your trust in man, and not in God, who is the maker of man. Some, according to mystical senses, understand the old pool as the shadow of the Law, and the reservoir built between two walls, namely the New and the Old Testament, as built by the traditions and commandments of the Pharisees, one that cannot hold water: and that they did not look to the Son of God, nor believe in the presence of him whom they had not seen of old, because they had always been unbelieving toward the precepts of God.
22:12, 14
And the Lord God of hosts will call in that day to weeping, and to lamentation, and to baldness, and to the girding of sackcloth. And behold, joy and gladness, slaying calves and slaughtering rams, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die. And it has been revealed in my ears by the Lord of hosts: If this iniquity will be forgiven you until you die, says the Lord God of hosts. When the captivity was at hand and Jerusalem besieged, while sword, famine and thirst pressed hard upon the city, Jeremiah called the people to repentance (Jer 34); and on the contrary the kings and princes, and the wretched multitude, with the despair of men perishing, gave themselves over to feasting. But nothing so offends God as a stiff neck after sins, and contempt born of despair. This he says through Amos too: For three and for four impieties I will not turn him back: because he both devised it and did it, and did not repent, and moreover taught evil. Hence now too it is said: If this iniquity will be forgiven you until you die (Amos 1:4). The allegorical interpreters think this was foretold of the passion of Christ: that God called the unhappy people to repentance even after the cross of the Lord Savior, and nevertheless they gave themselves over to despair and pleasure. For the beginning of this vision, where he says: Full of clamor, a crowded city, an exultant town, they refer to that time when the people, stirred up by the Pharisees, resounded with one voice against Jesus: Crucify, crucify such a one: we have no king but Caesar (John 19:6, 7). The Apostle too made use of the example of this testimony, writing to the Corinthians about the resurrection: If the dead do not rise, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die (1 Cor 15:32).
22:15ff.
Thus says the Lord God of hosts: Go, enter in to him who dwells in the tabernacle, to Shebna, who is over the Temple, and you will say to him: What are you doing here? or as whom are you here, that you have hewn out a tomb for yourself here? You have hewn out a monument on high, a tabernacle for yourself carefully in the rock. Behold, the Lord will cause you to be carried away, as a cock is carried away, and he will lift you up like a cloak. Crowning, he will crown you with tribulation; like a ball he will throw you into a broad and spacious land: there you will die, and there will be the chariots of your glory, the shame of the house of your Lord. And I will drive you out from your station, and depose you from your ministry. And it will come to pass in that day, I will call my servant Eliakim son of Hilkiah. And I will clothe him with your tunic, and strengthen him with your girdle, and I will give your power into his hand: and he will be like a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder, and he will open, and there will be none to shut: and he will shut, and there will be none to open. And I will fix him as a peg in a sure place, and he will be for a throne of glory to his father's house. And they will hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, vessels of various kinds: every small vessel, from the vessels of bowls even to every vessel of the musicians. In that day, says the Lord of hosts, the peg that had been fixed in the sure place will be removed, and it will be broken and fall, and what had hung upon it will perish, because the Lord has spoken. We said above that Shebna was the high priest who betrayed the city to the Assyrians. But since this belongs to Hebrew tradition, and Scripture does not say it, let us understand him as proud, swollen and given to pleasure, trampling the peoples under his feet; and that, because he had done all the things the Prophet describes, his priesthood was transferred to Eliakim son of Hilkiah, so that, with him cast out, a new high priest might be made. From this we understand that pride, which offends God, is to be shunned with all zeal, and that it cannot be safe even with the privilege of the high priesthood. This is the Shebna (as some think) and the Eliakim of whom the same Prophet wrote further on: The king of the Assyrians sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, to King Hezekiah, with a heavy force: and he stood by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the road of the fuller's field; and there went out to him Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder (Isa 36:2ff.). The Prophet, then, is commanded to go in to the high priest, who dwelt, according to the Seventy, in the pastophorium; according to Aquila, in the tabernacle; for which Theodotion, following the Hebrew truth, says: Go in to this Socen, which can be interpreted fair and upright (so that, namely, κατὰ ἀντίφρασιν, unjust and crooked is to be understood), to the high priest of the temple, and you will say to him: You who dwell in the house of God, whose crimes run riot through the whole city, why are you secure in your works, as though you did not fear captivity? Have you hewn yourself a tomb in the rock, and built so proudly that your ambition should follow you even in death? Hear what the Lord's sentence upon you is: as a cock is carried off on the shoulder of the one carrying it, and men each lift their cloak onto the shoulder, so your removal into captivity will be easy. You will have a crown, not of the golden plate and of the sanctification of the Lord, but of tribulation and anguish. For as a ball, if it is thrown down a slope, cannot stand still but rolls on in swift course, so you too will be led away to a most broad land, which we may understand as either Egypt or the plains of Babylonia, and there you will die; and there will be the chariots of your glory, all the powers and riches on which you now lean as you go about. There you will feel the shame of the house of your Lord: because you will suffer these things on account of your evil works and the violation of the Temple of your God. I will drag you down from your rank and cast you out of the office of high priest, and in your place I will clothe Eliakim my servant, son of Hilkiah, with your garments, and adorn him with your girdle, just as Eleazar was clothed with the garments of his father Aaron. To him I will give the authority of the Temple, so that he may have the people, not subject to him as a slave, but loving him as a son. He will receive the key of my house, and carry it on his shoulder; he will have authority over all the ceremonies. And as, when a peg is fixed in the wall of the Temple and set in a very firm place, all the vessels of the priests and Levites are hung upon it, both those needed in the sacrifices and those of the musicians of every kind, so the whole people will hang upon the authority of Eliakim my servant. And as for his saying: In that day the peg that had been fixed in the sure place will be removed, and it will be broken and fall, and what had hung upon it will perish, because the Lord has spoken, many refer it to Shebna: that when Eliakim had been fixed as a peg, the former peg, which had been fixed, collapsed. But since there follows: And what had hung upon it will perish, which by no means happened when Shebna was cast down, we understand this to be said: that when Shebna was deposed, Eliakim received the high priesthood, the dignity of whose priesthood the final captivity overthrew. Those who take everything according to ἀναγωγὴν would have the priesthood of the Jews fall in the high priesthood of Shebna, and the mysteries of the Gospel worship shown in the succession of Eliakim, which means God rising again: so that what follows: In that day, says the Lord of hosts, the peg that had been fixed in the sure place will be removed, and it will be broken and fall, pertains to the ruin of the former people. And no one doubts, both according to the history and according to the allegory, that, because he had said peg, the metaphor is kept in the hanging up of vessels of different kinds; and that when the former have been broken, others are hung up.
23:1
The burden of Tyre. Howl, you ships of the sea, for the house is laid waste from which they were wont to come: from the land of Cethim it has been revealed to them. Be silent, you who dwell in the island, the merchandise of Sidon. The prophet Ezekiel sets forth more plainly and more fully both the overthrow of Tyre and the causes of the overthrow, saying: Son of man, because Tyre has said of Jerusalem: Aha, the gates of the peoples are broken, she has turned to me, I shall be filled, she is deserted. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and I will cause many nations to come up against you, as the sea comes up in waves, and I will scatter the walls of Tyre, and destroy its towers, and I will scrape its dust from it (Ezek 26:2ff.). And who these many nations are, which will flood over Tyre like the surging sea, he teaches by name in what follows: Behold, I will bring upon Tyre Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the North, a king of kings, with horses and chariots and horsemen, and a great company and people. Your daughters that are in the field he will slay with the sword; and he will surround you with siegeworks, and will heap up a mound round about, and will raise the shield against you, and will set mantlets and battering rams against your walls, and will destroy your towers with his weapons, and the rest that follows to the end of the vision. For in another prophecy too, which is seen to be against the Egyptians, the same Scripture weaves in: Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has made his army serve a great service against Tyre: every head made bald, and every shoulder rubbed bare, and no wage has been paid to him, nor to his army, for Tyre (Ezek 29). By this he signifies that a mound was heaped up over a long time by the army of Babylon, so that he tried beforehand to do what Alexander did afterwards, joining the island to the mainland (Quintus Curtius, book 4). Just as, therefore, we have read above God's threats against Babylon and the Philistines, and Moab, and Egypt, and the Edomites and Ishmaelites, because they mocked the captivity of his people, so now too a prophecy is woven against Tyre, hostile and mocking at the overthrow of Jerusalem: that it too is to be destroyed by the same enemy. We have read the histories of the Greeks, and especially of those who describe the wars of the Assyrian nation; and there we find that after the captivity of Jerusalem the Palestinians, and the Arabs, and the Damascenes, and after them the Egyptians were overthrown. And that these nations, and Tyre above all, always attacked Israel and rejoiced at its overthrow, the prophet Amos explains at the opening of his volume (Amos 1), and the Psalmist, briefly singing praises to God, declares: O God, who will be like you? Do not keep silent, nor be restrained, O God. For behold, your enemies have made a noise: and those who hate you have lifted up the head. They have devised malicious counsel against your people, and have plotted against your holy ones. They have said: Come, and let us destroy them from being a nation, and let the name of Israel be remembered no more. For they have plotted with one mind, together they have made a covenant against you: the tents of the Edomites, and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagarenes, Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, the foreigners with the inhabitants of Tyre (Ps 82 [83]:1ff.). From all these we learn that the weight of God's wrath came upon Tyre the harlot, who is described here under the figure of a prostitute, and in Ezekiel under the metaphor of a ship (Ezek 27). Howl, he says, you ships of the sea. For this we read in the Seventy of Carthage; and in the Hebrew there is THARSIS (תרשיש), about which I have argued both on the prophet Jonah and in a certain letter. And because Carthage is a colony of the Tyrians, we can in the present place take Tharsis not only as the sea in general but also as Carthage: that ships no longer come to Tyre from Africa, nor from the land of Cethim, which some interpret as Cyprus: for to this day there is among them the city of Citium, from which came Zeno too, the heresiarch of the Stoic sect; although many of our writers, and especially the beginning of Maccabees, consider Cethim to be the islands of Italy and Macedonia. For Scripture records this, that Alexander king of the Macedonians went out from the land of Cethim. And in naming it an island he does not lie: for afterwards it was made part of the mainland by Nebuchadnezzar or by Alexander, when many mounds were heaped up in the narrow strait for its capture. He also calls it the merchandise of Sidon, in keeping with the following line, in which he says: Be ashamed, O Sidon. For the histories relate that Tyre is a colony of Sidon.
23:3
Those crossing the sea have filled you; in many waters the seed of the Nile, the harvest of the river is its produce. That Tyre delights in trade and is the emporium of the whole world, both present times prove and Ezekiel describes at length. And that merchants cross the seas in carrying their goods, there is no one who doubts; nor does the city itself have such great wealth from the land of its own region, which is very narrow and hemmed in by the borders of Galilee and of Damascus, as it has from the shipping of goods. The whole Nile and the fertility of Egypt pour into Tyre from close at hand. For Nile, which we read among the Hebrews as SIOR (שיחר), the Seventy and Theodotion interpreted merchants; this word means turbid, and by this signifies the waters of the Nile, as Jeremiah testifies: What have you to do with Egypt, that you should drink the waters of Geon? (Jer 2:18): for which in the Hebrew there is Sior, that is, turbid.
23:4
Be ashamed, O Sidon: for the sea has spoken, the strength of the sea, saying: I have not travailed, and I have not brought forth, and I have not nourished young men, nor brought up virgins. I said above that Tyre is a colony of the Sidonians. Hear, then, O mother, all the seas crying out together against your daughter, and in a manner uttering a voice, though by nature they cannot speak: In vain have I brought riches together; to no purpose have I gathered wealth from the whole world into Tyre: she that was rich, she that was luxurious, and once rejoiced in a multitude of peoples, in which a throng of mortals was born, a troop of children, swarms of youth, whose streets rang with the games of virgins and infants, of young men and girls, has now been reduced to solitude. It is customary to make προσωποποιΐας out of mute things.
23:5
When it has been heard in Egypt, they will grieve when they hear of Tyre. This is plain: that the Egyptians, after they have heard that a most mighty and neighboring nation has been destroyed by a long siege, know that destruction is drawing near to them too.
23:6
Cross the seas, howl, you who dwell in the island. Again, for sea and Tharsis the Seventy translated Carthage. We read in the histories of the Assyrians that the besieged Tyrians, when they saw no hope of escape, embarked on ships and fled to Carthage, or to other islands of the Ionian and Aegean sea. Hence too it is said in Ezekiel: No wage has been paid to him, nor to his army, for Tyre (Ezek 29): because all the wealth of the city had been carried away, and all the nobles had left it empty.
23:7
Is not this yours, which gloried from the days of old in its antiquity? He convicts Tyre of pride, because it gloried in the antiquity of its founding and did not look to God, but, recalling the names of its fathers, thought itself eternal.
Its own feet will lead it far away to sojourn abroad. He means those who had remained in the city and were led captive to Babylon.
23:8
Who has devised this against Tyre, once crowned? Read Ezekiel again (Ezek 27), and you will learn from the lament over its prince how great the glory of Tyre was. He calls it crowned because, as a king among a great multitude of men raises his head adorned with a diadem, so Tyre, gleaming and lofty in riches, and shining with gold and gems and silk and purple, was esteemed a queen among all nations.
Whose merchants are princes, its traders the renowned of the earth. We marvel that the envoy of Pyrrhus once said of the city of Rome: I have seen a city of kings. Behold, long before those times the merchants and traders of Tyre are described as princes and renowned men: so that by this the greatness of its opulence is shown, since a merchant of Tyre could be a king in the other's words.
23:9
The Lord of hosts has devised this, to pull down the pride of all glory, and to bring into ignominy all the renowned of the earth. Because above, in the manner of one asking, he had said: Who has devised this against Tyre, once crowned?, now he himself answers: It is not that the threads of the fates have been spun thus, as fools think; it is not that the wheel of fortune has run; but it has been accomplished by the judgment of God and by his will, who resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (Jas 4); and he reminds the arrogant of their condition, so that through misery they may learn the power of him whose clemency they had refused to feel through his benefits.
23:10
Pass through your land like a river, daughter of the sea: there is no girdle for you any more. As, he says, a river, or, as the Hebrew has it more expressively, a stream, for it is called IOR (יאר), is easily crossed on foot, so you too, led into captivity, will pass through your land, O daughter of the sea, either because you are an island, or because it was written of you above: The sea has spoken, the strength of the sea: I have not travailed, and I have not brought forth. And what sense his next words have, there is no girdle for you any more, Symmachus teaches more openly: you will no longer be able to resist, that is, you will not have the strength, nor your loins girded for fighting, so as to be able to go out against your adversaries.
23:11
He has stretched out his hand over the sea, he has troubled kingdoms. Who stretched out his hand? From the very tenor of the discourse there is no doubt that it is God, of whom he said above: The Lord of hosts has devised this, to pull down the pride of all glory. He stretched out his hand, then, over all the seas, signifying the world and the earth, and troubled all the nations, among which you too, O Tyre, were troubled; or else over the sea, in which you are properly situated.
23:12
The Lord has given command against Canaan, to crush its strong ones. He shows what the sea is over which the Lord stretched out his hand, saying: He has given command against Canaan. For Tyre was founded in the land of Canaan. Read the Scriptures, and especially the Gospel (Mark 7), where the Syrophoenician woman, pleading for her daughter, comes out of the land of Canaan, and is called a Canaanite woman. And at the same time, because he had said: He has stretched out his hand, lest you should believe that the Lord works with limbs and by bodily function, he added, he has given command, so that for God to have done is to have commanded.
23:12
And he said: You will no more glory, suffering calumny, O virgin daughter of Sidon; rise, cross over to Cethim: there too there will be no rest for you. God, who devised to pull down the pride of all glory, who gave command against Canaan to crush its strong ones, himself says: You will by no means glory any longer, nor trust in your own power. O virgin daughter of Sidon, that is, colony of the Sidonians, you will indeed flee in ships to the islands of the West, or to Cyprus, and the other lands of Macedonia and Greece; but there too, with God against you, you will not be able to find rest. Besides, everyone who is a wanderer and a stranger in the world, and of uncertain abode, is always in straits, continually in grief.
23:13-14
Behold the land of the Chaldeans, such a people there was not: Assyria founded it for captivity; they carried away its mighty men, they undermined its houses, they made it a ruin. Howl, you ships of the sea, for your strength has been laid waste. Because he had said above: Its own feet will lead it far away to sojourn abroad; and again, Pass through your land like a river; and because the people of Tyre was twofold, those who had fled and crossed over to Cethim, and those who had remained in the city, he speaks to both. Of those who had fled he said above: Rise, cross over to Cethim, there too there will be no rest for you. Of those who had remained and were led into captivity: Behold, he says, the inhabitants of the land of the Chaldeans, whose power no peoples had before, and which was founded by the Assyrian, have carried away the mighty men of Tyre. They undermined not only the walls but all the dwellings of the city, and made it a ruin. Since, then, some have fled and others have been captured, howl, you ships, whether of the sea or of Carthage; for your mart and your colony has been destroyed. And at the same time consider how he has praised the Chaldeans. He did not say, such a people will not be hereafter: for the kingdom of the Romans is more powerful and harsher; but, there was not before. He who denied what went before conceded what follows.
23:15
And it will come to pass in that day, you will be in oblivion, O Tyre, for seventy years, like the days of one king. From this place to the end of this prophecy prosperous things are announced to Tyre: that it ought to repent; that it is to be built again; that the overthrow of Tyre is to last only seventy years, the years during which the temple of God too was desolate: so that the city that mocked at the ruins of another should also match the time of that one's ruins. The seventy years of one king many think to be said of Nebuchadnezzar, the years during which the kingdom of the Assyrian nation continued in Jerusalem. Others think it is said in general: that he who has had a long time of reigning cannot go beyond seventy years.
23:16
But after seventy years it will be for Tyre like the song of a harlot. Take a harp, go about the city, harlot given over to oblivion; sing well, repeat the song, that you may be remembered. Because you have committed fornication with very many nations, and your former lovers have despised you, desolate and naked and filthy with the squalor of captivity, take up the harp now, redouble your songs, go about the city, lament your former brothel, and wash away with tears the traces of your old error, so that you may call forth the mercy of God upon you.
23:17
And it will come to pass after seventy years, the Lord will visit Tyre, and will bring it back to its wages, and again it will commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the earth upon the face of the earth. That all these things were fulfilled according to the history is shown by the concordant writings of the Greeks and Phoenicians: that after seventy years it was restored and returned to its former power, and became the mart of all the nations; and these, I think, are called fornications: so that, as he who commits fornication enters the brothel and pays the wage of debauchery, so the trader, flocking in from the whole world, has filled up the beauty of the city as of a harlot.
23:18
And its merchandise and its wages will be sanctified to the Lord: they will not be hidden away nor laid up. For its merchandise will be for those who dwell before the Lord, that they may eat to the full and be clothed even to old age. We find that these things have not yet been done according to the history; unless perhaps it is to be thought that after the building of Jerusalem and the restoration of Tyre the cities were friendly to each other, and Tyre often sent gifts to the temple of God: as we read in Ezra too (Neh 13:16), that he drove off the Tyrians who were selling fish on the sabbath, and did not allow them to enter the city: and from this one item of trade one must judge of the rest as well. The Jews put off their vain hopes into the future, declaring that these things are to be fulfilled after the Antichrist, in the thousand years. Nor is it surprising if those invent such things who, having spurned the truth of Christ, are to receive the Antichrist, the instrument of the devil, since even judaizing Christians contend that these things were said of the blessedness of the thousand years. But I, just as in the vision of Babylon I understand the time of the consummation under the type of its overthrow, and in Egypt refer to the time of Christ the altar of the Lord set up when the idols were destroyed, and in the vision of Moab recognize the throne of the Savior set up in its land, and in the visions of Damascus and all the others have no doubt that they are mysteries of our own times, so also in the vision of Tyre, which is the last, I interpret it of the time of Christian felicity: that after it was built and recovered its former state, and every merchant entered its harbor according to the old custom, their merchandise and their labor too are dedicated to the Lord. Let us behold the Churches of Christ built in Tyre; let us consider the wealth of all, that it is not laid up nor treasured, but given to those who dwell before the Lord, who, serving the altar, partake of the altar (1 Cor 9). And the Tyrians minister, not for riches, nor for heaping up the wealth of the priests, but for supplying the necessities of life: so that, according to the Apostle, having food and clothing, we may be content with these (1 Tim 6). And note that he did not say that the merchandise and wages of Tyre sanctified to the Lord are to be given to those who dwell in Jerusalem, as the Jews think, but to those who are before the Lord, who serve him. For so too the Lord has ordained, that those who preach the Gospel should live by the Gospel (1 Cor 9). And to serve the Lord and to dwell before him is a matter not of place but of merit. Thus far we have discussed, by a historical interpretation, the visions of Isaiah, or the burdens which he laid upon certain nations, as you bade and as we were able, pressing only on the footsteps of the Hebrew truth. What follows pertains to all the nations, and in general to the consummation of the whole world. About this neither did you ask me to write, nor did I have the leisure to dictate superfluously what was not asked, I who have scarcely written what was asked.
Book Six
What I promised in the preceding volume, namely that upon the foundations of the history, if Christ should assent to our wish, I would raise a spiritual building and, with the roof set in place, display the ornaments of the perfected Church, this I shall try to do in the following two books, O virgin of Christ Eustochium, by your prayers and the mercy of the Lord, so that with the same labor with which the fifth book embraced the history, the sixth and seventh may touch upon the anagogy: not discussing everything, lest the volumes become many, but briefly indicating what churchmen before us have thought.
13:1
The burden or vision against Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amos saw. He saw, not with the eyes of the flesh but with those of the mind, how great and heavy a weight was to be laid upon Babylon. And since Babylon, which in Hebrew is called BABEL (בבל), means confusion, because there the speech of those building the tower was confounded, spiritually this world is understood, which is set in wickedness and confounds not only the tongues but also the works and the minds of each person. The king of this Babylon is the true Nebuchadnezzar, who grows proud against the Lord and says in his heart: I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of heaven I will set my throne; I will sit on the mountain of the Covenant, on the sides of the North; I will ascend above the height of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. He it is who showed the Lord all the kingdoms of the world and said to him: All these have been delivered to me, and I will give them to you, if you will fall down and worship me (Matt 4:9). Accordingly, in what follows the threat is in no way against Babylon, but against the whole world. The Lord Sabaoth commanded a most warlike nation to come from a distant land, from the height of heaven, to destroy the whole world. And again: Behold, the day comes of incurable fury and wrath, to make the whole world a desert and to destroy sinners out of it. And then: I will command evils for the whole world, and for the ungodly their sins. From these it is proved that everything said against Babylon pertains to the confusion and destruction of this world.
13:2
Upon a misty mountain, or a level one, lift up a sign. It is commanded to the Apostles, and to apostolic men and teachers of the Churches, that when they are about to fight against Babylon they should raise the sign of the Lord's cross, not in a low place and in sunken valleys, but on a misty or level mountain. Of these, the one signifies the hidden mysteries of the Church, to see which, and to hear the voice of God, Moses entered into the darkness and the mist. For God made darkness his hiding place, and cloud and mist round about him (Ps 17 [18]). The other teaches that we ought so to climb to the heights of the Church's doctrines as to be humbled, according to the Apostle Paul, and to say: I who am not worthy to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God (1 Cor 15:9). He too raised the sign upon a level mountain when, with the humility implanted in him, he said: For I judged myself to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And this sign, in the passages above as well, was raised by him who arose from the root of Jesse among the nations, to gather the lost of Israel.
Exalt the voice, lift up the hand. For which the Seventy translated: Comfort with the hand. He exalts his voice who speaks of lofty things and despises present things as brief and transitory. He who hears from the same Isaiah: Go up upon a high mountain, you who bring good tidings to Zion; lift up your voice in strength, you who bring good tidings to Jerusalem, lifts up his hand, he who can say with David: The lifting up of my hands is an evening sacrifice (Ps 140 [141]:2); and who in every place lifts up holy hands, so that he not only lifts up his hands but also comforts with his hand: so that he does not say to the poor man, Come tomorrow and receive; but rather comforts his poverty and need with present mercy.
And let the leaders enter the gates. LXX: Open, you princes. The leaders of the Church enter the gates of the mysteries of God and know the mysteries of the Scriptures, having the key of knowledge, so as to open them to the peoples entrusted to them. Hence it is commanded that the teachers should open and the disciples should enter.
13:3
I have commanded my sanctified ones. For which the LXX: I will command, and I will lead them. For he himself sanctifies his ministers, so that both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified may all be of one. He who in another place also says to believers: Be holy, because I also am holy, himself commands and will lead his princes, so that they may do what has been commanded (Lev 19:2).
And I have called my mighty ones in my wrath, exulting in my glory. LXX: Giants come to fulfill my fury, rejoicing together and doing outrage. According to the Hebrew, what is said clings to what precedes: that he who had given command to his sanctified ones himself called his mighty ones, exulting in his glory. But according to the Seventy, the giants who come to fulfill the fury of the Lord, rejoicing and glad at another's injury, are to be taken as the left-hand and hostile powers, of which we also read in the psalms: He sent upon them the fury of his wrath, fury and wrath and tribulation, a sending by evil angels (Ps 77 [78]:49). Of these is also the destroyer in Egypt, who does not dare to enter the doorposts smeared with the blood of the lamb (Exod 12), and that spirit who went out and stood in the sight of the Lord and said: I will deceive Ahab. And the Lord said to him: You will deceive him and you will prevail; go forth and do so (1 Kgs 22:21, 22). Hence in the same volume of Kings Micaiah said: I saw the Lord of Israel sitting upon his throne, and all the host of heaven stood about him on the right and on the left (ibid., 19). The right-hand powers are those of the angels who are sent for good things; the left-hand, those of the angels to whom we are handed over for punishment. Hence the Apostle too says: Whom I have delivered, he says, to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme (1 Tim 1:20). Now the name of the giants, for which in the Hebrew GEBORIM (גברים), that is, of the mighty, is set down, the Seventy and Theodotion turned into the likeness of the fables of the Gentiles, just as they also name the Sirens and the Titans and Arcturus, the Hyades and Orion, which among the Hebrews are called by other names. But if the giants are rebels against God, and all heresies, being contrary to the truth, rebel against God, all heretics are giants, who rejoice in their error and glory most of all when they have done outrage to the Church.
13:5
The voice of a multitude on the mountains, as of crowded peoples; the voice of the sound of kings of nations gathered together. This passage is taken in three ways. First, that when the sign has been raised on the level mountain, the multitude of the nations comes, itself also set upon the mountains, and it is divided into two, namely into peoples and into kings, into disciples and teachers, of whom the Savior spoke in the Gospel: Many will come from the East and from the West, and will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven (Matt 8:11). And it is called one voice, and harmonious, for this reason: that the Apostle's saying may be proved: That you all say the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you, but that you be perfect in the same mind and in the same judgment (1 Cor 1:10). Secondly, the pride of the heretics is described, who, believing themselves to be on the mountains, are lifted up against the knowledge of God, and speak iniquity on high, and set their mouth against heaven; they too have peoples, they have kings, who devour the deceived people. The third interpretation is this: since he had said above, giants come to fulfill my fury, rejoicing together and doing outrage, he describes the arrogance of the giants themselves, and their agreement, in the evil sense, in punishing those who have been handed over to them.
The Lord of hosts has commanded the army of war, coming from a far land, from the height of heaven: the Lord and the vessels of his fury, to destroy the whole earth. LXX: The Lord Sabaoth commanded a most warlike nation to come from a distant land, from the highest ÷ foundation ⁚ of heaven, the Lord and his warriors, to destroy the whole world. Foundation is to be marked beforehand with an obelus. In the volume of Kings and of Chronicles we read (2 Sam 24; 1 Chr 21) that the wrath of God was kindled against Israel when David numbered the people and offended the Lord. In the Psalms too it is written: O Lord, do not rebuke me in your fury, nor chasten me in your wrath, and other things like these, for which I have read in the Commentaries of a certain writer [he means Basil] that the wrath of God can be understood as a hostile power to which we are handed over for punishment, of which it is also sung in the eighth psalm: That you may destroy the enemy and the avenger (Ps 8:3). Those who come from a far land and from the height of heaven can be called warriors, namely also the ministering angels, who are to be sent at the consummation of the world to make bundles of the tares and, separated from the wheat, to prepare them for everlasting burning (Matt 13). The whole earth, too, is destroyed when earthly works are overthrown. There are also other warriors of the Lord, equipped with the armor of the Apostle, who daily in the Church, which is understood as the οἰκουμένη, that is, the world and the inhabited land, destroy and slay those who are lifted up against the knowledge of God.
13:6-7
Howl, for the day of the Lord is near; it will come like devastation from the Lord. Therefore all hands will be loosened, and every heart of man will melt and be crushed. Since the warriors of the Lord are to come to destroy the whole earth, howl and do penance, you for whom punishment is coming. For the day of the Lord is near, either of the consummation of the whole world and of the judgment, or of each one's departure from life. For there comes from the Lord a plundering, which we have called devastation in order to keep the metaphor, since he had spoken first of warriors. When the day of judgment or of falling asleep has come, all hands will be loosened, to which it is said in another place: Be strengthened, you loosened hands. And the hands will be loosened because no work worthy of the righteousness of God will be found: And no living person will be justified in his sight (Ps 142 [143]:2). Hence the Prophet says in the psalms: If you mark iniquities, O Lord, who will endure (Ps 129 [130]:3)? Every heart too, or soul of man, will melt, and will tremble at the consciousness of its sin. This is the fearful and terrible day of which Zephaniah also speaks: Fear before the face of the Lord, for the day of the Lord is near (Zeph 1:14). And again: Near is the great day of the Lord: near, and very swift. And Amos: Woe, he says, to those who desire the day of the Lord: why would you have the day of the Lord, which is darkness and not light (Amos 5:18)? And what has been added according to the Seventy: the envoys will be troubled, and pains will seize them: we can interpret as those envoys whom the citizens had sent against him who had set out into a far country to seek a kingdom for himself (Luke 19:27). Hence he himself says in the Gospel: But those enemies who did not want me to reign over them, bring here and slay before me.
13:8
Twistings and pains will seize them; they will be in pain like a woman in labor; each one will be astonished at his neighbor; their faces are burnt countenances. When the warriors of the Lord have come from a distant land, and all hands have been loosened, and the heart is fearful and crushed, then strophomata, which we have translated as twistings of the belly, and pains will seize them, like the pains of women in labor. By this it is shown that they are tortured by their own conscience, and have their faces burnt with that fire which they had kindled for themselves: because they cannot say: The light of your countenance has been signed upon us, O Lord (Ps 4:7); and: We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image (2 Cor 3:18). Each one will be astonished at his neighbor, seeing him in the same torments by which he himself is tormented.
13:9
Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel and full of indignation, and of wrath and fury, to make the land a wilderness and to crush its sinners out of it. For land the Seventy translated τὴν οἰκουμένην, that is, the world; for cruel, incurable. For when the day either of judgment or of death has come, that will be fulfilled which is read in the sixth psalm: But in hell who will confess to you (Ps 6:6)? For that is not a time of penance, but of punishments. And in another place it is said: How great is the multitude of your sweetness, O Lord, which you have hidden for those who fear you! Therefore the great mercy of God is hidden from those who are still set in fear and do not have the perfect love of God, so that, while they hear of the day of the Lord as cruel and incurable and full of indignation and fury, they may cease to sin. The world, or the land, will also be made a wilderness, and the sinners will be crushed out of it, the land which before was weighed down by the burden of sinners, so that, crimes having been blotted out and destroyed, righteousness alone may dwell and reign on the earth.
13:10
For the stars of heaven and their splendor will not spread forth their light; the sun is darkened in its rising, and the moon will not shine with its light. LXX: For the stars of heaven and Orion, and all the adornment of heaven, will not give their light: and they will be darkened when the sun rises, and the moon will not give its light. Where we have translated their splendor, that is, beyond doubt, of the stars, Aquila and Theodotion set down the very Hebrew word CHISILEEM (כסיליהם): for which the Seventy translated Orion, adding of their own and all the adornment of heaven, which is to be marked beforehand with an obelus. Now the fables of the Gentiles say that Orion has twenty-two stars, of which four are of the third magnitude, nine of the fourth, and again another nine of the fifth, and by others they are called Bootes. We read also in Job of the Hyades, and Vesper, and Arcturus, and the treasuries, or the inner parts of the South (Job 9:9), of which we must speak in their own place. Nor ought we to think that among the Hebrews these stars are called by these names which the Greek and Latin tongues sound forth, but that they have names of their own. For just as God called the light, day; and the firmament, heaven; and the dry land, earth; and the gatherings of the waters, seas (Gen 1); so too he called the several stars by their own names, whose proper meaning our language does not express. It is written of God in another place: Who numbers the multitude of the stars, and calls them all by names. When therefore the day of the Lord has come to make the whole world a wilderness and to remove the sinners utterly from it (Ps 146 [147]:4), then, in comparison with the divine majesty, the stars of heaven and all their splendor will withdraw their light. Nor is it surprising to say this of the lesser stars, since even the sun is darkened in its rising, and the moon does not have its accustomed splendor. But what the Seventy translated, that the stars and Orion and all the adornment of heaven are darkened when the sun rises, has nothing of a sign or of a wonder; for this happens at all times, that when the sun has risen the stars that are in the heaven do not appear. Nor is it surprising that he said this of the sun, since even when the moon is full and shining the whole night most of the stars do not shine. And that there are stars in the heaven even by day is proved by an eclipse of the sun: when it has been obscured by the shadow of the earth, as the philosophers argue, and by the disk of the moon set in its way, the stars are seen more clearly in the heaven.
13:11
And I will visit upon the evils of the world, and against the ungodly their iniquities. When God visits and strikes, he strikes for this purpose, that he may amend. Accordingly, when he is vehemently angry with those who do not do penance: I will not visit, he says, upon your daughters when they have committed fornication, nor upon your daughters-in-law when they have committed adultery (Hos 4:14). On the contrary, of those who are to believe in Christ it is said (Ps 88 [89]:33): I will visit their iniquities with a rod, and their sins with scourges: but my mercy I will not take away from them.
And I will make the pride of the unbelievers to rest, and I will humble the arrogance of the mighty. LXX: And I will destroy the insolence of the wicked, and I will humble the insolence of the proud. The Hebrew word GAON (גאון), which plainly sounds arrogance and pride, Theodotion and the Seventy always translated insolence, expressing the sense rather than the word, because every proud man is ready for insolence. Therefore the Lord visits upon the evils of the world, and against the ungodly their iniquities, for this reason: that he may curb the arrogance of the proud and humble the pride of the mighty. For God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble (1 Pet 5). And in Proverbs we read: Before ruin the heart of a man is lifted up, and before glory it is humbled (Prov 16:18). Ruin always follows pride, and glory humility: For he who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 14). We read in another place: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will reject (1 Cor 1:19). Not that true wisdom and true prudence are destroyed by the Lord, but the knowledge falsely so called: those who treasure up for themselves a lying tongue, and fail searching with searching, and find nothing, speaking iniquity on high and setting their mouth against heaven. Hence the pride of heretics is properly called insolence against the truth.
13:12
A man will be more precious than gold, and a human being than pure fine gold. LXX: And those who have been left will be more honored than refined gold, and a man will be more honorable than the stone of Sophir. At the consummation of the world, when the world has been reduced to a wilderness, and the sun darkened in its rising, and the moon has not given its splendor, such signs and portents will be wrought by the Antichrist that, as iniquity increases, the love of many will grow cold, so as to deceive, if it be possible, even the elect of God (Matt 24). Then a man will be more precious than gold, which in Hebrew is called PHAZ (פז), and Aquila translated κιῤῥὸν, which is of the finest and blood-red color; and a human being than the purest fine gold, which in Hebrew is called OPHIR (אופיר), and Aquila translated σπήλωμα ὀφεὶρ, which the Seventy, intending I know not what, translated stone of Sophir. Now it is a place of India in which the best gold is produced; as we read in Genesis of the river Phison: This is it which encircles the whole land of Evila, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is the best: and there is the carbuncle and the green stone (Gen 2:11). And more precious is understood as meaning rarer. For everything that is rare is precious, as we also read in the volume of Samuel: And the word of the Lord was precious in Israel (1 Sam 3:1).
13:13
Upon this I will shake the heaven, and the earth will be moved from its place. LXX: For the heaven will rage, and the earth will be moved from its foundations. When a man has become more precious than gold, and a human being than pure fine gold, and that has been fulfilled which is written: Do you think, when the Son of Man comes, he will find faith on the earth (Luke 18:8)? then both the heavens and the earth will be moved. For heaven and earth will pass away, not by their own will and by their own choice, as many suppose, believing them to be living beings; but because of the indignation of the Lord of hosts, and because of the day of his fury, who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble. Hence what is said in the Seventy, for the heaven will rage, is to be taken μετωνυμικῶς of those who dwell in heaven, just as if we were to say: the whole city cried out, and the entire town went out to meet the judge. And of the foundations of the earth we read in Proverbs too: God by wisdom founded the earth (Prov 3:19). And the Lord says to Job: Where were you when I was founding the earth (Job 38:4)? Not that the earth has foundations laid down as a mass in the deep; but the will and power of God, by which all things are held together, is to be called its foundations. For he himself founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the rivers, and he himself hung it upon nothing (Ps 23 [24]; Job 26).
13:14, 16
And it will be like a fleeing fawn, and like a flock of sheep, and there will be none to gather them: they will turn each to his own people, and each will flee to his own land. Everyone who is found will be slain, and everyone who comes upon them will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered, and their wives will be ravished. When heaven and earth have been shaken, the devil, the crooked serpent, will flee, or every doctrine contrary to the truth, which is divided into teachers and disciples: the former of whom, because of their ὀξυδέρκειαν, are called in the Greek tongue Dorcades, that is, roe-deer; the followers are like brute animals, and wandering hither and thither they have none to direct them: for they have lost him of whom it is written: The steps of a man are directed by the Lord (Prov 20:24). And these, freed from their most evil teachers, will turn to their own people, and each will flee to his own land, from which they sprang: but whoever is found will be slain, or have his throat cut. And this happens not only at the consummation of the world, but to this very day in the Church: when the teachers have been overcome, the deceived flock returns to its people and to its own land; and in that it is found, it is slain, so that it ceases to be heretical, and whoever comes upon them will fall by the spiritual sword. Then their infants and little ones, who have not yet come to the full age of error, they will dash in pieces before the eyes of the teachers, and will plunder their houses and ravish their wives, depraved wisdom and perverse doctrine. Hence for fathers of this sort, whose little ones are to be slain, we ought to pray and say: Give them, O Lord. What will you give them? A barren womb and dry breasts (Hos 9:14). For they have travailed with iniquity, they have conceived sorrow, and they have brought forth unrighteousness.
13:17-18
Behold, I will stir up against them the Medes, who do not seek silver nor desire gold: but with arrows they kill the little ones, and on the sucklings of the womb they will have no pity, and their eye will not spare their sons. We find in Genesis (Gen 10) that Madai was the founder of the nation of the Medes, which means measure, or from the mighty one, or from the strong one. Therefore against the Babylonians, who are confused in mind, ministers of strength are stirred up by the mighty and strong God to punish, that they may render to each according to his works. For with the measure with which they have measured, it will be measured back to them. They will return into their bosom a measure shaken down and pressed together and full and running over (Matt 7, and Luke 6). They will receive neither silver nor gold, that is, neither beauty of eloquence nor sharpness of wit, in which they formerly applauded themselves; but they will afflict with punishments those handed over to them; and they will have no pity on the little ones and the sucklings of the womb, so that they may rather show pity. And would that we too might be stirred up by the Lord, and that this power might be given to us, that we should desire neither the silver nor the gold of worldly eloquence and wisdom, but should kill the sons of the heretics, and of all who have been deceived, with spiritual arrows, that is, with the testimonies of the Scriptures: and that those who are nourished with the milk of error may be slaughtered without any mercy, so that they may perish by a merciful cruelty, and that we may have pity on no infancy, and may be worthy of that beatitude: Blessed is he who will take hold of his little ones and dash them against the rock!
13:18ff.
And Babylon, that glorious one among kingdoms, renowned in the pride of the Chaldeans, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It will not be inhabited to the end, and it will not be founded unto generation and generation: nor will the Arab pitch his tents there, nor will shepherds rest there: but wild beasts will rest there, and their houses will be filled with dragons: and ostriches will dwell there, and hairy ones will dance there; and owls will answer there in its dwellings, and sirens in the shrines of pleasure.
14:1
Its time is near to come, and its days will not be prolonged. LXX: And Babylon, which is called renowned, the glorious one of the king of the Chaldeans, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah; it will not be inhabited forever, nor will anyone enter it for many generations; nor will Arabs pass through it, nor will shepherds rest in it; but wild beasts will rest there, and the houses will be filled with noise, and sirens will lie down there, and demons will dance there, and onocentaurs will dwell there; and hedgehogs will make their dens in their houses. It will come quickly and will not delay. What follows: And its days will not be drawn out, ⁚ is to be marked with asterisks, because it was added from Theodotion. When the Medes have been stirred up against the city of confusion, who count neither gold nor silver among good things, who kill the little ones with arrows and have no pity on the sucklings of the womb, and whose eye does not spare their sons, the city once renowned, which was in the pride of the Chaldeans, who mean as demons, will be overthrown just as Sodom and Gomorrah were overthrown, so that no trace of its former dwelling remains in it: but after there has been a new heaven and a new earth, and the form of this world has passed away (1 Cor 7), the city of confusion will not be inhabited forever, and will by no means recover the same state. For after it has ceased to be in its former glory, the Arab, who means western and of the evening, will not pitch his tents there, so as to desire to dwell in that which he has seen to be deserted. Now the Arab in the present passage is taken in the good sense, because he always strains toward the end and, forgetting what lies behind, stretches himself out to what lies before. Nor will the shepherds rest there, who are accustomed to feed the most gentle flock of the Lord in Jerusalem; but on the contrary, wild beasts will rest there, which the Psalmist detests, saying: Do not deliver to the beasts the soul that confesses to you (Ps 73 [74]:19). For these Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion set down the Hebrew word itself, SIIM (ציים). And their houses, that is, those of the Babylonians, will be filled, according to the Seventy and Theodotion, ἤχου, that is, with noise and clamors; according to Aquila, with typhoons, which we have turned into dragons; according to Symmachus, with OIIM (אחים), the word contained in the Hebrew. And ostriches will dwell there, an animal that always seeks out solitudes, of which more is written in Job: which, though it seems to have wings, yet is not lifted high above the earth: for which the Seventy translated σειρῆνας, that is, sirens. The hairy ones, who in Hebrew are called SIRIM (שעירים), Theodotion translated as with hair erect and standing up; Symmachus and the Seventy translated demons. For the onocentaurs too, which the Seventy alone translated, imitating the fables of the Gentiles, who say that there were hippocentaurs, the three other translators set down the Hebrew word itself, IIM (איים), which we have turned into owls. And where the Seventy said, hedgehogs will make their dens in their houses, and in the Hebrew THANNIM (תנים) is set down, Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion translated sirens, signifying either some kind of beasts, or demons who, according to the error of the Gentiles, sing sweetly and deceive men who cannot pass through the shipwreck of this world with stopped ears. Moreover the name onocentaur, compounded of asses and centaurs, seems to me to signify those who in part have some human understanding, and again are drawn away into vices by pleasures and the mire of baseness. It is said, therefore, according to tropology, that at the end of the world, or of each one's death, all the glory and pride of the Chaldeans and the confusion of the world will depart from us; and that all things will be overthrown as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah; and that the state of this world will be no more, but will perish forever. Nor will the Arab pitch his tents there, of whom it is said in the sixty-seventh psalm: Make a way for him who rides upon the setting of the sun; the Lord is his name (Ps 67 [68]:5). Nor will the shepherds rest there, namely the angels who preside over the human race and daily see the face of the Father: but wild beasts and dragons and ostriches and hairy ones and owls and sirens will rest there, all of which beasts we understand figuratively as angels, or demons, and those to whom we are handed over for punishment. And in the houses once of pleasure, where there was gladness and joy, there will be the wailing of owls and the lamentable voice of the sirens, which leads its hearers to death. That the time of judgment is imminent, and that the day of the consummation of Babylon is not prolonged, he will by no means wonder who sees Babylon daily overthrown through holy men in those who believe in the Lord, and who sees that every length of time, compared with eternity, is near. Of the kinds of beasts, or rather of monsters, we have spoken briefly, because in the former book they were in part touched upon according to the history. This too is to be considered: that after the Church's preaching and the teaching of the Savior have overthrown the city of confusion, so that it is compared to Sodom and Gomorrah, it is not inhabited by holy men, nor do the shepherds rest in it who were accustomed to feed the flock of Christ: but on the contrary, wild beasts and dragons and ostriches rest there, and hairy ones dance in it. For whatever the heretics say in the synagogues of Satan is not the teaching of the Lord, but the howling of demons and of hairy ones, whom Esau imitated. And sirens will rest in the shrines of pleasure, who with sweet and deadly song draw souls down into the deep, so that, as the shipwreck rages, they may be devoured by wolves and dogs. Near, therefore, and pressing daily is the time of the ruin of the heretics, and their overthrow is not deferred.
For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose out of Israel, and will make them rest upon their own soil: the stranger will be joined to them, and will cleave to the house of Jacob. And the peoples will take them and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel will possess them upon the land of the Lord as menservants and maidservants; and they will take captive those who had taken them captive, and they will subdue their oppressors. And it will be in that day, when God has given you rest from your labor, and from your trouble, and from the hard bondage in which you served before: you will take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and you will say. For stranger, that is, proselyte, the Seventy translated γηώραν, which in Hebrew is called GER (גר). Hence I think that the son of Moses too, who was a stranger in the land, was named by his father Gersam (Exod 1). Therefore georas is a Hebrew word declined after Greek custom: although someone ignorant of the Hebrew tongue tries to express a Greek etymology in it, from the fact that it has the care of an earthly thing: for γῆ, he says, is the word for earth, and ὤρα, φροντὶς, that is, care. Again, for MASAL (משל), which Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion translated parable, and whom we too have followed, the Seventy translated lament. Now the order is this: after Babylon has been deserted forever, so as to be a dwelling of wild beasts, the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, namely on him who supplanted vices; and he will choose Israel, him who beholds God with the mind. And note the propriety of the words: on Jacob, who is still set in the wrestling, he will have mercy; but to Israel, who received the name after the victory, not mercy but election is fitted. He will also make them rest upon their own land, of which the Savior speaks: Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land (Matt 5:4), and I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Ps 26 [27]:13). There will also be joined to the house of Jacob those who were chosen through the Apostles, the multitude of the nations; and they will take the remnant of the house of Israel and bring them to their own place, so that they may dwell in their tents; and the house of Israel will possess them upon the land of the Lord as menservants and maidservants. For it profits the wicked to serve the good. Hence it is said to Esau too: You shall serve your brother. And to Jacob: Your brother shall serve you (Gen 27). And they will take those who had formerly deceived them with sophistries: and they will reduce to bondage their oppressors, who do all things for the sake of gain. And after Jacob and Israel have rested from their labor, in which they had labored much fighting against the world and the heretics, and from their trouble and bondage, in which they had formerly served a malignant interpretation and false doctrines, then they will take up a lament and parable against the king of Babylon, namely the discourse of heretical error and confusion, and will say what follows. The Jews interpret this passage carnally, but they will not be able to show that it came to pass after they returned from Babylon. For neither did the Babylonians, who had first taken them captive, serve them; nor, when the Babylonians were conquered, did they possess their houses; nor did they have them as menservants and maidservants. It remains, therefore, that according to their fables they think this will come about in respect of this Roman empire: that when the Romans have been overcome in the last time, the nations whom they formerly served will serve them. But if, by following the letter, they deceive themselves with a false hope, who will grant them that Rome is called Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar the king of the Roman empire?
14:5-6
How has the oppressor ceased, the tribute come to rest? The Lord has broken the staff of the ungodly, the rod of the rulers, which struck the peoples in indignation with an incurable stroke, which subdued the nations in fury, persecuting cruelly. In the Epistle of Peter we read: It is time for judgment to begin at the house of God (1 Pet 4:17). And in Ezekiel it is said to the tormentors: Begin at my holy ones (Ezek 9:6). For the order of judgment is arranged according to the diversity of sin, so that those who have offended less are purged first. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Therefore, when Israel has been freed from hard bondage, he will take up a parable against the king of Babylon, which we ought to understand as a parable. For if the discourse is against Nebuchadnezzar, and a simple exposition of the history, how is it called a parable, when it παραβάλλεται, that is, is compared, to nothing else? Israel therefore wonders how the oppressor has ceased, who was accustomed to exact payment down to the last farthing. And he was accustomed to exact from none but debtors, who say in the Lord's Prayer: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors (Matt 6:12). To this exactor debtors are handed over by the judge, who sends them into prison and exacts down to the least sin. Accordingly Paul the apostle too handed over to the exactor the Corinthian fornicator, who had taken his father's wife, and also Phygellus and Hermogenes (1 Cor 5; 2 Tim 1). And of these exactors it is also said above: My people, your oppressors plunder you; and those who demand payment rule over you. For tribute Aquila translated famine. For since the bridegroom has been taken from us, we suffer a famine of the word of God and fast continually from the body of the Lord. And for this reason the rod and staff of the ungodly, for which the Seventy translated yoke, strikes us, or oppresses us, because we would not bear the lightest yoke, the yoke of the Savior. And with this staff and this rod he struck the nations with incurable fury, and cruelly pursued those who fled: not wishing to amend those handed over to him, but to kill them.
14:7ff.
The whole earth has come to rest and fallen silent; it has rejoiced and exulted; the fir trees too have rejoiced over you, and the cedars of Lebanon. Since you have fallen asleep, no one comes up to cut us down. Hell beneath was troubled: to meet your coming it stirred up the giants for you. All the princes of the earth have risen from their thrones; all the princes of the nations, all of them will answer and say to you: You too have been wounded as we were, you have become like us? Your pride has been dragged down to hell, your corpse has fallen; beneath you the moth will be spread, decay, and worms will be your covering. At the destruction of the ungodly king, who struck the nations with an incurable stroke and pursued them cruelly, the whole earth came to rest and fell silent, which before was full of tumults and sedition, so much so that the fir trees and the cedars of Lebanon rejoiced, of which it is written in the psalms: You brought a vine out of Egypt, you cast out the nations and planted it. Its shade covered the mountains, and its branches the cedars of God (Ps 79 [80]:9). These cedars of God, because at one time they sinned, the Lord handed over to punishments to be broken. Hence in another psalm it is said: The Lord will break the cedars of Lebanon (Ps 28 [29]:5). And the fir trees ought to be taken as all the lofty, those who are sublime in the service of the Lord, who said with harmonious voice: Since you have fallen asleep. Note that even the death of death is called a sleeping. No one comes up to cut us down. For when the strong man has been overcome and his vessels plundered, the rest of his attendants also have fallen. Hence the Lord too says in the Gospel (Matt 25:41): Depart into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. How many have these fellers of timber and trees cut down with their axes and made to fall? Hell too, troubled, or turned to bitterness, to meet the coming of the true Nebuchadnezzar, is the place of punishments and torments, in which the rich man clothed in purple is seen: to which the Lord also descended, to release the bound from prison. We can also call hell, coming to meet him, that angel who is set over the punishments of hell, who stirred up all the giants: for which some have translated Raphaim, others Titans. And they are called giants according to the custom of the heathen, who suppose them earth-born, whom the earth begot. But we, according to the etymology of the Greek word, can call giants those who have served earthly works. Then there follows: All the princes of the earth have risen from their thrones, at the coming of their former prince: so that him whom they formerly honored for his power they might afterward marvel at in punishments, and say: You too have been wounded as we also were: you have become like us. These words have this sense: We thought that we, because of our weakness, had not been able to resist the power of God, and that you alone were the one who would remain in your loftiness; but, as the facts show, you too have been wounded and taken, and have become like us; so that those whom rank separated on earth, punishment unites in hell. Your pride has been dragged down to hell, or your glory, and your corpse has fallen, or, as the Seventy translated, your great gladness, in which you formerly rejoiced when the nations were subject to you. Beneath you decay will be spread, and worms will be your covering. This is the rest of the devil, this the bed of the tempter, who was lifted up into such pride that he dared even to tempt the Lord, saying: All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me (Matt 4:9). The decay and the moth and the covering of worms are understood either as the eternal punishments which one's own conscience begets, or as the material of torments, which is born from one's own sins. For just as, so long as there is matter in a corpse and any moisture in the corpse, worms are born from decay, so from the very matter of sins torments are begotten. Hence the Apostle Paul too, death having been slain, to which the prophetic word spoke through Hosea: I will be your death, O death; I will be your bite, O hell (Hos 13:14), says to it: Where is your contention, O death? Where is your sting, O death (1 Cor 15:55)? For when it is dead, there is no one to cut us down: for there will by no means be sin that must be cut down, since the sting of death is sin.
14:12
How have you fallen from heaven, Lucifer, who rose in the morning? You have crashed to the earth, you who wounded the nations? LXX: How has Lucifer fallen from heaven, who rose in the morning? He who sent to all the nations has been crushed to the earth. For Lucifer, who in Hebrew is called ELIL (הילל), Aquila translated howling son of the dawn. For truly he ought to howl and wail, who because of his pride was cast headlong from heaven to earth and crushed. Hence the Savior too says to the disciples: I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:18). Not, I see now; but I saw before, when he fell. And if he fell from so great a height because of pride, you too ought not to glory because the demons are subject to you, but because your names are written in heaven; so that whence he fell through pride, you may ascend through humility. This is the prince of the world, who rose in the morning among the other stars, and by his own fault was made from Lucifer into Vesper, and not rising but setting: who wounded the nations, or who sent his attendants to the nations, to deceive all by his fraud. These are the false apostles, deceitful workers, who transform themselves into Apostles of Christ, who sow darnel over the good seed while the teachers of the Churches sleep and are unwilling or unable to resist their malice. And Jacob, and Israel, on whom the Lord has had mercy and whom he has chosen, still says these things to the devil, or, as the Seventy will have it, about the devil, that is, not in the second person but in the third.
14:13-14
You who said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of God I will exalt my throne: I will sit on the mountain of the covenant, on the sides of the North: I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. He said these things either before he fell from heaven or after he had fallen from heaven. If he was still set in heaven, how does he say, I will ascend into heaven (Ps 113 [115]:16)? But because we read: The heaven of heaven is the Lord's, when he was in heaven, that is, in the firmament, he desired to ascend into the heaven where the throne of the Lord is, not by humility but by pride. But if he speaks these words after he fell from heaven, we ought to understand arrogance: that even when cast down he does not rest, but still promises himself great things, to be not among the stars but above the stars of God. And while the Lord says to the Apostles: It is enough for the disciple to be as his master, and for the servant as his lord (Matt 10:25), and says to the Father: Holy Father, grant that as I and you are one, so these also may be one in us (John 17:11), this one arrogates so much to himself that he boasts he will set his throne above the stars of heaven, which have not fallen. And what he adds: I will sit on the mountain of the covenant, on the sides of the North, for which the Seventy translated, on a lofty mountain, above the high mountains which are toward the North, let us refer to what is said in Jeremiah: From the North evils will blaze forth upon all the inhabitants of the earth (Jer 1:14). And that the pot set on fire is kindled from the face of the North. This is the North, the harshest wind, from which the Lord wishes to free his captives and bring them back into the holy city, saying: I will say to the North, Bring; and to the South-west wind, Do not hold back; bring my sons from a distant land (below, Isa 43:6). But that which can seem contrary to this, the mountains of Zion, the sides of the North, the city of the great king, is easily resolved. For those who once were in the sides of the North, most hardened, afterward through penance began to be in the city of God. Always a Lucifer of this sort seeks to ascend above those who bear the image of the heavenly, and who shine in the Church like the stars of God: and to sit on the mountain of the pact or covenant, that is, in the Church, which is set on high and possesses inhabitants who were once from the sides of the North. He has so forgotten himself that he wishes to ascend above the clouds, which the Lord commanded not to rain rain upon Israel, and to which the truth of the Lord reaches, to whom Obadiah also says: Though you be exalted like the eagle, and set your nest among the stars of heaven, thence I will drag you down, says the Lord (Obad 4). Unhappy Judas, who like a cloud was sent with the other Apostles to rain rain upon Israel, and was like a star among the other stars, to whom the Lord said: Let your light shine before men (Matt 5:16), by his own fault received the devil as his rider, who, to complete his words of pride, dared even to say this: I will be like the Most High, so that, as Christ has his Prophets and Apostles, so I too may have false apostles. All these things are to be referred to the heretics, who, though they are below, boast with their prince that they are on high.
14:15
But you will be dragged down to hell, into the depth of the pit. LXX: But now you will go down into hell, and to the foundations of the earth. You will not go down to hell of your own accord, for this belongs to the Lord the Savior, to free the bound from hell, but you will be dragged down to hell against your will, so that you who could have climbed to the heights through virtues are dragged down to punishments through vices. The saints have the wings of an eagle and the wings of a dove, and can say: I will fly away and be at rest (Ps 54 [55]). But the ungodly, like the Egyptians, sank like lead in the mighty waters, and sank into the depth like a stone (Exod 15). Hence also iniquity, or, as it is better in the Hebrew, ungodliness, is seen sitting upon a talent of lead (Zech 5). Therefore what we read elsewhere: Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled (Luke 18:14), the king of confusion also suffered, so that he was dragged down to the foundations of the earth, or, as it is more truly in the Hebrew, into the depth of the pit. Of the foundations of the earth it is written in Deuteronomy: A fire has been kindled in my fury, it will burn down to the lowest hell. It will devour the earth and its foundations (Deut 32:22), namely those who are earthly. Of the pit too, that by it the depths of hell are signified, these are the testimonies: I am counted with those who go down into the pit. And: They have laid me in the lowest pit (Ps 87 [88]:5, 7). For just as a pit receives the waters that run down into it, so hell receives souls: into which pit Benaiah went down in the time of snow and cold and slew a lion in it (2 Sam 23, and 1 Chr 11). Hence the heretics too forsake the Lord, the fountain of living water, and dig for themselves broken pits which cannot hold water. Of these pits, which do not have the fervor of the Holy Spirit, and are not like the prophet Jeremiah, who according to the Seventy translators said: I found warm water in the desert (Jer 2), but, as love grew cold, have lost the warmth of the Holy Spirit: that is the pit of which the same Jeremiah speaks: As a pit cools water, so wickedness cools those who have it (Jer 6:7). Would that they, according to the Apocalypse of John, were either hot or cold (Rev 3), that is, either believed or did not believe at all, lest through lukewarmness and the pretense of faith they be cast out by the Lord!
14:16-17
Those who see you will bow down to you, and will look closely at you. Is this the man who troubled the earth? who shook kingdoms? who made the world a desert, and destroyed its cities, and did not open the prison to its prisoners? Or, as the Seventy translated: did not release those who were being led away? Those who see Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, fallen from heaven to hell, with the gaze not of the eyes but of the heart, will bow down in the humility which is contrary to pride, and will look closely at him, saying these things: Is not this the man, or the human being, who troubled, or stirred up the earth? And the sense is this: he who had said, I will be like the Most High, and boasted himself God, is proved to be a man, of whom it is said in the ninth psalm, which is properly against the devil: Arise, O Lord, let not man prevail (Ps 9:20). And in the Gospel: An enemy man sowed tares over it (Matt 13:25). Hence we read it said to him and his companions: I said, You are gods, and all sons of the Most High. But you will die like men, and you will fall like one of the princes (Ps 81 [82]:6). And to the same, under the figure of the prince of Tyre, it is said: Because your heart has been exalted, and you have said, I am God, I have dwelt in the dwelling of God in the heart of the sea: yet you are a man and not God, and you have set your heart as the heart of God (Ezek 28:2). This man, this human being, troubled the whole earth, namely those who hear with Adam: Earth you are, and into earth you shall go (Gen 3:19), and shook kingdoms, or kings, whose heart is in the hand of the Lord (Prov 21). He shook them, it says, he did not overthrow them. Hence one of those who had been shaken, and yet had not fallen, said: But my feet were almost moved (Ps 72 [73]:2). And the Apostle tells believers to take up the armor of God and stand against the snares of the devil (Eph 6). But the house that is founded upon the rock is shaken by no storm (Matt 7). There follows: Who made the world a desert, or, as according to the Hebrew all the others besides the Seventy translated, as a desert. For by vices and sins he made the world, which in Hebrew is called THEBEL (תבל), a desert, so that it had no virtue, or was subject to the same vices with which the solitude of the nations is filled. He also destroyed the cities of that same world, to make synagogues of the devil out of the Churches of Christ, and to pollute the purity of the true faith with heretical filth. But also to its prisoners, that is, the world's, he did not open the prison. We were all prisoners, and were held shut up in prison, to which prisoners the Savior said, come out, and to those who were in darkness, be uncovered. For the Lord sets free those in fetters. And those freed by him give thanks, saying: You have broken my bonds (Ps 115 [116]:17; Jer 2, Prov 5). For each one is bound fast with the cords of his own sins: and these cords and bonds the Apostles too can loose, imitating their master, who had said to them: Whatever you loose upon earth will be loosed also in heaven (Matt 18). And the Apostles loose them by the word of God, and by the testimonies of the Scriptures, and by exhortation to the virtues.
14:18-19
All the kings of the nations, all of them, have slept in glory, each one in his own house. But you have been cast out of your tomb like corrupt matter: polluted, wrapped up with the slain and those pierced through by the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit. LXX: All the kings of the nations have slept in honor, a man in his own house. But you will be cast out on the mountains like an untimely birth, abominable, and wrapped up with those slain by the sword who go down to the foundations of the earth. The kings of the nations, to whom, according to the Song of Deuteronomy, God had entrusted the nations to be governed (Deut 32), who were shaken by Nebuchadnezzar and yet not overthrown, in whom sin by no means reigns; but because their heart was in the hand of God, they did not fall at all. For indeed the Savior, just as he is called God of gods, so too is he Lord of lords and King of kings. These kings, then, all of them, have rested in their glory, each one in his own house. For with the Father there are diverse mansions (John 14): and according to the variety of the virtues, differences of dwellings. But Nebuchadnezzar has been cast out of his tomb, and not even in death has he rested from torments. And he has been cast out like corrupt matter, which in Hebrew is called NESER (נצר), which Aquila translated ἰχῶρα, namely putrefaction and filth, which Symmachus translated ἔκτρωμα, that is, an untimely birth, the Seventy a dead thing, Theodotion a shoot: although this very word above (Isa 11:1), where we read of Christ: A rod will come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower will rise up from its root, the Seventy translated flower, Theodotion shoot, Aquila ἀκρέμονα, that is, sucker. Properly, however, Neser means sucker, which grows at the roots of trees and, torn off by farmers, is thrown away as useless; hence we too translated useless stock. Therefore Nebuchadnezzar, like a useless stock prepared for burning, or polluted like corrupt matter, and wrapped up with those who were slain by him with the sword and went down to the foundations of the pit, will be dragged down into the depth, and will not have fellowship in burial even with those whom he slew. For the punishment of the author of an offense is one thing, and that of him who was compelled by the author another. This is the sword by which very many have been wounded and slain, of which we read in the seventh psalm: Unless you are converted, he will brandish his sword; he has bent his bow and made it ready. And in it he has prepared the instruments of death: he has made his arrows for those who burn (Ps 7:13, 14), namely for those who have received into their heart the fiery darts of the devil. But according to the Seventy, the corpse of Nebuchadnezzar, polluted and pierced through, will lie with very many slain on the mountains of pride, and will be led down to hell. And Symmachus translated foundations of the pit in place of stones of the pit, to signify in other words the depth and the Tartarus of hell.
14:20
Like a putrid corpse, you will not have fellowship with them even in burial. For you have destroyed your land, you have slain your people. LXX: As a garment mixed with blood will not be clean, so neither will you be clean, because you have destroyed my land and have slain my people. Since the Hebrew and the edition of the Seventy differ greatly from each other, let us discuss each separately. Like a putrid corpse, or, as Aquila translated, trampled, you will not have fellowship of burial, not even with those whom you slew. For you are the teacher, they were the disciples: and from him to whom more has been entrusted, more is required. For you have destroyed your land, you have killed your people, namely those who were entrusted to you to govern. Hence he dares to say to the Savior: All these have been delivered to me, and I will give them to you, if you will fall down and worship me (Matt 4:9). And that the corpse of the devil is putrid because of the greatness of his sins, he will not be able to doubt who reads that sin is most foul-smelling, the sinner himself saying: My scars have putrefied and are corrupted because of my foolishness (Ps 37 [38]:6). On the contrary, virtue is of a good odor: hence the love of spiritual brethren is also compared to ointment, which runs down upon the beard, the beard of Aaron, and upon the border of his garment (Ps 132 [133]). And the bridegroom says to the bride: Your odor is sweet, and your face is comely (Song 2:14). And how the corpse of the devil is spiritually trampled, that saying of the Apostle teaches us: God will crush Satan under your feet swiftly (Rom 16:20). And the words of the Lord, who says: I will blot them out like the mud of the streets (Ps 17 [18]:43). This one, because he has destroyed the land entrusted to him, and slaughtered the people committed to him, by no means keeping them alive for God but preparing them as companions of his burial, therefore the seed of the most wicked will not be, nor will it be named, forever. But according to the Seventy it has this sense: O Lucifer, who rose in the morning, who, when you had the works of virtue and of light, were the garment of God, and of whom it could be said: Clothed with light as with a garment (Ps 103 [104]:2): because you have slain many with the sword who went down to hell, and have been polluted with their blood, you will by no means be called the garment of God, but a garment mixed with gore, not stained and polluted, so that you might seem to have something clean, but wholly bloodied with blood. And this is to be noted, that it is said to the devil: as a garment mixed with blood will not be clean, so neither will you be clean. Where then are those who grant the devil penance, and say that he can be made clean? Nor do we on that account at once concede the heresy which asserts that there are diverse natures, and that there is one which never receives healing. For this garment, with which God was once clothed, is not unclean of itself, and was not so made by God; but because it is mixed with blood, and has wholly polluted itself by its own fault, and with evils added to it, it will not be clean. And it will not be clean for this reason: because it has destroyed the land of the Lord and slain his people, destroying and slaying the land of Judea and the land of confession and all the saints: and therefore it will not remain forever. Hence also in the Gospel it is said: Depart into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41). And just as the saint is the garment of God, and a new garment, and is clothed with the tunic of salvation and of gladness, saying: Let my soul exult in the Lord: for he has clothed me with the garment of salvation, and has surrounded me with the tunic of gladness (Isa 61:10), so on the contrary the sinner, who bears the image of the old and earthly man, deserves to hear: Behold, all of you will grow old like a garment, and the moth will devour you (Isa 50:9). But he who has advanced in wickedness, and has been unwilling to cleanse his oldness by newness, will be compared not to an old garment but to the rag of a menstruous woman, saying: We have gone astray, and we have all become unclean; all our righteousness is like the rag of a menstruous woman.
14:21-22
Seed of the most wicked, prepare your sons for slaughter for the iniquities of their fathers: they will not rise up nor inherit the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities. And I will rise up against them, says the Lord of hosts: and I will destroy the name of Babylon and its remnant, and its offshoot and offspring, says the Lord of hosts. LXX: Most wicked seed, prepare your sons for slaughter for the sin of your father: that they may not rise up and possess the land, and fill the land with cities. And I will rise up against them, says the Lord Sabaoth: and I will destroy their name and remnant and seed. For most wicked seed, which the Seventy translated, in the Hebrew is written ZERA MRIM (זרע מרעים), which the others translated seed of the most wicked. Not that the seed itself is evil of itself: for God made all things good (Gen 1); but that from those who are most wicked by their own will an evil seed has sprung, which comes about by will, not by nature. Hence we read in Daniel too: Seed of Canaan, and not of Judah (Dan 13:56). And of good sons it is said by the Apostle: In Christ Jesus through the Gospel I have begotten you (1 Cor 4:15). And in the Gospel: As many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God (John 1:12). For everyone who commits sin is of the devil. To this seed, therefore, it is commanded that it prepare for slaughter its sons, namely all most wicked thoughts and evil works, which were born of ungodly fathers, who beyond doubt signify the hostile powers. These most wicked sons are slaughtered in the iniquities of their fathers for this reason: that they may no longer rise up and possess the land, which is to be possessed and filled by the saints, so that cities of the Lord may be built in it. And since the victory of men is not perfect: For unless the Lord guards the city, those who guard it will keep watch in vain (Ps 126 [127]:1): therefore the Lord himself will rise up against the sons of the most wicked, and will destroy out of confusion their name and remnant, and every offshoot and offspring, so that they may no longer sprout in the cities of the Lord. We read in the Gospel (John 8) that the devil is a liar from the beginning, and his father, that is, of the lie; which many not understanding wish the father of the devil to be the dragon who reigns in the sea, whom the Hebrews call Leviathan. And they think this suits the present passage according to the Seventy translators, who said: for the sins of your father: whereas in the Hebrew ABOTHAM (אבתם) plainly signifies not of your father but of their fathers.
14:23
And I will make it a possession of the hedgehog, and pools of waters: and I will sweep it with a broom, grinding it, says the Lord of hosts. LXX: And I will make Babylonia desert, says the Lord, so that hedgehogs dwell in it, and it will come to nothing. And I will make it a gulf of mud, for destruction. When the Lord of hosts has destroyed the name of Babylon, and its remnant, and its offshoot, and all its offspring, he will not be content with its destruction unless he gives it as a possession to the hedgehog, and as pools of waters, and sweeps it, not lightly and casually, but grinding, so that nothing of its old filth remains in it. In the Acts of the Apostles it is written (Acts 10 and 11) that in that linen vessel which, let down by four corners, hung from heaven, all kinds of four-footed beasts and creeping things and birds were contained; which the Apostle afterward explaining says: God has shown me that I should call no man unclean. The characters of men, therefore, were shown in the various animals, just as the Pharisees and Sadducees are called a brood of vipers because of their wickedness, and Herod is called a fox because of his deceits (Luke 3 and 13); and the luxurious and those prone to pleasure are called horses, mad after women (Jer 5): and, Do not become like the horse and the mule, in which there is no understanding (Ps 31 [32]). On the contrary, the innocent are called doves and sheep. Therefore, according to the teaching of the Lord the Savior, who called the cares of this world and the seduction of riches thorns, the hedgehog seems to me to be he who, according to the Apostle, rejoices in the uncertainty of riches (1 Tim 6), and trusts that he is armed, not with the armor of God, but with the thorns and sins of this world, to whom that word of the Gospel is most rightly said: Fool, this night your soul will be taken from you; and what you have prepared, whose will it be (Luke 12:20)? Such inhabitants has Babylon, deserted of virtues, where there is no well-watered field to bear the fruits of various seeds, but barren pools, slimy and muddy, in which animals that delight in mire creep. For this reason the most merciful Lord swept it, grinding most vehemently, and as with a kind of drag-net cleansed it down to the bare ground, so that the Babylonian seeds might perish and it might be inhabited by hedgehogs alone. When we see anyone sunk in the mud of riches, and, as the Seventy translated, in the gulf, that is, in a deep whirlpool, and surrounded as it were by a miry pool, let us not hesitate to call him a hedgehog, an inhabitant of deserted Babylon.
14:24-25
The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying: Surely as I have thought, so shall it be, and as I have purposed in my mind, so shall it come to pass: that I will crush the Assyrian in my land, and on my mountains I will trample him. And his yoke will be taken from them, and his burden will be removed from their shoulder. After the hedgehog has dwelt in deserted Babylon, and in place of well-watered and fertile fields pools have covered everything, so that nothing of the former seed and abundance remains in Babylon, the oath of the Lord will be fulfilled, and what he purposed in his mind will come to pass: that the Assyrian is crushed in his land and trampled on his mountains. For the reckless enemy hastens to seize not only the land of God and all its lower places, but also those who in the service of God have so advanced in virtues that they are compared to mountains, and it is said of them: Its foundations are on the holy mountains (Ps 86 [87]:1). And note the propriety. In the land he is crushed; on the mountains of God he is trampled by the Lord himself. For when all enemies have been put under the feet of Christ, so that the last, death, is destroyed, then the most heavy yoke of the Assyrian, with which he had formerly weighed them down, will be taken from the saints, and the burden, or, as the Seventy translated, κῦδος, that is, glory, will be removed from their shoulder, so that, the yoke of the Assyrians having been taken away, they may see rest, that it is good, and the land, that it is most fruitful, and may put their necks under the yoke of Christ for labor, and become men who till the soil. Hence also Issachar, which means there is a reward, received his name from the virtues. And in the Prophet we read: There is a reward for those who serve the Lord (Jer 31:16); and in another place: Behold the Lord, and his reward is with him (Isa 40:10), who will render to each according to his work. And that the Assyrians, that is, the hostile powers, are crushed and trampled, that word of the Gospel also teaches: Behold, I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19). And the words of the Apostle bear witness: God will crush Satan under your feet swiftly (Rom 16:20).
14:26-27
This is the counsel which he has purposed upon the whole earth, and this is the hand stretched out upon all the nations. For the Lord of hosts has decreed, and who will be able to weaken it? And his hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? For the whole earth the Seventy translated the whole world, at the end of the burden, or vision, against Babylon. What lay hidden is opened: that God purposed his counsel upon the whole earth, that is, the whole world, and not only against the land of the Chaldeans and the Assyrian and Chaldean king; and that his hand is stretched out, or raised, upon all the nations, and not upon the one Babylonian nation. From this it is shown that all the things which have been said pertain not specifically to one province, but generally to the whole world. And what is said: Who will be able to weaken it, and who will turn it back? we ought to take not as of something difficult, as that is read: Who is wise, and will understand these things (Ps 106 [107]:43)? And: Who, do you think, is the faithful and prudent steward (Luke 12:42)? and other things like these; but as of something impossible. For no one will be able to weaken the counsel of the Lord, and to turn back his hand, stretched out or lifted on high, from striking.
14:28ff.
In the year in which King Ahaz died, this burden came. Do not rejoice, all you Philistia, because the rod of him who struck you has been broken. For out of the root of the serpent will come forth a basilisk, and its seed swallowing the bird. And the firstborn of the poor will be fed, and the poor will rest confidently, and I will make your root perish with famine, and I will slay your remnant. LXX: In the year in which King Ahaz died this word came: Do not rejoice, all you foreigners, for the yoke of him who struck you has been broken. For out of the seed of the serpent will come forth the offspring of asps, and out of their offspring will come forth winged serpents: and the poor will be fed through him, and poor men will rest in peace. But he will slay your seed with famine, and will kill your remnant. When Ahaz, who is interpreted κατάσχεσις, that is, holding, or possession, whom we read was a most ungodly king, had died, this weight, or word, comes upon the Philistines. For while he lived and reigned among sinners, neither a weight against the foreigners nor the word of God could come to the Prophet. Indeed I remember having said this above too, when, Uzziah having died, Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up. And in Exodus we read (Exod 2:23) that after the king of Egypt died, the children of Israel groaned from their works, and cried out, and their cry went up from their works, and the Lord heard their groaning. For unless what was said were mystical, they ought rather to have cried out while he was reigning, when they were slaving at mud and bricks. It is commanded, therefore, to the Philistines, whom they now call Palestinians, and whom the Seventy always translate ἀλλόφυλοι, that is, foreigners; and it is said to them that they should not rejoice nor be glad because they have broken the rod, or the yoke, of him who struck them (Heb 12:6). For whom the Lord loves he rebukes, and he chastises every son whom he receives. And God instructs us as sons when he visits our iniquities with a rod and our sins with scourges, so as not to take away his mercy from us (Ps 88 [89]). This is the rod of which it is written in another Psalm: Your rod and your staff, they have comforted me (Ps 22 [23]:4). This is the rod, and this the yoke, which the Savior wishes to lay upon the necks of all, so that, having put off the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, they may bear the yoke of Christ. But if anyone throws it off and breaks it, at once out of the seed or root of the serpent, who is the crooked serpent, will come forth the basilisk and asps, and out of the asps will go forth flying serpents, or those that swallow birds. For when the yoke of God has been thrown off and the discipline of the Lord broken, first the seed of the serpent takes root in our thoughts; secondly, from the most evil seed is born the basilisk, which is the king of serpents and is said to kill men by its breath and its look; or the offspring of asps, of which it is said in the Psalm: The poison of asps is under their lips (Ps 13 [14]:3; and 139 [140]:4), which are the various sins, and they burst forth from the most evil treasury of thoughts into evil works. And when they have reigned in foreign men, who are estranged from God, at once winged serpents come forth; so that it is not enough for them to have thought and done what is evil, unless they also seek a defense of their evil works and fashion various heresies. I think the winged serpents are those who exalt and lift themselves up against the knowledge of God and set their mouth against heaven: or those who swallow birds, that is, who with poisoned mouth devour in their jaws all who desire to fly and rise to the heights. And this, for the present, concerning the wicked. But those who have not broken the rod and yoke of him who struck them, but have submitted their neck to the Lord, and are poor in spirit, will be fed, and will say: The Lord feeds me, and I shall lack nothing (Ps 22 [23]:1). And they will hear from the Lord: In most rich pastures I will feed them (Ezek 34; John 10); and they will go in and go out and find pasture. And the poor will be fed through him who strikes them in order to amend them: and they will rest in peace, or, with a careful shepherd, they will live confidently and will rest with Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham (Luke 16). But those who have broken the yoke and rod of him who struck them will suffer perpetual famine, so that they are not nourished by the word of God: but all their remnant will perish, lest anything sprout from the evil seed.
14:31-32
Howl, O gate; cry out, O city: all Philistia is laid low. For smoke comes from the North, and there is none who escapes its column. And what will be answered to the messengers of the nation? That the Lord has founded Zion, and in him the poor of his people will hope. For messengers, that is, Angels, which Symmachus alone translated, all have translated kings, deceived by the ambiguity of the word, because, except for the one letter ALEPH, which is added in the word for Angels, kings and Angels are called by the same name among the Hebrews, that is, MALACHE (Kings מלכי, Angels מלאכי). In the book of Hebrew Names I have found that Philisthiim means falling by the cup. Those, therefore, who have been made drunk with the cup of Babylon and have drunk the wine in which is debauchery, and, among the other vices, have not obtained the kingdom of God because of drunkenness, according to the Apostle (Eph 5), are commanded that their gate should howl and their city cry out. The gate I take to be the mouth of the heretics, with which they blaspheme; the city, the soul, which is a treasury of evil thoughts. This ought to howl and lament, because it is wholly laid low and cast down to the ground, and there is nothing in it of sound understanding and of the wisdom of God. Why does the gate howl? for what cause does the city cry out? because all Philistia is laid low. And why it is laid low the following verse shows: Smoke comes from the North, and there is none who escapes its column. This smoke is raised by the burning darts of the devil; it is harmful to the eyes and contrary to light, and it rises from the North, from which in Jeremiah the pot is set on fire (Jer 1:14), and from which evils blaze forth upon all the inhabitants of the earth, who cannot say: I am a sojourner and a stranger, as all my fathers were (Ps 118 [119]:19); but they dwell in the earth. Hence in Proverbs too it is read: The North is a harsh wind (Prov 25:23; Sir 43). But by another name it is called the right-hand wind; for although of itself it is harsh and left-handed, and with a most hard neck will not receive the yoke of God, it is called right-handed by those who put sweet for bitter and bitter for sweet; who put darkness for light and light for darkness. And there is no one who escapes the column of this smoke; for no one is without sin, not even if his life be of a single day (Job 25). And when Philistia has fallen, and its smoke has penetrated all things, so that no one can escape it, what will be said to the Angels who preside over the several nations, who wonder and desire to know why Zion alone, set on a watchtower and on the heights, has escaped the bitterness of this smoke? What, then, will be said to them? Surely what follows: That the Lord has founded it, and he himself is its foundation. And he has founded it upon the foundation of prudence, righteousness, fortitude and temperance, under which names Christ is understood, of whom the Apostle also says: For no one can lay another foundation besides that which has been laid, Jesus Christ (1 Cor 3:11). But he who is foolish, and speaks foolish things, and whose heart understands vain things, builds his house upon the sand, which has no foundation. In this Zion, therefore, which has been founded by the Lord, the poor, or the meek and humble of his people, will hope, of whom it is said: Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land (Matt 5:4): and who have heard the Lord saying: Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart (Matt 11:29). They have been humbled before glory, and have heard the apostle Peter saying (1 Pet 5:6): Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in the time of visitation. And these are the poor of whom we read above: The firstborn of the poor will be fed, and the poor will rest confidently.
15:1
The burden of Moab. LXX: The word against the land of Moab. Symmachus and Theodotion: The taking up of Moab. Just as circumcision is both carnal and spiritual, and of the spiritual it is said by the Apostle: For we are the circumcision, who serve God in the spirit, and glory in the Lord, and put no confidence in the flesh (Phil 3:3); and again, to distinguish the spiritual Israel, it is said of the carnal: Behold Israel according to the flesh (1 Cor 10:18): and, You Gentiles in the flesh (Eph 2:11); so Moab is to be taken spiritually, which means from the father, or paternal water, conceived of incest and drunkenness, because he would seem to have been begotten in a manner in the absence, or rather without the knowledge, of the father. In many places of the Scriptures we read of Moab, and especially in the volume of Numbers, when Balak, king of the Moabites, invited Balaam the soothsayer to curse, who among other things prophesied also this mystical word against Moab: A star will rise out of Jacob, and a man will rise up out of Israel, and will strike the princes of Moab (Num 24:17).
15:1
Because by night Ar has been laid waste, Moab has fallen silent; because by night the wall has been laid waste, Moab has fallen silent. LXX: By night the land of Moab perished, for by night the wall of the land of Moab perished. For AR (ער), which Theodotion alone set down thus, as it is read in the Hebrew, Aquila and Symmachus translated city, not considering that between the Hebrew letters AIN and RES it does not have the letter JOD, which, if it were there, would rightly be read as city. Worldly wisdom, of which the Lord speaks through the Prophet: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent I will reject (Obad 8; 1 Cor 1:19), because it has as its author the mind, which is begotten by God's creating, seems indeed to be born of the father, which is what Moab means; but because it is adulterous and an adversary to the people of God, it is begotten of incest, of a cave and of night. Hence it perished by night, namely in everlasting error. The Egyptians too in the Red Sea were overwhelmed by the waves at the morning watch, which indicates the time of night (Exod 14). And Lot, while the Sodomites were perishing by night, came to Zoar, and the sun rose for him (Gen 19). Understanding this, the blessed Apostle writes of the saints and the perfect (1 Thess 5:6, 7): We are not of the night nor of darkness, but we are sons of the day. For those who sleep sleep by night, and those who are drunk are drunk by night. But let us who are of the day keep watch, clothed with the breastplate of faith and love. And because he had left the night and had already begun to be a son of the day, he says to believers: The night has gone before, and the day has drawn near; let us walk honestly as in the day, not in revelings and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness (Rom 13:12). And when the land of Moab perishes by night, its wall too, which was built by the art of dialectic, was laid waste and destroyed in the same night, and fell silent in eternal silence. Moreover Ar, which means ἀντίδικος, that is, adversary, shows this: that this wisdom, which is the adversary of God, has been overcome by the Church's preaching fighting against it.
15:2
The house has gone up, and Dimon, to the high places, to lament. LXX: Be sorrowful within yourselves, for Dimon will perish, where the altar is: thither you will go up to weep. The whole house of hostile wisdom, and Dibon, which means their flowing, goes up to the high places in which it had grown proud: not to sacrifice victims, but to lament the things in which it had formerly sinned. And truly falsehood passes like a river, and flows by, and can never stand firm in a stable dwelling. But the word of God, which is compacted, is stable. Hence the manna too, which is seen like ice upon the face of the earth, does not flow away, but stands firm. Moreover, according to the Seventy, the Moabites are commanded to grieve and lament, not over others (for this belongs to the perfect) but over themselves, because their Dibon too, that is, their composed discourse, which flowed like a torrent, is to perish: in which they had, as it were, the altar of their consecration, and all worldly riches. Hence it is said in the psalm too: If riches abound, do not set your heart upon them. And the beginning of salvation is to understand and weep over one's own sins.
15:3ff.
Over Nebo and over Medeba Moab will howl: on all its heads baldness, every beard will be shaved. In its crossroads they are girded with sackcloth: and upon its roofs and in its streets everyone howls: he will go down in weeping. And Heshbon and Elealeh will cry out: their voice has been heard as far as Jahaz: for this the armed men of Moab will howl, his soul will howl to itself. My heart will cry out to Moab: its bars as far as Zoar, a heifer of three years: for by the ascent of Luhith he will go up weeping, and on the way of Horonaim they will raise a cry of crushing: for the waters of Nimrim will be desolate: because the grass has withered, the shoot has failed, all greenness has perished. According to the greatness of the work is also their visitation: they will lead them to the brook of the willows: for the cry has gone round the border of Moab: its howling as far as Eglaim, and its cry as far as the well of Elim: because the waters of Dimon are filled with blood. For I will set upon Dimon additions, for those who have fled from Moab, a lion, and for the remnant of the land. Since the whole of this prophecy has almost a single sense, lest I tear it apart by setting it forth piecemeal, I have set it all down together, and I shall run through in brief discourse what seems to me, according to the anagogy, to be meant in each part. Nebo means sitting or prophecy; Medeba, from the forest; Heshbon, thoughts; Elealeh, ascent; Jahaz, deed or command; Zoar, small; Luhith, cheeks; Horonaim, hole of grief; Nimrim, leopards or transgressors; Eglaim, calves or mounds of sand; Elim, rams or strong ones; Dimon, sufficient grief. Since, then, every doctrine contrary to the truth, which is born without the inspiration of God from human sense in the darkness of error, has been laid waste by night, and its arguments, which are understood as walls, have been destroyed by the Church's preaching, so that they have fallen silent in eternal silence, insomuch that their whole faction has been turned to penance and tears, over Nebo, that is, the prophecy and the sitting, that is, their teachers, and over Medeba, where there are no fruitful trees but a barren forest in which wild beasts dwell, of which it is written in the twenty-eighth psalm: And he will uncover the thickets of the forest: there will be howling and lamentation, and all the ornaments of eloquence will be taken from their heads, so that they remain naked and unsightly. And if they seemed to have anything of manliness in the beard, shaved by the churchman, it is shown to be effeminate and weak. In their crossroads too, that is, in the byways of errors, while each one according to his own will fashions what he wishes, he is girded with the sackcloth of penance; and upon the roofs and housetops, on which at first they believed themselves to be lofty, and in the streets (because they do not enter by the narrow way that leads to life, but by the broad way that leads to death), there will be howling. And they will by no means go up into pride, but will go down into weeping. Then they will understand all their thoughts to be vain, which is the meaning of Heshbon, and the ascent of pride to be empty, which is what Elealeh sounds, so that their voice is heard as far as the evil works which they have done, and the command which they thought was God's, condemning themselves by their own confession. Therefore the bars, that is, those who have been firm in Moab and have understood their error, will howl, and will begin to have hope of progress, when their soul has howled to itself. Hence the Prophet, with the feeling of one who suffers with them, speaks to those whose soul was howling to itself, and says: My heart will cry out to Moab, that I may call them to penance. And their bars and all the supports which they seemed to have in their heresies will come as far as Zoar, that is, as far as the little one: and they will be shown to be not strong but fragile. And this Zoar, that is, small penance, if it perseveres, will lead them to perfect salvation: which is what the heifer of three years signifies, according to what we read in Genesis, where Abraham is commanded to offer a heifer, a ram and a goat of three years, namely a perfect sacrifice, so that he might deserve to be the heir of the Lord (Gen 15). And when they have done penance, they will climb to higher things by Luhith, that is, by the tears of the cheeks. And by this, as it were, hole and entrance of grief, they will raise the cry of contrition to the Lord, so that they can say: A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit: a contrite and humbled heart God will not despise (Ps 50 [51]:19). And this will come about because the waters of Nimrim, that is, the doctrine of the heretics, which is compared to leopards and transgressors, will be desolate and will be brought to nothing. They are leopards whose varieties and spots, in Jeremiah, are not changed (Jer 13), and apostates, of whom we read in the Psalms: I have counted all the sinners of the earth transgressors (Ps 118 [119]:119). Every grass too, and shoot, and whatever seemed green in their discourse, has withered. And they have been visited by God according to the greatness of their sins, so that him whom they had not perceived through benefits they might come to know through scourges. Accordingly they will be led to the valley or brook of the willows, so that no fruit may remain in them. For they say this is the nature of the seed of these trees: that whoever drinks it in a cup is without children. Hence the saints too, who because of their sins have come to be in the confusion of this world, hang their instruments on the willows of the rivers of the Babylonians (Ps 136 [137]). A cry goes round all the borders of the Moabites, either of those who call them to repentance, or of those who lament for their error: so that through their howling they may be able to offer the calves of the lips, and come as far as the fountain of the Lord's rams, or of the strong: because Elim signifies both. And the waters of Dimon, which means sufficient sorrow, or grief, which had polluted many by their sprinkling, will be shown to have been to the deceived peoples not for salvation but for blood. Hence the prophetic word promises that upon the flowing tears, which is the meaning of Dibon, they will redouble not one grief but many additions of grief: so that, after they have done full penance and have fled from Moab, they may have as their prince the lion, God, whom the Seventy called ariel, which means lion of God: whose edition I have forborne to discuss in this place, because it disagrees in very many points with the Hebrew truth, and from what we have translated its sense too can be understood.
16:1
Send forth the lamb, the ruler of the earth, from the rock of the desert, to the mountain of the daughter of Zion. And as a bird fleeing, and as young ones flying from the nest, so will the daughters of Moab be at the crossing of the Arnon. Enter into counsel, call a council: make your shadow like night at midday: hide those who flee, and do not betray the wanderers. My fugitives will dwell with you; Moab, be their hiding place from the face of the destroyer. For the dust is at an end, the wretch is consumed; he has failed who trampled the earth. And a throne will be prepared in mercy, and one will sit upon it in truth in the tabernacle of David, judging and seeking judgment, and swiftly rendering what is just. What we have translated from the Hebrew, send forth the lamb, the ruler of the earth, can be read thus: send forth the lamb to the ruler of the earth, in the sense, namely, that the lamb itself is not the ruler of the earth, as we interpreted according to the history, but that the lamb is to be sacrificed to the ruler of the earth. This lamb, then, which either is itself the ruler of the earth or is sacrificed to the ruler of the earth, is of the nation of the Moabites, and of those who have fled from Moab and have deserved to have the lion as their prince. And it signifies Ruth, from whom Christ was begotten (Matt 1:5), whom he calls the rock of the desert, because according to the precept of God the Moabites and Ammonites do not enter the Church of God even to the tenth generation and forever (Deut 23). But he who has fled from the desert of Moab (to return from the prophecy to the anagogy), and, despising falsehood, has stood on the mountain of truth, will be like a bird fleeing; and like young ones flying from the nest, lest they be devoured by the Moabite serpents. Thus, he says, will all the daughters, that is, the Moabite souls, be at the crossing of the Arnon, which means their illumination: when, having abandoned their errors, they have crossed over to the knowledge of the truth. It is said therefore to Moab himself, or to him who has escaped from Moab: Do nothing without counsel (Prov 13): and do not be carried about by every wind of doctrine, but follow him who is the Angel of great counsel (Eph 4): and call a council, so that out of the wandering and straying you may make a Church of God. And your shade and tabernacle, in which you formerly thought you were resting, which belonged to night and darkness, set it at midday, that is, in the brightest light, in which you ought to hide those fleeing from error, and no longer betray those who were formerly wanderers. For, O Moab, my fugitives who had forsaken me, who had gone out of the Church and, abandoning the teaching of the Holy Spirit, were following their own sense; or those who had dwelt with you, when the destroyer, the devil, begins to persecute them, do you, turned with your whole mind to the fear of the Lord, offer them hiding places: and know that after the coming of the Lamb, who arose from the rock of the desert as ruler of the whole earth and came to the mountain of the daughter of Zion, all the power of the devil, which is compared to dust, is at an end. And the wretch is consumed who made many wretched: and he has failed who trampled the whole earth, namely those who were earthly. And when he has been consumed and brought to nothing and has utterly failed, a throne and an everlasting kingdom will be prepared. First in mercy (for we are all (Rom 3) under sin, and need the grace of God); and he will sit in the tabernacle of David, which had fallen and has been raised up, who after mercy will judge, and seek righteousness, and render to each according to his works. Let us consider from the beginning of the Burden, or of the word, of Moab, in which it is said: By night Ar of Moab has been laid waste, and the rest up to this place; and we shall see how by steps and in the order of penance Israelites are made from Moabites, and flee like birds and fly away like young ones from the nest, so as to cross over by the Arnon and dwell on the mountain of the daughter of Zion: and, all the power of the devil or of the Antichrist having been crushed, Christ reigns in them and sets his throne among those who have been saved by mercy and righteousness. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son (John 5).
16:6ff.
We have heard of the pride of Moab: he is exceedingly proud. His pride and his arrogance and his indignation are more than his strength. Therefore Moab will howl to Moab, all of him will howl: to those who rejoice over the wall of baked brick, speak of his wounds: for the suburbs of Heshbon are deserted, the vineyard of Sibmah. LXX: We have heard of the insolence of Moab: he is exceedingly insolent: his pride and his insolence and his fury are not like your divination: not so will Moab howl: for in Moab all will howl: but for the inhabitants of Deseth you will meditate, and you will not be confounded: the plains of Heshbon will mourn the vineyard of Sibmah. In how many obscurities this passage is wrapped according to the Seventy translators is evident from the fact that it can scarcely be read. Let us speak, therefore, according to the Hebrew. It is the custom of the Scriptures, after they have relieved the despair of the human mind with glad tidings, to deter again by threats the negligent and those unwilling to do penance, lest the goodness of God harden our heart. Of this let us set down only one example. In the hundred and forty-fourth psalm we read: The Lord is sweet to all, and his compassions are over all his works (Ps 144 [145]:9). And a little after: The Lord upholds all who fall, and raises up all who are dashed down. The eyes of all hope in you, O Lord, and you give them their food in due season. And when he had said first, The Lord keeps all who love him, lest he make the hearer negligent, he added: And all sinners he will destroy. Since, then, he prophesied that when the Antichrist and his parent the devil, who trampled the whole earth, have been consumed, a throne is to be prepared in mercy, and he who is to sit in the tabernacle of David, the prophet speaks in the person of the saints who have been saved from Moab and have learned his pride by their own experience: We have heard of the pride of Moab, or the insolence, as the Seventy translated. For which of the heretics is not proud? who, despising the simplicity of the Church, regards the men of the Church as brute animals, and is lifted up by such a swelling of pride and insolence that he arms his mouth against the Creator himself, disparaging his prophets as though on the authority of the testimony of the Gospel, in which the Savior says: All who came before me were thieves and robbers (John 10:8): so much so that he even calls Moses, the servant of God, a murderer, and disparages Joshua the son of Nun as a bloodthirsty man, who was of such holiness that at the command of his word the sun and moon stood still: and calls David, of whose seed Christ was born (Matt 1), a murderer and an adulterer, not regarding his penance and his meekness, by which the clemency of God is obtained. But although he is proud and arrogant, and exults in his fury, yet he dares more than his strength allows. Therefore Moab will howl to Moab, that is, one to another: namely, all the varieties of the heretics and of worldly wisdom will bellow against one another when they are in torments (1 Kgs 6). For this reason, to those who have walls not built of squared stones, of which the Temple was built, and so polished that hammer and axe were not heard in the house of God, O you teachers of the Church, or you who have been saved from the error of Moab, announce their wounds, with which they have been wounded by the darts of the heretics. For all their thoughts, which is what Heshbon signifies, do not belong to the dwelling of the Lord's city, of which it is written: The rush of the river makes glad the city of God (Ps 45 [46]:5); but they are suburbs, so that they may be believed to belong to the city of the Lord: and these suburbs are deserted by the protection of God, or burnt by the divine fire, especially the vineyard of Sibmah, which means lifting up height, because it raises itself on high and tries to build the tower of its pride up to heaven. And what is set down in the Seventy, for the inhabitants of Deseth, is not found in the Hebrew; but in its place is read ARES (חרש), which signifies potsherd, or baked brick.
16:9-10
The lords of the nations have cut down its branches: they have reached as far as Jazer. They have wandered in the desert: its shoots have been left: they have crossed the sea. For this I will weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vineyard of Sibmah: I will drench you with my tears, Heshbon and Elealeh: for upon your vintage and upon your harvest the voice of the treaders has burst in. And gladness and exultation will be taken away from Carmel: and in the vineyards he will not exult nor shout for joy: he who was accustomed to tread will not tread wine in the press: I have taken away the voice of the treaders. The suburbs of Heshbon, of which we spoke above, are deserted, and the vineyard of Sibmah, which can be interpreted not only as lifting up height but also as some conversion: because in the region of Moab it seems in some part to wish to be converted to the service of the Lord. Of this vineyard of Sibmah, therefore, the lords of the nations, the Apostles and apostolic men, have utterly cut off the branches and shoots, lest from some heresies other heresies should be born and an infinite multitude of the straying should come to be. And they not only cut off the shoots of Sibmah, but reached as far as Jazer, which means their strength: that is, to all the strongest doctrines of the heretics, built by the art of dialectic, in which they seemed to have the strength of their error; and their sword raged so far that at last they wandered in the wilderness and had no one to slay. And though they cut off its branches, yet, through the fault of the most evil root, some shoots remained. But the lords of the nations crossed the sea, that is, the temptations of this world, of which we read in the psalm: I came into the depth of the sea, and the tempest swallowed me (Ps 68 [69]:3); and in another place: Those who go down to the sea in ships, doing business in many waters: they have seen the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep (Ps 106 [107]:23). These, then, crossed the sea, so as to behold the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep of temptations, while they are delivered from them. And so the prophetic word laments the strength of the heretics, that is, Jazer, and the vineyard of Sibmah, which exalts itself against the knowledge of God. And I will drench you with my tears, Heshbon, namely their thoughts, and Elealeh, by which they climb to the heights. And why does he lament Jazer and the vineyard of Sibmah, and drench Heshbon and Elealeh with his tears? So that, while he himself weeps, he may teach them also to weep. For, he says, upon your vintage and upon your harvest the voice of the treaders has burst in. For the vineyard of the Moabites, because of the nearness of the place, is such as is the vineyard of the Sodomites too, of which it is said: For their vine is of the vineyard of the Sodomites, and their shoot of Gomorrah (Deut 32:31). And in Psalm 77 (78) we read of the Egyptian vine which God struck with hail. The harvests of Moab too grow in the valleys which are called Rephaim: and its false vintage is of the vineyard of which it is said above: The lords of the nations have cut down its branches. For these crush the most bitter grapes and tread them with their feet, lest the poisons of the dragon be pressed out of them and all who drink be killed. The gladness and exultation of the heretics, in which they had formerly been accustomed to rejoice, will also be taken away: so that, after they have done penance, they may deserve to hear: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted (Matt 5:5). And what he added, from Carmel, signifies this: not that the heretics truly have Carmel, that is, the knowledge of the spiritual circumcision, but that they falsely boast of having it. And when the vineyards have been cut down, and gladness and exultation taken away from the knowledge falsely so called, then there will be none of the former treaders to tread the grapes which he had trodden before: and their voice will be struck dumb in eternal silence.
16:11ff.
For this my belly will sound for Moab like a harp, and my inward parts for the wall of baked brick. And it will be, when it has appeared that Moab has labored on his high places, he will enter into his holy places to entreat, and he will not prevail. This is the word which the Lord spoke to Moab from that time. When the error of Moab has been destroyed, or rather its false gladness changed into mourning and tears, my belly, the prophet's, which is composed with musical art like a harp, and which, conceiving from the fear of God, has begotten many children, so that there is no string that does not give back its sound, will resound with the mourning of Moab doing penance: and all my inward parts for the wall of baked brick: for which Theodotion translated for the scattered wall. For all the defenses of the adversaries, in which they formerly trusted, will be destroyed and will fall. And these are the inward parts and the inner things of the prophet, of which David too spoke in the Psalm: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all my inner parts his holy name (Ps 102 [103]:1). For just as a harp does not give forth a tuneful and well-composed sound if even one string is broken, so the spiritual belly of the prophet, if one string of the virtues is lacking in it, will not be able to sound forth a sweet melody, nor to cry out with all its inward parts to the brick wall. It is also the opinion of the philosophers that the virtues cleave to one another; and of the Apostle James, that he who lacks one lacks all the virtues. And when Moab has understood that he has labored in vain at the doctrines which he formerly thought lofty, he will enter into his holy places, not those which are holy of themselves, but those which in his error he thought holy, and he will not be able to find help. Or surely, having abandoned the error of falsehood, he will try to enter into the holy places of the Church, to make them his own, and to pray and entreat, but he will not prevail. For we cannot take hold of perfect virtue as soon as we wish. And what he adds: This is the word which the Lord spoke to Moab from that time, let us know that an epilogue has been given back to the proem in which he had said, the word against Moab, or the burden, so that what he had begun there he has completed here. And from that time is to be understood as from when he began to speak to him, so that all that he said is one word of God, that is, one sentence. Moreover, according to the Seventy, who translated: The inner parts of the prophet, like a wall renewed by God, and that he is put to shame, that is, Moab, and enters to the altars and to the things that are made by hand, we can discuss it thus, saying that the inward parts of the prophet are always renewed and made stronger by God, so that the adversaries are confounded, and understand the things which have been fabricated by human hand to be empty and of no profit for salvation.
16:14
And now the Lord has spoken, saying: In three years, like the years of a hireling, the glory of Moab will be taken away over all his great people, and he will be left small and slight, by no means many. The three years in which the glory of Moab will be taken away over all his great people, or great riches, as the Seventy translated, are to be understood mystically. For just as the mercy of the Lord is in weights and measure, so torments and punishments too have their measure, so that after three years have passed, in which he will be left small and slight and by no means many, he may then cease to be without glory. And this is to be noted, that according to the prophecy of Ezekiel, when days are counted for years to Israel (Ezek 4), that is, to the ten tribes, which had sinned more grievously, three hundred and ninety years are reckoned in punishments, as it is contained in the Hebrew, not a hundred and ninety, as the common edition has: and to Judah, in which was the Temple of God, forty years. For he who is small deserves mercy: but the mighty will suffer torments mightily (Wis 6). And the servant who knows the will of his lord and does not do it will be beaten with many stripes (Luke 12). Moab, therefore, because he was an outsider and not of the people of God, but was converted after leaving his error, will be left small and slight and without glory, not for many years, but for three only. These are the years of which we read elsewhere too: Remember the days of the age (Isa 46), and again: I thought upon the days of old, and I had the eternal years in mind (Ps 76 [77]:6). For if Israel according to the flesh served the shadow and the patterns, and every solemnity of theirs was a type of things to come, why should not the years of the present time also prefigure the times to come? of which we read in another place too: What will you do in the days of the assembly, and in the days of the festival of the Lord? And what is joined to it, Like the years of a hireling (Hos 9:5), shows this: that false doctrine does everything for gain and profit. For every hireling, and he who is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, when he sees the wolf coming, flees, because he is a hireling and the sheep do not belong to him (John 10). For this reason I think that the stranger and the hireling do not eat of the holy things, nor are servants partakers of the holy things. For it is not for love of the Lord but for wages that they do all things, who devour the houses of widows and lead off flocks of their own, to be clothed with their wool and to milk their milk (Matt 23). What we have said of hireling doctrine, let us refer to the rest as well. If I give alms in order to be glorified by men, I have received my reward and am to be called a hireling. If I pretend to be chaste, and there is something else in my conscience, I have not the glory of a hireling but the punishments of a sinner. And in the comparison of two evils, it is a lighter evil to sin openly than to feign and counterfeit holiness. But in this too Moab has made progress: that he who formerly had many companions in his error is afterward reduced to a few; or he who formerly was great in the riches of sins is, after penance, small and poor in malice.
Book Seven
The seventh book is likewise the second according to the anagogy, or rather the last; for in it the tropological explanation of the ten visions comes to an end. When, with your prayers, Eustochium, and with the help of Christ, I have completed it, I shall come to the eighth, and shall unfold both explanations together, as in the earlier books up to the fourth.
17:1
The burden of Damascus. Symmachus and Theodotion: The taking up of Damascus; the LXX: The word against Damascus, adding something of their own, as they did at the beginning of Moab. We first read the name Damascus in Genesis: he was Abraham's home-born servant before Isaac, and was thought to be his heir, had not the son of Sarah been begotten by promise (Gen 15). Now it means either kiss of blood, or drinking blood, or blood of sackcloth, all of which suit the people of the heathen, who before the faith of Christ were friends of blood and cruelty, and did works worthy of lamentation and of sackcloth. In the book of Days (2 Chr 24) the history relates that when the year was completed the army of Syria went up against Joash king of Judah, and came into Jerusalem, and slew all the princes of the people, and sent all the spoil to the king of Damascus; it had come with few men, and God had delivered into their hand a very great multitude, because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers. This must be considered according to the anagogy and as a type of things to come, whether we may refer it to the time of the Lord's advent. For after the end of the acceptable year, in which the Gospel was preached by the Savior, the army of the nations went up from Damascus with few men against Judah and Jerusalem, who had forsaken the Lord; and they carried off all their riches of the Law and the Prophets, and sent them to the king of Damascus: namely, churchmen and men of the Gospel teaching, who, in comparison with the whole world, still unbelieving at that time, and with the Jews scattered through the whole earth, were few; and yet the Lord delivered Jerusalem into their hands, because they had forsaken the Son of God, who had been foretold beforehand through the prophets (Acts 9). Therefore I think that for this reason Saul too, who afterwards received the name of Paul from his virtue, went to Damascus because he was a zealot of the Law, and wished to fight against the believers from the nations; and that, overcome there, he followed those who lived in Damascus, so that from there he might go up again to Jerusalem to do battle with the Jews. Nor should it seem contradictory to anyone if in the book of Paralipomenon glad things are foretold of Damascus, and now in Isaiah sad things; for of Israel itself, which is surely the portion of God, now adverse things, now prosperous things are announced. And as it is said to Israel according to the flesh and to the nations: You nations according to the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh; so, on the contrary, there is an Israel according to the spirit, and there are nations according to the spirit, and among the other nations there is a Damascus according to the spirit, lest we rest content with Jewish fables alone.
17:1ff.
Behold, Damascus shall cease to be a city, and shall be as a heap of stones in ruin. The cities of Aroer shall be left for flocks, and they shall rest there, and there shall be none to make them afraid; and help shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus; and the remnant of Syria shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, says the Lord of hosts. As was shown in the title, by Damascus is signified the calling of the nations, which loved or drank blood; and once they have believed in Christ, they will cease to be cities of their former way of life, and will be as a heap of stones in ruin. For as heaps of stones that are scattered over the fields are carried together into one mound, so out of all the nations a heap of believers has been gathered at the ruin of the people of the Jews, they falling and we rising. The forsaken cities of AROER (ערוער), that is, of the tamarisk, shall also be for the flocks of the Church, so that we may inhabit those which the Jews forsook; or else, idolatry being destroyed, the Gospel shall be built up. This too we see fulfilled in our own times: the Serapeum at Alexandria and the temple of Marnas at Gaza have risen up as churches of the Lord, and the cities of Aroer have been made ready for the flocks of the Gospel. Aroer, that is, tamarisks, grow in desert places, according to what is written in the curse of the man who trusts in man, and whose heart departs from the Lord: He shall be, it says, like the tamarisk in the desert, and shall not see good when it comes; but he shall dwell in dryness, in the desert, in a land of salt and uninhabitable (Jer 17:6). Others again say that from this tree, by the arts of sorcerers, μίστρα, that is, hatreds, are stirred up. Therefore those who were formerly in the desert of the Gentiles, and in hatred of the Christian name, shall serve the flocks of Christ, which shall rest in them, and there shall be none to make them afraid, because the Lord shall dwell among them, and with the Shepherd present they will not be able to fear the wolf. Then the help of God shall cease from Ephraim, by whom in this place are understood the Scribes and Pharisees, according to the prophecy of Hosea, who names Ephraim those who are opposed to the people of God (Hos 5 and 8). And the kingdom shall cease from Damascus, so that sin, and the prince of sin, the devil, may no longer reign in Damascus, which formerly loved blood; but the remnant of Syria, that is, those from the nations who have believed, are to be as the children of Israel formerly were, the kingdom of God having been taken from them and given to the nations which bring forth its fruit, as the Lord God of hosts has spoken through all his prophets.
17:4, 6
And it shall come to pass in that day that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall waste away. And it shall be as one gathering in the harvest what remains, and his arm shall glean the ears, and it shall be as one seeking ears in the valley of Rephaim. And there shall be left in it as a cluster of grapes, and as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three olives at the top of a branch, or four or five at its summits, its fruit, says the Lord God of Israel. After the remnant of Syria has become as the glory of the children of Israel once was, and through their trespass salvation has been given to the nations, then all the glory of the Jews, by which they were glorious in the whole world, shall be made thin, and the fatness of their flesh shall waste away, since they have no prophets, no signs and mighty works, no present help of God, no dignity of the priesthood; but the whole body of their nation shall wither and be brought to nothing. And since it is said of the calling of the nations: The harvest is great, but the labourers are few (Matt 9), those poor ones shall glean the remnants of the harvest, which were saved through the Apostles, and the scantiest ears, not from the mountains and lofty places, but in the valley of Rephaim, that is, in the lowliness of the letter. And consider that Rephaim, which means giants, signifies the Pharisees and Scribes, as Ephraim did above. Indeed, for the valley of Rephaim the Seventy translated the hard valley, to express the hardness of the Jewish heart. Out of their lowliness those who shall be saved are chosen like ears among the stubble and like clusters at the vintage; and as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three olives, or four or five. For when the smiting of the people of the Jews came, that olive tree of the people of Israel, which under Moses had six hundred thousand armed men (Num 26), and under David, when Joab numbered them, a countless people (2 Sam 24), could scarcely offer a few fruits to the Lord the Savior: two olives, Paul and Barnabas; and three olives, Peter and James and John (Acts 13), who both beheld the Lord transfigured on the mountain and were found worthy to go with the Lord to the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue (Matt 17). The four and five olives make up the remaining nine Apostles, among whom Matthias took the place of Judas the betrayer; and these, according to a diversity of graces unknown to us, are divided into four and five olives, so that they might show in themselves the number of the Gospels and the volumes of the Law, as preachers of both Testaments (Acts 1).
17:7-8
In that day man shall bow down to his maker, and his eyes shall look to the Holy One of Israel. And he shall not bow down to the altars which his hands have made, and which his fingers have wrought; they shall not look to the groves and the shrines. At that time, when from the people of Israel, to whom it was formerly said, The Lord your God has called you a fruitful olive tree (Jer 11:16), and of whom we read in the Psalms, Your children like young olive plants round about your table (Ps 127 [128]:3), the Lord in his hunger shall scarcely have found, for the drought of spiritual grace, two olives, and three, or four, or five, the fullness of the nations shall come in, and shall bow down not to idols made with hands but to its God, and looking to the Holy One of Israel they shall despise altars and groves and shrines, knowing what is written: Every plant which the heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up (Matt 15:13).
17:9-10
In that day the cities of his strength shall be forsaken like ploughs and standing corn, which were forsaken before the face of the children of Israel. And it shall be desolate, because you have forgotten God your Savior, and have not remembered your strong helper. LXX: In that day your cities shall be forsaken, as the Amorites and the Hivites forsook them before the face of the children of Israel. And they shall be desolate, because you have forsaken God your Savior, and have not remembered the Lord your helper. As under Moses and Joshua the son of Nun the Amorites and the Hivites, and the other nations that dwelt in the land of promise, forsook their ploughshares and standing corn and the heaps in the fields and fled, lest they be seized by their enemies, so the land of Judea and all its strongest cities were forsaken by their inhabitants when the Romans laid Judea waste and besieged Jerusalem. And an apostrophe is made to the land of Judea itself, that is, to those who dwelt in it: You have suffered all these things because you have forgotten God your Savior, which means Jesus, whose coming to you the Law and the Prophets continually announced; and you have not remembered your strong helper, who was always your succour. The cause, then, of the desolate cities of Judea is forgetfulness of the Savior, who had said at the beginning of this Prophet: Israel has not known me, and my people has not understood.
17:11
Therefore you shall plant a faithful plantation, and shall sow a strange seed. In the day of your planting wild grapes, and in the morning your seed shall flower: the harvest is taken away in the day of inheritance, and he shall grieve grievously. LXX: Therefore you shall plant an unfaithful plantation and an unfaithful seed, and in the day on which you plant you shall go astray. But if you sow in the morning, it shall flower for harvest in the day of inheritance, when, as the father of a man, he gives an inheritance to his sons. Where we, following Aquila and Symmachus and the Seventy, have translated in the day of inheritance, which in Hebrew is BIOM NEHELA (ביום נחלה), one can read in the Hebrew in the worst day. And where Aquila and Theodotion translated and man shall grieve, we, taught by the Hebrews, instead of man, which in their tongue is ENOS, have rendered ANUS (אנוש), that is, grievously. Of the ambiguity of this word we shall treat more fully, if the span of this life allows, in Jeremiah, where according to the Seventy it is said: And he is a man, and who shall know him? Let me say, then, what I set out to say. Because you have forgotten, land of Judea, God your Savior, and have not remembered him who always gave you strength, therefore you shall indeed plant a faithful plantation, or as Aquila and Theodotion translated, a beautiful one, or as Symmachus, a good one, preaching one God; but you shall sow a strange seed, not receiving the Father because you do not receive the Son. For whoever believes in the Father believes also in the Son. And because you have sown the strange seed of blasphemy against Jesus in the synagogues of Satan, therefore you shall not gather the grape at the vintage, but the wild grape. And when your seed shall seem to flower, and to have some shadow of piety, while you draw men away from idols, yet when you come to gather the fruits in the day of inheritance you shall grieve grievously, seeing the people of the nations preferred to you. Whence the Apostle also says: I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I myself wished to be anathema from Christ for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belong the adoption of sons, and the giving of the law, and the glory, and the covenant, and the promises; whose are the fathers and so on (Rom 9:2ff.). This not only Paul but every saint says, wishing that, together with the branches of the wild olive, the root too may be saved. Now that inheritance is the one we obtain from the Lord, of which the Apostle says: Now there are divisions of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are divisions of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are divisions of operations, but the same God, who works all in all. Someone may wonder why, where Aquila and Theodotion and Symmachus translated beautiful and good plantations, we have said a faithful plantation. The Hebrew word NEEMANIM (נאמנים), if it is written with the letter ALEPH, sounds πιστοὺς, that is, faithful; but if with AIN, and pronounced NEAMENIM נעמנים, it signifies beautiful. Hence Naomi too, whose name is written with this letter, says in Ruth (Ruth 1:20): Do not call me NOEMI (נעמי), that is, beautiful, but call me bitter.
17:12ff.
Woe to the multitude of many peoples; like the multitude of the roaring sea, and the tumult of the crowds, like the sound of many waters, they shall roar. The peoples shall roar like the multitude of overflowing waters; and he shall rebuke him, and he shall flee far off, and he shall be carried away like the dust of the mountains before the wind, and like a whirlwind before the tempest. At eventide, behold, trouble; in the morning, and he shall not stand. This is the portion of those who have wasted us, and the lot of those who plunder us. Above, under the name of Damascus, we read of the calling of the nations, and the casting off of the Jews, and, through the Apostles and in the Apostles, the election of the few of the Jews who believed. And since, in comparison with the whole world and all the nations, only a small part believed of the Christian people, of whom it was said above: And the remnant of Syria shall be as the glory of the children of Israel (for many (Matt 22:14) are called, but few are chosen); and: Not all have faith (2 Thess 3:2): now there follows in due order, not a lament, but a woe to those nations which had refused to believe and persecuted the Christian people. And they are compared to the masses of the waves and to the raging sea, which, as far as in it lies, longs to overwhelm and seize everything. For the peoples shall roar in the spectacles of theatrical licence, and in the cruelty of the amphitheatre, and in the frenzies of the circus, like the sound of overflowing waters, when with a voice concordant in impiety they blaspheme and cry that the Christians be thrown to the lions and the beasts, and other things of the kind. But while they rage like the sea, the Lord shall rebuke the author of their sedition and drive him away from his people. And as dust stirred up on the mountains is carried off the more violently the higher it is, and as a whirlwind that rises from the earth is borne aloft by a sudden tempest, so he too shall be carried off and separated from the people of God and shall flee, lest he be banished to the abyss. And when the day of consummation comes, which is what evening means, then there shall be trouble for him as he recognizes his own sins. And at morning time, that is, on the day of the resurrection, he shall not stand, which the Seventy translated shall not be. But if he shall not be, what will they answer who grant the devil repentance and, as far as in them lies, promise him the summit of an archangel? This is the portion of those who have wasted us, and the lot of those who plunder us. These words are spoken either by the Christian people, or by the prophet in the person of the believing people: that their persecutors, who oppressed the saints of God with exiles, prisons and confiscations of goods, shall have eternal destruction and shall possess everlasting punishments.
18:1ff.
Woe to the land, the cymbal of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, which sends ambassadors by the sea, and in vessels of papyrus upon the waters: go, swift Angels, to a nation torn away and rent asunder, to a terrible people, after which there is no other, to a nation waiting, waiting and trodden down, whose land the rivers have plundered. All you inhabitants of the world, who dwell on the earth, when the sign has been lifted up on the mountains you shall see, and you shall hear the blast of the trumpet. LXX: Woe to the land of the wings of ships beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, you who send hostages by the sea, and letters of papyrus upon the water. For swift messengers shall go to a lofty nation, and to a foreign and most wicked people, which is beyond it: a nation without hope, and trodden down; now the rivers of the whole earth as a region that is inhabited: their region shall be inhabited, as if a sign were lifted up from the mountain, and the voice of the trumpet were heard. I have set down both editions in a most obscure prophecy, so that nothing may seem to be lacking to those who wish to understand what is written. And at the same time I greatly marvel at those who think that our faith and Christian hope are content with simplicity, because it is written: The commandment of God is clear, enlightening the eyes (Ps 18 [19]:9), and that we ought to seek nothing more than that what is commanded be done; whereas the whole of Scripture, and the Prophets especially, are wrapped in the mysteries of things to come precisely in order to rouse us to understanding, and to what is said in the Gospel: Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. Since, then, I have expounded it in the fifth book according to the history and what is contained in the Hebrew, I shall now set out what seems to me according to the anagogy. A prudent reader may perhaps ask what is meant, in the Vision or Burden of Damascus, by the cymbal of wings and the other things that follow. After it had been said of the calling of the nations, of the casting off of the Jews, and of the election of those who believed through the Apostles, and afterwards of the multitude of the nations and the persecutors, who were compared to the waves of the sea, it followed that the prophetic word should also announce the heresies which have troubled the Church and lay it waste to this day, which, while the householder slept, oversowed tares in the field of the Church (Matt 13). And they are called a cymbal, as not having the love of God, according to that saying of the Apostle: If I speak with the tongues of men and of Angels, but have not love, I have become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal (1 Cor 13:1). And they are called not only a cymbal clashing with a harsh sound, but, because of the lightness of heretical speech running off in different directions, a cymbal of wings, or according to the Seventy, wings of ships, since, promising great merchandise, they sail on the waves of this world. By the wings of ships understand the sails by which they are lifted and drawn along. And he fittingly said wings of ships, for every heretic promises lofty things, and though he boasts that he has wings, he nevertheless sticks fast in the salt waves, and does not go far from land, and in mid-course suddenly suffers shipwreck. Hence Aquila translated, instead of cymbal, shadow of wings, for they do not have wings, but a likeness of wings. And what he adds, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, signifies that the heretics surpass all in their impiety. For example: Epicurus says that there is no providence, and that pleasure is the highest good. In comparison with him Marcion is more wicked, and all the heretics who tear the Old Testament to pieces. For while they admit providence, they accuse the Creator, and assert that he erred in very many of his works and did not make them as he ought to have made them: for to what benefit of men, they ask, do serpents, scorpions, crocodiles, and fleas, bugs and gnats belong? These, then, are beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, and they send ambassadors on the sea of this world, that is, their disciples, who, carrying their volumes, are rightly said to carry vessels of papyrus, that is, of paper, upon the waters, which are quickly blotted out. For as books by water and damp are soon dimmed, blotted out and perish, so their speech and teaching, though at the beginning it seemed to possess some strength, passes away and slips by. And so it is said to them ironically: O Angels of the heretics, go swiftly. These the blessed apostle Paul calls false apostles, deceitful workers, who transform themselves into Apostles of Christ (2 Cor 11). And go to a nation torn away and rent asunder: torn away from God and mangled by the bites of the heretics. To a terrible people; for nothing is more terrible than blasphemy, which sets its mouth on high. After which there is no other people: for every sin, compared with blasphemy, is lighter. A nation waiting, waiting and trodden down. For all the heretics promise themselves heavenly things and pledge great things, and yet they are trodden down by demons. Whose land the rivers have plundered, rivers which have their waters not from heaven but from the earth. For what corner is there, what remotest wilderness of the earth, which the turbid speech of the heretics does not reach? And so all who inhabit and dwell in the world lift up their eyes to the sign of the heretics, which is lifted up as it were on the mountains, and hear the blast of the trumpet, that is, of their teaching. So much according to the Hebrew. But according to the Seventy the wings of the heretics are bewailed, which flit like ships over the sea of this world and surpass the impiety of the heathen, whom the Scripture now calls Ethiopians; and it is said to their teaching and speech: You who send books on the sea of this world, the hostages of your perversity, and letters to deceive those who will read them. Swift messengers go to a lofty nation, and to a foreign and most wicked people. For none of the churchmen has as much zeal for good as the heretics have for evil, and they think they gain a profit if they deceive others, and, being lost themselves, destroy the rest. Now the nation is called lofty on account of its pride, and foreign and most wicked because it is estranged from God. Truly a nation without hope, and trodden down, whose rivers throughout the whole earth imitate the dwelling of the Church, so that they may find themselves a lodging and a region in which to lift up the sign of their teaching, in which to sound the trumpet of the Scriptures.
18:4ff.
For thus says the Lord to me: I will rest, and I will consider in my place, as the noonday light is clear, and as a cloud of dew in the day of harvest. For before the harvest it has all blossomed, and an unripe perfection shall bud, and its twigs shall be cut off with sickles; and what is left shall be cut away and shaken off. And they shall be left together to the birds of the mountains and to the beasts of the earth, and the birds shall be upon it all summer long, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon it. At that time a gift shall be brought to the Lord of hosts from a people torn away and rent asunder, from a terrible people, after which there was no other, from a nation waiting, waiting and trodden down, whose land the rivers have plundered, to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, Mount Zion. God rests and contemplates in his place, or according to Aquila, in his firmament, that is, in the Church, of which the apostle Paul says: The pillar and firmament of truth (1 Tim 3:15). And he contemplates the things that are done in the Church, and as the noonday light is clear, so he surveys all things, according to what is said in the eighteenth Psalm, according to the anagogy, of the sun of righteousness: Nor is there anyone who can hide himself from its heat (Ps 18 [19]:7). And as a cloud of dew in the day of harvest and in the burning summer is most welcome, so the Lord refreshes the dwellers of his Church, and in his presence all things flourish. And before the time of the consummation comes, since now we know in part and prophesy in part, many will be found perfect, of whom the Apostle says: Let as many of us as are perfect be of this mind (1 Cor 13; Phil 3:15). But the twigs that are useless shall be cut off with sickles, as the Savior says in the Gospel: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he will take it away; and every one that bears fruit he will prune, that it may bear more fruit (John 15:2). And those that have been cut off shall be left to the birds of the mountains and the beasts of the earth: to the birds which ravage what is sown by the wayside, and to the beasts to which the soul that does not confess God is delivered; so that whoever has been cut off and cast away by the Lord, and separated from his body, which is the Church, becomes, in summer as in winter, that is, in prosperity and adversity, the dwelling of birds and beasts. But as those who are useless and unfruitful in the Church are cut off and cast out, lest a little leaven corrupt the whole lump, so on the contrary it may come about that those who had been deceived by heretical error, torn away from the Lord and rent, terrible on account of blasphemy, vainly awaiting lies, trodden down by demons, and scattered by the rivers in various directions, when they remember their God and forsake their most wicked masters, may offer a gift to the Lord of hosts nowhere else but on Mount Zion, and in the watchtower, which is interpreted as the Church. We speak more briefly because we have already said much in the book of the historical explanation.
19:1
The burden of Egypt. Symmachus and Theodotion: The taking up of Egypt. LXX: The vision of Egypt. Where in the Hebrew is written MASSA MESRAIM (משא מצרים), which we have translated The burden or weight of Egypt, for which Aquila rendered ἄρμα Αἰγύπτου, we may say that because the prophet takes up and carries the yoke of the Lord, he proved worthy to behold, or to bear, the prophecy of Egypt. Hence I marvel that the Seventy, both in Babylon translated Vision for Weight, and in Philistia and Moab and Damascus Word, and now in Egypt Vision, when in the Hebrew in all these places what is set down is not Word and Vision but MASSA (משא), that is, Burden and weight. And as for Symmachus and Theodotion always translating λῆμμα, that is, a taking up, we ought to know that the prophet received spiritual grace from the Lord to know the mysteries of Egypt, or to behold them with the eyes of the mind, as the Seventy translated. But this Egypt is not the one the Jews suppose, as Josephus thought, who relates in the books of the Antiquities that the priest Onias fulfilled the oracle of Isaiah by building in the district of Heliopolis, which the Egyptians call a νομὸν, a temple after the likeness of the Temple of God, and an altar. For suppose we grant that these things were said of Onias and the altar he built in Egypt: what will be the five cities in Egypt that speak the Canaanite tongue, of which one according to the Seventy is called ἀσεδὲκ, and according to the other translators the city ARS or ARES, or the city of the sun? And who will be this savior who was sent to the Egyptians to save them, so that the Egyptians might know the Lord? When did they worship him with sacrifices and gifts, and pay their vows? When did the Lord strike Egypt and heal it? At what time shall we be able to show it happened that there was a way from Egypt to the Assyrians, and that the Assyrians entered Egypt, and the Egyptians the Assyrians, and that the Egyptians served Assur? When was Israel the third in Egypt, and among the Assyrians as a blessing in the midst of the earth, so that the Lord should say: Blessed is my people of Egypt, and the work of my hands the Assyrian? It is plain that these things do not belong to that Egypt which the Jews suppose. And so this place which we inhabit, and the world which lies in the evil one, we may call Egypt, especially because MESRAIM (מצרים), which is called Egypt, means ἐκθλίβουσα, that is, afflicting, or reducing to straits. Yet we must know that many things of the Burden, or Vision, of Egypt belong to the province of Egypt, which is inhabited and seen to this day. But both in this and in other places of the Scriptures very many things are set down which could not stand according to the history, so that by the necessity of the matter we are compelled to seek a higher understanding.
19:1ff.
Behold, the Lord shall go up upon a light cloud, and shall enter into Egypt, and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it. And I will make the Egyptians clash against the Egyptians, and a man shall fight against his brother, and a man against his friend, city against city, kingdom against kingdom. And the spirit of Egypt shall be broken in its bowels, and I will cast down its counsel; and they shall consult their idols and their diviners, and those with familiar spirits, and the soothsayers. And I will deliver Egypt into the hands of cruel lords, and a strong king shall rule over them, says the Lord God of hosts. Most of the prophecy of Egypt, which Isaiah took up or saw, I touched upon in the historical explanation; so now, according to tropology, only the chief points are to be gathered. The Lord went up upon a light cloud, the body of the holy Virgin Mary, which was weighed down by no burden of human seed; or certainly his own body, which was conceived of the Holy Spirit. And he entered into the Egypt of this world, and at once all the idols of Egypt were moved, so that divinations and the whole fraud of idolatry, which held possession of a deceived world, felt itself broken; so much so that the magi from the East, taught by the demons, or understanding from the prophecy of Balaam (Num 24) that the Son of God was born who would destroy all the power of their art, came to Bethlehem, and, the star showing the way, worshipped the child (Matt 2). Then the whole heart of Egypt melted, and Egyptians rose against Egyptians, according to what the Lord says in the Gospel: Do not think that I have come to send peace upon the earth; I have not come to send peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law (Matt 10:34ff.). At that time this too was fulfilled: A man's enemies are those of his own household (Mic 7:6). And a man shall fight against his brother, and a man against his friend. For in one house they were divided, two against three and three against two, and father was divided against Son and son against father, city against city and kingdom against kingdom: those who did not believe against those who believed, or else those who believed, longing to save their neighbours. And the spirit of Egypt was broken in its bowels, so that they were no longer of one mind; but, separated against themselves by the spiritual sword, they came to know that all their counsel had been cast down; and nonetheless, remaining in their former error, those who had refused to receive the truth of the faith consulted their idols and their diviners, and those with familiar spirits, and the soothsayers. And when they had done this, the Lord delivered them into the hand of cruel lords, according to that saying of the Apostle: Whom I have delivered to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme (1 Tim 1:20), so that, oppressed by that hardest servitude, they may return to the most merciful Lord. And fittingly he calls the demons cruel lords, for nothing is crueller than they. The strong king also, who is their lord, is plainly understood as the devil, whom the Lord in the Gospel too calls the strong man; and when he is bound and overpowered, the vessels of his house and the spoil are plundered.
19:5ff.
And the water shall dry up from the sea, and the river shall be laid waste and dried up, and the rivers shall fail; the streams of the embankments shall be diminished and dried up. The reed and the rush shall wither; the bed of the stream shall be laid bare from its source, and every watered sowing shall be dried up; it shall wither and shall not be. And the fishers shall mourn, and all who cast a hook into the river shall lament, and those who spread a net upon the face of the water, and they shall wither away. And those who work flax shall be confounded, plaiting and weaving fine things, and its watered places shall be drooping, all who made pools to catch fish. Foolish are the princes of Tanis; the wise counsellors of Pharaoh have given foolish counsel. When the strong king, the harsh one, has ruled in Egypt, all the learning and beauty of worldly eloquence shall dry up, and the devil himself, the source of all the rivers, from whom all lies spring, shall be laid waste, so that the other rivers and streams, which used to be filled from the turbid waters of the Nile, shall fail. The reed and the rush too shall wither from excessive drought. For rush the Seventy translated papyrus, from which paper is made, adding of their own green achi, which is not found in the Hebrew. And when I asked learned men what this word signified, I heard that the Egyptians in their own tongue call by this name everything green that grows in a marsh. Now the reed, according to tropology, is empty speech, having nothing solid in itself; and the papyrus is that which seems indeed to have pith and is not empty, and yet is fragile and quickly withers. All the streams too, once the head of the streams has dried up, shall be dried up, and whatever was formerly watered by the Egyptian waters shall be dried up and shall not be; so that the fishers of Egypt shall mourn, who are utterly opposed to the fishers of the Lord, and those shall lament who used to cast a hook into the river and spread a net upon the face of the water. Those who deceive people one at a time cast a hook into the turbid waters; but those who deceive many at once, speaking publicly in the synagogues of Satan and leading away whole flocks of the peoples, cast a net upon the Egyptian waters. Those too shall be confounded who used to work flax to make the vestments of the priests, plaiting it and weaving fine things, which belongs properly to the art of the dialecticians. For fine things the Seventy translated byssus, which itself also is woven into the vestments of the priests. And what follows, And its watered places shall be drooping, all who made pools to catch fish, signifies that all the snares of the fishers of Egypt shall be destroyed and perish. Where we, following the sense, have translated pools made to catch fish, both in the Hebrew and in all the translators souls are set in place of fish, so that we may be drawn from the history to tropology: namely, that these fishers who made pools and pits made them for this purpose, to ensnare souls in them. It should be noted that for pools the Seventy translated ζύθον, which is a kind of drink made from grain and water, and is commonly called sabaium in the provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia, in the heathen and barbarian speech. The Egyptians use this most of all, so that they give those who drink not pure waters but turbid ones, like dregs mixed in; so that by a drink of this kind is shown the teaching of heretical depravity. Then the princes of Tanis shall be foolish, which means a lowly command. For all the heretics teach a lowliness contrary to loftiness, and drag men down to the underworld, and are princes of a lowly and abject command. The counsellors too of Pharaoh, who is the king of Egypt, and is rightly rendered scatterer and divided, and separated into various parts, shall be convicted of having given foolish counsel, when the Lord destroys the wisdom of the wise and rejects the understanding of the prudent (1 Cor 1).
19:12ff.
How do you say to Pharaoh: I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings? Where now are your wise men? Let them tell you, and declare what the Lord of hosts has purposed concerning Egypt. The princes of Tanis have become fools, the princes of Memphis have withered; they have deceived Egypt, the corner of its peoples. The Lord has mingled in its midst a spirit of giddiness, and they have made Egypt err in all its work, as a drunken man errs and vomits. And there shall be no work for Egypt which may make the head and the tail, bending and curbing. The heretics are accustomed to say to their king, or Pharaoh: We are sons of the wise, who handed down the Apostolic teaching to us from the beginning; we are sons of ancient kings, who are called the kings of the philosophers, and we have the knowledge of the Scriptures joined to worldly wisdom. These he now asks, or the very king of the heretics, where are his wise men who despised the simplicity of the Church; and he compels them to answer what the Lord Sabaoth has purposed concerning the Egypt of this world, and what he will do at the consummation. The princes of Tanis, who held the lowly command of the heretics, are proved to be fools. All the princes of Memphis have withered, who were tainted with the boasting of eloquence and of the mouth. For Memphis means mouth or from the mouth, and μεταφορικῶς signifies speech. And what follows: They have deceived Egypt, the corner of its peoples, or according to the Seventy: they shall deceive Egypt by tribes, signifies that the kingdom of worldly wisdom is shown to be foolish, and the princes of the several doctrines, who are interpreted as the tribes, are convicted of having had foolish teachers. For the Lord has mingled for them a spirit of giddiness, or of errors, according to what is written: And as they did not see fit to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate mind (Rom 1:28). And as he who is holy can say with Isaiah, We shall make the spirit of your salvation upon the earth, so he who is a sinner will make a spirit of error, that is, a spirit of wickedness, according to what we read also in Jeremiah: Your own transgression shall reprove you, and your wickedness shall rebuke you (Jer 2:19). But if the heretic who does not receive the Old Testament is scandalized that the Lord is said to mingle a spirit of error or of giddiness, let him hear what is written in the Apostle, that is, in the New Testament: God delivered them up in the desires of their heart to uncleanness (Rom 1:24). And again: For this reason God delivered them up to passions of ignominy. And again: God delivered them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting. Now they are delivered up in the desires of their heart because they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things. This we read not only in the Epistle to the Romans, but also in that to the Thessalonians concerning Antichrist: Because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved, God shall send them the working of error, that they may believe a lie, and that all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in the lie (2 Thess 2:10); which I think the apostle Paul took from the present reading of Isaiah, in which he says: The Lord has mingled for them a spirit of error, and they have made Egypt err in all its works, as, he says, a drunken man errs and vomits, one who is drunk with vices. Of such drunkards Joel speaks: Woe to those who are drunk without wine. And not only drunk, but also vomiting the fury of dragons and the incurable fury of asps; so that, after they have vomited up wine of this kind, they may understand their drunkenness, and recognize that as long as they were drunk they had neither beginning nor end, that is, neither head nor tail, but were an animal maimed at both ends. For beginning and end, as both Symmachus and the Seventy translated, Theodotion, after his custom, set down the Hebrew words themselves, CHAPHPHE (כפה) and AGMON (אגמון), which Aquila translated bent and perverse: wishing old men to be understood by bent, and by perverse wanton boys, who do everything perversely; and hence the sense is that in Egypt not only head and tail are lacking, but also old men and boys, that is, both beginning and end.
19:16-17
In that day Egypt shall be like women, and shall be amazed, and shall fear before the shaking of the hand of the Lord of hosts, which he shall shake over it. And the land of Judah shall be a festival to Egypt; everyone who remembers it shall tremble before the counsel of the Lord of hosts, which he has purposed concerning it. At that time (for that, as we have often said, is what day signifies), when the Lord has mingled a spirit of error and giddiness, so that Egypt vomits up the wine of dragons and the incurable fury of asps, understanding its error and its former drunkenness, Egypt shall fear like a woman: not with the chance fear that is wont to befall men, whom Egypt does not love but strangles and kills, but with the fear of women, whom alone Pharaoh wishes to live. And it shall fear the shaking, or lifting up, of the hand of the Lord, by which punishments are signified, which he will shake and lift up to strike Egypt. Then the land of Judah, that is, the knowledge of the Scriptures, the Law and the Prophets, the Gospels and the epistles of the Apostles, shall be a festival to Egypt, if it comes to know them; or a fear, if by comparison with their teaching and truth it understands that it has held a lie. Everyone who remembers this land shall tremble with that trembling which leads to life: For the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord (Prov 9:10). And we can take this not only of the consummation of the world, but of the present time as well: that every heretic fears a churchman learned in heavenly teachings, and is terrified at the remembrance of him. And he shall fear and tremble at the counsel of the Lord, which he has purposed concerning the Egypt of this world. We run through each point briefly, so as to pass on to the rest.
19:18
In that day there shall be five cities in the land of Egypt speaking the Canaanite tongue, and swearing by the Lord of hosts: one shall be called the city of the sun. The hand of the Lord lifted up or shaken over Egypt is of great profit, so that the land of Judah becomes a fear to it, and everyone who remembers it trembles. At that time five cities in the land of Egypt shall speak the tongue of Canaan, which most of our writers understand as the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. When we look on a woman to lust after her, our sight speaks the Egyptian tongue. When we hear a judgment of blood, though the Lord says, You shall not receive a vain report (Exod 23:1, LXX), our hearing speaks the Egyptian tongue. When, according to the prophet, we live in delights, and lie upon beds of ivory, and are anointed with the chief ointments, our smell speaks the Egyptian tongue. When our belly is our god (Phil 3), our taste speaks the Egyptian tongue. If we do not hear what the Apostle says, It is good for a man not to touch a woman (1 Cor 7), but on the contrary are joined to a harlot, our touch speaks the Egyptian tongue. But if, on the contrary, we lift up our eyes and see that the fields are already white for harvest, and are no longer bent toward the earth, but, like the woman in the Gospel who for eighteen years could not look up at heaven (Luke 13), lift up our eyes and say, To you have I lifted up my eyes, who dwell in the heavens (Ps 122 [123]:1), our eye and sight speaks the Canaanite tongue. If we circumcise our ears and hear the Lord saying, He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Luke 8:8), our hearing speaks the Canaanite tongue. Whoever can say to the bridegroom, We run after you in the fragrance of your ointments (Song 1:3), and, We are the good fragrance of Christ in every place (2 Cor 2:15), his smell speaks the Canaanite tongue. Taste too is taken in a good sense, of him who eats the bread that comes down from heaven, the living bread and not the dead, and who hears that saying, Taste and see how sweet the Lord is (Ps 33 [34]:9): at once it speaks the Canaanite tongue. And there is a spiritual touch also, of which the apostle John says, Our hands have handled of the Word of life (1 John 1:1); and he has it who touches Jesus by faith, so that the Savior can say of him, Someone has touched me, for I know that power has gone out from me (Luke 8:46). We have learned how great the good things are which the uplifted hand of the Lord bestows; let us ask why the five cities of Egypt speak not the Hebrew tongue but the Canaanite tongue. To this we shall try to answer thus. Hebrew sounds περάτην, that is, one who passes over, who passes from place to place. Therefore we too, though we be saints, as long as we are in Egypt and live in the darkness of this world, cannot speak the Hebrew tongue, but the Canaanite tongue, which is midway between the Egyptian and the Hebrew, and for the most part borders on the Hebrew. Canaan means as it were a moving, or as it were answering. When, therefore, we withdraw from Egypt and wish to go out from the power of Pharaoh, so that our land and our confession are fearsome to Egypt, then we are moved and as it were answer to the will of the Lord; and yet, because we are still in the present world, we cannot yet speak the Hebrew tongue. And what follows, five cities swear by the Lord of hosts, signifies that even while placed here we call to mind not demons but almighty God. Of these five cities, the names of the other four being passed over in silence, one is called the city of the sun, which seems to me to refer to sight. For as a city needs the sun and the moon in order to be seen, so we need the sun of righteousness in order that our eyes may be enlightened.
19:19, 21
In that day there shall be an altar of the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar of the Lord at its border. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt. For they shall cry to the Lord because of the oppressor, and he shall send them a Savior and a defender to deliver them; and the Lord shall be known by Egypt. In sequence to what he had said above, In that day there shall be five cities in the land of Egypt speaking the Canaanite tongue, and swearing by the Lord of hosts, there now follows: There shall be an altar of the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, which Onias, according to Josephus (Antiquities, book 13, ch. 6), misunderstanding it, tried to fulfil. And the title of the Lord containing his passion, on which was written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin letters, Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews (John 19), for a sign of the Cross, and for a witness to all the nations, which are now called Egypt. And when persecution has grown at the hands of those who afflict the Christian name, then they shall cry in their hearts: Abba, Father (Rom 8). And the Lord of hosts shall send a Savior, that is, Jesus, and a Judge, or defender, to deliver them, so that, delivered, they may know the Lord, and themselves be known by the Lord; and where sin abounded, grace may abound the more (Rom 5). Now one altar of Egypt, that is, of this world, is spoken of, so that we may know that all the altars which are raised up against the altar of the Church are not the Lord's. In the book of the Historical Explanation we said that, up to the end of the vision of Egypt, since the prophecy was manifest, all things are to be referred to Christ.
19:20
And the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day, and shall worship him with sacrifices and gifts, and they shall vow vows to the Lord and pay them. And the Lord shall strike Egypt with a plague, and shall heal it; and they shall return to the Lord, and he shall be appeased toward them, and shall heal them. After the Egyptians have come to know the Lord, they shall worship him with spiritual sacrifices and gifts; and they shall vow vows to the Lord and pay them, and shall say with David: A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit (Ps 50 [51]:19), and: The lifting up of my hands is an evening sacrifice (Ps 140 [141]:2); when, believing in the Nazarene, they themselves have become Nazirites, drinking neither wine nor strong drink (John 19), nor the vinegar which was offered to the Lord to drink, nor whatever is made from the grape of Sodom. And when they have paid their vows with Abel, and God has had regard to them, the elder brother Cain, that is, the people of the Circumcision, will envy, and will shed Christian blood, which shall cry out to the Lord (Gen 4); and therefore he shall go out from the face of God, saying of the Savior: Crucify, crucify him (Luke 23:21), and: We have no king but Caesar (John 19:15). He who is holy in body and spirit offers a vow and pays it to the Lord. Zacchaeus too offered a vow, who promised half of his substance to the poor (Luke 19). It is asked: if a savior and defender was sent to the Egyptians to deliver them from their straits, how is it now said, The Lord shall strike Egypt with a plague? But let us consider what follows: And he shall heal it. For whom the Lord loves he chastens (Heb 12). And the Savior himself in Psalm 68 (69) says to the Father: For they have persecuted him whom you struck, and they have added to the pain of my wounds (Ps 68 [69]:27). If, then, he did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us, that by his bruise and wounds we might be healed (Rom 8), the Lord delivered up the martyrs too to suffering, but he will heal them again in the resurrection, so that by their wounds the faith of believers may be confirmed. Hence it is said also to Job: Do you think that I spoke to you otherwise than that you might appear righteous? For he himself causes pain and restores to former health; and he visits his servants with the rod, so as not to take away his mercy from them. Hence the daughters and daughters-in-law who have sinned greatly, and have spread their feet to everyone who passed by, are not visited or chastened, for the Lord says: I will not visit your daughters when they commit fornication, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery (Hos 4:14). The Lord, then, strikes the Egyptians, not with fire, not with the sword, but with the rod. For what son is there whom his father does not train? So that, after they have been healed, they may return to the Lord, and he may be appeased toward them, and heal them once more. For we always need the mercy of God, and there is no end to his clemency.
19:23
In that day there shall be a way from Egypt to the Assyrians, and the Assyrian shall enter into Egypt, and the Egyptian into the Assyrians; and the Egyptians shall serve the Assyrians. As we have shown that the other things which go before befell the Egyptians in a good sense, namely, five cities in their land speaking the Canaanite tongue and swearing by the Lord, and the altar of the Lord set in the midst of the land of Egypt, and the pillar, and the witness, and the sign, and the savior who should deliver them; and that the Lord should be known by the Egyptians, and they themselves should know him; and that they should offer sacrifices and gifts, and pay their vows, and, being struck, be healed, and return to the Lord, and he be appeased toward them, and they be healed again: so this too which follows, that the Egyptians serve the Assyrians, is to be taken in a good sense. For the Apostle too serves believers, that he may gain them (1 Cor 9). And Esau is made subject to his brother Jacob (Gen 33), that he may become a sharer in his blessings. Therefore those from the nations who are saved first, and have the altar of the Lord within them, will by their service save those who persist in hardness; and by mingling and fellowship with them they will themselves go to the Assyrians, in order to lead the Assyrians to Egypt, and so that afterwards they may be able to reach the people of Israel. For this reason, I think, the believing wife too serves the unbelieving husband, so that little by little she may draw him from Egypt and from the Assyrians to Judea.
19:25-26
In that day Israel shall be the third to the Egyptian and the Assyrian, a blessing in the midst of the earth, which the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying: Blessed is my people of Egypt, and the work of my hands the Assyrian; but my inheritance is Israel. Israel shall be the third in Egypt and among the Assyrians, that he may mingle the whole lump with the leaven of his blessing, and that those who formerly were at hostile variance with one another may be joined together by this clasp of blessing; and that Egypt may be the people of God, and the Assyrian the work of his hands, but Israel his inheritance. The Egyptian is blessed by the Lord, because he is blessed through fellowship with Israel. And the Assyrian is the work of his hands, because in him he has shown his clemency. But Israel alone can say: The Lord is my portion (Lam 3:24), he who beholds God with the mind, and is called his inheritance.
20:1ff.
In the year that Tartan came into Ashdod, when Sargon the king of the Assyrians had sent him, and he had fought against Ashdod and had taken it, at that time the Lord spoke by the hand of Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying: Go, and loose the sackcloth from your loins, and take your shoes off your feet. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said: As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot, it shall be a sign and portent of three years upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia. So shall the king of the Assyrians lead away the captivity of Egypt and the exile of Ethiopia, young and old, naked and barefoot, with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. And they shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia their hope, and of Egypt their glory. And the inhabitant of this isle shall say in that day: Was this our hope, to whom we fled for help, that they might deliver us from the face of the king of the Assyrians? And how shall we be able to escape? For Tartan the Seventy translated Thanatan, and for Sargon, Arna: what these mean we cannot know. For we cannot invent false etymologies for false names. Now these are not Hebrew names but Assyrian, and of them we have learned that they sound thus: Tartan, he gave a tower, or superfluous, or putting far off; and Sargon prince of the garden. This king of Assyria, whom we read of above as the great mind, has very many generals, of whom one is Tartan, lifted up in pride, and going far in wickedness, and greater than the rest; and he is sent to attack Ashdod, which in Hebrew is called ASDOD (אשדוד), and means fire of generation; and the general of the king of Assyria overcomes those who serve generation and lust. And the king of the Assyrians, Sargon, prince of gardens, is fittingly said to be given over to pleasure and luxury. Indeed Ahab king of Israel too desired to turn the vineyard of Naboth into a garden (1 Kgs 21); and Naboth, understanding this according to the laws of tropology, chose to die rather than do it, lest his father's inheritance and ancient possession be turned into the delights of an impious king. Now the Prophet is commanded to lay aside the sackcloth and the shoes and walk naked and barefoot, and to be a sign and portent to the Egyptians and the Ethiopians, who persecuted the people of God and were made low on account of their pride. For Egypt means persecuting or afflicting; Ethiopians, lowly and cast down; for everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled (Luke 14:11). These are to be led into captivity and to suffer torments of three years (Exod 12), of which years we read in the Psalms: I thought upon the days of old, and I had the eternal years in mind (Ps 76 [77]:6). Let us not think these are small punishments, but punishments drawn out over long ages. And in that very captivity and exile of Egypt shall go the young and the old, who have been hardened in wickedness and have come to the vices of full age: naked, so that all their crimes may be laid bare (for nothing (Luke 8:17) is hidden that shall not be revealed), and barefoot, because they will not be able to eat the Passover of the Lord; for whoever eats it has his loins girded, and holds a staff in his hand, and stands with shod feet, lest, passing through the wilderness of this world, he be bitten by serpents (Exod 12). Then their buttocks, through which dung is voided, shall be uncovered, and all the shame of Egypt shall be shown, so that those shall be confounded who had their hope in Egypt and in Ethiopia, and shall see their glory changed into confusion; so much so that the inhabitant of this isle, that is, of the world, who is not a stranger and a sojourner, but longed to have a perpetual possession of the world, shall say in his confusion: Is this Egypt, and is this Ethiopia, whose help we hoped for, that they might deliver us from the prince of this world? How then shall we be able to escape, when those in whom we had our hope are taken captive? And this is to be noted, that before Ashdod is taken the Prophet is clothed in sackcloth and has his feet shod, so that he may indeed lament those who have been wounded by the fiery darts of the devil and serve lust, but may nonetheless himself go shod, so as to be able to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and walk safely through the desert of this world, in which there are serpents and scorpions and thirst for good things. But after Ashdod has been taken, as a type of the captivity of Egypt and the exile of Ethiopia, he walks barefoot and naked. For in the holy Land, to which he hastens to go, he could neither stand nor walk clothed in sackcloth and with his feet covered with skin, for the Lord says: Loose the shoe from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground (Exod 3:5).
21:1ff.
The burden of the desert of the sea. As whirlwinds come from the south-west, it comes from the desert, from a terrible land. A hard vision has been told to me: he who is unbelieving deals faithlessly, and he who is a spoiler lays waste. Go up, Elam; besiege, O Mede: I have made all its groaning to cease. Therefore my loins are filled with pain; anguish has taken hold of me, like the anguish of a woman in labour. LXX: The vision of the desert of the sea. As a tempest passes through from the desert, coming from the desert. From a terrible land a hard vision has been announced to me: the transgressor transgresses, and the wicked man does wickedly. Against me come the Elamites and the ambassadors of the Persians: now I shall groan, and comfort myself; therefore my loins are filled with anguish, pains have seized me, as a woman in labour. What we think according to the History we have said briefly; now let us gather the chief points of tropology. The vision, or weight, is seen against the sea of this world; and it is seen by the Prophet with how many temptations this world is filled. That the world is called the sea (to pass over many things), I am content with a single testimony of the Psalm: They who go down to the sea in ships, doing business in many waters, these have seen the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep (Ps 106 [107]:23). For those who do the work of God in this world, and say with the Prophet, I have come into the depth of the sea, see his wonders in the deep; and, delivered from temptations and straits, they say that they have heard a terrible and hard vision. Now this very tempest comes from the desert, in which the Lord too was tempted (Matt 4), and Israel lay open to the bites of serpents and the stings of scorpions (Num 21). And when it has come, it passes through and goes by; and then he who endures it understands that none transgresses but the transgressor, and none does wickedly but the wicked. That we are overwhelmed, then, by the waves of the sea, and that a savage tempest overpowers us, is our own fault, who were transgressors and wicked before the tempest. And what he says, Against me come the Elamites and the ambassadors of the Persians, has this sense: Elamites means despisers; Persians, tempters. Let those come, then, who are wont to despise, to scorn and to tempt: but I shall groan, and my groaning will be my consolation. But my loins too are filled with anguish, and pains have taken hold of me as of a woman in labour, so that from the fear of the Lord I may conceive and bring forth, and make the spirit of his salvation upon the earth. And rightly, according to the Hebrew, whirlwinds and tempests come from the desert and from a terrible land, where God is not the inhabitant, and where all things are earthly; and whoever is unbelieving does a thing in keeping with his faithlessness, and he who is a spoiler lays waste. Hence he speaks boldly against his adversaries: Go up, Elam; besiege, O Mede: I have made all the groaning of the desert of the sea, and of the terrible land, and of the hardest vision that has been told, to cease. For my loins, doing penance, are full no longer of pleasure, as before, but of pain; and I shall no longer say: My loins are filled with illusions (Ps 37 [38]:7). For anguish and tribulation have taken hold of me, as it is wont to hold a woman in labour. The common edition and the Hebrew differ greatly from each other in this place; therefore we shall touch briefly on both, lest we leave the φιλεγκλημῶσιν some little occasion of carping at us.
21:4-5
I fell down when I heard, I was troubled when I saw; my heart withered, darkness stupefied me; Babylon my beloved has been made a wonder to me. Set the table, behold in the watchtower those who eat and drink: rise up, princes, seize the shield. LXX: I did wickedly so as not to hear, I hastened so as not to see; my heart goes astray, iniquity has overflowed upon me; my soul stands fast in fear. Prepare the table, watch the watchtower: eat, drink; rise up, princes, prepare the shields. At the hearing and at the hardest vision which the Prophet saw coming from the desert of the sea, he says that he fell down and was troubled, and that with his eyes almost darkened and his mind stupefied he did not know what he was seeing. For that Babylon (for which Aquila and Theodotion translated darkness, to signify this world, which lies in the evil one (1 John 5), and whose princes, according to the apostle Paul (Eph 6), are the rulers of this darkness), which was once dear either to the Prophet or to God, has become a wonder in its overthrow. Hence the Prophet is commanded, eating at the table of the Lord and filled with his food, to contemplate more carefully what is to come upon the world; and through him it is said to all believers that, eating and drinking the body and blood of the Lord, they should be turned into princes of the Church, and hear with the Apostles, Rise up, and seize the shield of faith from the armour of the apostle Paul (Eph 6), with which they may quench the fiery darts of the devil. This according to the Hebrew and the interpretation begun concerning the world. Let us pass on to the edition of the Seventy, which differs greatly from the foregoing. The Prophet reproves himself, or rather in his own person confesses the error of others, who, following the letter that kills, despise the spirit that gives life; and he says that he did wickedly so as not to hear the law spiritually, but on the contrary hastened not to see the mysteries of God, and did not say with David: Unveil my eyes, and I shall consider the wonders of your law (Ps 118 [119]:18). Therefore his heart goes astray, and, filled with Jewish superstition, stands fast not in the love of God but in fear, so that he has the spirit of bondage in fear, and by no means the spirit of adoption, in which we cry, Abba, Father (Rom 8). Hence he is commanded to come to the table of spiritual food, and that all who follow his example should eat and drink at it; and that, having scorned the old error, those who lay in the letter should rise up in the spirit and become princes, and say with the Prophet: Lord, you have crowned us as with the shield of your good will (Ps 5:13).
21:6-7
For thus the Lord said to me: Go and set a watchman, and let him declare whatever he sees. And he saw a chariot of two horsemen, a rider on an ass, and a rider on a camel; and he gazed diligently with much attention, and a lion cried out. LXX: For thus the Lord said to me: Go and set for yourself a watchman, and whatever you see, declare it. And I saw two horsemen riding, a rider on an ass, and a rider on a camel; I heard much hearing, and I called Uriah to the watchtower. The Prophet is bidden to set a watchman in his heart, and to gaze more carefully at what is to come upon the world; and he saw two horsemen, a rider on an ass and a rider on a camel. These someone has interpreted so as to call the rider on the ass, according to the Gospel reading (Matt 21) and the prophecy of Zechariah (Zech 9), Christ; and on the contrary the rider on the camel the opposing power, on account of the foulness of that crooked animal. Others again refer the two riders, of the letter and of the spirit, to the two Testaments. And for what is said in the Hebrew, ARIE (אריה), for which Aquila and Symmachus translated lion and lioness, the Seventy, meaning I know not what, set down οὐρίαν, which a certain man thinks is to be interpreted light of the Lord, though light of the Lord, which is not found here, is written with other letters, and lion, which is read here, with others. And he would have this watchman, whom the Prophet is bidden to set in his heart, be called Uriah, and by the interpretation of the name he refers it to the understanding of Christ, so that, with him dwelling in us, we may be able to see what is to come. This indeed could also be fitted to the lion, since Jacob (Gen 49) and Balaam (Num 23 and 2) name the lion under the mystery of Christ.
21:8, 10
I am upon the watchtower of the Lord, standing continually by day, and I am upon my guard, standing whole nights. Behold, this man comes, the rider of a chariot of horsemen, and he answered and said: Fallen, fallen is Babylon, and all the graven images of her gods are broken to the ground. My threshing, and the sons of my floor, what I have heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I have declared to you. LXX: The Lord said: I stood all day, and upon the camp I stood all night; and behold, he comes, the rider of a chariot, and answering he said: Fallen, fallen is Babylon, and all her idols and the things made with hands are broken to the ground. Hear, you who are left and are grieving; hear what I have heard from the Lord Sabaoth; the God of Israel has declared it to us. The Prophet stands on the watchtower of the Lord, and, set in his light, looks forward to what is to come. And this is the guard he keeps, this the office entrusted to him: to see, in the darkness of this world, what is to come. Behold, he says, this man comes, signifying by what follows that he saw the Lord the Savior coming, seated on a chariot of two, and yoking to one car two horses, or rather two animals, the ass and the camel. And this rider of the chariot answered the Prophet, who longed and desired to hear his words, and said: Fallen, fallen is Babylon, the confusion of the whole world; it fell at my coming, when I took a human body, and it will utterly collapse at the consummation of the world. And all her graven images are broken to the ground. For which the Seventy translated idols and things made with hands, signifying the scripture of the heretics and the various errors of heresies, who are makers of idols and worship what they have fashioned out of their own heart. And what follows, in the person of the Prophet saying, My threshing, and the sons of my floor, what I have heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I have declared to you, has this sense according to the Hebrew: O people, who are to be stored in my granaries, whom I have therefore threshed in various straits, that I might shake the chaff from you, and the purest wheat might be stored in my granaries: what I have heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, is to come upon the whole world, this I have declared to all of you who are in the world. Others again say that the person is still the earlier one, namely the Lord the Savior, and that he himself speaks to the Apostles: What I have heard from the Father I have declared to you (John 15:15). And since in place of this the Seventy read, hear, you who are left and are grieving, this seems to me the sense according to their translation: O Apostles, of whom Isaiah writes, Unless the Lord had left us seed, we should have been as Sodom, and should have been like Gomorrah (Isa 1:9), whose remnant the Apostle too, writing to the Romans, teaches has been saved (Rom 9): you who were left of the people of the Jews that you might be saved, and grieve over the perdition of your nation, of which we read elsewhere also, There is sorrow in my heart, and continual grief for my brethren, who are Israelites according to the flesh (Rom 9:2, 3): these things which I have heard from God the Father I declare to you, which the God of Israel foretells to you as things to come.
21:11-12
The burden of Dumah: he calls to me out of Seir: Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said: The morning comes, and the night. If you seek, seek; turn, and come. LXX: The vision of Idumea: he calls to me out of Seir: Guard the ramparts; I keep guard morning and night; if you seek, seek, and dwell with me. The Hebrew word ELAI (אלי), which all have translated to me, if you choose to read it ELI, means my God or my strong one. And what we have rendered he calls or he summons, that is, καλεῖ, may, by the ambiguity of the Hebrew and the Greek speech, be read call! or summon!; and the sense is: God, who is my watchman, calls me day and night to repentance, so that, leaving Seir, which means shaggy and hairy, I may return and dwell with him. Dumah sounds either likeness or silence; but Idumea is rendered earthly. The Lord therefore speaks to the choir of the Apostles and commands it: Call to me those who are of Seir, so that the multitude of the nations may serve me, which, after the likeness of Esau, has nothing in itself soft and smooth and sleek, but is shaggy, wild, intractable. And you, O Apostles, after you have called the nations to me out of Seir, guard the ramparts of the Church, lest the enemy break in easily; lest the lion, roaring and going about, seeking an entrance by which he may get in, tear and scatter the flock shut up in the Church. And the multitude of the Church answered: Not only in prosperity but in adversity, that is, both by day and by night, I will keep your commandments, O God. To her God says: If you truly seek me, show by your works that you seek me; and let it not suffice you to have sought once, but seek always him whom you have found; and to hold him more perfectly, forget your people and your father's house, and, having forsaken the error of the Gentiles, abide with me in the Church. This we would say according to the Seventy, who put in the title the vision of Idumea, that is, of the earthly, to show that those are called who formerly served earthly works. Further, according to Aquila, who set down Dumah, that is, silence, or likeness, we can understand it thus: that the multitude of the nations is roused to the likeness of the people of Israel, and that where formerly there was silence of the law of God, there the cry of confession should be, and the wild olive be grafted into the good olive. We read also in the parable of the Gospel that servants were sent to call good and bad, and to fill the householder's banquet with whomsoever they found, because the first guests refused to come (Matt 22). The Church too can relate that the Lord cries aloud to her out of Seir, that is, out of earthly places, and calls her forth to salvation; and she may say to the Lord himself: O watchman, why, rising by night, do you dwell in darkness? Why are you, without sin, in the flesh of sin? For what reason did you will to take a human body? The watchman answered, that is, the Samaritan, who in the Gospel carried the wounded man on his shoulders to the inn (Luke 10): The morning comes, and the night. And the sense is: For the multitude of the nations the sun of righteousness has risen, and for the Jews darkness has come; according to what is said by the Lord: For the judgment of this world I have come, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind (John 9:39). And the watchman himself, who had said, The morning comes, and the night, speaks to the multitude of the nations: If you seek me, seek more earnestly. Turn to me, you returning sons, and I will heal your bruises; and come to me. The passages are difficult, and since according to the history they are by no means plain, we are compelled to follow various opinions according to the ἀναγωγὴν.
21:13
The burden in Arabia. This is not found in the edition of the Seventy Translators; but what follows, In the forest at evening you shall sleep, in the paths of Dodanim, is joined to the preceding vision, so that it reads, if you seek, seek, and dwell with me in the forest. Arabia in our tongue sounds evening, which is the beginning of night and of darkness; and everyone who has the beginning of sins dwells in the evening. But he who comes to the height of them stands in the middle of the night. Hence in Egypt too the firstborn are slain at midnight (Exod 12). And the apostle Peter denied the Lord three times before the cock crew, which is understood as midnight (Matt 26); but after the night was far spent and the day began to draw near, when the darkness of midnight had been overcome and the cock, herald of the light, sounded, he wept bitterly and understood his sin, and at that time he could say: In the evening weeping shall linger, and in the morning gladness (Ps 29 [30]:6). So much meanwhile on the present place. But the name of Arabia, that is, of evening and of the West, receives different meanings in other places of the Scriptures.
In the forest at evening you shall sleep, in the paths of Dodanim. LXX: In the forest at evening you shall sleep, in the way of Dedan. Those who have begun to be in wickedness, and are entering on the way of sins, do not sleep or linger in sown fields and fallow lands, nor in meadows and cornfields, which the Savior teaches are white for harvest, nor among fruit-bearing trees, but in fruitless forests, where there are brambles and thorns and where beasts dwell. Of such a forest we read also in the volume of Kings, that the wood or forest devoured more than were slain by the sword, when Absalom rose up as a rebel against his father (2 Sam 18). And rightly, since evening is the beginning of evils, they are said to dwell in the way and in the paths, and in the way of Dedan, which means judgments. For as many kinds of sins as they have, so many sentences of judgment do they deserve. But Dedan can also be interpreted great judgment.
21:14-15
Coming to meet the thirsty, bring water, you who inhabit the land of the South; meet the fugitive with bread. For they have fled from the face of the swords, from the face of the threatening sword, from the face of the bent bow, from the face of the grievous battle. LXX: To meet the thirsty bring water, you who dwell in the region of Teman; meet those who flee with bread, because of the multitude of the slain, because of the throng of those who go astray, because of the multitude of the sword, and because of the multitude of the bent bows, and because of the multitude of those who fall in war. You who are in Teman, which means South and perfection, and who dwell in that place of which it is written, God shall come from the South (Hab 3:3), and who are consummated and perfect, and have within you the light of the knowledge of the Scriptures: meet those who flee from Arabia and from the forest with water and bread, and do not wait until they come to you, but imitate that father of the Gospel parable who ran to meet his returning son. And he indeed gave the robe and offered the ring (Luke 15); but you, offer water and bread to those who flee, so that those who were weary and spent may be sustained by your mercy and pass the more quickly to your dwellings. For they have fled the swords of the heretics, the teaching of the Gentiles, the blasphemies of the Jews. And because they have seen many slain by their darts, and very many fallen in battle, they themselves long to be delivered by your help. This place may properly be understood as directed against those who, giving themselves to leisure and sloth, are content with their own salvation and do not stretch out a hand to the penitent and converted.
21:16-17
For thus says the Lord to me: Yet within one year, as in the year of a hireling, all the glory of Kedar shall be taken away, and the remnant of the number of the mighty archers of the children of Kedar shall be diminished. For the Lord God of Israel has spoken. I tell you to meet with water and bread those who flee from the forest and from Arabia because the Lord has promised that these things shall be. As the year of a hireling passes quickly, who every day looks for nothing but the wage of his labour, or certainly is always at work and toil in order to receive the wage of his labour, so all the glory of Kedar, which means darkness, of which we read in the Psalm too, I have dwelt with those who dwell in Kedar (Ps 119 [120]:5), shall swiftly be taken away; and the whole number of the archers, that is, of the various doctrines, which used to wound those placed in the forest of Arabia, shall be brought to nothing, once those fleeing from the forest have been delivered, and have received the water of saving baptism, and have eaten the heavenly bread. For the Lord of all, and properly the God of Israel, that is, of those who behold God with the mind, has spoken that these things shall be.
22:1
The burden of the valley of vision. LXX: The word of the valley of Zion. In the book of Hebrew Names we have set down that Zion means watchtower, which, set on high places, beholds from afar the things that are coming. Since, then, Zion, according to the laws of tropology, is referred to the Church, as in that saying of the second Psalm in the person of the Lord the Savior, But I have been appointed king by him over Zion, his holy mountain (Ps 2:6); and, Those who trust in the Lord are as Mount Zion (Ps 124 [125]:1); and, The Lord loves the gates of Zion above all the tabernacles of Jacob (Ps 86 [87]:2); and more plainly the Apostle: You have come, he says, to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22): we ask why in the present vision it is called the valley of Zion. And by the very sequence of the words we are drawn to a spiritual understanding: that we should know that all the princes of perverse doctrines, who have fallen from the loftiness of the sense of the holy Scriptures and have rolled down to low things, dwell in the valley of Zion. Something of this kind I think Solomon too says in the Proverbs: The eye that mocks its father and despises the old age of its mother, let the ravens of the valleys dig it out, and the young eagles eat it (Prov 30:17). For as soon as the mind of the heretics has mocked the Creator, the Father, and despised the old age of the Church, its mother, it is dug out by foul and unclean birds, which are referred to the opposing powers. Nor can such men say, I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, whence help shall come to me (Ps 120 [121]:1); but, like brute beasts, they are bowed down to earthly things.
What is the matter with you also, that you too have gone up, all of you, onto the housetops? LXX: What has happened to you now, that you have all gone up onto vain housetops? That which, according to the Seventy translators, is asked in the volume of Kings, what is meant when Elisha says (2 Kgs 2:14), Where is the God of Elijah APHPHO (אפא), is set down more plainly in the present place: where the Seventy translated now, the Hebrew has APHPHO, which we have translated now also; and Aquila, wishing to preserve the Hebrew idiom, set down καίπερτοι, a conjunction which the Latin tongue cannot render. And when he says, What is the matter with you also?, he asks why she too goes up among the others, and, with the reputation of lofty things, abides in low ones. And the sense is: Since the Philosophers are puffed up, and all worldly wisdom, disputing about lofty things, despises the simplicity of the Church, why do you too pursue high things? These the Seventy, σημαντικώτερον, translated δώματα μάταια, that is, vain housetops, to show that there is also another housetop, from which the Savior forbids us to come down (Matt 24), which is not, however, a vain housetop. Indeed the apostle Peter too went up onto the housetop at the sixth hour of prayer (Acts 10). But now, to show the great variety of heresies, he has named not one housetop but very many housetops.
22:2
Full of clamour, a crowded city, an exulting town. LXX: The city is filled with those who cry out, an exulting city. The teaching of the heretics consists not in sense but in much speaking and clamour. Hence, on account of the multitude of those deceived, it is called a crowded city, and exulting on account of its pride. For being puffed up they swell, and boast that they have found holier things.
Your slain are not slain by the sword, nor dead in battle. LXX: Your wounded are not wounded by the sword, nor are your dead dead in battle. The greatest part is overthrown by the deceptions of the heretics without any struggle or debate, and this is a very great crowd. The slain, then, or as the Seventy translated, the wounded of the valley of Zion are not slain and wounded by the sword, but have gone over to the heretics of their own will; and in comparison with those who are overcome after battle, he is the more unhappily wounded and slain who has surrendered of his own accord. Just as in martyrdom too, he who yielded after torments is liable to a lighter penalty than he who denied Christ without any necessity and without the pain of tortures.
22:3
All your princes have fled together, and have been harshly bound. In this place we have followed the translation of the Seventy, because in sense it is not far from the Hebrew. But to translate word for word from the Hebrew, it reads thus among them: All your chief men have departed together, they have been bound by the bow; and the other translators also followed this edition. For all the princes of the heretics have departed from the Church of Christ to the synagogue of Satan, and have gone over together, discordant in faithlessness, concordant in desertion; and they have been bound by the bow, of which it is written in the Psalm: Behold, the sinners have bent the bow, they have made ready their arrows in the quiver, to shoot in the dark at the upright of heart (Ps 10 [11]:2), and to send the fiery darts of the devil, which both wound and bind. And therefore they have been harshly bound, because they have stopped their ears like deaf asps, and stopping their ears, which will not hear the voices of the charmers, nor of the sorcerer charming wisely. For this reason the apostle Paul too commands that a heretic be left to his perversity after one admonition (Titus 3), because he is perverted and condemned by his own judgment. For they went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us (1 John 2:19). Of these fugitive princes the prince is he whom the same Isaiah calls the fleeing dragon, the crooked serpent, who, when he has sent deadly words into the ears of the deceived, binds them harshly and does not suffer them to escape from his bonds. Delivered from these, the saint rejoiced in the Psalm: My soul has been rescued like a sparrow from the snare of the fowlers (Ps 123 [124]:7). And in another place, rejoicing that he has escaped, he says: You are my upholder and my refuge. My God, I will hope in him. For he has delivered me from the snare of the fowlers, and from the harsh word (Ps 90 [91]:2-3), or the turbulent word, which properly signifies the teaching of the heretics.
All who were found in you are bound together; they have fled far off. LXX: And the strong in you have fled far away. The Prophet's speech is still against the valley of Zion, whose inhabitants have gone up onto vain housetops and have cried out with a confused clamour, and have been wounded without battle; all of whose princes have fled and been harshly bound, and those who were strong among them have fled further away. For the more prudent a man is in heretical perversity, the further he withdraws from the Lord. And as for what he says according to the Hebrew, All were found in you, we ought to note this: that the heretics too say they have found those whom they have deceived; but their finding is perdition. Accordingly they are bound together and flee far off. Nor am I pleased with that exposition which holds that, according to the diversity of the heresies, the distances of those who flee are also diverse, since the holy Scripture says (Luke 11:23) that all who have been found by the heretics are bound together and have fled very far, the Lord saying: He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. Hence it is said of Moses (Exod 24): Moses alone drew near to God, but the rest did not draw near. For to his saints God is a God who draws near, and not from afar, says the Lord.
22:4, 6
Therefore I said: Depart from me, I will weep bitterly; do not press to comfort me over the devastation of the daughter of my people. For it is a day of slaughter and of trampling and of weeping from the Lord God of hosts in the valley of vision, searching the wall, and magnificent upon the mountain. LXX: Therefore I said: Let me alone, I will weep bitterly; do not strive to comfort me over the breaking of the daughter of my race; for it is a day of tumult and of perdition and of trampling, and error from the Lord God Sabaoth in the valley of Zion; they err from the least to the greatest, they err upon the mountains. Samuel too mourned for Saul (1 Sam 15), and the Lord and Savior wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19; 2 Cor 12:21); and the Apostle writes to the Corinthians: Lest, when I come to you again, God humble me, and I mourn for many who sinned before and have not done penance. Hence, with the feeling of one who suffers with them, he says to others also: Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I do not burn? (2 Cor 11:29). So the Prophet too, seeing the people that was once of vision climbing the vain housetops and living in clamour, and all its princes fled and bound with the chains of sins, bursts into tears, and drives away those who would console him, and testifies that he weeps with most bitter weeping, not over the sons but over the daughter of his people, which has lost the dignity of manhood. For the day of judgment and slaughter and trampling will by no means be Jerusalem, which means vision of peace, but of its ancient name Jebus, which means trampling; a day of weeping too, or of error, as the Seventy translated, from the Lord Sabaoth: not that weeping and error come from the Lord, but through the occasion of the holy Scriptures, which the Lord gave to be read, an occasion of error arises for those who can say: Why have you made us err from your way? (Isa 63:17). And in another place: The Lord has mingled for them a spirit of error (ibid. 29:10): so that they should stand not on the mountain of Vision but in the valley of Zion. And this very day, which arises from the Lord of hosts in the valley of Vision to show the works of each, searches the wall of the heretics, which they have built against the Church like a most solid rampart; and it searches the magnificent and glorious one, that is, their teachers, who boast that they stand upon Christ the mountain, of which we read elsewhere: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will declare to us his way (Isa 2:3). Further, as for what the Seventy translated, they err from the least to the greatest, they err upon the mountains, we ought to understand this: that those who are greater are in greater wickedness, and yet that all err from the least to the greatest, and err upon the mountains: Moses, Jeremiah and the other Prophets, the Evangelists and the Apostles. And though they dwell in the valley, they err in a wondrous way upon the mountains.
22:7, 9
And Elam took up the quiver, the chariot of a man, a horseman, and the shield laid bare the wall. And your choice valleys shall be full of chariots, and the horsemen shall set their seats in the gate. And the covering of Judah shall be uncovered, and you shall see in that day the armoury of the house of the forest; and you shall see the breaches of the city of David, that they are multiplied. LXX: But the Elamites took quivers, riders, men upon horses, and a gathering of fighters; and your choice valleys shall be filled with chariots, and horsemen shall throng your gates; and they shall uncover the gates of Judah, and they shall look on that day into the choice houses of the city; and they shall uncover the hidden things of the houses of the citadel of David, and they shall see that they are many. Elam, which means their ascent, or the Elamites, as the Seventy translated, whom we render despisers, took up the quiver to shoot in the dark at the upright of heart; they are horsemen of men in a chariot, to lay bare with their shield and their assault the wall of Zion and the strongholds of the Church. And your choice valleys, he says, and your lowly doctrines, O valley of Zion, shall be full of chariots, those which the Lord sank with Pharaoh, whose horsemen and riders shall set their seats in your gates, so as not to let those besieged and shut up in you go out. Then almighty God, through churchmen, shall uncover the coverings of Judah and all the secrets of those who stand in the confession of the faith; and then, O valley of Zion, in that day and in the clear light of truth, you shall see the whole armour of the Apostle, and of the house of the forest, in which the throng of the nations stands; as it is sung also in Psalm 131 (132): Behold, we have heard of it in Ephrathah; we have found it in the fields of the forest (Ps 131 [132]:6). And when the covering and secret of Judah, which formerly was hidden on account of the mystery, has been uncovered, and you have seen the armour of the Church, then you will understand the schisms of the city of David, which you have multiplied in order to gather to yourself deceived peoples. These Elamites, according to the edition of the Seventy, have not one quiver but several; and they are riders of men, on whose souls they ride; and there is a very great multitude preparing itself for battle against the Church, so that all its valleys are filled; and the horsemen stop up their senses, and by their combat challenge to the contest the churchman, who is interpreted Judah; and when he brings forward the testimonies of the Scriptures and refutes all lies, the heretics will see the houses of the city of David, and will come to know all the things formerly secret: how in the citadel of David, which means strong of hand, that is, of Christ, are all the doctrines of truth. The places are obscure, not only according to the history but according to the ἀναγωγὴν. Those, then, whom our views displease ought to bring forward their own, so that we may acquiesce in their explanation, if it is true.
22:10-11
And you gathered the waters of the lower pool, and you numbered the houses of Jerusalem, and you pulled down houses to fortify the wall. And you made a reservoir between the two walls, and the water of the old pool; and you did not look to him who had made it, and you did not see its maker from afar. LXX: And they turned the water of the ancient pool into the city, and they pulled down the houses of Jerusalem to strengthen the walls of the city; and you made yourselves water between the two walls within the ancient pool; and you did not look to him who made it from the beginning, and you did not see its creator. You who will see, or do see, the breaches of the city of David, that is, of the Church, which have been multiplied throughout the whole world; who have gathered the waters of your pool and teaching, not the upper but the lower, and have numbered, or pulled down, the houses of Jerusalem in order to fortify your wall: you have not dug wells which might have living and eternal waters, but broken cisterns, which cannot hold water. And you have made them between the two walls of the New and the Old Testament, and have neglected the water of the old pool, and have not considered God the giver of the law, and have utterly neglected the maker of the world. This according to the Hebrew. But according to the Seventy, the heretics considered that they were many, and trusting in this multitude they turned the teaching of the Old Testament away from the city of God, which is the Church, and pulled down the houses of Jerusalem in order to build assemblies of the wicked; and while they reject the Old Testament, they have not followed the New either, because the New is strengthened by the testimonies of the Old Testament. Therefore between the two walls, the old and the new, they have made themselves new waters, which they think are more inward and contain greater mysteries than are contained in the Old Testament; and they did not look to God, who is the founder of the Old Testament, and would not see its maker even from afar.
22:12ff.
And in that day the Lord God of hosts shall call to weeping and to mourning, to baldness and to the girding of sackcloth; and behold joy and gladness, killing calves and slaughtering rams, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die. And it was revealed in my ears by the Lord of hosts: Surely this iniquity shall not be forgiven you until you die, says the Lord God of hosts. Daily the Lord God of hosts calls to repentance the heretics, who, despising the water of the old pool between the two walls, have dug themselves a reservoir and gathered the water of the lower pool, which has its waters not from heaven but from the earth; and he calls them to weeping, for blessed are those who weep, for they shall laugh (Matt 5:5); and to mourning, lest afterwards they hear: We have lamented to you, and you have not mourned (ibid. 11:17); and to baldness, that they may shave off all the works of death, and remove from their body whatever does not live in the body; and to the girding of sackcloth, lest afterwards, according to Jerusalem, they be girded with a rope instead of a girdle. But they, on the contrary, instead of weeping and mourning, baldness and haircloth, had joy and gladness, and, as if all things ended with death, killing calves and slaughtering rams, to eat flesh and drink wine, they spoke the words of blasphemers: While we are in the present world, let us abound in delights; for tomorrow, that is, the time to come, will be without sensation. While they were saying these things, the Lord heard the words of blasphemy, and threatened that he would not forgive this iniquity until they either die to sin and vices, or are dragged down to the underworld with their offences. This indeed can be understood not only of the heretics but of every sinner who, neglecting his sins, becomes worse through despair, and, ensnared by pleasures, joins blasphemy to sin, so as to think that all the sensation of the living ends with death, saying that saying of Epicurus: "After death there is nothing, and death itself is nothing."
22:15-16ff.
Thus says the Lord God of hosts: Go, enter in to him who dwells in the tabernacle, to Shebna who is over the temple, and you shall say to him: What are you doing here, or as whom are you here? For you have hewn yourself a tomb here; you have hewn a memorial on high carefully, a tabernacle for yourself in the rock. Behold, the Lord will cause you to be carried away as a cock is carried away, and he will lift you up like a garment. Crowning, he will crown you with tribulation; like a ball he will cast you into a land wide and spacious: there you shall die, and there shall be the chariot of your glory, the shame of the house of your Lord. And I will drive you from your station, and depose you from your ministry. And it shall come to pass in that day that I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your tunic, and strengthen him with your girdle, and I will give your power into his hand; and he shall be as a father to those who dwell in Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder; and he shall open, and there shall be none to shut; and he shall shut, and there shall be none to open. And I will fasten him as a peg in a sure place, and he shall be for a throne of the house of his father. And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, divers kinds of vessels, every small vessel, from the vessels of bowls even to every vessel of the musicians. In that day, says the Lord of hosts, the peg that was fastened in the sure place shall be taken away, and shall be broken and fall; and what hung upon it shall perish, for the Lord has spoken. LXX: Thus says the Lord Sabaoth: Go to the pastophorion, to Somnas the treasurer, and you shall say to him: What are you here? Or what have you here? For you have hewn yourself a tomb, and have made yourself a memorial on high, and have marked out for yourself a tabernacle in the earth? Behold, the Lord Sabaoth will cast out and crush a man, and will take away your robe and your glorious crown, and will cast you into a great land, and without measure, and there you shall die; and he will set your excellent chariot in shame, and the house of your prince for trampling. And you shall be removed from your stewardship and from your rank. And it shall come to pass in that day that I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe, and will give him your crown with strength, and will give your stewardship into his hands; and he shall be as a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and of Judah, and I will give him the glory of the house of David, and he shall rule, and there shall be none to gainsay. And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder; and he shall open, and there shall be none to shut; and he shall shut, and there shall be none to open. And I will establish him as a prince in a sure place, and for a throne of glory of his father's house; and every glorious one in his father's house shall trust in him, from the least to the greatest. Every small vessel, from the vessels aganoth; and they shall hang upon him. In that day thus says the Lord Sabaoth: The man who was established in a sure place shall be moved, and shall be taken away and shall fall, and the glory that was upon him shall perish, for the Lord has spoken. The prophet Isaiah is commanded to go in to him who dwells in the tabernacle, which in Hebrew is called SOCHEN (סכן), to Shebna who is over the temple, or as the Seventy translated, ταμίαν, that is, the treasurer and steward of the treasures of the house of God. Now Sochen is interpreted either tabernacle or pastophorion, that is, the chamber in which the one set over the temple dwells. And who else is it that dwelt in the tabernacle of the Jews, and in what was once the house of God, but the word and reasoning of the Jewish law, which was occupied with the reading of the Old Testament? To this tradition and teaching, then, it is said: What are you doing here? Why do you wish to build yourself a house in the letter that kills, and to fix your tabernacle, which has no foundation, in the firmness of the rock, which ought to be called not so much a tabernacle and a house as a tomb and a memorial? And I tell you this because you ought not to toil at hewing a tomb, since the Lord will carry away your priesthood, as GEBER (גבר) is wont to be carried, which all have translated man. But the Hebrew who instructed us in the reading of the Old Testament rendered it cock. As a cock, he says, is carried from one place to another on the shoulder of a porter, so the Lord will lightly carry you away from your place. And you who once had the crown of the high priest, and the sanctification on the plate of gold on which the name of God was written (Exod 28), shall be crowned with tribulation and distress. And as a ball, if it is thrown down a sloping and spacious place, cannot stand still but rolls on without end, so all your people shall be scattered to the ends of the world. And there you shall die with your letter, and all your glory, and the chariots in which you were formerly borne in renown; and the splendour of the house of God shall be turned into shame. For the Lord shall take you away from your station and from your ministry, that is, from the ceremonies of the victims, so that what is written to the Hebrews may be fulfilled: For when the priesthood is changed, there must of necessity be a change of the law also (Heb 7:12). And when you have been cast out of your ministry, I will call my servant Eliakim, to whom I have said in another place also: It is a great thing for you to be called my servant (Isa 49:6, LXX). Eliakim means God rising again, or the resurrection of God. This God rising again, then, who is the son of Hilkiah, that is, of the portion of the Lord, shall receive your place, and shall be clothed with your robe and strengthened with your girdle, so that what you had in the letter he may possess in the spirit; and he shall be the father of those who dwell in Jerusalem, that is, in the vision of peace, which is interpreted as the Church, and to the house of Judah, where the true confession of faith is. Hence he himself says to the Apostles: Little children, yet a little while I am with you (John 13:33). And to another: Son, your sins are forgiven you (Matt 9:2). And to another woman: Daughter, your faith has made you whole (Luke 7:50). I will give him, he says, the key of the house of David, he who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens (Rev 3). And this very key shall be upon his shoulder, that is, in his passion, according to what is written in another place: Whose government is upon his shoulder (Isa 9:6). For what he has unlocked by his passion cannot be shut; and what he has shut in the ceremonies of the Jews shall be opened by no one else. For I will fasten him as a peg in a sure place, where the assembly of the Faithful is; hence too those who believe in Christ are called the faithful. And he shall be for a throne of glory of his father's house, that is, of the Church; and they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house. Hence it is written in the Gospel also: All the people hung upon him (Luke 19). And this indeed was done not only at that time, but is fulfilled to this day, so that there hang upon him, as it were, divers vessels of God: wisdom and righteousness and all the things by which Christ is called. Divers kinds of vessels: for these Aquila translated SASAIM (צאצאים) and SEPHOTH (הצפעית), which Symmachus rendered grandsons and mixed ones, so that the Apostles and all believers, that is, the sons of sons, and those mixed from all the nations, may hang upon him. From the vessels of bowls, for which Theodotion set down AGANOTH (אגנות): for both small and great shall believe in the Lord. And I think the bowls are the Apostles, full of living waters, of whom it is said: Bless God from the fountains of Israel (Ps 67 [68]:27), in which bowls wisdom has mingled her wine. And every vessel, he says, of the musicians, of those who at all times resound in the praises of God. What follows seems contrary to our sense: how this peg, which had been fastened in a sure place, is taken away and broken, and what had hung upon it falls and perishes, and this happens because the Lord has spoken. This can be resolved thus, if we read that saying of the Gospel, that in the last days the love of many shall grow cold (Matt 24), and the Lord himself says: Do you think the Son of man, when he comes, will find faith upon the earth? (Luke 18:8). It is not, then, the peg that will be broken and fall and perish, which it is impious to say; but the peg will be taken away from the sure place, that is, from the Church, through the impiety that daily grows up, and those who before hung upon him by faith will afterwards through unbelief be broken and fall and perish. And this shall happen in the last days, because the Lord has spoken. For peg, which in Hebrew is called JATHED (יתד), and is rendered alike by all, the Seventy alone translated above prince, and here man. And what almost escaped us in the haste of dictation: Shebna means turn now, or conversion. It is said, therefore, to the prince of the Jews, that he should turn from the Law to the Gospel, and, forsaking the images of the victims, pass over to the truth of the spiritual sacrifice.
23:1
The word of Tyre. What we thought about the burden, or word and taking up, of Tyre according to the Hebrews, we have said above in the book of the historical explanation of the ten Visions. Now we shall run briefly through the whole prophecy against Tyre according to the ἀναγωγὴν and the edition of the Seventy. Tyre is called SOR (צר) in the Hebrew tongue, and is rendered into our speech as distress. Every soul, then, that is taken up with vices and evil thoughts can be called sor.
Howl, you ships of Carthage, for they have perished, and shall come no more. From the land of the Kittim she has been led captive. To whom are the inhabitants of the isle become like? The merchants of Phoenicia, crossing the sea in many waters, the seed of merchants like harvests brought in, the merchants of the nations. For Carthage, in the Hebrew is written THARSIS (תרשיש), which all have translated alike. And Tharsis means contemplation or searching out of joy. Kittim too, which in Hebrew is called CHETIM (כתים), means sea congealing; and for Phoenicia, Sidon is read among them. Those, then, are rebuked whom a throng of evil thoughts surrounds, and who, wishing, as the Apostle says, to become rich, fall into temptations and snares of the devil, and many harmful desires, which drag men down into the deep (1 Tim 6). And they are told that they must howl, knowing that all the trading of this world will perish, and the contemplation of joy and gladness be turned into mourning and tears. For this sea can be sailed no longer, but all things will freeze; and the colonies of the Tyrians will be led captive to punishment. For those who dwell in this isle are like no others than merchants, or carriers, who are carried about by every wind of doctrine and pass from one vice to another. And we dwell in an isle as long as we are beaten by the temptations of this world, and on every side our isle and little boat is struck by the waves of the sea. Now the merchants of this isle are from Sidon, which means huntress, and in which dwell very many hunters, of whom it is written: He will deliver you from the snare of the hunters (Ps 90 [91]:3). And in another place the saint rejoices that he has been delivered from their snares, saying: Our soul has been rescued like a sparrow from the snare of the hunters (Ps 123 [124]:7). And all the merchants of the nations are compared to crops which quickly wither, or to the harvests of the river, which have their rain not from heaven but from the earth; and therefore they will perish with the nations. Where we read the seed of merchants, in the Hebrew is written the seed of sior, by which the Nile is understood, because it has turbid waters with which the crops of Egypt are watered.
23:4-5
Be ashamed, O Sidon, said the sea; and the strength of the sea said: I have not travailed, nor brought forth, nor nourished young men, nor brought up virgins. And when it is heard in Egypt, pain shall seize them over Tyre. The sea of this world, in which dwell small animals with great, and the dragon which God formed to be mocked, seeing that those who had formerly been taken by the demons have been taken by the hunters of Christ, who hunt from every mountain and hill, speaks to the opposing power of the hunters, which Sidon means, and says to it: Be ashamed, O Sidon; for I have not travailed nor brought forth, nor nourished the young men taken by you, nor brought up the virgins whose folly is condemned in the Gospel (Matt 25). For my travail and childbearing, and my nourishing and bringing up of virgins, have been blotted out by the travail of the Apostles of Christ, one of whom said: My little children, of whom I travail again until Christ be formed in you (Gal 4:19). And: I gave you milk to drink, not solid food (1 Cor 3:2). And again: I wish to present you all as a chaste virgin to Christ (2 Cor 11). When Egypt hears this, which in Hebrew is called MESRAIM (מצרים), which means ἐκθλίβουσα, that is, afflicting and constraining, it too will be terrified, understanding that it too will suffer the same things that Tyre has suffered. And while this is referred to all vices, it can also be perceived in the diversity of the heresies, when, one heresy being taken, another trembles, and in the confusion of one the other perceives that it is to be taken. And as it is said of Sodom: For if the signs had been done in them which were done in Capernaum, they would have remained until this day; and it is added: But it shall be more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment than for you: so we learn of Tyre and Sidon, the Savior saying: But it shall be lighter for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for that city (Matt 11:21ff.). Hence too the Canaanite woman, who understood that her daughter, that is, her soul, was grievously vexed by a demon, is said to have come out of the borders of Tyre and Sidon to pray to Christ. For she could not otherwise have gone to meet the Savior, unless she had left the borders of Tyre and Sidon.
23:6-7
Go to Carthage; howl, you who dwell in this isle. Is not this your disgrace from the beginning, before she was delivered up? Her feet shall lead her far off to sojourn. What follows, Her feet shall lead her far off to sojourn, has been added from the Hebrew, and is marked beforehand with an asterisk, that is, with shining stars. O Tyrians, you who dwell in distress and abide in an isle, exposed on every side to the waves of temptations, depart from it, and go to Carthage, that is, Tharsis, and hasten to true joy, mourning your old sins and the ancient disgrace which you either inflicted on others or suffered from them. And I command this because you see Tyre, your city, about to move from its seats and purpose to other borders, when, having laid aside their old error, they have bowed their necks to the Gospel of the Savior; so that those who formerly dwelt in distress may depart far off and become sojourners and dwellers in the teaching of the Lord the Savior.
23:8-9
Who has purposed these things against Tyre? Is she less, or does she not prevail? Her merchants are princes of Canaan, the renowned of the earth. The Lord Sabaoth has purposed to dissolve all the insolence of those who glory, and to dishonour all that is renowned upon the earth. The word Canaan has been added from the edition of Theodotion; for it Aquila translated merchants. The Holy Spirit therefore asks, or rather by the question affirms, that the Lord has purposed these things against the princes of Tyre, whose whole industry is to seek wealth by trading. And as in the Gospel we read of dealers in pearls (Matt 13), who, having sold all, long to buy one pearl, and who surely are to be called renowned merchants, not of earth but of heaven, so, on the contrary, the merchants of Tyre, that is, of tribulation and distress, are to be called the renowned of the earth, because whatever they do looks to the earth; and princes of Canaan, which means tossed about and shaken. For they do not set their feet upon the rock, nor can it be said of them, The rock is a refuge for the hedgehogs (Ps 39 [40]; 103 [104]:18), or for the hares; but rather they endure what the righteous man almost suffered: But my feet were almost moved, my steps had well nigh slipped (Ps 72 [73]:2). The Lord of hosts, then, purposed this counsel: to dissolve the most wicked bonds of the merchants, or rather to scatter the compacted injury through which all who are subject to Tyre grow proud. And as for what he added, and to dishonour all that is glorious upon the earth, the Lord is not the author of dishonour, but shows to be shameful what lies open to shame of itself. This indeed we read in Leviticus also concerning the Priests: With defilement he has defiled him (Lev 21), the priest, no doubt: not that he is the author of the defilement, but that he shows him to be defiled who formerly seemed clean to very many.
23:10-11
Work your land; for ships no longer come from Carthage, and your hand no longer prevails, which provokes kings on the sea. The edition of the Seventy differs greatly in this place from the other translators and from the Hebrew itself; but let us pursue our purpose. Above he had said: Go to Carthage; howl, you who dwell in the isle. Now he says the opposite: since ships no longer come from Carthage, work your land. For it profited Tyre that the foreign ships perished, so that she is compelled to work her own land, of which it is said in the Proverbs: He who works his land shall be filled with bread (Prov 12:11): so that she may live not from the uncertain hazard of the waves and of shipwrecks, but from the fruits of her own work, of which it is sung in the psalms to the righteous man: You shall eat the labours of your hands (Ps 127 [128]:2). It is written in Hosea that the ways of the harlot were hedged by the Lord with thorns, so that she could not follow her lovers, in order that, driven by this necessity, she might return to her first husband. And this we often observe in the affairs of the world too: many who, through prosperity and abundance of all things, could not perceive the Lord, come to understand him through want, and are converted to the works of righteousness, after their hand no longer prevails to enjoy the felicity of this world, the hand which formerly provoked kings on the sea, or according to Symmachus, troubled them; kings whose heart is in the hand of God. And would that we too, scorning the trade of this sea, might work our land, and by no means wait for the ships of Carthage, or the ships of Tyre which used to go to Carthage, lest we be made subject to the power of the dragon who rules in the sea! But let us fix a steady step upon the land, or rather, hastening to heavenly things, let us work our land, so that, sowing here, we may reap there. Our hand too, which formerly was busied with the affairs of the world, and through power and felicity could move even kings, that is, the saints, from their standing, let it become feeble in the affairs of the sea, so that it may be strong in the work of its own land.
23:12
The Lord Sabaoth has commanded concerning Canaan to destroy its strength, and they shall say: You shall no more do injury and iniquity to the virgin daughter of Sidon. That Tyre and Sidon are in the land of Canaan we have shown above also, setting forth the testimony of the Gospel, in which we read that the Canaanite woman, or Syrophoenician, came out of the borders of Tyre and Sidon and met the Lord the Savior. Now every soul that is set amid the waves of the world and is carried about by every wind of doctrine is to be called Canaan, which means as it were a tossing or a shaking. Hence it is said also to the adulterous old man: Seed of Canaan and not of Judah, beauty has deceived you (Dan 13). It profits Tyre and its distresses, then, that the Canaanite strength should perish, so that it may be said to its inhabitants that they can no longer do injuries and oppress by iniquity the virgin daughter of Sidon. Whoever is taken by the devil in the turmoil of various vices, and is delivered over to the outrages of shame, so as to pollute the body with pleasures and foulness, he is the son or daughter of Sidon. And this is to be known: that Sabaoth is not found in the Hebrew, and on the contrary virgin has been added from the Hebrew.
23:13
If you go to the Kittim, not even there shall there be rest for you; and if to the land of the Chaldeans, it too has been laid waste by the Assyrians. Siim founded it; they set up its ramparts, they raised its tower: its wall has fallen. What follows has been added from the edition of Theodotion under asterisks: Siim founded it; they set up its ramparts; they raised its tower; and joined without asterisks: its wall has fallen. The Kittim are interpreted a stroke consummated or perfect; the Chaldeans in this place, as it were breasts; the Assyrians, reproving. The etymology of Siim we too have not been able to find, and the other translators rendered it by the very name with which it is written among the Hebrews. It is said, therefore, to Tyre, that although she strive to go to the Kittim and avoid the stroke of her distresses, she cannot find perfect rest even there. And again, if she desires to go to the Chaldeans and enjoy their fertility and the abundance of all things, she will find them too desolate, the Assyrians reproving their barrenness; just as the Apostle also delivered sinners to Satan (1 Tim 1), that they might learn not to blaspheme: they are delivered to the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved. And Siim laid the foundations of the Chaldeans, by whom I understand the most wicked demons, who raised both the ramparts and the proudest towers of the Chaldean city against the knowledge of the Lord. But all their building has fallen into ruins; for there follows, its wall has fallen. For unless the Lord builds the house, they have laboured in vain who build it (Ps 126 [127]:1). We often see in the world some men pass from one pursuit to another: for example, those who have fared badly in soldiering pass over to trade; and again advocates take up the arms of warriors. They change their occupation in order to change their misfortune; and nonetheless, by the dispensation of God, for those whom he deigns to save everything turns out contrary to their striving, so that through want and miseries they are compelled to have confidence not in themselves but in their Creator.
23:14
Howl, you ships of Carthage, for your strength has perished. The ships of Carthage, that is, of Tharsis, are bidden to howl; for they have not, as above, perished or shall not come, but their strength has perished. For Tharsis, according to another interpretation, is rendered into our tongue consummation of six, or of gladness. Now we read that this world was made in six days, and according to the traditions of the Church it will afterwards be consummated. All the goods of this world, then, and the whole labour of mortals, are compared to the uncertain course of ships, because they will quickly perish, and all the strength of those who sail will be dissolved. Hence it is written in Solomon also: The wise man has gone up to strong cities, and has destroyed their fortifications (Prov 21:22). For whatever is composed by the art of the heretics, of worldly wisdom, and of opposing doctrines, the churchman destroys, and teaches that it is subject to his feet.
23:15ff.
And it shall come to pass in that day that Tyre shall be forsaken seventy years, as the time of one king, as the time of a man. And after seventy years Tyre shall be as the song of a harlot. Take a harp, go about, harlot city given over to forgetfulness. Play well on the harp, sing much, that you may be remembered. And after seventy years God will visit Tyre, and she shall be restored again to her former state; and her trade shall be with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth. And her trade and her hire shall be holy to the Lord; but it shall not be gathered for themselves, but for those who dwell before the Lord. All her trade, to eat and drink and be filled in common store, a memorial before the Lord. What is said, a memorial before the Lord, and upon the face of the earth, and as the time of a man, is not found in the Hebrew, but has been added in the Greek. Now Tyre, once straitened, is let go for seventy years, so that, the time of desolation fulfilled, she may turn her once harlot's song into the praises of God, and, taking up the harp, may have all its strings sounding in concord; so that, after she has played well in concord and sung much, there may be a remembrance before God of her who on account of fornication had been given over to forgetfulness; and that she may be restored to her former state, and have the riches of the kingdoms of the whole world, and that the wages of her labour may by no means be gathered for the Tyrians, but for those who dwell in the sight of the Lord, and that they may eat and drink and be filled with all the good things which have been brought together by the labour of all for the gladness of the banquet. The divine word exhorts Sidon and Tyre to repentance, and promises that her labours and wages are to be sanctified to the Lord. Who among sinners would not have hope of salvation, if only he sings well, and all the strings of the virtues, which once had been slackened, are tuned to the praises of the Lord? We read in Psalm 44 (45), which pertains especially to the union of the bridegroom and the bride, that is, to God the Savior and to the mysteries of the Church, that it is said among other things: The daughters of Tyre with gifts, the rich among the people shall entreat your face (Ps 44 [45]:13). And the bridegroom himself speaks again to the Tyrian bride: Hear, O daughter, and see, and incline your ear; and forget your people and your father's house, for the king shall desire your beauty (ibid. 11, 12). Hence in the description of her beauty too it is added: The queen stood at your right hand, in a vesture of gold, surrounded with variety (ibid. 10). And again: All the glory of the king's daughter is within (ibid. 14). And if the king desired the beauty of the penitent Tyrian woman, who has the ornaments of various virtues, how much more shall her hire and her trade belong not to those who remain in Tyre but to those who dwell in the sight of the Lord! These, after they have done penance, shall hear from the Lord the Savior: Eat, my friends, and drink, and be inebriated, my dearly beloved (Song 5:1). And what it is to eat and drink and be filled with the common store of all the virtues, the faithful reader understands. That the temple was desolate for seventy years Jeremiah (Jer 29), Daniel (Dan 9) and Zechariah (Zech 7) teach. And in Ezekiel (Ezek 16) we read of Sodom that it shall be restored to its former state, and of Egypt that, after the desolation of the land of Egypt and the drying up of the seven rivers, it shall recover its old fertility. Now the number seven and seventy, which is made up either of single days or of seven decades, signifies a perfect and consummated repentance; so that Tyre rightly, the time of repentance fulfilled, returns to her former state. Of this harlot, I think, that saying too in the Proverbs of Solomon is signified in mystical speech: Do not heed a most wicked woman; for honey drips from the lips of a harlot woman, which for a short while fattens your throat, but afterwards you will find her more bitter than gall (Prov 5:2-4). For she looks out through the window of her house into the streets (Matt 7), because wide and spacious is the way that leads to death; and whatever foolish young man she sees (for the wise she does not dare to tempt) passing by the corners, those who have lost the straight line, she speaks to him in the darkness and in the gloom, and under the appearance of pleasures leads him like a victim to death. If she is converted, and sings well, and fulfils the time of years of perfect repentance, she shall eat and drink and be filled. Let Novatian hear this, and be silent.
Book Eight
The sixth and seventh books above contain the allegory of the fifth volume, which I formerly dictated as a historical explanation. The present work, that is, the eighth book, returns to the interpretation we had begun, so as to discuss both the history and the tropology according to both editions alike. If it seems long to you, O virgin of Christ Eustochium, do not impute it to me, but to the difficulty of Holy Scripture, and especially of the prophet Isaiah, who is wrapped in such great obscurities that, because of the magnitude of the matter, I think an explanation brief which is in itself long. Certainly we write for the studious and for those who desire to know Holy Scripture, not for the fastidious, who are nauseated at every single point. If they desire a river of eloquence and polished declamations, let them read Tully, Quintilian, Gallio, Gabinianus, and, to come to our own, Tertullian, Cyprian, Minucius, Arnobius, Lactantius, Hilary. Our purpose is that Isaiah be understood through us, and by no means that our own words be praised on the occasion of Isaiah.
24:1ff.
Behold, the Lord will scatter the earth, and will lay it bare, and will afflict its face, and will disperse its inhabitants; and as the people is, so will the priest be; and as the servant, so his master; as the handmaid, so her mistress; as the buyer, so he who sells; as the lender, so he who receives the loan; as he who demands repayment, so he who owes. With scattering the earth will be scattered, and with plundering it will be despoiled: for the Lord has spoken this word. After the particular rebuke of the individual nations, Judea, Babylon, the Philistines, Moab, Damascus, Israel, Egypt, the desert of the sea, Edom and Arabia, the valley of vision, and at the last Tyre, in the explanation of which we have said what we could, the prophetic discourse now describes what the whole world is going to suffer at the consummation, and the prophecy is by no means about the individual nations, but about all of them alike. And first, what torments the impious are going to suffer; and how, according to the Gospel and the Apostle, heaven and earth and the fashion of this world pass away (Matt 24; 1 Cor 7), and sinners are led down into hell (Ps 30 [31]), of whom it is written: They shall go into the lowest parts of the earth, they shall be delivered into the hands of the sword, they shall be the portions of foxes (Ps 62 [63]:10). Then, because according to the quality of their merits there are many mansions with the Father, it is told how the saints are caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and are to be with him always (John 14; 1 Thess 4). For the earth scattered, the Seventy translated the world corrupted; and for its face afflicted, that is, the earth's, the same translated, and he will uncover its face, so that the dead may come forth from their tombs; or he will lay it bare, so that all its works may be brought out into public view, and its inhabitants be dispersed into different places, destined for rewards or for punishments. Then there will be no difference between noble and base, priest and layman, servant and master, handmaid and mistress, rich and poor, the lender and him who is pressed by debt, buyer and seller. For all will stand on equal terms before the judgment seat of Christ, and there will be no respect of persons with God (Rom 14; Col 3). Of this Job too speaks in almost the same words: The small and the great are there, and the servant who does not fear his master (Job 3:19). And the Savior in the Gospel, to whom all judgment has been committed, bears witness in full discourse. The earth, therefore, will be scattered, and all earthly works will be reduced to nothing, so that, the image of the χοϊκοῦ having been abolished, the image of the heavenly may remain. For the first man was from the earth, earthly, and the second from heaven, heavenly: as is the earthly, such also are the earthly; and as is the heavenly, such also are the heavenly; so that, as we have borne the image of the earthly, we may bear also the image of the heavenly (1 Cor 15:47-49). Hence the same Apostle says: Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God (ibid., 50). Not that, as the heretics say, the nature of bodies perishes, but that this corruptible puts on incorruption, and this mortal puts on immortality. And all these things will come to pass, because what is to come the Lord has spoken through the prophets.
24:4-5
The earth has mourned and has wasted away, and has been weakened; the world has wasted away, the height of the people of the earth has been weakened, and the earth has been slain by its inhabitants. LXX: The earth has mourned, the world has been corrupted, the lofty of the earth have mourned, but the earth has acted impiously because of its inhabitants. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble (Jas 4:6). Hence the first sentence is against those who are lofty on the earth, that all things which are now strong may be weakened because of those who have mingled blood with blood, and, in the manner of the blood of Abel, have made the gore of the slain cry out to God (Gen 4).
24:6
Because they have transgressed the law, they have changed the ordinance, they have broken the everlasting covenant. Because of this a curse will devour the earth, and its inhabitants will sin; therefore its tillers will go mad, and few men will be left. LXX: Because they have transgressed the law, they have changed the precepts, the eternal testament. Because of this a curse will devour the earth, because its inhabitants have sinned; therefore the inhabitants of the earth will be poor, and few men will be left. Let the Jews hear, who boast that they alone have received the law of the Lord, that first all the nations and the whole world received the natural law, and that the law was given afterwards through Moses for this reason, because the first law had been broken. Of it the Apostle speaks: For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature the things that are of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves: who show the work of the law written in their hearts (Rom 2:14). Those, then, who have kept these laws will obtain rewards; but those who have neglected them will endure what the prophetic discourse now threatens. And as in the beginning God blessed every creature that he had made (Gen 1), so at the consummation of the world he will curse those who are earthly, and who were not sojourners but inhabitants of the earth, and sinned in it; who, forgetting their condition, have raged against one another in mutual fury. And few will remain who have the heavenly image; or, according to the Seventy, the inhabitants of the earth will be poor, because they have lost their spiritual riches.
24:7ff.
The vintage has mourned, the vine has been weakened, all who were glad of heart have groaned. The joy of the timbrels has ceased, the sound of those who rejoice has been stilled, the sweetness of the harp has fallen silent; they shall not drink wine with song, the drink will be bitter to those who drink it. The city of vanity has been crushed, every house has been shut, with no one entering. There will be an outcry over wine in the streets; all gladness has been forsaken, the joy of the earth has been carried away. And desolation has been left in the city, and calamity will overwhelm the gates: for these things will be in the midst of the earth, in the midst of the peoples. At the consummation of the world, the remembrance of past delights will be the matter of torments. Hence also that rich man clothed in purple at his banquet, who had received his good things in his life, lifting up his eyes from hell, sees Lazarus at rest (Luke 16). And the Lord, rebuking the rich, the luxurious and those who laugh, says in the Gospel: Woe to you rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are now filled, for you shall hunger. Woe to you who now laugh, for you shall mourn and weep (ibid., 24, 25). When, therefore, the resurrection of the dead has come, and the day of judgment has arrived, then will mourn the wine and the vintage of which Moses speaks: Their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and their shoot of Gomorrah. Their grape is a grape of gall, their cluster is one of bitterness. Their wine is the fury of dragons, and the incurable fury of asps (Deut 32:33). Then every drink, or, as it is said in Hebrew, sicera, that is, drunkenness, which overturns the state of the mind and does not allow men to keep watch, will be changed into bitterness: it counterfeits honey for a time to those who use it, and in the end is found more bitter than gall. Then all the sweetness of those who rejoice, and the sound of timbrels and harp, will be turned into lamentation and groaning. Let us press this testimony upon those who at banquets are wanton not only with gluttony and drunkenness but also with their ears, so that through all the senses the strength of the soul grows soft. The city of vanity will be crushed, or every city, or the spiritual Babylon, which sits clothed in purple upon seven hills, whose punishments we read in the Apocalypse of John (Rev 18). And he did well to say the city of vanity. For if it is said of heaven and earth and of all things that are earthly: Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity (Eccl 1:2), how much more must this be said of one city, which is a small part of the whole world! Then the houses whose ceilings are now gilded, and whose walls, while the poor die of cold without roof or hut, are clothed with veneers of marble and shine with the gleam of sawn ivory, will remain empty. There will be an outcry in the streets over wine, not in the strait and narrow way that leads to life, but in the broad and spacious one that leads to death (Matt 7): over the wine and drunkenness of the error of those who have slept their sleep, and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands (Ps 75 [76]). For the joy of the earth has been carried away into heaven, and desolation has been left in the once most crowded city, and the calamity of its inhabitants will overwhelm the gates of the busy streets, through which the throngs of the peoples used to stream in. And that we might know plainly that the destruction of the whole world is being announced, he added: These things will be in the midst of the earth, in the midst of the nations, or of the peoples.
24:13, 15
As if a few olives that are left were shaken from the olive tree, and the grape clusters when the vintage is finished. These will lift up their voice and give praise; when the Lord has been glorified, they will neigh from the sea: therefore glorify the Lord in teachings, in the islands of the sea the name of the Lord God of Israel. How far the translation of the Seventy differs in this place from the Hebrew truth, the following words will show. LXX: As if someone were to shake an olive tree, so they will shake them; and if the vintage ceases, these will cry out with clamor. But those who have been left upon the earth will rejoice together with the glory of the Lord; the water of the sea will be troubled; therefore the glory of the Lord will be in the islands of the sea, the name of the Lord will be glorious, of the Lord God of Israel. When few men have been left, when the curse has devoured the earth, and there is desolation in the city, and all these things have happened in the midst of the earth, in the midst of the peoples and nations, so great will be the fewness of the saints, of whom the Lord speaks in the Gospel: Many are called, but few chosen (Matt 20:16); and so violent the oppression of the righteous, that even the elect of God, if it were possible, would be tempted; and their fewness is compared to the very rare berries of olives, of which, when they have been shaken down and gathered, scarcely a few remain at the tops of the branches; and to the way that, when the vintage is finished, the poor, driven by need, are accustomed to go round the empty vines and gather a few grapes. These, then, who remain, and after the vintage and the pressing of the world have been able to escape the hands of the persecuting Antichrist, or the burning of the impending punishment, will lift up their voices on high and will praise God. When the Lord comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels, and they see him reigning in majesty, then they will neigh in the likeness of horses, exulting in the greatness of their joy, and they will neigh from the sea of this world. Therefore you who are now instructed in the Holy Scriptures, and know that such great joy and such great rewards are reserved for you, glorify the Lord in teachings, hearing that which is written: He who glories, let him glory in the Lord (2 Cor 10:17). Not at all in the land of Judea, but in the islands, that is, in the Churches of this sea and world, in which is blessed and praised the name of the Lord God of him who was once Israel, or, of the man who sees God. According to the Seventy, all that we have understood of the saints can be referred to the impious: that when the vintage is finished, then they cry out, set in punishments. But those who have escaped the number of the impious rejoice in the glory of the Lord, and the waters of the peoples of this world are troubled.
24:16
From the ends of the earth we have heard praises, the glory of the Righteous One; and I said: My secret is mine, my secret is mine: woe is me. LXX: From the wings of the earth we have heard portents: hope for the righteous; and they will say ※ my mystery is mine ⁚. This, which is said, my mystery is mine, is not found in the Seventy, but has been added in the Greek from the translation of Theodotion. Again, for what they put as woe, so as to join it to the following verse, in the Hebrew is said OI LI (אוי לי), which properly means woe is me. Also for ends, which we have set down for the sake of explaining the sense more openly, the Hebrew has MECCHENAPH (מכנף), which means wing, not end. These, then, of whom it was said above: They will lift up their voice and give praise, when they have neighed from the sea, and have glorified the Lord in teachings, and have seen the name of the Lord God of Israel praised in the islands of the sea, then will sing with harmonious voice and say: From the wings of the earth, that is, from the prophets and from the saints of the Lord, who, having taken the wings of a dove, hasten to the kingdoms of the heavens, we have heard his praises proclaimed; and that the glory or hope of the Righteous One is not vain, but all things are fulfilled in deed. So, while the saints say these things, and neigh from the sea, and lift up their voice and give praise, the Prophet speaks to himself: When, he says, I had heard these things, and perceived that the prophecy of the Prophets was to be fulfilled in the overthrow of the world, I said to myself with the inward feeling of my heart: I cannot tell all that I see. My tongue cleaves to my throat, my voice is shut in by grief. Woe is me, what a train of punishments passes before my eyes! I see as present the things that are to come. But those err who think this must be understood as spoken in the person of God, not following the order of the matter. And I wonder in what sense, for psalms and praises, which in the Hebrew reads ZEMROTH (זמרות), the Seventy translated portents, unless perhaps it is a sign and a portent that, the people of the Jews being shut out, the once unbelieving multitude of the nations is saved.
24:17-18
The transgressors have transgressed, and with the transgression of transgressors they have transgressed. Terror and the pit and the snare are upon you, who are an inhabitant of the earth; and it shall be that he who flees from the voice of terror shall fall into the pit, and he who extricates himself from the pit shall be held by the snare. LXX: Woe to the transgressors who transgress the law. Fear and the pit and the snare are upon you who inhabit the earth. And it shall be that he who flees fear shall fall into the pit, and he who comes out of the pit shall be caught by the snare. This is the cause of my mourning and groaning, on account of which I said a second time, my secret is mine, my secret is mine: because all have transgressed the law of God, and the Lord's punishment is by no means put off, nor is it foretold as future, but it is imminent, and holds the inhabitants of the earth captive. And when they think they have escaped, they will fall from one thing into another, and wherever they turn they will not evade the impending wrath of the Lord.
24:19-20
For the floodgates from on high have been opened, and the foundations of the earth will be shaken. With breaking the earth will be broken, with crushing the earth will be crushed, with shaking the earth will be shaken. With tossing the earth will be tossed like a drunken man, and it will be removed like a tent of one night, and its iniquity will weigh it down, and it will fall, and will not add to rise again. Therefore no one will escape the terror and the snare and the pit of the Lord, because the floodgates from on high, or, as the Seventy translated more plainly, the windows of heaven have been opened, so that the Lord might look down upon all the sins of men, which before, because he did not punish them, he seemed to sinners not to know. But after he has seen all the works of mortals through the opened windows, the foundations of the earth have been shaken, according to what is written in another place of the gaze of God: Who looks upon the earth, and will make it tremble (Ps 103 [104]:32). Then the earth will be broken and crushed, and shaken and tossed in the likeness of a drunken man: not that the earth itself is reduced to dust and to nothing, but that all earthly things pass away, and another manner of life succeeds. And as a drunken man does not know what he is doing, but, his sinews growing dull with drunkenness, neither foot nor mind stands to its duty: so the whole earth, that is, all men who dwell on the earth, will be drunk with the greatness of the evils and the punishments, and will be stupefied at all that they see. And as a tent or pavilion of one night is moved from place to place, and the place of the former tent is abandoned by the traveler, so that no trace remains of the past lodging: so the fashion of this world will pass away, and the earth will be deserted which has been weighed down by its iniquity, whose weight and most grievous burden is described in Zechariah: Who sat upon a talent of lead (Zech 5:7). And it will fall, he says, and will not add to rise again. Not that the resurrection of men and of all who dwelt on the earth is denied, but that there will by no means be an earthly manner of life and the state of the former life, since human bodies rise again for this purpose, that souls may be clothed with the same bodies that they had laid aside before, and may receive from God either the good or the evil that they did upon the earth.
24:21ff.
And it will be in that day: the Lord will visit upon the host of heaven on high, and upon the kings of the earth who are upon the earth. And they will be gathered together in the gathering of one bundle into the pit, and they will be shut up there in prison, and after many days they will be visited. And the moon will blush, and the sun will be confounded, when the Lord of hosts reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and has been glorified in the sight of his elders. For what we have translated, and the moon will blush, and the sun will be confounded, the Seventy translated, the brick will melt, and the wall will fall; what the cause of the error is, the following words will show. The sun in the Hebrew language is called by three names: SEMES (שמש), and HAMMA (המה), which means heat, and HERES (חרס), which signifies ὄστρακον, that is, potsherd or dryness. MAOR (מאר), however, which in Greek is called φωστήρ and in Latin luminary, is common to the sun and the moon. Again, the moon is called JAREE (ירה), which in Greek is called μήνη, because it makes a month by a circuit of thirty days, and LABANA (לבנה), that is, white or bright. In the present place, then, for LABANA, that is, moon, the Seventy translated brick, which in Hebrew is called LEBENA, deceived by the ambiguity of the word. Again, for HAMMA, that is, heat, by which is understood the sun, they put wall, which in Hebrew is called HOMA (הומה). And this is the sense of the whole passage: The windows of heaven have been opened, so that, as the Lord looked out upon earthly sins, every fashion of earthly works might pass away and fall, and by no means rise again to its former state. In that day, that is, in the day of judgment, the Lord will visit upon the host, or upon the adornment, of heaven on high, so that he may judge not only earthly but also heavenly things. And what the adornment or host of heaven is, let us learn from the writing of Moses: Beware lest, looking up to heaven and seeing the sun and the moon, the stars and all the adornment of heaven, you be deceived and worship them (Deut 4:19). And the Lord will visit, according to the idiom of the Scriptures, the host and army of heaven as one sick and in need of the knife and cautery, according to this: I will visit their sins with a rod, and their iniquities with scourges (Ps 88 [89]:33). For in what follows too we read: My sword has been made drunk in heaven (below, Isa 34:5); and in Job: The stars are not clean in his sight. And: Against his angels he has found something perverse (Job 25:5). He will visit also upon the kings and princes of the earth, the rulers of this darkness, and the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Of these princes, who preside over the various provinces, it is written also in Daniel: The prince of the kingdom of the Persians came out to meet me, and the prince of the kingdom of the Medes, and the prince of the kingdom of the Greeks (Dan 10). These princes, then, who did not keep their rank, the Lord will gather in the day of judgment, bound together as in one bundle, and will cast them into the pit of hell, so that in them too may be fulfilled what is written of the impious: He opened a pit and dug it, and he fell into the ditch which he made (Ps 7:16). And they will be shut up in prison, according to what the Lord says: Depart into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41). But what follows, And after many days they will be visited, seems to applaud my friends who grant repentance to the devil and the demons, in that after long times they are visited by the Lord. But let them consider that the divine Scripture did not say openly, They will be visited by the Lord, or, they will be visited by the angels, but absolutely, they will be visited. From this ambiguity of the word both remedy and correction can be understood: that after the righteous have received their rewards, those are visited in perpetual punishments. Yet it must be known that human frailty cannot know the judgment of God, nor pass sentence on the greatness and measure of the punishments, which has been left to the Lord's decision. Then the moon will blush, and the sun will be confounded, according to what the Apostle says: For the creation itself groans and travails (Rom 8:22), seeing that men who enjoyed its light have done nothing worthy of the goodness of God, who makes his sun rise upon the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt 5): as if a steward and bailiff, when the master comes, were to see the household subjected to various torments and not having fulfilled his precepts at all. Of this same passage the Savior teaches more fully in the Gospel: The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be moved, when the sign of the Son of man has appeared in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth have beaten their breasts, and have seen the Son of man coming with the clouds of heaven in power and much glory (Matt 24:29, 30). We have learned of the overthrow of the earth, the visitation of the host of heaven, the gathering of the kings and princes into one bundle, and their thrusting down into the pit, and the keeping of the prison, and the visitation of those shut up after a long time, the blushing of the moon and the confusion of the sun. After all these things the Lord of hosts will reign on Mount Zion and in the heavenly Jerusalem, of which it is written also in the Epistle to the Hebrews: And in the sight of his elders he will be glorified (Heb 12). Such an elder was Abraham, who died in a good old age and was gathered to his fathers (Gen 25). Such were the elders whom Moses too is commanded to choose, whom he knows to be elders (Num 11): for the gray hair of a man is his wisdom (Wis 4:8); who imitate the Ancient of days, whose hair is described as white, so that length of age may be shown (Dan 7:9). This can also be understood of the ecclesiastical rank, if only they do not destroy the dignity by their works.
25:1ff.
O Lord, you are my God: I will exalt you, I will confess to your name, for you have done wonders, ancient faithful designs: amen. For you have made the city a heap, the strong city a ruin, the house of strangers, so that it is no city, and will never be built for ever. Because of this a strong people will praise you, the city of mighty nations will fear you. For you have become strength to the poor, strength to the needy in his tribulation, a hope from the whirlwind, a shade from the heat: for the spirit of the mighty is like a whirlwind driving against a wall. Like heat in thirst, you will bring low the tumult of strangers; and as with scorching heat under a cloud, you will make the offshoot of the strong wither. LXX: O Lord my God, I will glorify you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, an ancient true counsel, so be it. For you have made cities a heap, strong cities, that their foundations might fall. The cities of the impious will not be built for ever. Therefore the people of the poor will bless you, and the cities of men who suffer iniquity will bless you. For you have been a helper to every lowly city, and a protection to those who are sad because of want; you will deliver them from most wicked men: a shade of the thirsty, and the spirit of men who suffer iniquity, like faint-hearted men thirsting in Zion, from the impious men to whom you have delivered us. The exposition of this place is twofold. The Jews think it is the voice of the saints and of the believing people, when God has done against the whole world the things said above, and the prophecies of all the prophets have been fulfilled; and the overthrown city they interpret as Rome, which is to be utterly destroyed; and the strong people, which praises the Lord, and to which the Lord has become strength in its tribulation and distress, they refer to Israel, which has been freed from the persecution of the nations as from most burning heat and thirst. But others, both better and more correctly, understand it as said in the person of the prophet, giving thanks to the Father for the passion of the Lord Savior, because he has done wonders and has fulfilled his ancient designs in truth, when those standing at the right hand will hear: Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world (Matt 25:34). Understanding this, Paul too said: As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and spotless (Eph 1:4); and, desiring that what he prophesies should come to pass, he adds the Hebrew word AMEN (אמן), for which the Seventy translated so be it. And the Lord in the Gospel often uses this word: Amen, amen, that is, truly, truly I say to you (John 6:54). And why he praises and confesses to the name of the Lord, and what these wonders are, and the ancient designs which he showed true in deed, follows: For you have made the city a heap, the strong city a ruin, the house of strangers, so that it is no city, and will never be built for ever. The once strong city is understood as Jerusalem, which has become the house of strangers; of whom the Savior says in the psalm: Strange children have lied to me, strange children have grown old and have limped in their paths (Ps 17 [18]:46). This city, when it has been destroyed, will never be built for ever, so that the dreams of a thousand-year kingdom and of a golden and jeweled Jerusalem may be laid to rest. And when Jerusalem has been destroyed for its impiety, a strong people will praise the Lord. And who the strong people is, the following verse shows: The city of mighty nations will fear you. While those blaspheme, the people of the nations will fear you. For the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10). And a strong people will praise you, and the city of mighty nations will fear you, that is, the Church gathered from the nations. For you have become strength to the poor, to your Christ, of whom we read also in the Psalms: Blessed is he who understands concerning the needy and the poor (Ps 40 [41]:1). And in Zechariah, according to the Hebrew truth, the poor man, that is, EBION (אביון), is described as sitting upon the colt of an ass (Zech 9). Strength to the needy, in the tribulation of his passion, a hope from the whirlwind of the cross, and a shade from the heat, when he said: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit (Luke 23:46). For as when the wind is dashed against a wall and passes by, so the whirlwind of the blaspheming Jews could not harm him. And to use another comparison: as an offshoot is scorched by most grievous heat and droops, so you will make the tumult and clamor of the strangers, that is, of those who have become strangers to you, wither and perish. According to the Seventy translators, I could not find in this place, I do not say the sense, but the order and sequence of the words. And for that place where we have translated, like heat in thirst, for which in the Hebrew is written BASAION (בציון), which among them means pathless place or thirst: why they turned pathless place and in thirst into in Zion, the error is plain, from the likeness of the words SAION and SION (Both ציון), since it is marked with the same letters.
25:6, 8
And the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples on this mountain a feast of fat things, a feast of the vintage: of fat things full of marrow, of a vintage refined from the lees. And he will cast down on this mountain the face of the bond that was bound upon all peoples, and the web that he wove over all nations. And he will cast down death for ever, and the Lord God will take away the tear from every face, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth: for the Lord has spoken. LXX: And the Lord Sabaoth will make for all nations upon this mountain: they will drink gladness, they will drink wine. They will be anointed with ointment on this mountain. Deliver all these things to the nations, for this counsel is upon all nations: death, prevailing, has devoured. And again: The Lord God has taken away every tear from every face, and the reproach of his people he has taken away from all the earth. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. For what we have rendered, the face of the bond that was bound upon all peoples, Aquila translated, the face of darkness upon all peoples. And whereas Aquila said darkness twice, Theodotion named darkness once, the rest alike. For this Symmachus translated, the face of the Ruler who rules over all peoples. And what the Seventy meant to say for this place, Deliver all these things to the nations, is plain to the reader: that they set down not the words of Scripture but their own sense, because all the mysteries of the Law and of the Temple were to be transferred to the Churches of the nations. After the passion of the Lord, then, when he has freed him from thirst and heat and whirlwind, the Lord will make, not at all for the people of the Jews, but for all nations, on Mount Zion a fat feast, burnt offerings full of marrow, and the wine of a vintage refined from the lees, so that he may cast down and cause to be swallowed up the face of death and of the bond by which all peoples were bound; and he will break the net of death, and the web that had caught all nations. And according to the Apostle, death will be swallowed up for ever (1 Cor 15). And the Lord will take away the tear from every face, when, death being overcome, the kingdom of Christ has come, and the reproach of the human race, which had been made to the image of the Creator, has escaped the slavery of the devil and of death. Nor is it surprising if according to Symmachus death is called a ruler, since the blessed Apostle said: Death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned, in the likeness of the transgression of Adam (Rom 5:14). The Ruler of all peoples, or the face of darkness upon all peoples, and the web that was woven over all nations, some wish to be understood as the Antichrist, who is to be consumed on the Mount of Olives, as we also said on the last vision of Daniel. According to the Seventy, a feast of gladness is prepared for all nations on Mount Zion, in which they will drink the wine which the Lord promised that he would drink with his saints in the kingdom of his Father (Matt 26 and Luke 22); and they will be anointed with ointment, so that, reborn in Christ, they may be made a new people; whence it is said: Deliver all these things to the nations, which Israel once celebrated in type and image. For this is the counsel of the Lord, that all things should be transferred to the nations, because death has been swallowed up (1 Cor 15), and every tear wiped away, and the reproach of the whole earth blotted out, as the rule of Christ succeeds.
25:9ff.
And they will say in that day: Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord, we have waited patiently for him; we will exult and be glad in his salvation. For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain; and Moab will be threshed under him as straw is crushed in the wagon. And he will stretch out his hands under him, as a swimmer stretches them out to swim, and his glory will be brought low with the dashing of his hands. And the fortifications of your lofty walls will fall, and will be brought low and pulled down to the ground, even to the dust. When death has been swallowed up for ever, the people of God which has been freed from the hand of death will say to the Lord: Behold, this is our God, whom the unbelieving thought only a man; and we have waited for him, that is, we have believed his words, that he will fulfill his promises, and he will save us. Therefore, snatched by his help from the jaws of death, we will exult and be glad in him; and his hand and his power will rest on this mountain, of which we read above: When the Lord of hosts reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and has been glorified in the sight of his elders (Isa 24:23). And Moab, which means from the father, will be crushed as straw is wont to be crushed by the wagon. He speaks according to the custom of Palestine and of many provinces of the East, which, for lack of meadows and hay, prepare straw for the feeding of animals. Now there are iron-shod carts, with wheels turning in the middle in the manner of saws, which crush the stubble and break it up into straw. As, then, straw is crushed by iron-shod wagons, so Moab will be crushed under him, whether under the power of God or in himself, so that nothing whole remains in him. And as one who swims is wont to stretch out his whole body, so he will be dashed from his power to the ground, and in falling will make a noise. And all the fortifications of his lofty men, or of his walls, as is contained in the Hebrew, will fall and be brought low, and will be pulled down to the ground, broken to the dust. So the prophetic discourse, although it weaves its prophecy generally about the consummation of the world, yet, so as not to seem to neglect present things entirely, names Moab, which was an enemy of Israel, so much so that it made them commit fornication with the Midianites and be consecrated to the idol Baal-peor, which means Priapus; against which Jeremiah speaks: Chemosh will go forth into captivity, his priests and his princes together (Jer 48:7); and again: Moab will be confounded in Chemosh, as the house of Israel was confounded in Bethel (ibid., 13), and other things like these. And from one idol and the demon who presided over this idol, he indicates that all the adverse powers are to be brought low and led down into Tartarus, and crushed like dust. But if this is how it will be, where is the repentance of the devil?
26:1
In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: The city of our strength, the Savior, a wall and an outer wall will be set in it. LXX: In that day they will sing this song in the land of Judea: Behold a strong city, and our salvation will set a wall and a surrounding wall. When Moab has been brought low and pulled down to the ground, even to the dust, and all enemies laid beneath the feet of Christ, then this song will be sung in the land of Judah, or Judea, each of which means confession: so that, as we have understood Zion and Jerusalem as the heavenly city, so we may also understand the region of this city as the heavenly confession. Indeed, the saints, unwilling to sing the song of Judea in a foreign land, say: How shall we sing a song to the Lord in a foreign land? (Ps 136 [137]:4). I think that this is the song which in another place too the saints are commanded: Sing to the Lord a new song (Ps 95 [96]:1). And this song will be what follows: The city of our strength, the Savior (Matt 5). Which is this city? The one which, set on a mountain, cannot be hid. Of which it is written also in another place: The rush of the river makes glad the city of God (Ps 45 [46]:4); and again: Glorious things are spoken of you, city of God (Ps 86 [87]:2). The founder of this city is he of whom the Father speaks: he has built my city; nay rather, the city of our strength is the Savior, that is, Jesus. And a wall and an outer wall will be set in it: the wall of good works, and the outer wall of right faith, so that it may be enclosed by a double fortification. For it is not enough to have the wall of faith, unless faith itself is confirmed by good works. This wall and this outer wall, or surrounding wall, is built of living stones, which, according to the prophet, are rolled upon the earth. For what we have rendered, outer wall, Symmachus translated bulwark: so that the walls themselves are girded with fortifications, and with rampart and ditch and other walls, which in the building of camps they are accustomed to call breastworks.
26:2, 4
Open the gates, and let the righteous nation enter, keeping the truth. The old error has gone; you will keep peace: peace, because we have hoped in you. You have hoped in the Lord for everlasting ages. LXX: Open the gates, let the people enter which keeps righteousness, and keeps the truth, laying hold of the truth, and keeping peace: peace, because they have hoped in you, O Lord, for ever. This whole song, which the saints are to sing in the land of confession and praise, suddenly changes persons, and is woven as if by question and answer. The people of God had said: The city of our strength, the Savior, a wall and an outer wall will be set in it. The Lord answered, or rather commanded, not those who had said this, but the angels who presided over the gates of the Lord's city, that they should open the gates, and let the righteous nation enter through them, keeping the truth, or, as is said in the Hebrew, EMMUNIM (אמונים), which in our language is rendered faiths, in the plural number, not the singular. Which are the gates that are opened by the angels, so that there may enter, not the people of the Jews, which has been cast off, but the righteous nation, which from faith has received the name of the faithful? Surely those of which the holy man speaks: Open to me the gates of righteousness; having entered them, I will confess to the Lord (Ps 117 [118]:19). But no one will be able to enter these gates except one who has been freed from the gates of death, as the Psalmist said: You who lift me up from the gates of death, that I may declare all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion (Ps 9:15). For when we have been snatched from the gates of death, then we shall be able to sing all the praises of the Lord in the gates of the daughter of Zion. And as I consider the gates of death to be sins, of which it is said to Peter: The gates of hell shall not prevail against you (Matt 16:18), so I consider the gates of righteousness to be all the works of the virtues; and he who has entered them will find one gate, of which it is said: This is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall enter by it (Ps 117 [118]:20). And as through many pearls one comes to the one pearl, so through many ways and gates we come to him who says that he is the way and the gate, through which we enter to the Father. After the word of God, the people answered in Hebrew JESER SAMUCH (יצרסמך), which Aquila and Symmachus translated alike, πλᾶσμα ἐπηρεισμένον, that is, our error has been taken away, or our thought has been made firm, which before wavered between you and the idols, so that we are by no means carried about by every wind of doctrine, but believe with our whole mind in you, the Lord Savior. For this, so that the sense might be made plainer, we translated, the old error has gone. And because our thought has been made firm, therefore you will keep for us the peace which you promised to the Apostles, saying: My peace I give you, my peace I leave you (John 14:27); and not once only but a second time, so that the recompense which is promised with a double word may be secure, according to what the Apostle too said: Rejoice, again I say rejoice (Phil 4:4). And this he obtains of whom it is said in Leviticus: Man, man, of the children of Israel (Lev 17); and in the book of Numbers: Man, man, whose wife has defiled his bed (Num 5:12): so that the double man and the double husband may obtain a double peace. And we merit peace, they say, because we trust in you with our whole mind. After the words of the people and the answer of the Lord, and again the voice of the people, the Prophet speaks to the believers: You have hoped, or hope in the Lord, for everlasting ages, and the rest that follows. According to the Seventy, he enters the gates of the Lord who keeps righteousness in good works, and keeps or embraces the truth in the truth of faith, so that through good works and faith he may come to the peace which surpasses all understanding, and may merit to receive that peace; because he has believed in God, who is the eternal rewarder of good works (Phil 4). Hence also in another place it is written: You have desired wisdom: keep the commandments, and the Lord will grant it to you (Sir 1:33).
26:5-6
In the Lord God, the strong one, for ever: for he will bow down those who dwell on high; he will bring low the lofty city, he will bring it low even to the ground; he will pull it down even to the dust. The foot will trample it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy. LXX: O great eternal God, who have brought low and pulled down those who dwell on high, you will destroy strong cities, and will bring them down even to the pavement, and the feet of the meek and the lowly will trample them. These things too the Prophet speaks, who answered from that place where he had said above, Hope in the Lord for everlasting ages; and he joins to it what we have now set forth: In the Lord God, the strong one, for ever, and the rest. For the Lord God, the strong one, the Hebrew has three names, IA (יה) and ADONAI (יהוה) and SUR (צור), of which one signifies invisible, another ineffable, another mighty; the first of them is placed as the last syllable in ALLELUIA (הללו יה). And let the diligent reader observe this, that we sometimes divide the text in setting out a testimony, because the edition of the Seventy produces one sense, and the translation rendered word for word from the Hebrew another. The Prophet says, then: Hope in the Lord for everlasting ages: in the Lord God, the strong one, for ever, whose help is everlasting. For he will bow down those who dwell on high, because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled; those who boasted that they had Abraham as their father, and said in insult of the Lord: We were not born of fornication (John 8:41). He will bring low the lofty city: as the Jews think, Rome; as we prove to be more correct, Jerusalem, which killed the Prophets and stoned those who were sent to it, and at the last killed the son of the householder, so that, the heir being slain, the inheritance might perish (Luke 13). Nor is it called a city, which in Hebrew is said IR (עיר), but CARIA (כריה), which Aquila translated πολίχνην, which we can call either little city or hamlet or small town; and Jerusalem is frequently called by this name in the Scriptures. And he did well to set down a double humbling, He will bring low, he will bring it low: first under the Babylonians, when the temple was destroyed; the second time under Titus and Vespasian, whose ruin remains until the end. The foot will trample it, and he repeats and joins the feet of the poor, without doubt of Christ, of whom we have said above too: He has become strength to the poor, strength to the needy in his tribulation. The steps of the needy, namely of the Apostles, who, imitating the poverty of the Lord, obtained also the privilege of his power; who, not being received, shook off upon it the dust of their feet. And because it is said in the words of the Savior, Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 14:11), we can refer this not only to men but also to the adverse powers. According to the Seventy, the Prophet sings praises to God because he brings low all the proud, and razes the fortifications of all cities to the ground, and the feet of the saints, the meek and the lowly trample them.
26:7, 9
The path of the righteous is straight, straight is the track of the righteous for walking; and in the path of your judgments, O Lord, we have waited for you; your name and your memorial are in the desire of the soul: my soul has desired you in the night. LXX: The way of the righteous is straight, the way of the righteous has been made straight, and prepared. For the way of the Lord is judgment; we have hoped in your name, and in the remembrance which our soul desires. The Prophet is still speaking of Christ, of whom he had said above: The foot will trample it, the feet of the poor. The path of this righteous one, then, is straight, or, to coin a new word, straightnesses, which the Greeks call εὐθύτητας, and which we can call more in the Latin manner equities; and in Hebrew they are called MESSARIM (משרים). In the one path of Christ, then, all righteousnesses are found; and for that reason he trod and wore it with his own foot, so that whoever wishes to walk along it may walk with an unstumbling course. In this path of the Lord's judgments the saints have waited for him, and have hoped in him, because hope does not confound. And they have had his name and memorial in the desire of their soul, saying: My soul has longed to desire your judgments at all times (Ps 118 [119]:20); and again: My soul desires, and has fainted for your salvation (ibid. 81). And he who has the name of the Lord in his desire desires nothing else. And this must be noted, that the desire for the Lord is not in the flesh but in the soul, according to what we read in another psalm: My soul has thirsted for God, the strong, the living (Ps 41 [42]:2). For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh (Gal 5). For these are opposed to one another, so that we do not do the things we wish. And what follows, In the night, according to the Seventy is joined to the following passage, according to the Hebrew to the former one. And he can say, My soul has desired you in the night, who says confidently with the Psalmist: Every night I will wash my bed, I will water my couch with tears (Ps 6:7). Night and darkness can also be taken for tribulation and distress. Hence in another psalm too the Prophet sings of the security of the righteous: The sun will not burn you by day, nor the moon by night (Ps 120 [121]:6), that is, neither in prosperity nor in adversity will you ever be moved from your place.
But also with my spirit within my breast, from the morning I will watch for you. LXX: From the night my spirit rises early to you, O God: for your judgments are a light upon the earth. We wish both to follow the Hebrew and not to pass over the common edition entirely, and by this necessity of things we are compelled to seek different understandings in a different order and wording. So what is said, from the night, is, according to the Seventy, as we said, the beginning of this passage; according to the Hebrew, the end of the preceding one; although even according to the Seventy it can be taken at the end of the preceding testimony, so that the sense is: My soul desires you in the night; and afterwards it begins: in the morning my spirit rises to you, O God. And it rises in the morning for this reason, because your precepts are a light upon the earth. For, keeping your commandments, and illumined by the light of those of which it is said, The precept of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes (Ps 18 [19]:9), I cannot sleep, but desiring you at all times, I rise to you with my spirit. And this must be observed, that while still placed in the night we desire the Lord with the soul; but after our spirit within our breast has moved itself toward God with the whole mind, let us watch for him in the morning: and, to speak more plainly, night and desire are joined to the soul, but morning and watching to the spirit. Further, he watches for God with the spirit within his breast who can say: Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord (Ps 129 [130]:1).
26:10
When you have done your judgments on the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. Let us have mercy on the impious, and he will not learn righteousness; in the land of the saints he has done wickedly, and he will not see the glory of the Lord. LXX: Learn righteousness, you who dwell upon the earth. For the impious has ceased, and he will not learn righteousness upon the earth; he will not do truth; let the impious be taken away, that he may not see the glory of the Lord. Let us speak first according to the Hebrew, and when we have chosen to express the sense of the Prophet, then let us pass to the Seventy translators. As long as you do not exercise your judgments upon the earth, and neither repay good to the good nor evil to the evil, your righteousness, O Lord God, is unknown on the earth. But when on the day of judgment you have rendered to each what he deserves, according to the quality of his works, then your righteousness will be known in the world, which before seemed unjust among the unbelieving, so that one of the saints too said: But my feet were almost moved, my steps had well-nigh slipped: for I was zealous over the wicked, seeing the peace of sinners (Ps 72 [73]:2). To which the Lord answered: Let us have mercy on the impious; which all, except the Seventy, translated alike. And the sense is: rather let the impious obtain mercy, and learn my clemency, while he too is saved. And again, to the Lord as he speaks, the Prophet answered in the person of human impatience: And he will not learn righteousness. And the sense is: and how will he be able to know your righteousness, if he has experienced only clemency? And he gives the reasons why he wishes him to learn the righteousness of God: because he has acted wickedly in the land of the saints, and has fought continually against your saints, he ought to feel torments. And again the Lord, tempering the sentence, says: And let him not see, or he will not see the glory of the Lord. And the sense is: it is enough for him, in place of all punishment, that he will not see me reigning with my saints in my majesty. Some wish the impious one, that is, RESA (רשע), to be understood as the devil, of whom it is written in the ninth psalm: You have rebuked the nations, and the impious has perished; you have blotted out their name for ever and for ever and ever. The swords of the enemy have failed unto the end, and their cities you have destroyed (Ps 9:6). But let us take the impious generally either for the sinner or for one who does not have the worship of God. According to the Seventy, the inhabitants of the earth are commanded to learn righteousness. For every man seems righteous to himself; but God knows the hearts of all, who will render to each according to his works (Prov 21). And in another place of the same book it is said: There are ways of a man which seem straight; but their ends look into the depth of hell (Prov 14:12). Hence we ought to learn righteousness, and not trust in our own judgment. For there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness (Eccl 7); not because he is righteous, but because he seems to himself to be righteous. But if Christ has been made for us by God wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Cor 1), those who are commanded to know righteousness are commanded this: to learn and know Christ. And I command you, he says, to learn righteousness for this reason, because the impious has been taken away, and his kingdom destroyed, who, as long as he reigned on the earth, could neither know righteousness nor do truth; of which it is written elsewhere that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). And because the impious does not do truth on the earth, he will be taken away: for he does not deserve to see the Lord reigning.
26:11
O Lord, let your hand be exalted, and let them not see: let them see, and let the zeal of the people be confounded, and let fire devour your enemies. LXX: O Lord, your arm is lofty, and they did not know; but knowing they will be confounded: zeal will seize the untaught people, and now fire will eat the adversaries. What he had said above, and he will not see the glory of the Lord, can be understood thus: You ask, O Prophet, that I should not have mercy on the impious, lest, if I have had mercy on him, he who has acted wickedly in the land of the saints should begin not to know righteousness; I answer you: will he then not see the glory of the Lord? Will he then not behold my triumphs, he who rather ought to see me reigning, so that he may know how great a good he lacks? And this is to be read more pointedly, with the voice of one asking a question. To which the Prophet answered: O Lord, let your hand be exalted, and be stretched out to strike, so that the impious may not see you, and may not enjoy the light of your glory, not even for repentance. To whom the Lord answered: Let them rather see and be confounded, either the zeal of the people or those zealous for the people, and let fire devour and consume your adversaries, that is, those of the people of the saints. And it is the fire of repentance, which tortures their hearts because they have lost such a Lord. This can also be understood of the Jews, who did not know Christ, the arm of the Lord, and when they have seen and recognized him whom they had fastened to the gibbet, will be confounded. Then the untaught people, not knowing the law of God, will be roused by the goads of zeal, when it sees that the nations have succeeded to its place, and burns with the fire of regret, or with the pain of punishment, when it hears that which is written: Depart into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41).
26:12
O Lord, you will give us peace: for you have wrought all our works for us. LXX: O Lord our God, give us peace: for you have rendered all things to us. It must be noted that after he has rendered to us our works, he is going to give peace, and how they set out the reasons why they ask for peace. For they say that for all the works which they have wrought upon the earth they have endured torments, and that it is just that after punishments and tortures they should obtain mercy. Or otherwise: Because the consummation of the world has come, and all that you spoke through the Prophets has been fulfilled in deed, and you have rendered all that you promised, grant us peace, which surpasses all understanding.
26:13
O Lord our God, lords have possessed us without you: only in you may we remember your name. LXX: Lord our God, possess us: O Lord, besides you we know no other, we call upon your name. For this reason we seek mercy and peace, which is to be granted after all things, because lords have possessed us without you, namely the idols, or the demons who sit by the idols; and we ask nothing else but that, after very many errors, we may be worthy to remember your name. According to the Seventy, those who said, Lord God, possess us, pray for this, that after peace has been restored to them they may become the possession of God. This indeed we read also of Wisdom, which according to the Hebrew speaks in Proverbs: God possessed me, the beginning of his ways (Prov 8:22), although some copies wrongly have creature for possession. Then it follows: But before all the hills he begot me. For how can begetting be fitted to a creature, when it rather suits possession? It is written in Deuteronomy: Is not he your father, who possessed you, and made you, and created you? (Deut 32:6). And this must be considered, that he did not say, the Lord, or God, possessed you, and made you, and created you; but father, so that the clemency of the name might soften the severity of the power. And what follows, O Lord, besides you we know no other, does not exclude the Son, but joins him to the Father; for he did not say "We know no other," but "Besides you we know no other." And since the Son says, I am in the Father and the Father in me, we do not know the Son outside the Father (John 14:10), because we know him in the Father. And indeed we name his name too, saying in the Lord's Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven (Matt 6:9).
26:14
Let the dying not live; let the giants not rise again. Therefore you have visited and crushed them, and have destroyed all memory of them. LXX: For the dead will not see life, nor will physicians raise them up. Therefore you have brought on, and destroyed, and taken away every male of theirs. Symmachus, in his manner, more plainly: The dead will not give life; the giants will not raise up. Therefore you have visited and crushed them, and have utterly destroyed all memory of them. Let us speak first according to the Seventy. The question seems difficult, how the dead do not see life. It is solved thus: they do not see life so long as they are dead. As if we were to say, a blind man does not see the light so long as he is blind; but if he has recovered his health, he will look upon the light: so too he who is dead in iniquity and sins cannot live before he is given life by righteousness and the virtues, through him who says, I am the life (John 14). Hence God is also called the God of the living, not of the dead (Matt 22). For the soul that sins, it shall die (Ezek 18:4). We read in the Epistle written to the Hebrews: Not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works (Heb 6:1). But if sins are called dead works, why should not, on the contrary, the virtues be called living works? And what follows, Nor will physicians raise them up, its sense is plain: the fables of the poets are condemned, who boast that Virbius was raised up by Aesculapius. And this is to be said not only of the dead, but of every infirmity: that without the mercy of God the art of healing avails nothing. But how? Unless the Lord builds the house, they have labored in vain who build it: unless the Lord guards the city, he has watched in vain who guards it (Ps 126 [127]:1, 2). So unless the Lord has cured the sickness, the physicians labor in vain who desire to heal the sick. Unless the Lord has guarded health, they guard it in vain who even publish precepts for guarding health in their own books; and one must always learn, not only in the health of the body but also in that of the soul: Bless the Lord, O my soul, who heals all your sicknesses (Ps 102 [103]:1, 3). Further, those who persist dead in sin, and can recover the health of the soul by no art of medicine, will be utterly destroyed and taken away by the Lord, and whatever is strong in them, which is called the male, will be wholly removed. Hence Pharaoh too does not wish to kill the female sex, which is frail in itself and can easily perish, but every male, which, if it has grown up and come to manly age, is killed with difficulty (Exod 1). According to Symmachus, the dead will not give life, because, being dead in sin, they cannot give life to others, nor is praise seemly in the mouth of a sinner. And the giants, that is, RAPHAIM (רפאים), will not raise up others, they who themselves, according to the book of Genesis, are called the falling. And the Lord visits them, so that all memory both of the dead and of the giants may be blotted out. For he alone it is who raises the dead, of whom it is said: As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will (John 5:21). We can call the dead the images of dead men, and the giants the demons who sit by their images. Nor should it trouble us why the Seventy translated male and the other translators memory, since among the Hebrews both are written with the same three letters, ZAI (ז), and CHAPH (כ), and RES (ר). But when we say memorial, it is read ZACHAR; when male, ZOCHOR. And they think that Saul was deceived by this ambiguity of the word when he fought against Amalek and killed every male of them (1 Sam 15). For when God commanded that he should blot out all memory of Amalek under heaven, he, for memory, led astray not so much by error as by the desire for plunder, interpreted males, not knowing that saying of the Apostle: Do not err, God is not mocked (Gal 6:7).
26:15
You have been indulgent to the nation, O Lord, you have been indulgent to the nation. Have you been glorified? You have removed far all the ends of the earth. LXX: Add evils to them, O Lord, add evils to the glorious of the earth: you have made far off all the ends of the earth. The evils which the Seventy put twice are not found in the Hebrew; but because he had said above, Therefore you have brought on and destroyed, and taken away every male of theirs, following the same sense they added of their own, evils: so that those who are glorious on the earth may be crushed by double evils. Further, according to the Hebrews the sense is far otherwise, and in agreement with the earlier discussion. The Lord had said: Let us have mercy on the impious. The Prophet had answered: And where is your righteousness? especially since he has wrought such great evils against your saints. To which the Lord: And he will not see, he says, the glory of the Lord. Again the Prophet: Let your hand be exalted to strike, and let them not see your glory, which they do not deserve to behold. To which the Lord: Let them see rather and be confounded. Again the Prophet: O Lord, give us peace, and possess us, who remember your name. But let the impious and the proud not live, nor rise again in glory, but crush all memory of them. And he gives the reasons why he desires them to perish: You have been indulgent to the nation, O Lord, you have been indulgent to the nation; have you been glorified? And the sense is: You have often had mercy on the nations, that is, on the human race, and have exercised toward them an incredible clemency; have they known you? Have they glorified your name? Have they not, on the contrary, withdrawn far from you? For security breeds negligence, and negligence contempt.
26:16
O Lord, in distress they have sought you; in the tribulation of murmuring your teaching was to them. LXX: O Lord, in tribulation I remembered you; in small tribulation your teaching was to us. Because, being indulgent, you have often been despised and not glorified, but on the contrary all have withdrawn from the knowledge of you, therefore, O Lord, strike them, so that in distress they may seek you, and in the tribulation of murmuring your teaching may be to them: when so great a weight of evils presses upon them that they do not even dare to cry out confidently, but swallow their pain in silence. According to the Seventy, the Prophet remembers the Lord in tribulation, according to what is said in the psalm: Out of tribulation I called upon the Lord, and he heard me in a broad place (Ps 117 [118]:5). And in another place: To the Lord I cried when I was troubled, and he heard me (Ps 119 [120]:1). Hence the Apostle says: We are troubled, but not distressed; we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken (2 Cor 4:8). And in another place: The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, which will be revealed in us (Rom 8:18). But if a small tribulation teaches, and amends, and corrects, how much more a great one, when we are reminded of our condition and remember the power of God!
26:17-18
As a woman who has conceived, when she draws near to the birth, cries out in pain in her pangs: so have we become before your face, O Lord. We have conceived, and as it were travailed, and have brought forth spirit. LXX: And as a woman in travail, when she draws near to the birth, cries out in her pain: so have we become ÷ to your beloved ⁚ because of fear of you, O Lord; we have received in the womb, and have travailed, and have brought forth the spirit of your salvation, which we have made upon the earth. As a woman drawing near to the birth is compelled by pain to cry out, so we seek you in distress, and before the face of the dread of you we have conceived, and travailed, and brought forth, not children of the flesh, but of the spirit: so that we may believe in you with our whole mind, and learn through torments him whom we did not perceive through benefits. What the Seventy added, so have we become to your beloved, for which the others translated, so have we become before your face, O Lord, is to be marked beforehand with an obelus. But we can take the beloved of the Lord as Christ, for fear of whom we conceive, and travail, and bring forth, and make the spirit of salvation upon the earth. An apostolic man can say this too, when he instructs the peoples and imitates the apostle Paul: My little children, with whom I travail again until Christ be formed in you (Gal 4:19). Or is it to be doubted that the apostle Paul made the spirit of salvation upon the earth, who preached the Gospel from Jerusalem as far as Illyricum (Rom 15), and as a wise architect laid the foundation, besides which no one can lay another, which is Christ Jesus (1 Cor 3)? Whether, then, we read, because of fear of you, O Lord, we have received in the womb, or according to the Hebrew, before your face, O Lord, we have conceived, and have received in the womb, both pertain to this: that from the fear and remembrance of the Lord we conceive the word of God, and our heart is illumined as we say: The light of your countenance has been signed upon us, O Lord (Ps 4:7). And, show your face, and we shall be saved (Ps 79 [80]:4).
Salvations we have not wrought on the earth; therefore the inhabitants of the world have not fallen. LXX: We shall not fall, but the inhabitants of the earth will fall. A different translation must needs have a different sense too. According to the Hebrew this is said: Because we have done nothing worthy of your mercy, therefore the impious have not fallen, but to this day prevail and possess the earth. But the Seventy assert this: that while the saints make the spirit of salvation upon the earth, those who are inhabitants of the earth fall; although between world, which in Hebrew is called THEBEL (תבל) and in Greek οἰκουμένη, and earth there is much difference. Whoever, then, have given themselves to dwelling on the earth, and have been grounded with a fixed root in earthly works, will fall; and they will not fall who sit in the world and rest in the Church, which is the dwelling place of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
26:19
Let your dead live, let my slain rise again: awake and give praise, you who dwell in the dust, for your dew is a dew of lights, and the land of the giants you will pull down to ruin. LXX: The dead will rise again, and they will rise again from the tombs, and those who are in the earth will rejoice. For your dew is their healing, but the land of the impious will fall. While the saints travail and bring forth the spirit, and the inhabitants of the earth fall, because they have not wrought salvations on the earth, those whom the Apostle calls the dead in Christ, and who have been slain for the name of the Lord, will rise again in glory (1 Thess 4). And because their death is sleep, they are said, not, as according to the Seventy, to rise again, but to awaken and to wake up. Hence Lazarus too, who was to be awakened, is called sleeping by the Lord (John 11). All the martyrs, then, and the holy men who shed their blood for Christ, and whose whole life was a martyrdom, will rise again and awaken, and will praise God their Creator, they who now dwell in the dust, of whom it is written in Daniel: Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will rise again, some to everlasting life, and some to reproach and everlasting confusion (Dan 12:2). And in John the Evangelist we read: The hour will come, and now is, when those who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live, and those who have done good will come forth to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment (John 5:28, 29). For the dew of the Lord, surpassing, as in the fables of the poets, all the Paeonian herbs, will give life to the bodies of the dead. And as, when seeds have been cast into the earth, the dew little by little makes the plants grow and come to the fruits of their kind, so the dew of the Lord, which is put for mercy, will be a dew of very many lights, which in Hebrew is called OROTH (אורות). But the land, that is, the bodies of the Raphaim, namely of the giants and the impious, the Lord will pull down into everlasting punishments. Indeed, for RAPHAIM (רפאים) the Seventy alone translated the impious. And because we read above, The dead will not see life, nor will physicians raise them up, for which Aquila and Symmachus translated Raphaim and giants, we ask what the cause of the error is, that for the Hebrew RAPHAIM some put giants, others physicians. If the Hebrew word RAPHAIM has VAU following its first letter RES, it is read ROPHAIM (רופאים) and signifies physicians; but if it is written without the letter VAU, it is read RAPHAIM, and is translated giants. And at the same time, because he had said above, The dead will not see life, so as to show more plainly that it was not said there of those dead by the law of nature and the separation of soul and body, but of those who are dead in sin, he now on the contrary says to God: Your dead will live, who have been slain for your sake; who are not called dead absolutely, as the Seventy translated, but, according to the Hebrew, where it is said JEJU METHECA (יהיו מתיך), your dead.
Go, my people, enter into your chambers, shut your doors upon you: hide yourself a little for a moment, until the indignation passes. For behold, the Lord will come forth from his place, to visit the iniquity of the inhabitant of the earth against him; and the earth will disclose its blood, and will no longer cover its slain. LXX: Go, my people, enter into your chambers, shut your door: hide yourself a little, however little, until the wrath of the Lord passes. For behold, the Lord from the holy place will bring wrath upon the inhabitants of the earth, and the earth will disclose its blood, and will no longer hide the slain. Above he had said of the saints, The dead will rise again, and those who are in the tombs will rise again; for the dew from you is their healing; and on the contrary of the impious, but the land of the impious will fall. Now he speaks to the saints: because resurrection has been promised to you, until the wrath of God rages against sinners and the impious, enter into your tombs and hide yourselves, for it is a short time until the indignation of God passes. For indeed the Lord comes forth from his place, because the Lord is merciful and compassionate, and the most clement father is compelled to strike his negligent children, and in a manner to be changed from his own judgment, so that he may visit and bring his wrath upon the inhabitants of the earth, of whom it is said in Hosea: Cursing and lying and adultery and theft have been poured out upon the inhabitants of the earth (Hos 4:2). And in the Apocalypse we read three times, Woe upon the inhabitants of the earth (Rev 8:13). But the righteous, although they are seen on the earth, yet their citizenship is in the heavens; they can say, I am a stranger on the earth, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were (Ps 38 [39]:13), and they enjoy the dwelling of the Most High, of whom the holy man speaks: He who dwells in the help of the Most High will abide in the protection of the God of heaven (Ps 90 [91]:1). Then the earth will disclose its blood, of which God speaks to Cain: The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand (Gen 4:10, 11). This can also be understood of the Martyrs, who shed their blood for Christ and cry out beneath the altar of God: How long, O Lord, do you not avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth? (Rev 6:10). Of them Moses too says in the Song: The blood of his sons will be vindicated and avenged, and he will repay vengeance to his enemies (Deut 32:43). This blood the earth which had received it will disclose, and it will by no means cover the slain of the Lord, but will bring them out into public view for the condemnation of those who killed the Martyrs. Let this be understood of the simple resurrection. But according to the anagogy, the people of God is commanded to enter into its chambers, or storerooms, for ταμεῖα means both: to shut, according to the precept of the Gospel, the door of its chamber (Matt 6), and to say with the Prophet: Set a guard, O Lord, on my mouth, and a fortified door to my lips (Ps 140 [141]:3); and to hide itself a little, however little, until the wrath of the Lord passes, so that it does nothing for the sake of glory, but enjoys the good of conscience and awaits God alone as judge. And the storerooms which are to be shut and hidden by those who have become rich in works and words are prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, so that the left hand may not know what the right hand does, so that we may enjoy the riches of the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel. And that all the days of our life are short and very small, Jacob, exceeding a hundred years, says: Small and very evil are my days (Gen 47:9). And the wrath of the Lord that is to pass is that which those store up for themselves who are unwilling to do penance; after it has passed, the storerooms will by no means be shut any longer, but what is written will be fulfilled: Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed, and secret that will not be made manifest (Luke 8:17). And what follows, For behold, the Lord from the holy place will bring his wrath, signifies this: that the wrath of God begins from the saints, or that all his vengeance is just and holy, not coming down from disturbance of mind, as is usual among men, but from zeal to correct. And I consider the earth of the inhabitants to be that of which it is written: Let the earth hear the words of my mouth (Deut 32:1). And: Give ear, O earth (Isa 1:2). And again: Earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord (Jer 22:29). For as those who dwell on the earth, so those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom 8). And earth in this place signifies the soul that lives carnally. And it will disclose its blood, if it has caused anyone to stumble, and deserves to hear with Cain: The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood (Gen 4:10, 11). All blood, then, will be required on the day of judgment, nor will the earth hide its blood; and the slain whom it has killed, whether willingly or through negligence, it will bring out into the open.
27:1
In that day the Lord will visit with his hard and great and strong sword upon Leviathan the bar serpent, and upon Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the whale that is in the sea. LXX: In that day God will bring the holy and great and strong sword upon the dragon, the fleeing serpent, upon the dragon, the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea. The Hebrews hand down that the devil, that is, the slanderer, which is a Greek name, is called in Hebrew SATAN (שטן), that is, adversary. Hence in Zechariah too it is said: Satan, that is, the adversary, stood at his right hand to oppose him (Zech 3:1). And he is also called BELIAL (בליעל), that is, apostate, transgressor, and without yoke. Hence the Apostle too: What fellowship, he says, has Christ with Belial? (2 Cor 6:15). And wherever the Seventy put sons of pestilence, in the Hebrew is written sons of Belial. Hence also that which is sung in the psalm about the mystery of the Savior, The son of iniquity shall not proceed to harm him (Ps 88 [89]:23), in the Hebrew is said the son of Belial. And he is called by other names too, as is written in another psalm: You shall walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample the lion and the dragon (Ps 90 [91]:13). This dragon is properly called in the Hebrew language LEVIATHAN (לויתן). He is the great whale of whom it is told in mystical language in Job that he is to be caught by Christ: Who is going to catch the great whale (Job 40:20); for there too Leviathan is put for whale; and again: But you will draw the dragon with a hook, you will put a halter about his nostrils; and immediately: This is the beginning of the Lord's creation, which was made to be mocked by his angels. And in the psalm: This is the great and wide sea: there are creeping things without number, small animals with great. This dragon which you have formed to mock him (Ps 103 [104]:25, 26). Of him John too writes in the Apocalypse: There was a battle in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels, and they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven (Rev 12:7ff.). And: The great dragon was cast out, the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who makes the whole world go astray; and he was cast down to the earth, and his angels with him; and there it is said: The accuser of our brethren has been cast out, who accused them before our God (ibid., 12:10). And it must be noted that in the psalm and in Job the dragon, that is, Leviathan, is said to have been made for this purpose, that he might be mocked by the angels. Hence also the Apostles receive power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy (Luke 10). Because, then, from the place where it is written, Behold, the Lord will scatter the earth and will lay it bare (above, Isa 24:1), or, according to the Seventy, Behold, the Lord will destroy the world and will make it desolate, up to the present passage, judgment has been foretold against the world at the consummation of the world, and the last enemy, death, will be destroyed (1 Cor 15): therefore the final sentence is against the devil, that the holy and great and strong sword be brought upon him, or, according to the Hebrew and the other translators, the hard sword. For it is not said CADESA (קדשה), as the Seventy thought, which, if it were so, would signify holy; but CASA (קשה), which is properly translated hard. Hence also Kish, the father of Saul, is interpreted hard. And the holy, or hard, sword, on account of the sense of him who suffers it, some of our writers understand as the Word of God, of which the Apostle says: For the word of God is living and effective, and sharper than any two-edged sword (Heb 4:12). Hence in another place too we read that a two-edged sword goes out of the mouth of the Savior (Rev 19). And when at the end of the world the holy, or hard, and great and strong sword has been brought against Leviathan, who at the beginning of Genesis is called the most cunning serpent above all the beasts (Gen 3:1) that were on the earth, he will flee who was never accustomed to flee, not knowing that which is written: Whither shall I go from your spirit, or whither shall I flee from your face? (Ps 138 [139]:7). A certain poet in his Gigantomachy jested finely about Enceladus: Whither do you flee, Enceladus? Whatever shores you reach, you will always be under God. And this Leviathan, the fleeing serpent, is called in the Hebrew BARI (ברי), which Aquila translated bar, Symmachus shutting in, Theodotion mighty. I think he is called bar, or the one who shuts, because he has shut many in his prison and subjected them to his own power; and he has nothing straight in him, and for that reason is called twisting, nor can he imitate the rod of the Lord, of which it is written: A rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom (Ps 44 [45]). Him the Lord will slay with the breath of his mouth (2 Thess 2), him who was once the inhabitant of the sea, of its salty and bitter waves. Let those who say that the devil will do penance and obtain pardon explain to us how they take what is written: And he will slay the dragon that is in the sea, or the whale. For in the second place in the present passage he is not called Leviathan in the Hebrew, but THANNIN (תנין), which properly means whale. Hence the Hebrews suppose that Leviathan dwells under the earth and in the ether, but Thanniim in the sea; which is a Jewish fable. And what is said at the end of this passage, in that day, Eusebius joins to the former chapter, lest the following prophecy be fitted to this time. But the Hebrews and the other expositors join it to the following, which we are now about to set forth.
27:2-3
In that day the vineyard of pure wine will sing to him. I the Lord, who keep it, will suddenly give it to drink: lest perhaps it be visited, I keep it night and day. LXX: In that day the good vineyard is his desire, that he may be its prince. I am a strong city, a city which is besieged: in vain will I give it drink. For they will be taken by night, and by day the wall will fall. The Hebrew in this place differs much from the edition of the Seventy; therefore let us discuss the particulars as we have set them out. The vineyard of which Isaiah speaks above, A vineyard was made for the beloved on a horn, in a fertile place: how it ought to be understood, let us learn from his own teaching: For the vineyard of the Lord Sabaoth is the house of Israel (Isa 5:1); of which it is sung in the psalm: You brought a vine out of Egypt, and so on (Ps 79 [80]:9). To this vineyard too he gives the cup of purest wine to drink through Jeremiah (Jer 25). For when he had sent him to give drink to all the nations, and the Prophet had willingly offered himself for this office, he is commanded first to make Jerusalem drunk. Hence he says: You have deceived me, O Lord, and I was deceived (Jer 20:7). Jerusalem, then, will drink, and an unmixed draught is given it to drink, so that it may learn lamentation and weeping. And the Lord says that he has guarded it for a long time and has given it a place for repentance, and because it would not be converted, it is to be made drunk suddenly. For he says that he has done this by days and by nights, so that it might always be kept by his help. But the Seventy call the same vineyard beautiful, in which were the Law and the Prophets, the priesthood and the high priesthood, and the knowledge of God, as Scripture says: God is known in Judea, his name is great in Israel (Ps 75 [76]:1). Others think that, according to their edition, it pertains to the Church, than which nothing is more beautiful, and of which it has been said: Glorious things are spoken of you, city of God (Ps 86 [87]:3): which is the princess of her mother, and says in the Song of Songs: The sons of my mother have fought against me (Song 1:5). And she says: I am a firm city, a city which is besieged. And he did well to say is besieged, not is taken by storm. And immediately he adds concerning the Synagogue, which has been turned from head into tail: In vain do I give it the drink of my teachings, for it will be taken in the darkness of its error. And because it did not receive the open light, its wall has fallen by day, that is, all that it thought its help; and there will be none of the adversaries who does not take it, which we ought to understand of the adverse powers.
27:4-5
Indignation is not in me: who will make me a thorn and a brier in battle? I will march upon it; I will burn it up together. Or rather shall I hold fast my strength? It will make peace for me, peace it will make for me. LXX: There is none that has not laid hold of it. Who will set me as keeper of stubble in a field? Because of this adversary I have driven it back. Therefore the Lord has done all that he arranged: I have been burned; its inhabitants will say, we will make peace with him, we will make peace with him. According to the Hebrew, this is the sense: I, who by days and nights have always preserved my vineyard, lest the boar out of the wood should lay it waste, lest the beasts should devour it, have I no indignation, and do I not know how to strike the sinner, and to render to each what he deserves? Where Aquila put thorn and brier, in the Hebrew is written SAMIR (שמיר) and SAITH (ושית), which signify adamant and places full of brambles. Hence he says: Who will teach me to be hard, and to overcome my clemency, and to advance savage in battle and contest, so that I may march upon the vineyard which I kept before, and burn that which I had hedged with my wall? Or rather will my strength bring this about, that I defer my wrath, and save by the clemency of the Gospel those who were by no means saved by the authority of the Law? And according to the Hebrew it is to be read ἐμφατικῶς: Who will make me hard and cruel, so that I overcome my nature? For this indeed is signified by the desert and by the thorns: that I should crush, as in battle, and burn that which I have always guarded with my diligence. Or rather shall I hold fast my strength, which without doubt is Christ, and of which we read, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24), so that it may make peace for me and reconcile the world? According to the Seventy, this is the sense, if we take it in the person of the Church: I am a firm city, a city surrounded by many enemies, I who in vain gave cups to my enemy the Synagogue. For it will be taken by night, and its wall will fall, and there will be none of the adverse powers which does not lay hold of it. Again I will speak: What does it profit me to guard her, who has stubble in her, not grain, who is so uncultivated that she is full of briers and thorns, whom I wished to save? But because she deals with me as an enemy, I have withdrawn from her. And the Apostles, born in me and from me, said: It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you; but since you have rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles (Acts 13:46). Therefore the Lord will do what he threatened, so that all in her burn, surrounded by Roman fire. Or certainly they burn with vices and sins, so that they cannot quench the burning darts of the devil. For all are adulterers, their hearts like an oven. And those who formerly dwelt in her, after they have cried out, The city is taken and burned, will leave her, and, reconciling the world to God, will say: Let us make peace with him, let us make peace with him, that is, with Christ, always writing in their Epistles: Grace be with you and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord (1 Cor 1:3). Of whom we read in this same Prophet: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good tidings of peace! (Isa 52:7). Some refer this place to the Churches: that they are indeed guarded by God, but many in them bear no fruit; and for that reason they are set on fire by the burning zeal of a good teacher, so that they cry out and confess their error, and afterwards make peace with God, being truly called sons of Jacob.
27:6
Those who come forth from the root of Jacob, Israel will blossom and bud, and they will fill the face of the world with seed. LXX: Those who come are the sons of Jacob: Israel will bud and blossom, and its fruit will fill the world. After the Apostles, preaching the Gospel in the whole world, have said, We will make peace with Christ, we will make peace with him, those who were of the seed of Jacob on high, and have attained to the apostolic dignity, will be called sons of Jacob. Then Israel will bud and blossom, seeing that the whole world has been filled with the teaching of its sons and has borne most abundant fruits, which while it remained in Judea it had not borne.
27:7
Has he struck him according to the stroke of him who struck him? Or as he killed his slain, so was he killed? This place is understood in two ways: either against Jerusalem, so as to say that it was not struck by God as it itself struck Christ and his Apostles; or against the multitude of the nations, in that, while they persecuted and shed Christian blood, the Apostles and apostolic men nonetheless took care of their salvation and reconciled them to God.
27:8
In measure against measure, when it has been cast off, you will judge it. LXX: Quarreling and reproaching, he will send them away. According to the Hebrew, this is the sense: As Jerusalem did, so will it receive, and according to the measure with which it measured, it will be measured back to it. And it will receive the measure heaped up when the time of judgment has come and God has cast it off. According to the Seventy, what is said depends on what precedes. For Israel will not be struck as it struck, nor killed as it killed: Israel, which quarreled against the Apostles, and reproached its teachers, and commanded them not to speak in the name of Christ. Therefore the Lord will cast them off and drive them out of his flock.
He has meditated in his hard spirit through the day of heat. LXX: Was it not you who meditated with a hard spirit to kill them, with a spirit of fury? According to the Hebrew this is said: with the measure with which it measured, Jerusalem will receive; therefore God in his hard and vehement spirit has meditated, or spoken, against it in the day of heat, that is, in the time of persecution, when the day of indignation and punishments is more burning. According to the Seventy, it is said to Jerusalem itself, or to Israel: Was it not you who, in your most hard and cruel spirit, and in the fury of your blasphemies, desired to kill the Apostles and teachers of the Lord?
27:9
Therefore by these things iniquity will be forgiven to the house of Jacob, and this is all the fruit, that his sin may be taken away: because he has made all the stones of the altar like stones of ash dashed to pieces; the groves and the shrines will not stand. LXX: Therefore the iniquity of Jacob will be taken away, and this will be his blessing, when I have taken away his sin, when he has made all the stones of the altars crushed like ash ground small, and their trees will not endure, nor the idols. He gives the reasons why, after the Jews have laid hands on the Lord, they may obtain pardon if they are willing to do penance, so that the prayer of the Savior may be fulfilled: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do (Luke 23:34). Therefore, he says, iniquity will be forgiven to the house of Jacob, and its sin will be taken away, so that it may merit the blessing of God, which had called down a curse upon itself, saying: His blood be upon us and upon our children (Matt 27:25); because through the Apostles of the stock of Israel the Gospel will be sown in the whole world, and idolatry will be destroyed, and the altars will be ground down to dust, the groves will be cut down, the shrines will fall, and the knowledge of the one God under the mystery of the Trinity will be preached.
27:10
For the fortified city will be desolate; the beautiful one will be left, and abandoned as a desert. There the calf will feed, and there he will lie down and consume its topmost shoots. LXX: Their idols will be cut down like a grove, and the flock dwelling far off will be abandoned like a forsaken flock, and it will be for a long time for pasture, and there the flocks will rest, and after a long time there will not be in it anything green, because it has been dried up. Jerusalem, the city once firm and fortified, because it did not receive the son of the householder, but said, Come, let us kill him, for this is the heir, and the inheritance will be ours (Matt 21:38), will be desolate. And she who was once beautiful, of whom it is said in Ezekiel too, You ate fine flour and honey and oil, and you became exceedingly beautiful (Ezek 16:13), and in whom dwelt he of whom it is written, Beautiful in form above the sons of men (Ps 44 [45]:3), will be left and abandoned as a desert, as the Lord says to the Apostles: Arise, let us go hence (John 14:31). There the calf will feed, the Roman army, of which it is said in another place under the name of the boar: The boar out of the wood will lay it waste, and the solitary wild beast has fed upon it (Ps 79 [80]:14). And there he will lie down and consume its topmost shoots, under the metaphor of a vineyard and its shoots, so that nothing green, nothing of the tendrils, remains in it, but the enemy consumes all. According to the Seventy, because they did not receive the good shepherd, therefore they will be like a forsaken flock, and will lie open to the bites of the beasts; and nothing green will remain in them, because drought will possess all things.
27:11
In the drought of its harvest the women coming and teaching it will be crushed. For it is not a wise people: therefore he who made it will not have mercy on it, and he who formed it will not spare it. LXX: Women coming from the spectacle, come: for it is not a people having understanding; therefore he who made them will not have mercy on them, and he who formed them will not spare. What is said, In the drought of its harvest they will be crushed, for which the Seventy translated, there will not be in it anything green, because it has dried up, according to the Hebrew is coupled with what follows, according to the Seventy with the preceding sense. Let us speak first, then, according to the Hebrew. When the time of the drought and the harvest of Jerusalem, and, to speak more openly, of its devastation, has come, the throng of the synagogues will run together from the whole world to lament Jerusalem and console her evils. Or he is speaking openly of the women who, with bared breasts, strike their arms till they bleed; and the prophecy of the Lord will be fulfilled: Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but lament over yourselves and over your children (Luke 23:28). And it is a great unhappiness for the people to learn songs of lamentation from women; just as it was a reproach to the people of Israel when, in the book of Judges (Judg 4), the Lord wrought salvation by the hand of the woman Deborah, and at the time of the approaching captivity, while the men were silent, the woman Huldah prophesied (2 Kgs 22). But for this reason the women will be crushed by the long journey, worn out by weakness, hunger and squalor, and they will teach the wretched people, because it is not a wise people, nor has it understood its Creator, who, neglected and despised by them, will not have mercy on his handiwork and will not spare his creature. According to the Seventy, it is said of Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, and the rest of the women, who first saw the Lord rising again, and held his feet, and merited to hear from him: Do not fear: go, tell my brethren to go into Galilee, and there they will see me (Matt 28:10). Of these women, long before they were born, the prophetic discourse foretells, and calls them from the spectacle of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection, so that they may preach the Gospel, and, according to the Hebrew, teach Jerusalem, or the land of Israel, that this is the Lord and God. For since the people of Israel did not have wisdom at that time, when the Lord suffered, and the prophetic oracle was fulfilled, Save me, O Lord, for the holy one has failed (Ps 11 [12]:1), and, All have turned aside, together they have become unprofitable: there is none who does good, there is not even one (Ps 13 [14]:4), the women are called from the spectacle, so that they may announce to the Apostles what they themselves have seen. But Israel, of which it was said (above, Isa 1:3), Israel has not known me, and my people has not understood, provoked its most clement Creator and maker to bitterness, so that he by no means has mercy on it. These things are indeed said piously; but how they agree with the rest, and are fitted to the times of the consummation of the world, is a difficult interpretation.
27:12
And it will be in that day: the Lord will strike from the channel of the river to the torrent of Egypt. LXX: And it will be in that day: the Lord will shut in from the trench of the river to Rhinocorura. Had he not added, in that day, by which we are taught that what he is about to say is to be coupled with what precedes, we could have expounded a sense proper to this passage; but now everything is to be referred to what precedes. Since the fortified city will be desolate, and the once beautiful one will be left as a desert, and there the calf will lie down and consume the shoots of the vineyard, and all things will be dried up, since it is not a people having understanding, and because of its folly it has obtained no mercy from its Creator: therefore the Lord will strike, or shut in, from the channel or stream of the river to the torrent of Egypt, so that in all Judea, which was once the land of promise, no word of teaching may be found, nothing of the knowledge of the Scriptures; of whom the Apostle too speaks: That we may not give heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn away from the truth (Titus 1:14); and again: For there are many both insubordinate and vain talkers and deceivers, whom one must refute, especially of the circumcision (ibid., 10). And the channel, or stream, of the river, according to the history, we can call the Euphrates, as it is written also in the seventy-first psalm: He will have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the end of the world (Ps 71 [72]:8). Others think it is the Jordan. And this must be noted, that in the borders of Judea it is called river, in the territories of Egypt torrent, which has turbid waters and not perpetual ones. For the torrent of Egypt, the Seventy translated Rhinocorura, which is a town on the border of Egypt and Palestine, expressing not so much the words of the Scriptures as the sense of the words. And what we have said, will strike, for which the Seventy translated συμφράξει, that is, will shut in, Aquila and Theodotion translated ῥαβδήσει, which can be understood either as will strike with a rod or will count under the rod the number of his flock, so that it may be taken not in a bad but in a good sense.
And you will be gathered one by one, O children of Israel. LXX: But you, gather one by one the children of Israel. O children of Israel, for which Symmachus translated house of Israel: when your adversaries have been struck from the stream of the river to the torrent of Egypt, that is, from the Euphrates to the Nile, you yourselves will be gathered to the faith of the Lord one by one, because the throng of the Jews did not believe; by which he signifies that few of the Jews will believe in the Lord Savior. Or certainly, O Apostles and apostolic men, since the multitude of the Jews does not believe, bring back from the whole world as many as you can, like sick sheep, to the folds of the Lord, and gather them with the people of the nations, so that that may be fulfilled which the Apostle Paul and Barnabas say to the Jews: It was necessary that the word of God should be announced first to you; but since you have judged yourselves unworthy of salvation, behold, we turn to the Gentiles (Acts 13:46).
27:13
And it will be in that day: a blast will be sounded on a great trumpet; and those who had been lost from the land of the Assyrians, and those who had been cast out into the land of Egypt, will come, and they will worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem. LXX: And it will be in that day: they will sound with a great trumpet; and those who had perished in the region of the Assyrians, and those who had perished in Egypt, will come, and they will worship the Lord upon the holy mountain in Jerusalem. In this place the Jews promise themselves empty hopes: that at the consummation of the world, when the Antichrist, their ἠλειμμένος, as it is said, has come, the dispersed people will be gathered from the Assyrians and from the land of Egypt, and will come to Jerusalem, and, the temple having been built, will worship the Lord their God. This cannot stand at all according to the letter. For not from the Assyrians and from Egypt only, but from the whole world, those who are to believe in Christ will be called. This, therefore, is what it signifies: that at the last trumpet, according to the Apostle Paul (1 Cor 15), all who had perished among the Assyrians and in Egypt come to the Lord. Nor did he say all the children of Israel, but all who had perished, by which he signifies the multitude of the nations: that those bound to idolatry and to the magic arts and to philosophy come to the faith of Christ and worship him in the Church. And the great trumpet can be understood as the word of the Gospel, of which we read also in this same Prophet: Go up upon a high mountain, you who bring good tidings to Zion: lift up your voice, you who bring good tidings to Jerusalem (below, Isa 40:9). The holy mountain, then, and Jerusalem is that of which we have often spoken: You have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and many thousands of angels, and the Church of the firstborn, who are enrolled in the heavens (Heb 12:22). Thus far it has been spoken of the consummation of the world, from the place at which we began to expound, Behold, the Lord will scatter the earth and will lay it bare (above, Isa 24:1), which is contained in the present volume. Now, with Christ helping, nay rather inspiring us, let us pass on to the ninth, which will hold the beginning of another prophecy.
Book Nine
Beset by various troubles, we dictate our explanations of the prophet Isaiah at intervals. So, the eighth volume completed, we now pass, after some space of time, to the ninth: not without the biting and the detraction of the envious, who, not knowing what they hear or what they say, dare to pass judgment on what they do not understand, and despise before they test, and reckon themselves learned and eloquent if they disparage all writers. Despising their spite and their chattering mutter, let us ask God's help, and say with the Psalmist's imprecation: Scatter the nations that desire wars (Ps 67 [68]:31). For the place of the Lord is in peace, which surpasses all understanding. This the prophet too desires when he cries out: O Lord our God, give us peace: for you have rendered all things to us (Isa 26:12). But now let us set out the chapter of Isaiah, and with Moses let us enter into the cloud and the thick darkness, so that our face may be made bright, and, according to the Hebrew, be horned; and let the thunders and lightnings be heard and flash, which the baser common people could not look upon (Exod 19).
28:1
Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the falling flower of the glory of its exultation, who were on the summit of the most fertile valley, going astray from wine. Behold, the strong and mighty one of the Lord, like the onrush of hail, a whirlwind that shatters; like the onrush of many waters overflowing and sent forth upon a spacious land. With feet shall the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim be trodden down. And the falling flower of the glory of its exultation, which is upon the summit of the valley of the fat, shall be like an early fruit before the ripeness of autumn, which, when the beholder has looked upon it, as soon as he has taken it in his hand, he will devour it. LXX: Woe to the crown of insolence, the hirelings of Ephraim: a flower falling from glory upon the summit of the fat mountain, you who are drunk without wine. Behold, the wrath of the Lord is strong and harsh, like hail that is borne headlong, having no shelter, which falls violently like a multitude of waters dragging the soil along and making room for itself: with hands and feet shall the crown of insolence, the hirelings of Ephraim, be trodden down. And the flower that falls from the hope of glory on the top of the lofty mountain shall be like an early fig, which whoever sees it will long to devour before he takes it in his hand. Let us speak first according to the history, then according to tropology, and lastly according to the prophetic prediction. The divine word speaks against the ten tribes who reigned in Samaria and who, on account of Jeroboam, who was of the tribe of Ephraim, were called Ephraim. And it calls them a crown of pride, because, compared with the two tribes that were called Judah, they were loftier both in number and in strength. And it calls them the drunkards of Ephraim, since they did not understand their Creator, but in place of the Lord worshiped the golden calves in Dan and Bethel. These were once in the flower of the Lord, and in glory, when they were ruled by David and Solomon and, among the twelve tribes, worshiped God in the temple of Jerusalem; they were on the summit of the most fertile valley, which in Hebrew is called GE SEMANIM (גיא שמנים). This signifies the place where the Lord was betrayed; above the summit of this valley the temple of the Lord is situated. These men were made drunk with the wine of error and madness, which Jeroboam mixed for them. Therefore the Lord threatens them with punishment: that, as a whirlwind of hail shatters all things, and the onrush of overflowing waters sweeps away whatever it finds in its path, so they would be destroyed by the army of the Assyrians, and whatever remained would be carried off to the mountains or cities of Media. He compares the glory of the ten tribes to a crown of varied flowers, which had such beauty that, just as someone who, before summer and autumn come, sees a πρόδρομον fig on the tree, devours it as soon as he has taken it in his hand, so too the Assyrian, when he saw the ten tribes, would lay them waste and devour them, and leave nothing at all of the former people in Samaria. Let this have been said briefly according to the history. Let us pass to allegory. According to our exposition of the prophet Hosea, in which we referred Ephraim and Joseph and Samaria and the ten tribes, which were cut off from the body of the twelve tribes and abandoned the temple of the Lord, to the heretics, these are truly, according to the Septuagint edition, a crown of insolence: they blaspheme the Lord, and do everything for the sake of payment, and have fallen from the glory of the Lord; nor do they follow the slenderness of the manna and the humility of the Church, but they dwell on the most fertile mountain, drunk without wine. Therefore the strong and harsh wrath of the Lord, which is going to punish them, is compared to headlong hail, which falls not on roofs but on the heads of mortals, and to the floods of many waters, which drag along whatever they find in their way. This crown of insolence, the hirelings, are called Ephraim, who, according to the Apostle, for the sake of base gain have fallen from the flower and the hope and the glory of their former faith, and dwell in pride, and are the sweetest food of the devil, who devours them daily (1 Pet 5). According to the prophecy we can say this: that he calls the scribes and Pharisees, who blasphemed the Lord, a crown of insolence. And they were called the hirelings of Ephraim on account of Judas, who, of the tribe of Ephraim and of Iscarioth, a village of that same tribe, sold the Lord for a price; he truly, the flower of apostolic glory, fell upon the most fertile mountain, of which we think it was said: Jacob ate and drank and was filled, and grew fat, and the beloved kicked (Deut 32:15). Or, according to the Hebrew: upon the valley of the fat, that is, Gessemanim: in which the name of the place is also signified in which Judas betrayed the Lord. And it is called the fat valley, or the valley of the fat, on account of its fertility, and on account of the scribes and Pharisees who seized the Lord there: of whom it is written in the psalm: Fat bulls have besieged me (Ps 21 [22]:13). This valley of the fat, that is, Gessemanim, is named a second time in this chapter; and I wonder how the Seventy first called it a fat mountain and afterward a lofty mountain. The betrayer was drunk not with wine but with avarice and the incurable fury of asps, and with the food of the devil, who entered into him after the morsel (John 13), and he was utterly devoured, because his prayer was turned into sin, and not even his repentance had the fruit of salvation. The Hebrew word SACCHORE (שכורי) is ambiguous, and means either drunkards or hirelings. Hence Issachar too means there is a reward; and SACHAR (שכר) is μέθυσμα, that is, drunkenness. And the rest translated drunkards: the Seventy alone translated hirelings.
28:5ff.
In that day the Lord of hosts shall be a crown of glory and a garland of exultation to the remnant of his people, and a spirit of judgment to him who sits upon judgment, and strength to those returning from war to the gate. But these also have not known because of wine, and have gone astray because of drunkenness; the priest and the prophet have not known: they are swallowed up by wine because of drunkenness, they have gone astray in drunkenness: they have not known the seer, they have been ignorant of judgment, or wonderfully. For all the tables are filled with vomit and filth, so that there was no more room. LXX: In that day the Lord Sabaoth shall be a crown of hope, which is woven of glory, for the remnant of the people. They shall be left in a spirit of judgment upon judgment, and strength forbidding to kill. For these have been deceived by wine: they go astray because of strong drink; the priest and the prophet have lost their minds because of strong drink; they are swallowed up because of wine, they have staggered, that is, φάσμα; a curse shall eat this counsel: for this counsel is for the sake of avarice. After the whole land of Samaria, that is, of the ten tribes, has been destroyed by the Assyrian's flood, and the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim has been trodden underfoot and devoured like an early fig, then the Lord himself shall be a crown of victory to the remnant of the people of Israel, that is, of the two tribes, Judah and Benjamin; and a spirit of judgment to him who sits upon judgment, doubtless to Hezekiah king of Judah; and the strength of those who, when the whole region had been ravaged, returning from battle, shut themselves up in the city. This we shall read in this same prophet (below, Isa 37), when one hundred and eighty-five thousand armed men of the army of the Assyrians were destroyed by the stroke of an angel. But these also, that is, Judah and Benjamin, were made drunk with the wine of idolatry, and, despising the worship of the temple, venerated the images of demons, and did not know the Lord, the seer, who beholds all things. For all their tables, and their whole worship, were filled with vomit and filth, so that not only in the temple but on the tops of the mountains and in wooded places they filled everything with the filth of idolatry, and the Lord had no place of habitation among them. Let this have been said according to the letter. Further, according to tropology, let us follow the former understanding, and not leave the Seventy translators untouched. For when the heretics, who have climbed the most fertile mountain of pride, have been devoured by the mouth of the devil, the Lord shall be a crown of glory to those who dwell in the Church and who, compared with the multitude of the many who go astray, are few in number. And he shall be in a spirit of judgment upon judgment, because the Lord will wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Zion by the spirit of judgment. But if anyone has blood, he will be purged not by the spirit of judgment but by the fire of burning; and he shall be strength to the people, and shall forbid it to be killed by those who are drunk with the wine of dragons and have gone astray because of strong drink. We have often said that wine is what is made from vines; but strong drink is every drink that can intoxicate and overturn the state of the mind, which Aquila properly translated drunkenness, whether it is made from wheat or barley or millet, or from the juice of fruits, or from the fruit of palms, or from any other kind. Therefore the priests and prophets of the heretics have lost their minds because of strong drink, and are swallowed up because of wine, such as were Prisca and Maximilla and their chief Montanus: and they did not know what they were saying. They are made drunk with wine when they misunderstand and pervert the holy Scriptures; with strong drink, when they misuse worldly wisdom and the snares of the dialecticians, which are to be called not so much bonds as phantasms, that is, certain shadows and images that quickly perish and dissolve. A curse shall possess the counsel of such men, who suppose that godliness is gain, and do everything for the sake of avarice. Of this phantasm the Apostle too spoke: Giving heed to spirits of error and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy (1 Tim 4:1-2). The third explanation is that, after the Lord has overthrown the scribes and Pharisees, and their associate Judas the betrayer, who had been a thief from the beginning, for he himself carried the purse of the money for the poor (John 12 and 13), he then becomes a hope and a crown of glory to those of the Jews who believed in the Lord; doubtless he means the apostles, whom he reserved for the preaching of the Gospel and did not allow at once to shed their blood for Christ. For all the scribes and Pharisees were made drunk with the wine and strong drink of which we spoke above, the priests as well as the false prophets. But their snares and plots came to nothing, since both Judas himself, who betrayed him, did it for money, and the priests, who corrupted the betrayer with money, did it out of fear of their own rejection. For he himself, making a scourge of cords, cast out of the temple those who sold oxen and sheep, and by his own authority overturned the seats of those who sold doves and the tables of the money-changers, saying to them: It is written: My Father's house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a house of trade, or a den of robbers (Matt 21:13). According to the anagogy, that Hebrew text in which we said: For all their tables are filled with vomit and filth, so that there is no more room, can be referred to the heretics, and to the scribes and Pharisees, in this way: that we say all their teaching and all their mysteries are full of vomit and filth, since they do not digest the food of the holy Scriptures nor make it life-giving to the whole body, but void it unripe and stinking, so that God finds no place in them. But I wonder what Theodotion meant, that for the Hebrew word called CISOA (קיאצאה), for which Aquila translated vomit of filth and Symmachus simply vomit, he should say ἐμετὸν δυσαλίας, that is, vomit of dysalia, a word I have not been able to find read anywhere among the Greeks, unless perhaps he coined a new name for a new thing. Indeed among the Hebrews too it is a compound, since vomit is called CI, and SOA filthy. Whatever, then, causes nausea and vomiting can be called δυσαλία.
28:10ff.
Whom shall he teach knowledge, and whom shall he make to understand what is heard? Those weaned from the milk, those drawn from the breasts: for command, command again; command, command again; wait, wait again; wait, wait again; a little there, a little there. For with speech of lip and with another tongue he will speak to this people, to whom he said: This is my rest; refresh the weary, and this is my refreshment, and they would not hear. And the word of the Lord shall be to them: command, command again; command, command again; wait, wait again; wait, wait again; a little there, a little there; that they may go and fall backward, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken. LXX: To whom shall we announce evils, and to whom shall we announce tidings? those who are weaned from the milk, who are drawn from the breast. Expect tribulation upon tribulation; wait for hope upon hope; yet a little, yet a little: because of the mockery of the lips, because of another tongue with which they will speak to this people, saying to them: This is the rest for the hungry, and this the crushing, and they would not hear. And the word of the Lord shall be to them: Tribulation upon tribulation: expect, expect; hope upon hope: yet a little, yet a little; that they may go and fall backward, and be broken, and be endangered, and be taken. Who, he says, is worthy of the teaching of the Lord, who, by the words of the Savior, who says: He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Matt 11:15), understands with the heart what he has taken in with the ears? Who these are the following verse shows: Weaned from the milk, drawn from the breast: those who are no longer fed with the milk of infancy but eat solid food; who are drawn from the breast with Isaac, for which joy Abraham made a great feast (Gen 21); these deserve to hear the mysteries of the Lord and to understand what the priest and the prophet do not know, drunk and swallowed up by wine, who went astray and did not know the seer, because all their tables were filled with vomit and filth. These, when the prophets announced what was to come and threatened torments unless they did what had been commanded, used to say in mockery: Command, command again; command, command again, that is, give orders, give orders, command what we ought to do. And since they abused the patience of God, who defers his wrath in order to show mercy, they used also to say this, jesting, in the person of the prophets: Wait a little while, wait a little, the things we have foretold will come. All this they said among the people, because they did not believe the words of God; and at once the prophet adds: God will no longer speak to you in these words, to command what you ought to do and that you should wait for what is to come, but he will speak to you in present fury, he who had earlier said to the people: This is my rest, refresh the weary: I have labored a long time, in nothing have I found rest. The foxes have holes, and the birds of the sky nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head (Matt 8; Luke 9). And this is my refreshment, that I may at some time rest in you. They would not hear, and despised my warnings; wherefore what they used to say to the prophets in jest: Command, command again; command, command again: wait, wait again; wait, wait again: a little there, a little there, mocking my patience, since they thought I was threatening things I would never do: let them feel it fulfilled in fact, so that they go to destruction and fall backward with an incurable ὀπισθοτόνῳ; and may never advance to the things before, nor be able to say with the Apostle: Forgetting the things that are behind, we stretch forward to those that are before (Phil 3:13); but may they be broken and snared, and be taken either by the Babylonian or by the Roman army. Where we have said: Command, command again; command, command again: wait, wait again; wait, wait again; a little there, a little there, in the Hebrew it is written thus: SAU LASAU, SAU LASAU; CAU LACAU, CAU LACAU: ZER SAM, ZER SAM; and a most unclean heresy is accustomed to misuse these words among simple and deceived people, to cause terror by the novelty of the expressions: namely, that whoever has learned these words and remembers them in their intercourse will pass without any doubt into the kingdom of heaven. We read in the Apostle: In other tongues and with other lips I will speak to this people, and not even so will they hear me, says the Lord (1 Cor 14:21). This seems to me taken from the present chapter according to the Hebrew; and we have observed this in the Old Testament (apart from a few testimonies which Luke alone uses, who had a greater knowledge of the Greek language): wherever anything is cited from the old instrument, they set it down not according to the Septuagint but according to the Hebrew, following no one's translation, but rendering the Hebrew sense in their own language. Symmachus, Theodotion and the Seventy understood this place differently, and because it is long to speak of them all, let us run briefly through the Seventy translators, who are read in the churches. The people of the Jews having been rejected, the priests and prophets who were drunk with strong drink and went astray, and the curse having eaten up the counsel they formed for the sake of avarice, to whom shall we announce the tribulations to come for Christ's sake? to whom the evils in return for which the crown of virtues is prepared? Surely to those who are weaned from the milk, who are drawn from the breast: doubtless he means the apostles: Expect tribulation upon tribulation. He is speaking to the company of the apostles and of all believers, that each should prepare himself not for one tribulation but for many, so that when he has been afflicted and pressed down he may hope again, and have hope upon hope. And if what has been promised delays a little, let him not be unbelieving: for a little, a very little, and what has been promised will come. For tribulation works patience; patience, proof; proof, hope; and hope does not confound (Rom 5:3-5). And this very tribulation will be doubled by the detraction of lips, and by the blasphemies of the persecutors, with which they rage with rabid mouth against the people of God. Further, the apostles and apostolic men will speak to the people of the Jews, saying: This is the rest for the hungry for righteousness, and this the crushing and the narrowness that leads to life. When they preached this, the ungodly would not hear. Hence what was said to the people of God: Endure tribulation, endure tribulation; expect hope, expect hope: yet a little, yet a little, will be turned into punishment for those who would not hear the word of the Lord, so that they fall and go backward, and run into the peril of siege and death, and are taken with no end of miseries. That the Seventy alone translated the Hebrew word DEA, which all rendered knowledge, as evils is an evident error. For the first letter, DALETH or RES, are distinguished by a small stroke. If, then, it is read DEA (דעה), it means knowledge; if REA (רעה), malice: not from the evil that is the contrary of good, but from distress.
28:14-15
Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men, who rule over my people that is in Jerusalem. For you have said: We have struck a covenant with death, and with hell we have made a pact: when the overflowing scourge passes through, it shall not come upon us, because we have made a lie our hope, and by a lie we are protected. LXX: Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you afflicted men and princes of this people that is in Jerusalem: Because you have said: We have made a testament with hell, and a pact with death: if the passing tempest rushes on, it shall not come upon us, since we have made a lie our hope, and by a lie we shall be protected. What we said above, that the princes of the Jews used to say to the prophets with mockery: Command, command again; wait, wait again, and other things like these, by which it is shown that they in no way believed the words of the prophets but held their prophecy in contempt, the present chapter shows, in which they are called scornful men. These are the scribes and Pharisees, who rule over the people of God in Jerusalem, whom the Seventy call afflicted men and princes of the people of Jerusalem. For they said, not in word but in deed: We are like the other nations too: we have a pact and a covenant with hell and with death: we have despaired of salvation once for all. Surely the captivity will come a long time hence, since you say: Yet a little, yet a little: wait, wait again. So when we are dead we shall not feel this scourge of captivity and this tempest. For once for all we have believed a lie, that is, we have had hope in God and in his Law in vain. And therefore we are protected by a lie, because, being dead, we have escaped the threatening captivity. The Hebrew word SOT (שוט) Aquila and Symmachus translated scourge, the Seventy tempest; CHASAB (כזב) too all translated lie, in which the Jews hoped, whose father, according to the Evangelist John, is the devil.
28:16ff.
Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will lay in the foundations of Zion a tried stone, a corner stone, precious, founded with a foundation: he who believes, let him not hasten. And I will set judgment in the weight, and righteousness in the measure: and hail shall overthrow the hope of falsehood, and waters shall overflow the protection. And your covenant with death shall be blotted out, and your pact with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge passes through, you shall be trodden down by it. When it passes through, it shall take you away: for in the morning, at daybreak, it shall pass through, in the day and in the night, and vexation alone shall give understanding to the hearing: For the bed is straitened, so that one must fall out, and a short cloak cannot cover both. LXX: Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I will put into the foundations of Zion a precious stone, chosen, a corner stone, honorable, in its foundations; and he who believes shall not be confounded. And I will set judgment in hope, and my mercy in the weight; and those who trust vainly in a lie, since the tempest shall not pass through us, and shall not take from us the testament of death, also your hope in hell shall not remain. If the coming tempest passes through, you shall be trodden down by it: when it passes through, it shall take you in the morning, in the morning it shall pass through: by day and by night there shall be a most evil hope. Learn to hear, you who are in tribulation: We cannot fight, and we ourselves are too weak to be gathered together. I had said to you, he says: Hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men, or afflicted princes of my people, and do not have a covenant with death nor a pact with hell, you who, despising my precepts, have made a lie your hope, and, boasting, or rather despairing, say: by a lie we shall be protected. Therefore the Lord, who is merciful and compassionate, patient and abounding in mercy (Ps 144 [145]), says that, against your will, he will lay in the foundations of Zion a stone chosen and tried and precious and a corner stone. Of this the Apostle too speaks: As a wise architect I have laid the foundation (1 Cor 3:10); and again: For no one can lay another foundation than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus (ibid., 11). This stone is truly, and a second time, called a stone, just as in Leviticus man, man is said twice; and a corner stone, because it joined together the peoples of the Circumcision and of the Gentiles, of which it is said in the psalm too: The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner (Ps 117 [118]:22). These are the builders and masons who are now called scornful men and princes of the people that is in Jerusalem. Of this stone we read in Daniel too, that it was cut from the mountain without hands and filled the whole world (Dan 2): because the dispensation of the divine offspring took a human body, and the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in it bodily. Upon this stone, which by another name is called the rock, Christ built the Church, and, according to the Hebrew, founded it with a firm foundation; in which whoever believes shall not be confounded, or, according to the Hebrew, let him not hasten: that is, lest the coming of Christ should seem slow to him. For if he delays, according to Habakkuk, let no one despair: because he will surely come, and will fulfill his promises (Hab 2). God promises also to set in it the judgment of the weight: For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son (John 5:22). And righteousness, or mercy, in the measure, so that he may render to each according to his works, and temper righteousness and mercy each by the other, according to what we read in the psalms too: Mercy and truth have met each other: righteousness and peace have kissed (Ps 84 [85]:11). Your hope also, he says, and your lie, that is, the devil, the father of every lie, the hail of my punishments shall overthrow. And the protection under which you thought you would be safe, a mighty tempest and a multitude of waters shall destroy, so that the friendship and covenant you had with death and with hell, that is, with the devil, shall perish forever. And the scourge, or tempest, of which you had said: When the overflowing scourge passes through, it shall not come upon us, shall come, and you shall be trodden down by it, that is, you shall suffer all the torments which, in your despairing mind, you thought you would never suffer. For it will always rush upon you, and in prosperity as in adversity you will feel the wrath of the Lord, and cruel death will lay you waste. What shall I say of the punishments? The mere dread of punishments and the fear of torments will correct you unto salvation, and will make you understand your evils. And when you have been vexed, then you will know that my prophets spoke the truth. And what follows: For the bed is straitened, so that one must fall out, and a short cloak cannot cover both, has the sense we read in the Apostle: You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord and of the table of idols (1 Cor 10:20-21); and elsewhere: What participation has righteousness with iniquity? What fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial? What part has the believer with the unbeliever? What consent has the temple of God with idols (2 Cor 6:14-15)? He speaks under the metaphor of a most chaste husband, who says to an adulterous wife: One little bed cannot hold me and the adulterer with you, and a short cloak cannot cover both the husband and the paramour. O Jerusalem, then, to whom he speaks in Ezekiel too under the person of a fornicating wife (Ezek 16:21), and whom at the beginning of Hosea he calls a harlot and an adulteress (Hos 3), if you wish to be joined in my embraces, cast away your idols: if you serve idols, you cannot have me. This according to the Hebrew. Further, as for what is read in the Seventy: Learn to hear, you who are afflicted: we cannot fight, and we ourselves are too weak to be gathered together, what sense it has, and how it is connected with what goes before, I am entirely ignorant. Unless perhaps the divine word is speaking to the princes of the people and exhorting them to have hope in God and not in death and hell, and to learn to hear the oracles of the prophets; and they answer that, for the weakness of their strength, they cannot fight against the opposing powers, nor be gathered together among the people of God.
28:21-22
For as on the mountain of divisions the Lord shall stand, as in the valley of Gibeon he shall be angry, that he may do his work, his strange work, that he may perform his work, his work is foreign to him. And now do not mock, lest perhaps your bonds be tightened. For I have heard from the Lord God of hosts a consummation and a cutting short upon the whole earth. LXX: As a mountain of the ungodly the Lord shall rise up, and he shall be in the valley of Gibeon; with fury he shall do his works, a work of bitterness, and his fury shall deal as with strangers: and his bitterness is strange. And do not you rejoice, lest your bonds be strengthened, since I have heard from the Lord God Sabaoth things completed and cut short, which he will do upon all the earth. The Lord promised that he would lay a precious stone in the foundations of Zion, so that hail might overthrow the lie and the hope of the ungodly, and a mighty tempest might blot out the covenant with death and the pact with hell. Since the scornful princes would not receive it, just as once, when David reigned, the Lord cut down his adversaries against the Philistines on the mountain of divisions, which in Hebrew was called PHARASIM (פרצים), from which the place also took its name; and as in the valley of Gibeon, under Joshua the leader, when, in the confidence of God dwelling in him, he said: Let the sun stand still at Gibeon, and the moon over against the valley of Aijalon (Josh 10:12), and the sun stood still for the space of one day, and many of the foreigners perished: so the Lord shall be angry against the ungodly and the scornful, that he may do his work. For it is not the Lord's work to destroy those whom he created, but to do a strange work, which pertains to cruelty rather than to mercy. And again he repeats the very same thing in other words: that he may perform his work. It is not his work to punish sinners, but foreign and strange to him that he who is the Savior should punish. Since, then, the Lord is going to rise up from his patience and will by no means spare, just as he did not spare on Mount Pharasim and in the valley of Gibeon, I warn you, O scornful men, by no means to laugh at my prophets, nor to think that what they announce will not come, lest, if you persist in mocking, the bonds of your sins be tightened (For each one is bound fast by the cords of his own sins (Prov 5:22), or the time of captivity come upon you. For what the Lord was postponing in time, the bonds, the captivity and the punishments, or the last day of judgment, he is now about to fulfill in fact, and to consummate and cut short. Therefore I, the prophet, announce to you the things I have learned from the Lord God almighty are to come upon the whole earth, so that you may forestall the impending wrath by repentance. According to the Seventy, the Lord himself is said to be about to rise like a mountain of the ungodly and to be in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his works, which are all one work of bitterness: and this should by no means seem blasphemous. For it does not say that the Lord will be a mountain of the ungodly, but like a mountain, which seems most heavy to the ungodly and those who bear it. Just as a negligent son and a sick man may think a father and a physician cruel if they restore them to health with blows and with the cautery of discipline. For the Lord will rise up and will be in the valley of Gibeon on account of those who, though for their sins they stand in a low place, are lifted up into pride by the swelling of their mind. For Gibeon means hill: that he may do his works, which are works of bitterness, when he is compelled to change his clemency and, instead of sweet, becomes bitter. Therefore you who are one day to suffer these things, do not now rejoice with that joy with which the rich man too rejoiced, clothed in purple at his banquet and neglecting the poor man Lazarus (Luke 16), lest perhaps your bonds become stronger. For what the Lord is going to do, and to fulfill his sentence in fact, this I have both heard and announced to you in full. And as for what he added: Upon all the earth, according to the history understand the borders of Judea; according to the anagogy, of the whole world.
28:23ff.
Give ear and hear my voice: attend and hear my speech. Will the plowman plow all day that he may sow, will he break up and hoe his ground? When he has leveled its surface, will he not sow gith, and scatter cumin, and put wheat in rows, and barley, and millet, and vetch in their borders? And he will instruct him in judgment; his God will teach him. For gith shall not be threshed with saws, nor shall the wheel of the cart go round over the cumin; but gith shall be beaten out with a rod, and cumin with a staff: but bread shall be crushed. Yet the thresher shall not thresh it forever, nor shall the wheel of the cart vex it, nor shall he crush it with its hoofs. And this has gone forth from the God of hosts, that he might make his counsel wonderful and magnify righteousness. LXX: Give ear and hear my voice: attend and hear my words. Will he who plows plow all day, or will he prepare the seed before he prepares the ground? When he has leveled its surface, will he not then sow gith and cumin, and again sow wheat, and barley, and millet, and spelt in your borders, and you shall be instructed by the judgment of God, and shall rejoice? For gith is not cleaned with harshness, nor does the wheel of the cart go round over the cumin; but gith is beaten out with a rod, and cumin is eaten with bread. For I will not be angry with you forever, nor shall the voice of my bitterness trample you down; and these portents have gone forth from the Lord. Take counsel, exalt a vain consolation. He is now speaking also to the same men to whom he had said above: Hear the word of God, you scornful men, who rule over my people that is in Jerusalem; and he commands them to hear his voice and attend diligently to his speech. Will the farmer, he says, always plow so that he may cast the seed? Will he not first break up the ground and turn over the furrows with the plowshare, and break the lumps lying there with rake and hoe, so that when he has leveled the surface of the earth and first softened the hard fields, he may then scatter gith or cumin, and sow wheat, and barley, and millet, and spelt in their borders, according to the variety of the land and of the seasons: for all things are not sown at once. For spelt, which the Greeks call ζέαν, some understand vetch. And God by his judgment instructs the farmer himself, that is, the sower, by nature, and teaches him to know what cultivation to apply to which seed. Then, when the time of reaping has come, gith and cumin, which are the weaker seeds, are not ground by the wheels of the carts, which, made of iron like saws, are driven round and dragged over the reaped crops; but they are beaten out with a rod and a staff, which are commonly called flails. But bread, that is, the wheat from which bread is made, is ground by iron wheels, and all its stalk is crushed into chaff. Yet it is not always vexed and ground, nor at all times crushed by the hoofs of the wheels; for which in the Hebrew it says by their horses: so that, since he had spoken of the hoofs of the wheels, he might keep the metaphor in the rest. Some would have it that, because he named hoofs and horses, herds of mares are meant, which are usually let into the threshing floors to tread out the grain; but Scripture could not say what the province of Judea did not have. But this, that is, that gith and cumin are beaten out with a rod and a staff, while wheat and barley and spelt, and perhaps millet too, are ground by iron wheels, not forever, is the judgment of God, who in all things shows his wonderful counsel and displays the greatness of his righteousness in all. These things we have said παραφραστικῶς, so that we may more easily understand the sense for which they are said. God dispenses the human race in various ways: now he punishes, now he has mercy; now he rebukes, now he defends; that is, now he plows, now he sows, now he reaps the ripe fruits, and when they are reaped he threshes them on the floors, and governs his world as he will. Gith and cumin, that is, all the nations that did not receive the knowledge of him nor have the precepts of the Law, he corrects with a rod and a staff; but the wheat, that is, the people of the Jews, he will torment with great punishments. For to whom more is entrusted, from him more will be required. And the servant who knows the will of his lord and does not do it shall be beaten with many stripes (Luke 12:47); and in another place it is written: The mighty shall suffer torments mightily (Wis 6:7). Yet he will not torment them forever. For it is one thing to be ungodly, another to be a sinner. What we have interpreted of the nations and the Jews, others expound of the people and the priests: that the unlearned common people in the day of judgment will be chastised like gith and cumin with a rod and a staff, but the priests, who had the key of knowledge, will be tormented with great punishments; and that this happens by the judgment of the Lord, who shows in all things his wonderful counsel and the truth of his righteousness, so that from those who have received more, more is required. Where we have translated: gith shall be beaten out with a rod, and cumin with a staff, the Seventy, meaning I know not what, translated: but cumin is eaten with bread. Indeed the old Greek translators too, in rendering the Hebrew, were silent about this expression, perhaps because they had nothing to say. And that passage in which we, according to the Hebrew, have put: Yet the thresher shall not thresh it forever, nor shall the wheel of the cart vex it, nor shall he crush it with its hoofs, the Seventy translated not word for word but according to the sense: For I will not be angry with you forever, nor shall the voice of my bitterness trample you down: showing that refreshment is to come to sinners after torments, and that these things have gone forth from the Lord as portents and wonders. Hence sinners who are afterward to be punished are commanded to take counsel and exalt their consolation, by no means a vain one, as was added by the Seventy, but consolation absolutely. For God would never command them to exalt their vain consolation, which would be of no profit to them.
29:1ff.
Woe to Ariel, Ariel, the city which David besieged. Year has been added to year, the solemnities have rolled round. I will surround Ariel with a rampart, and it shall be sad and mourning; and it shall be to me like Ariel. And I will set as it were a ring round about you, and I will cast up a mound against you, and set up fortifications for your siege. You shall be brought low, you shall speak from the earth, and your speech shall be heard from the ground, and your voice shall be like that of a python from the earth, and from the ground your speech shall mutter. And the multitude of those who winnow you shall be like fine dust, and the multitude of those who have prevailed against you like passing ash. And it shall be suddenly, at once: it shall be visited by the Lord of hosts with thunder and the shaking of the earth, and with the great noise of whirlwind and tempest, and of the flame of devouring fire. And the multitude of all the nations that have fought against Ariel, and all who have made war and besieged and prevailed against it, shall be like the dream of a night vision. As the hungry man dreams and eats, but when he has awakened his soul is empty; and as the thirsty man dreams and drinks, but after he has awakened he is still faint and thirsty, and his soul is empty: so shall be the multitude of all the nations that have fought against Mount Zion. LXX: Woe to Ariel, Ariel, the city which David besieged. Gather the produce, eat year upon year, for you shall eat with Moab: for I will press Ariel hard, and its strength and its riches shall be mine, and I will encompass you like David: and I will throw up a rampart round about you, and set towers around you, and your words shall be brought low to the earth, and your speeches shall sink into the earth. And your voice shall be like that of those who speak from the earth, and down to the pavement your voice shall grow weak. And the riches of the ungodly shall be like dust from a wheel, and the multitude of those who have oppressed you like ash that is swept away; and it shall be in an instant, suddenly, from the Lord Sabaoth. For there shall be a visitation with thunder, and shaking, and a great noise, a mighty tempest, and a flame of devouring fire. And the riches of all the nations that have made war against Ariel, and all who have fought against Jerusalem, and all who have gathered against it and afflicted it, shall be like one who sees a dream by night. And they shall be like those who hunger in their sleep and eat, and when they rise their dream is vain; and like one who thirsts in a dream and drinks, and when he rises he will still thirst, and his soul has hoped in vain: so shall be the riches of all the nations that have made war against Mount Zion. Where we have translated Woe, in the Hebrew is written OI (הוי), which among them is sometimes used in the vocative case, so that it does not lament Ariel but calls it; although in the present place it is to be taken as a lament. Ariel too means lion of God; and for city, which Aquila translated πολίχνην, that is, little town or little village, they read in the Hebrew CARIATH (קרית), which properly signifies village, and in the Syriac language is called Cartha; whence the village of the woods too is called CARIATH JARIM (קרית יערים). Indeed above too (cf. Isa 1:21), where we read: How has the faithful city Zion become a harlot?, for city Cariath is written, that is, village: which, to express Aquila's translation word for word, we can call citylet. Therefore Ariel, that is, lion of God, is the name given to Jerusalem, once most strong; or, as others think, to the temple and altar of God that was in Jerusalem. And what follows: Which David besieged, for which Symmachus translated camp of David, and Theodotion circumvallation of David, in the Hebrew reads HANA (חנה), which the most learned of the Hebrews held to signify dwelling place. If, then, we read: which David besieged, let us refer it to that time when David took the citadel of Zion, while the blind and the lame resisted, and Joab first climbed the heights of the buildings (1 Chr 11). But if according to Symmachus and Theodotion, it is to be understood that David restored and fortified it; year has been added to year, or taken away, as Aquila translated; and the solemnities have rolled round. For when the temple was overthrown and the Jewish worship taken away, all their festivity perished. And the Lord says that he will surround Ariel with a rampart, with the Babylonian army, and that it will be sad and mourning when it has been destroyed by them. And again, under Jeshua son of Jozadak the high priest, and Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, and Ezra and Nehemiah, when Haggai and Zechariah prophesied, it will be like Ariel, in that it will have the likeness of the ancient temple, but not have its magnificence and adornment. A second time also the Lord threatens that he will surround Ariel with a ring, and cast up a mound against it, and set up fortifications for its siege, and that what he himself says, lamenting Jerusalem in the Gospel, will be fulfilled: If you knew the things that are for your peace, for days shall come upon you, and your enemies shall surround you with a rampart, and besiege you, and you shall be brought low to the ground (Luke 19:42ff.). And Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the nations until the time of the nations is consummated. For in other words the prophet now says the same thing: that, brought low, it speaks from the earth, and its speech is heard from the ground; and its voice is like that of a python from the earth, and from the ground it mutters like sparrows; so that by these words he signifies the νεκυομαντείαν of the magicians, by which they are said to call up souls and to hear the thin voices of shades, or rather of demons. Indeed for python Aquila translated magician, which in Hebrew is called CHEB (כאב), for which the Seventy translated those speaking from the earth. By these words it is indicated that the ruin of the temple will remain until the consummation of the world, so that, having collapsed into ashes, it will never be raised again. And so great an army of Roman power will encompass you, O Ariel, that it will be compared to countless dust, like ash flying through the air. Hence he compares to dust and ash not the weakness of those who made war against them, but their multitude, which is equal to the countless sands. And this will be suddenly, at once, so that in the midst of peace sudden wars arise under Nero, and the Lord of hosts visits Jerusalem with thunder, and with the shaking of the earth, and with the whirlwind of tempest, and with the flame of devouring fire, by which he signifies that the temple was to be burned. And the Romans, who, when the Jews had been overcome and Jerusalem overthrown under Titus and Vespasian, offered to the Capitol spoils from the vessels that once were God's, and thought that what they had done was the work of their own valor and of the power of their gods, not of the wrath of God, will possess all their riches as in a dream and in a vision of the night. And as one who is hungry thinks, while sleeping, that he is eating in his dreams, and one who is thirsty, his throat parched with thirst, drinks rivers, and when he has awakened his thirst becomes fiercer, having been mocked by an empty drink: so the multitude of all the nations which, subject to Roman power, fought against Mount Zion, will have their riches as in a shadow and a cloud and a dream of the night, riches which they will leave behind by an early death. In the place where we have put: all who have made war and besieged and prevailed against it, the Seventy translated: and all who have fought against Jerusalem, which is not in the Hebrew. At the beginning of this chapter too, where we have said: Year has been added to year, or taken away, they translated: gather the fruits, or produce, year upon year: eat, for you shall eat with Moab. And the sense is: before the acceptable year of the Lord, of his preaching, comes, or rather the two years, of which we read in the Canticle of Habakkuk according to the Hebrew: In the midst of two times you shall be known (Hab 3), sow for yourselves in tears, that you may reap in joy (Ps 125 [126]). It is written in the Gospel according to John that the Lord came to Jerusalem at three Passovers, which make two years (John 2:13). And what follows: For you shall eat with Moab, is not in the Hebrew. Of this we can say that, unless they gather for themselves the fruits of repentance, they will begin to eat with those who do not enter the Church of the Lord forever. The other points in which they seem to differ are plain, and from what we have expounded their interpretation is easy. I know that I have read that Ariel means my light of God, which is far otherwise. For here the first syllable is written with ALEPH and RES (אר): but light, which in Hebrew is called OR, has between ALEPH and RES the middle letter VAU, which is not found in the present name. And they refer all that is now said against Ariel to the heretics, who reckon their own doctrine to be the light of God, and who are to be overcome by the true David: and all their solemnities are to be taken away, and their present joy changed into future sorrow; and God commands them to do penance, lest they begin to eat with the Moabites and be like the Gentiles. For he himself will overcome Ariel, and will encompass all their strength and riches with his army. And with towers, that is, with the teachers of the Church, he will bring their words low to the earth, so that they will by no means set their mouth against heaven, but will be written in the earth and speak from the earth, and become like dust shaken off by a wheel; and all the riches of the ungodly will be compared to a point and a moment of time, when he visits them in his majesty, descending in whirlwind and tempest and the fire of punishment; and they will understand that all their riches, and the pomp of their words, and the twists of their arguments, are like the dream of one who eats and drinks in vain: they who have made war against Jerusalem, the vision of peace, or against Ariel, the mightiest lion, and lastly against Mount Zion, upon which the city of the Church is set and cannot be hidden.
29:9ff.
Be stupefied and wonder: waver and stagger, be drunk, and not with wine; reel, and not with drunkenness. For the Lord has mingled for you a spirit of deep sleep: he will close your eyes; your prophets and your princes, who see visions, he will cover. And the vision of all shall be to you like the words of a sealed book, which, when they give it to one who knows letters, they will say: Read this, and he will answer: I cannot, for it is sealed. And the book shall be given to one who does not know letters, and it shall be said to him: Read; and he will answer: I do not know letters. For spirit of deep sleep the Seventy translated compunction; Theodotion ecstasy of mind; Aquila καταφορὰν, that is, heavy sleep; which in Hebrew is called THARDEMA (תרדמה), and which Scripture records was sent by God upon Adam (Gen 2), when the woman was made from the rib of his side. And Jonah snored in this same sleep in the ship (Jonah 1). And the whole prophecy after the overthrow of Jerusalem and the temple, that is, of Ariel, is against the scribes and Pharisees, who, having the key of knowledge, neither enter themselves nor allow others who wish to enter. And they are commanded to be made drunk with stupor and wonder, or rather, according to the Septuagint, with the dissolution of the whole body and ecstasy of mind, and to reel and waver: staggering not with wine nor strong drink, but with the spirit of deep sleep, or of the Lord's compunction, so that, understanding their evil, they may at some time do penance and say with the prophet: I was turned in my weakness, while the thorn is fastened in me (Ps 31 [32]:4). Know, then, O scribes and Pharisees, who are the princes of the Jews, that the Lord is repaying you in kind. For when you heard the Lord the Savior, you would not understand, and you closed your eyes lest you should see him, and made your ears heavy lest you should hear. Therefore he too will close your eyes, which are the prophets, through whom you used to see the knowledge of God. Or he will close your eyes and those of the prophets, who are your princes. For the Law and the prophets were until John the Baptist (Luke 16): so that while you do not see, those may see of whom the later passage (cf. v. 18) testifies: And in that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see and exult. For the Lord came for judgment, that the Jews who see might not see, and that those who were blind, namely the people of the nations, might see and contemplate the Lord (John 9). Hence he significantly did not say that the vision of all the prophets is sealed to all who read; but to you, he says, it shall be sealed, to whom I now speak, to whom I foretell that these things will come; or he will close forever the eyes of your princes, who, according to the Septuagint, boasted that they saw things hidden and secret. And all holy Scripture, he says, shall be to you closed and sealed, so that you, who suppose you know the letters of the Law and the oracles of the prophets, and meditate day and night with unwearied mouth on the volumes of the Scriptures, may not understand what you read; as it is written in the Apocalypse of John: Who is worthy to open the book and to loose its seals (Rev 5:2)? And when no one had been found to open the seals, he says that he wept, and that at last he was granted a word of God to him: Do not weep: behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has prevailed to open the book and to loose its seals. The lion of the tribe of Judah is the Lord Jesus Christ, who loosed the seals of the book, not, properly, of one book, as many think, the psalms of David, but of all the Scriptures, which were written by one Holy Spirit; and therefore they are called one book. Of this Ezekiel testifies in mystical speech (Ezek 2) that it was written within and without: in the sense and in the letter. Of this the Savior too speaks in the psalms: At the head of the book it is written of me (Ps 39 [40]:8); not of Jeremiah, not of Isaiah, but in all holy Scripture, which is called one book. Since, therefore, the teachers of the Jews to this present day cannot read and open the seals and lay open the mysteries of the Scriptures, if you give that book to the unlearned people, who are devoured by their own teachers, they will confess that they do not know letters and therefore cannot read. And of two evils it is much lighter to confess ignorance of the Law than to boast of wisdom and not be able to know what is said.
29:13-14
And the Lord said: Because this people draws near with its mouth, and glorifies me with its lips, but its heart is far from me, and they have feared me by the commandment of men and by doctrines; therefore, behold, I will proceed to cause wonder in this people by a great and astounding marvel: for wisdom shall perish from its wise men, and the understanding of its prudent men shall be hidden. LXX: And the Lord says: This people draws near to me with its mouth, and honors me with its lips, but its heart is far from me: in vain do they worship me, teaching the precepts and doctrines of men. Therefore, behold, I will proceed to remove this people: for I will remove them, and I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and hide the understanding of the prudent. The Lord used this testimony against the Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew, saying: Why do you also transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your traditions (Matt 15:3). And again: Hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying: This people honors me with its lips, but its heart is far from me. And in vain do they worship me, teaching the doctrines and precepts of men (ibid., 6-9). In this we ought to note what we have often pointed out: that the Evangelists and Apostles did not translate word for word, nor follow the authority of the Seventy translators, whose edition was already being read at that time, but, as Hebrews and men instructed in the Law, used their own words without loss to the sense. The people of the Jews draws near to God with its mouth and lips, because it boasts that it holds to the worship of the one God and rejects idols; but its heart is far from him, because it does not receive the Lord Jesus Christ. For he who does not receive the Son does not receive the Father. And at the same time let us learn how a person draws near to God, or becomes far from him. He speaks through Jeremiah too: I am a God who draws near, and not from afar, says the Lord (Jer 23:23 LXX). We draw near to God with the mind, not with the body; as we read of Moses too: Moses alone drew near to God; but the others did not draw near (Exod 24:2). For he prayed to God in spirit and in truth, and approached him with understanding and spirit. But these, of whom it is written that they are taken from the womb and instructed from boyhood to old age, and meditate day and night on the Law of God, do not draw near to God, because they accept the traditions of the Pharisees and scribes, which make them far from God; and they are whitened sepulchres, which outwardly appear beautiful but within are full of dead men's bones: they chose Barabbas and rejected the Lord (Matt 23:27). Therefore he threatens, according to the Seventy, that he will proceed, not to remove them to the Assyrians and Babylonians, but to scatter them through the whole world. According to the Hebrew, he says that he will cause great wonder and an astounding marvel to the people of the Jews, so as to destroy the wisdom of those who did not receive the power of God and the wisdom of God, and to hide and conceal the understanding of the prudent: that is, lest they find him who is contained in the letter. From this place the Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, set down a testimony: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will reject (1 Cor 1:19): setting out the same sense in other words; not that God is an enemy of wisdom, of which he is the father, and through whom all wisdom among men exists; but he set it down with an addition, as it is in the Hebrew: of the wise of the people and of its prudent, that is, of the people of the Jews. And truly God worked a great marvel in the people after the coming of the Lord the Savior, so that at one and the same time Jerusalem burned, and the temple fell, and all the knowledge of the teachers was taken away; fulfilling what was said above (cf. Isa 3:1ff.): Behold, the Ruler, the Lord Sabaoth, shall take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the strong man and the strong woman: all the strength of bread and all the strength of water; the giant and the man of war, and the judge, and the prophet, and the diviner, and the elder, and the captain of fifty, and the wonderful counselor, and the wise architect, and the prudent hearer, and the rest that the prophetic word wove together.
29:15-16
Woe to you who are deep of heart, to hide counsel from the Lord, whose works are in darkness, and they say: Who sees us, and who knows us? This thought of yours is perverse, as if the clay should think against the potter, and the work say to its maker: You did not make me; and the thing formed say to him who formed it: You do not understand. LXX: Woe to those who make deep counsel, and their works shall be in darkness, and they say: Who sees us? who shall know us, and what we are doing? shall you not be reckoned as the potter's clay? Shall the thing made say to its maker: You did not make me wisely; or the thing formed to him who formed it: You did not make me? Against the same men of whom he had said above: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will reject, or, as the prophet writes, hide, the word of God is now also directed: those who are wise in themselves and prudent in their own sight. Of whom that can most rightly be understood: They have failed, searching with searching (Ps 63 [64]); since it is written of the wisdom of God: For if anyone be perfect among the sons of men without your wisdom, he shall be reckoned as nothing (Wis 9). They think God does not know their counsels because their works are in darkness, and they say: Who sees us? and who knows us? And the wise of this world, and the teachers of the heretics, and the Pharisees of the Jews say this: that no one understands them; not remembering what is said to God: Darkness shall not be dark to you: and the night shall be lit up as the day (Ps 138 [139]:12). And: As is his darkness, so also is his light (Gen 3). Deceived by this error, Adam and Eve, hearing the sound of the feet of God walking in paradise, hid themselves under the tree in which was the knowledge of good and evil; and Cain too, saying: If you cast me out today from your face, I shall be hidden (Gen 4:14), with like folly thought that God did not know. And through Amos it is said of the ungodly and sinners: If they hide themselves from my eyes in the depth of the sea, there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them (Amos 9:3). Hence, however wise someone may be and of the most ardent talent, if he does not have the wisdom and teaching of God, let us say of him: Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, he who guards it watches in vain (Ps 126 [127]:1). And let us make a saying like it: Unless the Lord helps knowledge, he labors in vain who thinks himself wise. Unless the Lord keeps our heart with all watchfulness, he watches in vain who thinks it can be kept by his own diligence. This thought of yours, he says, is perverse: that you should think the maker does not know what he has made, and the Creator is ignorant of his creature; as if the clay and the work should say to the potter and its maker: You did not make me, or you did not make me well, nor do you understand your handiwork. The Apostle uses this testimony in other words in writing to the Romans, where he discusses the deep knowledge of God and seeks to refute the false charge of men: O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it: Why have you made me thus? Or has not the potter power over the same clay to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor (Rom 9:20-21). In all these that rule must always be observed: the Evangelists and Apostles translated from the Hebrew into Greek as seemed good to them, without loss to the sense.
29:17ff.
Is it not yet a little while, and a short time, and Lebanon shall be turned into Charmel, and Charmel shall be reckoned as a forest? And in that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and out of darkness and gloom the eyes of the blind shall see. And the meek shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall exult in the Holy One of Israel: for he who prevailed has failed. The scorner is consumed, and all who watched for iniquity have been cut down: who made men sin by a word, and tripped up him who reproved in the gate, and turned aside in vain from the righteous. Let the Jews answer, and the friends of the bare history alone, who seek not fruit on the tree but only the leaves and the shade of words, which quickly withers and perishes: how at the coming of the Lord the Savior (since from the times of Isaiah to the dispensation of the flesh he assumed is, compared with eternity, a short and little space of time) Lebanon, a mountain of Phoenicia, was turned and transferred into Mount Carmel, which in Hebrew is called CHERMEL (כרמל), and lies on the border of Palestine and Phoenicia, overlooking Ptolemais (though another mountain too is called Carmel in the holy Scriptures, where lived Nabal the Carmelite (1 Sam 25), a foolish and wicked man, who had as wife Abigail, who on her husband's death married David; for while he lived she could not take David as husband, lest she be called an adulteress if she were joined to another man); and how Charmel is reckoned as a forest and as unfruitful trees? Since they cannot say this, let them hear that Lebanon, which means whitening, refers to the people of the nations, which, washed in the Lord and its former filth purged away, ascending wholly clean, leans upon the Savior in the person of the Church; and of it it is said in the Song of Songs: Who is this who comes up whitened, leaning upon her kinsman (Song 8:5); and that this people is transferred into Charmel, that is, into the knowledge of circumcision, so as to recognize the mysteries of the spiritual and true circumcision, and to be in the place once held by the people of the Jews; while those who would not receive Christ are reckoned as a forest and as barren trees, which cannot praise the Lord with the fruit-bearing trees. When Lebanon has been changed into Charmel, and Charmel into a forest, then those who before were deaf and could not hear the words of the prophetic book (of which we said above that all holy Scripture is called one book, as the Preacher says (Eccl 12:11): The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fixed deep, which are given from the councils by one shepherd) shall hear, and shall speak, those to whom the Savior will say: Ephphetha, which means be opened (Mark 7). And where we translated: out of darkness and gloom the eyes of the blind shall see, whose interpretation is easy, Aquila and Theodotion and Symmachus translated: The eyes of the blind shall see darkness and gloom: to show that the mysteries of Christ were to be laid open to the people of the nations, which before was blind, according to what is said: Dark water in the clouds of the air (Ps 17 [18]:12). And in the same psalm it is written of God: He made darkness his hiding place (ibid., 12). And in Proverbs we read: A wise man hearing these things will be wiser, and the prudent will possess government; and he will understand a parable and dark speech, the sayings of the wise and riddles (Prov 1:5-6). Indeed Moses too, that he might understand and see God (Exod 20), entered into the cloud and into the thick darkness, of which it is said in the Psalm: Thick darkness under his feet (Ps 17 [18]:10). When those who were before blind have either beheld all the mystical things, or have lifted their eyes from blindness and darkness to see, so that the true light may rise for those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death: then the meek, of whom it is written: Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth (Matt 5:4); or the poor, whose prince says in the psalms: This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him (Ps 33 [34]:7); and: who shall judge the poor of the people, and shall save the sons of the poor (Ps 71 [72]:4), of whom it is said to the Jews: You have despised the counsel of the poor man: these shall increase their joy in the Lord, so that he who glories may glory in the Lord (2 Cor 10); and the poor among men, or those despaired of and despised by men, who before had no knowledge of the Law, shall exult in the Holy One of Israel, who says: Be holy, for I am holy (Lev 11:44). And there is every exultation, because he who prevailed has failed. The scorner is consumed, or the arrogant and proud one, who had said: By strength I will do it, and by wisdom; I will remove the bounds of the nations and lay waste their strength; who mocked all, so much so that the saint too said: My loins are filled with illusions (Ps 37 [38]:8). And all who watched for iniquity have been cut down, or destroyed, whose destruction, because of their evil watchings, does not slumber: who made the whole race of men sin by a word of blasphemy, so that they denied the Word of God and set their mouth against heaven. He means the demons, who, wicked themselves, made all men sin in speech, blaspheming with various dogmas; and as far as in them lay they tripped up him who reproved in the gate and in judgment, and made him turn aside from righteousness, who was in the gates of the daughter of Zion, lifted up from the gates of death; and who rebuked those who hated him who reproved in the gates. What we have understood of the devil and his angels, the Nazarenes think was said against the scribes and Pharisees: that the δευτερωταί have failed, who before mocked the people with most wicked traditions, and watched day and night to deceive the simple, who made men sin against the Word of God, so that they denied Christ the Son of God.
29:22ff.
Therefore thus says the Lord to the house of Jacob, he who redeemed Abraham: Jacob shall not now be confounded, nor shall his face now blush: but when he sees his sons, the works of my hands, in his midst sanctifying my name: and they shall sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and shall proclaim the God of Israel; and those who err in spirit shall know understanding, and the mutterers shall learn the Law. LXX: Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the house of Jacob, which he separated from Abraham: Jacob shall not now be confounded, nor shall he now change his face; but when he sees his sons, my works: for my sake they shall sanctify my name, and they shall sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and shall fear the God of Israel; and those who err in spirit shall know understanding, and the mutterers shall learn obedience; and what follows, ÷ and the stammering tongues shall learn to speak peace ⁚, is to be marked with an obelus. When, he says, the deaf have heard the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind have seen, and Lebanon has been turned into Charmel, and Charmel reckoned as a forest, so that the meek and the poor rejoice in the Lord, and the proud man and the scorner fail: then Jacob shall be confounded, who now, for the time being, is not confounded. He means the times of Isaiah. And his face shall blush, so that blushing and confusion may be an occasion of salvation, especially when he sees his sons, that is, the Apostles and apostolic men, who were of the race of the Jews, performing the mighty works of the Lord in the midst of the nations, and proclaiming the name of Christ to the Gentiles, and saying: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name (Matt 6:9). For they will sanctify the Holy One who sprang from Jacob, and will teach the God of Israel among the nations, so that, having abandoned idols, they say: How false are the idols our fathers possessed, and there is none among them who gives rain; and then those who now err in spirit shall know the understanding of God, and those who once murmured against the Lord in the wilderness shall learn the Law, of which before they had no knowledge. For if they had received Moses, they would have received the Lord Jesus Christ too, since Moses spoke of him. What at the beginning of the chapter we translated according to the Hebrew: Thus says the Lord to the house of Jacob, he who redeemed once Abraham, and brought him out of the Chaldeans, and led him into the land of promise (Gen 11), is perfectly plain. But what the Seventy translated: Thus says the Lord concerning the house of Jacob, which he separated from Abraham, can be understood thus: that he separated the scribes and Pharisees, who blasphemed the Lord, from Abraham, who saw the day of the Lord and rejoiced (John 8). For if they had been sons of Abraham, they would have done the works of Abraham. And the Apostle argues that those are to be called sons of Abraham (Heb 11) who have the likeness of Abraham's faith, that is, the people of the nations, which was called the son of Abraham not from works but from faith.
30:1ff.
Woe, you deserting sons, says the Lord: that you should take counsel, and not from me; and weave a web, and not by my Spirit; that you might add sin upon sin. You who walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked my mouth, hoping for help in the strength of Pharaoh, and having confidence in the shadow of Egypt. And the strength of Pharaoh shall be to you for confusion, and the confidence in the shadow of Egypt for disgrace. For your princes shall be in Tanis, and your messengers have come as far as Hanes. All are confounded over a people that will not be able to profit them: they were not for help nor for any use, but for confusion and for reproach. LXX: Woe, you transgressing sons, says the Lord. You have taken counsel, and not through me; and a pact, not through my spirit, that you might add sins to sins: you who go to go down into Egypt, and have not asked me, that you may receive help from Pharaoh and be protected by the Egyptians. The protection of Pharaoh shall be to you for confusion, and to those who trust in Egypt, a reproach. For there are in Tanis princes, most evil messengers. In vain shall they labor for a people that will not profit them for help, nor for use, but for confusion and reproach. After the prophecy against Ariel, and the other things that the preceding discourse set forth up to this place, there now begins another prophecy, which is shown to have been fulfilled after the hundred and fifty years that lay between Isaiah and Jeremiah. For it foretells that history which we read in the volume of Jeremiah (Jer 41), when, Jerusalem having been overthrown and all its wealth and princes carried off to Babylon, Gedaliah son of Ahikam was set over those of royal stock who had remained in Judea; and when he had been slain by treachery together with his Chaldean companions, all the captains of the warriors, and Johanan son of Kareah, and Jezaniah son of Hoshaiah, and the rest of the common people from the least to the greatest, came to Jeremiah the prophet and said to him: Let our prayer fall before you, and pray for us to the Lord your God for all this remnant. For we are left a few out of many, as your eyes behold us; and let the Lord your God show us the way by which we should go, and the thing that we should do (Jer 42:2-3). And when Jeremiah, after ten days, had answered from the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: If you remain quietly in this land, I will build you up and not pull you down, I will plant you and not pluck you up, for I am appeased concerning the evil that I have done to you. Do not be afraid of the face of the king of Babylon, whom you fearfully dread (ibid., 10-11). And a little after: But if you say: We will not dwell in this land; and set your face to enter Egypt, and go in to dwell there, the sword which you dread shall overtake you there, and the famine about which you are anxious shall cleave to you in Egypt, and there you shall die (ibid., 42:13, 15, 16). The proud men answered, saying to Jeremiah: You are speaking a lie: the Lord our God has not sent you, saying: Do not enter into Egypt to dwell there; but Baruch son of Neriah is inciting you against us, to deliver us into the hands of the Chaldeans, to kill us and to have us carried away to Babylon (Jer 43:2-3). At length all the princes of the people, gathering the remnant with the women and little ones and the king's daughters, not hearing the voice of the Lord, entered Egypt, taking Jeremiah and Baruch with them, and came to Tahpanhes, so that Jeremiah, as a sign of the captivity to come, prophesied against the disobedient people the things contained in his book. What, therefore, was to happen afterward is foretold many years before; and those are called deserting and transgressing sons who, forsaking the counsel of God which they had received through Jeremiah, followed their own will, and wove a web, not by the spirit of God, which sounded to them from the mouth of Jeremiah. He put the weaving of a web μεταφορικῶς, to show an evil counsel; and they did this so as to increase their former sins with the sin of contention and pride. You who go down, he says, into Egypt, and have not asked my mouth. Not that they did not ask, but that they would not hear the counsel of the prophet, hoping for help in the strength of Pharaoh, and having confidence in the protection, or shadow, of Egypt. For the strength of Pharaoh, which is put twice in this place, the Hebrew has written MAOZ (מעוז). We have noted this so that, where we read in the last vision of Daniel (Dan 11) the God MAOZIM (מעוזים), we may understand not, as Porphyry dreams, the God of the village of Modim, but the mighty and strong God. Pharaoh among the Egyptians is the name of the royal power; and each is called by a particular name as well, as Pharaoh Neco and Pharaoh Hophra: as if we were to set Caesars and Augusti before the proper names of kings. And the strength of Pharaoh, he says, shall be to you for confusion, and the confidence in the shadow of Egypt for disgrace. The same Jeremiah writes that in Tahpanhes, a city of Egypt, he buried stones in the gate of Pharaoh's house, and said to the men of Judah: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, my servant, and I will set his throne upon these stones which I have hidden, and he shall set his throne upon them. And he shall come and strike the land of Egypt: such as are for death, to death; and such as are for captivity, to captivity; and such as are for the sword, to the sword: and he shall kindle a fire in the shrines of the gods of Egypt, and burn them, and carry them away captive. And he shall wrap himself in the land of Egypt as a shepherd wraps himself in his cloak, and he shall go forth from there in peace (Jer 43:10-12). For when the Egyptians had been overcome, the Jews too who had fled to the Egyptians were taken captive. And what follows: For your princes shall be in Tanis, and your messengers have come as far as Hanes, is to be read with mockery and ἐμφατικῶς: that, despising the counsel of God, they sent their princes to Tanis, a city of Egypt, in which was the royal house of Pharaoh, and where under Moses very many signs and portents were performed, as the Psalmist says: Who did wonders in the land of Egypt, in the plain of Tanis (Ps 77 [78]:43). And the same Isaiah says against Egypt: Where now are your wise men? Let them tell you and say what the Lord Sabaoth has purposed against Egypt. The princes of Tanis have failed (Isa 19:12-13); and he records that they failed at that time when the Lord entered Egypt upon a light cloud. We do not read of Hanes, a city of Egypt, anywhere else; but from his saying: Your messengers have come as far as Hanes, we understand that it is the farthest city of Egypt, toward the Ethiopians and the Blemmyes; for which the Seventy translated: Most evil messengers shall labor in vain, who trusted in the people of Egypt, which could not profit them, and they became an everlasting reproach. Some think this place was written against the ten tribes in Samaria, because, seeking help from the Egyptians, they were taken captive by the Assyrians. According to tropology: all who, despising the religion of God, return to their vomit, and, having lost the name of sons, are called most shameless dogs, take counsel not through the Lord, and strike a covenant not through the spirit of the Lord, and add sins to sins: so that, overcome by flattering vices, they also accept the perversity of false doctrines, and go down into the darkness of Egypt, seeking the help of Pharaoh, who reigns in Egypt, whose protection leads to disgrace and to everlasting reproach. For his princes are in Tanis, that is, in a humble and lowly command, most evil messengers, who labor in vain over a people that will not be able to profit them. For as the salvation of their disciples helps holy teachers, so the perdition of those seduced destroys the patriarchs of those who have fled to the help of Egypt.
The burden of the beasts of the South. For this the Hebrew says MASSA BEEMOTH NEGEB (משא בהמות נגב), which the Seventy translated: The vision of the four-footed beasts in the desert. The foregoing exposition, which we have woven with a very full unfolding of the history, is the interpretation of this place: that, according to prophetic custom, the burden, that is, the weight and load of torments and punishments, came not only upon Babylon and Philistia, and Moab, and Damascus, and Egypt, and the desert of the sea, and also Edom and Arabia, and the valley of Zion, and lastly Tyre, but also upon the beasts of the South, which the Seventy translated four-footed beasts in the desert. He means the tribe of Judah, which, situated in the southern part, borders on the wilderness; and those who, rejecting the prophecy of Jeremiah, when Jerusalem had been taken, would not dwell in Judea, but fled through the desert to the Egyptians. And rightly are they called beasts of the South, or four-footed beasts in the desert, because they rejected the knowledge of God, and, despising his command, fled to the images of Egypt, having hope in Pharaoh; and whoever leans on him is like one who rests upon a reed, which, when broken, wounds the hand of him who leans on it. Of such beasts the sons of Korah too spoke in the psalm: Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he has been compared to the senseless beasts, and has become like them (Ps 48 [49]:13). And what follows: This way of theirs is a stumbling block to them, can rightly be understood of the present chapter: that the way of the desert was their ruin. I know that I have read that the beasts of the South and the four-footed beasts in the desert, who, leaving the borders of Judea, fled to the darkness of Egypt, refer to the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, and the rulers of this darkness, who through their longing for Egypt lost all their riches and former wealth. So he may have said. We, according to tropology, so as to discuss what we have not yet set out, say that all who, having deserted the Creator, have given themselves to the errors of the world are four-footed beasts in the desert of this world, from which they hope for help in vain, since they have abandoned the true help of God.
30:6-7
In a land of tribulation and anguish, the lioness and the lion: from them the viper and the flying basilisk: carrying their riches on the shoulders of beasts of burden, and their treasures on the hump of camels, to a people that will not be able to profit them: Egypt shall help in vain and to no purpose. LXX: In tribulation and anguish, the lion and the lion's whelp: thence asps and the offspring of flying asps: who carried their riches on asses and camels to a nation that will not profit them: the Egyptians will profit you emptily and vainly. For lion the Hebrew has written LEIS (ליש); and for flying basilisk, which the Seventy translated offspring of flying asps, in the Hebrew it is called ἐμπρηστὴς and flying, which we can call the burner, and in Hebrew it is named SARAPH (שרף). Again, in the place where we translated carrying on the shoulders of beasts of burden, for beasts of burden all alike translated πώλους, that is, the foals of asses. The land of tribulation and anguish signifies the vast waste of the wilderness, through which the remnant of Jerusalem, with Johanan son of Kareah and the daughters of King Zedekiah, taking with them all they could have, fled over to Egypt. Understand the lioness and the lion's whelp μεταφορικῶς as Jerusalem and its people, as Balaam says in Numbers: Behold, the people shall rise up as a lioness, and shall be lifted up as a lion: it shall not lie down until it devours the prey and drinks the blood of the slain (Num 23:24). In Ezekiel too it is written: Take up a lamentation for the prince of Israel, and say: Why did your mother, a lioness, lie down among lions, and rear her whelps in the midst of young lions (Ezek 19:1-2)? And lest we should think that holy Scripture speaks truly of a lioness and a lion, it speaks against the nature of things, saying that from a lioness and a lion was born a viper and a flying basilisk, or the flying offspring of asps: namely, that from evil parents worse children were begotten, of whom the Gospel too spoke: Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the wrath to come (Matt 3:7)? And to the land of Israel it is said: You are a land on which it has not rained, nor has a shower come upon you in the day of wrath; whose princes in the midst of it are like roaring lions, seizing the prey, devouring souls by their might (Ezek 22:24-25). These offspring of vipers, or of flying asps, that is, the princes of the people and the whole crowd of the ungodly, went to a people that could not profit them, as Jeremiah says (Jer 44), that the Lord would deliver Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies and into the hands of those who sought his life, and that all the men of Judah who were in the land of Egypt would be consumed by sword and famine to utter destruction; so much so that the Hebrews hand down that, before Nebuchadnezzar took Egypt, Jeremiah and Baruch escaped the impending captivity by death. A certain writer expounded the lioness and the lion's whelp as the heavenly Jerusalem and the people deceived from it; and the flying basilisk, and the vipers, and the offspring of asps, as that crooked serpent of which we read above (above, Isa 14 and 27), and of which the Savior spoke in the Gospel: I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:18): who, called a dragon in the Apocalypse (Rev 12), drew down with him to the earth a third part of the stars, which by the perversity of their judgment lost their former riches, abandoning them in the Egypt of this world.
Therefore I have cried out concerning this: it is only pride: be still. For which the Seventy translators, meaning I know not what, translated: Announce these things, since this consolation of yours is vain. Further, Symmachus translated ταραχαί εἰσιν κατοικεῖν, that is, there are tumults, that they may dwell. The Hebrew word REEB (רהב) Aquila translated ὅρμημα, that is, onset and pride; Symmachus disturbance; the Seventy vanity; Theodotion breadth; it is written with three letters, RES and HE and BETH, and it is the very word read in the Psalms: I will be mindful of Rahab and of Babylon, who know me (Ps 86 [87]:4). And the sense is: Since in the Egyptians there is vain help, I have commanded her, that is, Jerusalem, or I have cried out, that the Egyptians had only the name of a kingdom, and pride without strength; and that Israel ought to sit or dwell in its own land, and not seek help in vain from the weak.
30:8
Now go in and write for them on boxwood, and inscribe it carefully in a book: and it shall be in the last day for a testimony forever. The Hebrews say that, since in the prophets there is one spirit, and all times are joined together with the Lord, Jeremiah is commanded, and it is God's charge, that, having entered Egypt, he should write for them on boxwood, which is a wood that does not rot; or, as Symmachus translated, ἐπὶ πτυχὶ, that is, on a very broad tablet. For them, doubtless for the Jews: and that he should set it out carefully in a book, so that there may be no difficulty in reading it, so that when the prophecy has been fulfilled in fact, they may then understand that the word of the prophets is true. We run over the plain things so that we may linger on the more obscure.
30:9ff.
For it is a people provoking to anger, and lying sons, sons unwilling to hear the law of God. Who say to the seers: Do not see; and to those who look: Do not look out for us the things that are right: speak to us pleasing things; see errors for us. Take the way away from me: turn the path aside from me: let the Holy One of Israel cease from before our face. It is plain that they provoked the Lord to anger, unwilling to hear the words of Jeremiah (Jer 43). They said to him: Do not see for us what we do not want: do not forbid us the way of Egypt, nor preach the things that are right; but say what pleases us, that we may go on into Egypt, which heaps sins upon sins. Why do you press upon us what we do not willingly hear? why do you show the way by which we do not wish to go? Why do you so often repeat in our ears: Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel? Let this preaching cease from us. According to tropology, all heretics are called lying sons. For they went out from us, but they were not of us (1 John 2); they do not hear the Law of God with the ears of the inner man, and they say to the teachers of the Churches: Do not see for us the things that are right, nor threaten the flames of Gehenna; but promise us the kingdom of heaven, so that after luxury and delights paradise may be opened to us. Why do you show me the way of the Lord, by which I do not willingly go? Why do you repeat the name of the Holy One of Israel, or the word of Israel, which does not penetrate the secret places of my breast? This indeed is said also to the people of the Church when it is negligent, if it turns away from the severity of its teachers and favors flatterers.
30:12, 14
Therefore thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel: Because you have rejected this word, and have hoped in false accusation and tumult, and have leaned upon it: therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach that falls, and is sought for in a high wall: since suddenly, when it is not hoped for, its crushing shall come. And it shall be broken in pieces as a potter's jar is shattered with a very mighty crushing: and there shall not be found among its fragments a sherd in which a little fire may be carried from the burning, or a little water drawn from the pit. Because, he says, you said above: Let the Holy One of Israel cease from before our face, or, as the Seventy translated, take away from us the word of Israel, therefore thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and he thrusts himself upon you against your will, so that him whom you neglected when he warned you, you may feel when he punishes. You had confidence in the false accusation and lying of the Egyptians, and leaned upon their tumult, or contradiction and pride, as Symmachus and Theodotion translated; therefore this iniquity, or sin, will turn against you, so that you will be like the suddenly falling wall of a most strongly fortified city that has been taken, whose ruin has come all at once: for so the Seventy translated. And the sense according to the Hebrew is: As the breach of a very high wall that has drawn after it a long ruin can hardly be repaired and recover its former beauty, so sudden crushing will come upon you. And to use another comparison: As a potter's vessel, if it is shattered with a very mighty crushing, is broken into pieces so that scarcely a tiny sherd remains among the fragments in which a little fire may be carried, or a little water drawn from a puddle and a pit, so you, when you have gone into Egypt, with Nebuchadnezzar pursuing you there, will perish to utter destruction. The heretics too, and every doctrine contrary to the truth, trust in false accusation and lying, and, according to the Seventy, mutter against their Creator. Therefore the city of their ungodliness, which Cain built, will be destroyed; sudden perdition will come upon it, when it has been taken by churchmen, and so destroyed and broken in pieces that nothing remains in it that could rekindle a dead fire, or offer even a little muddy water to thirsting peoples.
30:15ff.
For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: If you return and are quiet, you shall be saved: in silence and in hope shall be your strength; and you would not, and you said: By no means; but we will flee to horses: therefore you shall flee; and we will mount upon swift ones: therefore swift shall they be who pursue you. A thousand men from before the terror of one: and from before the terror of five you shall flee. LXX: Thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: When you have returned and groaned, then you shall be saved, and you shall know where you were: because you trusted in vain things, your strength has become vain; and you would not hear, but you said: We will flee upon horses: therefore you shall flee; and we will be upon light riders: therefore light shall they be who pursue you. A thousand shall flee at the voice of one, and at the voice of five many shall flee. The Holy One, he says, whose name I had kept silent above, is himself the Lord God, who speaks to you both through me and through Jeremiah (Jer 12): If you do penance, and abandon either your vices or the error of your evil counsel, and remain in Judea, fearing not the onset of the Babylonians but my precepts, you shall be saved. Be quiet and hope in the Lord, and take hold of the strength of faith in my promises, you who, despising the precepts of life, said in despair: It shall by no means be as you say; but we will flee to the horses of the Egyptians, and go to them with quick and swift step. Since, then, you have said this, you shall indeed flee and enter Egypt at a rapid pace; but swifter will be the Babylonians, who will pursue you even to Egypt, and such terror and dread will seize Egypt that a thousand Egyptians will not be able to withstand one Chaldean, and a very great multitude of fugitives will not withstand five enemies; according to what we read in Deuteronomy: The Lord will cause you to fall before your enemies. You shall go out against them by one way, and flee before them by seven ways, and you shall be scattered through all the kingdoms of the earth (Deut 28:25, 32). According to the anagogy and the edition of the Seventy, the divine word exhorts all sinners to repentance, and especially the heretics: that when they have returned from their vices and groaned, and done penance, they may be saved; and then they will understand where they were before, and that they hoped in vain things to no purpose. And while he exhorts them to repentance, they on the contrary trust in false teachers and in the uncertainty of the world; and, unwilling to hear the words of God, they long for the horses of Egypt and delight in their swiftness, horses which the Lord forbade to be multiplied (Deut 17). Therefore churchmen will swiftly pursue them, and a thousand men, a disorderly crowd of fugitives, will not be able to withstand the voice of one warrior, or of five fighters (which we should refer to the mind and to the five senses).
30:17
Until you are left like the mast of a ship on the top of a mountain, and like a signal upon a hill. Jeremiah too writes that, when those who had fled into Egypt had been slain by sword and famine, a few remained who returned to Judea (Jer 44). And as, when a ship has been broken and its framework dissolved, only the tree that is called the mast remains, and is set up as a signal on the summit of a mountain or on a lofty hill, so, as a signal and a trace, scarcely one or two would remain, to show the power of God. And then, he says, all the remnant of Judah, who now are entering the land of Egypt to dwell there, will know, when they have returned to the land of Judea, whose word is fulfilled, mine or theirs.
30:18
Therefore the Lord waits, that he may have mercy on you, and therefore he shall be exalted in sparing you, because the Lord is a God of judgment: blessed are all who wait for him. Great is the clemency of God, that he waits for our repentance, and, until we are converted from our vices, holds back his mighty hand, so as not to be compelled to strike. And he has mercy and spares for this reason, that his mercy may be exalted, and the goodness of the Creator made known to all. Or certainly, according to what he says in the Gospel (John 12:32): When I am lifted up, I will draw all things to myself, he is exalted on the cross for this reason, that he may spare all. For he is the God of judgment; and blessed are all who wait for the Lord, who waits for their conversion. But whose this conversion is, and what it is, the following words will show.
30:19
For the people of Zion shall dwell in Jerusalem. The Jews refer this to the times of Cyrus, when the people returned from Babylon to Judea under Zerubbabel and Jeshua the high priest. But we, as we have often said already, refer all the promises that exceed the modest measure of that time to the coming of Christ, at which the people once captive, set free by the passion of the Lord, dwelt in Zion and Jerusalem, that is, in the watchtower and the vision of peace, that is, in the Church. Further, as to the word of holiness added in the Seventy, who said: for a holy people dwells in Zion, we can interpret it thus: we say that no one dwells in Zion except one who is holy, and who hears the Lord saying: Be holy, for I too am holy (Lev 11:44).
30:20
Weeping, you shall by no means weep; showing mercy, he will have mercy on you: at the voice of your cry, as soon as he hears, he will answer you. When you have returned to Zion and dwelt in Jerusalem, you shall by no means weep as you had wept before, but your weeping shall be turned into joy: For blessed are those who weep, for they shall laugh (Luke 6:21). And after you have cried out and said to the Lord: I cried with my whole heart, hear me, O Lord (Ps 118 [119]:145); and again: I cried, have mercy on me, and I will keep your commandments (Ps 85 [86]); and elsewhere: I waited in the morning and cried out (Ps 118 [119]:147); and your voice has been so clear that it pierces the heavens: at once the Lord will answer you, and you will be like Moses, of whom it is written: Moses spoke, and the Lord answered him (Exod 19:19).
30:21
And the Lord will give you scant bread and short water. If we refer these things to the times of Zerubbabel, the interpretation is easy: that under him there was no perfect joy, as David says: When the Lord turned back the captivity of Zion, we became like those comforted: so that they received not full and perfect comfort, but a likeness of comfort. But if to the coming of the Savior, then by the scant bread and short water, according to the Apostle Paul and this same prophet Isaiah, the word of the Gospel is foretold, which, in place of the long-drawn observances and commandments of the Law, summed up all things in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. For the Lord has made a word completed and cut short upon the earth (Gal 5).
30:22
And he will no longer make your teacher fly away from you, and your eyes shall see your instructor, and your ears shall hear the word of one admonishing behind your back: This is the way, walk in it, neither to the right nor to the left. LXX: And those who deceive you shall no longer come near you, because your eyes shall see those who led you astray, and your ears shall hear behind you the words of those who deceive, who said: This is the way, let us walk in it, whether to the right or to the left. In this place the Seventy's edition and the Hebrew disagree greatly. First, then, we shall treat of the common edition, and afterward follow the order of the truth. When the eyes of the heart have understood and discerned the truth, and have recognized with the whole reason of the mind those who had deceived them before, and with trained ears have perceived the words of the deceivers behind their back (for they always hasten to deceive the blind part of the body, according to what we read in the psalm: That they may shoot in the dark at the upright of heart (Ps 10 [11]:2)), who assume to themselves such authority that, whether they teach things on the right or on the left, that is, whether good or evil, they do not wish their disciples to examine them by reason, but to follow them as their forerunners: then those who before deceived will no longer be able to approach them, once they perceive that they have been seen through. Further, according to the Hebrew, the explanation is both easy and true. For when the Lord has given believers scant bread and short water, he will no longer make him who teaches man knowledge fly away from them; but their eyes will always see their instructor, and their ears will hear the word of one admonishing behind their back and saying: This is the right way, walk in it, neither to the right nor to the left; according to what is read elsewhere: We will turn aside neither to the right nor to the left; we will go by the king's highway (Num 20:17). For on either side whatever is beyond measure is in vice. And of the right side it is said: Do not be overly righteous (Eccl 7:17). And of the left, there is no doubt that it is placed on the side of the goats and of those who perish.
30:23
And you shall defile the plates of your graven images of silver, and the garment of your molten image of gold, and you shall scatter them like the uncleanness of a menstruous woman: Go out, you shall say to it. LXX: And you shall defile the silvered and gilded idols: you shall break them in pieces and scatter them like the water of a menstruous woman, and you shall cast them away like dung. When you have understood the truth, and the deceivers have not come near you, but your eyes have seen your instructor and your ears have always heard: This is the way, walk in it, neither to the right nor to the left: then you will break in pieces and scatter all the errors and idols and likenesses of the truth which an artful tongue had composed in the splendor of eloquence, which is what silver means, and in the reasoning of wisdom, which is what gold signifies; and you will judge them so unclean that you will compare them to the most filthy blood of a menstruous woman, which the Seventy, in other words, translated as the water of a menstruous woman.
30:24
And rain shall be given to your seed wherever you sow in the land, and the bread of the fruits of the land shall be most abundant and rich. LXX: Then there shall be rain for the seed of your land, and the bread of the fruits of your land shall be plentiful and rich. It is written in the volume of Kings (1 Kgs 18) that after the false prophets had been slain by Elijah, rain was given to the land of Israel; and that the bread of Elisha, and afterward of the Savior, was most abundant and most rich, and had such fullness that many thousands of men were filled from it (2 Kgs 4; John 6). So also in the present place, rain will not be given to the spiritual seed, nor the most abundant and richest bread of the land, until the silvered and gilded idols have been broken in pieces and reckoned as a dunghill. For unless vices depart, virtues do not enter.
30:25
In that day the lamb shall feed in your possession at large. And your bulls and the foals of asses that work the ground shall eat mingled mash, as on the threshing floor it has been winnowed. LXX: And in that day your cattle shall feed in a rich and spacious place. Your bulls and your oxen that work the ground shall eat chaff mixed with winnowed barley. In the abundance of all things, when the heavenly rain comes down, and that bread which came down from heaven, which whoever eats will never hunger, the lambs shall feed in a most spacious place, those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes and who are always on the right hand. The bulls are the leaders of the flock, of whom we read: The assembly of bulls among the cows of the peoples (Ps 67 [68]:31); and the foals of asses, sitting on which the Lord entered Jerusalem (Matt 21), who work the ground, shall eat from the threshing floor in such a way that it has been winnowed, namely, so that no chaff be mixed in their food; of which chaff it is written in Jeremiah: What has the chaff to do with the wheat, says the Lord (Jer 23)? and which in the Gospel is burned with unquenchable fire (Luke 3). Further, according to the Seventy, the cattle, which are not yet full of reason and wisdom, and one of whom says to God: I have become like a beast before you (Ps 72 [73]:23), shall feed in a most rich and spacious place, which does not bring forth thorns and thistles, but, like the land of Israel, flows with milk and honey and gives full freedom to those who feed there. And the bulls and oxen that work the ground, that is, the Apostles and apostolic men, of whom the apostle Paul too interprets what is written: You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain; and: Is it for oxen that God cares (1 Cor 9:9)? but surely he speaks of those who work their own ground, and of whom he likewise says: We are God's husbandry, God's building (1 Cor 3:9); for the Father is the husbandman, and Christ the vine (John 15): these shall eat chaff mixed with winnowed barley. We read that Isaac sowed barley and, because he was among the foreigners, received a hundredfold harvest of barley (Gen 26). And Hosea hired an adulterous woman for a cor and a half cor of barley (Hos 3). The Savior too had filled with barley loaves five thousand men who still served the senses of the body and followed the Law of Moses (John 6). In another place, breaking the seven loaves of the Law and crushing them into pieces, he filled with wheaten loaves four thousand men who followed the number of the Gospel (Matt 15). Peoples of this kind eat a part of the chaff too, since in certain things they follow the letter; and yet through the chaff and the barley they gradually advance, so as to pass on to the wheat.
30:25
And there shall be upon every high mountain and upon every lifted-up hill streams of running waters in the day of the slaughter of many, when the towers have fallen. In this place the Jews refer the many slain and the falling towers to the power of the Roman empire, of which the Apostle too speaks (2 Thess 2:7): Only let him who holds now hold, until he be taken out of the way: namely, that at that time the blessedness of the people of Israel will be so great that not only the valleys and plains but all the mountains and hills will be watered with flowing waters. But let us understand by the mountains and hills those who are lifted on high by virtues, who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt 5), whom the Lord invites to drink. For whoever drinks of his waters will never thirst (John 4). Hence in the psalm too we read: Bless the Lord from the fountains of Israel (Ps 67 [68]:27). And in the Gospel it is said that whoever drinks of the waters of Jesus, rivers of living water shall flow from his belly (John 7). And the holy man says to God: For with you is the fountain of life (Ps 35 [36]:10), from which goes forth a most pure river, of which Scripture again makes mention: The stream of the river gladdens the city of God (Ps 45 [46]:5). And in another place: The river of God is filled with waters (Ps 64 [65]:10): that is, he who speaks through Jeremiah: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water (Jer 2:13). This will happen when very many have been slain, or have perished: for many are called, but few chosen (Matt 20). And when the towers have fallen, whether the powers of the demons, or all the proud and arrogant and great in this world; of whom it is said in the psalms too: I saw the ungodly man lifted up and exalted like the cedars of Lebanon, and I passed by, and behold, he was not; I sought him, and his place was not found (Ps 36 [37]:35-36). Such towers those desired to build (Gen 11) who moved their feet from the East, whose tongues were confounded in Babylon; and those too on whom the tower of Siloam fell (Luke 13).
30:26
And the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the Lord binds up the wound of his people and heals the stroke of its blow. LXX: And the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun sevenfold, in the day when the Lord heals the crushing of his people and cures the pain of your blow. I wonder how in the present place the same Seventy translated moon and sun, following the Hebrew, when above they translated the Hebrew words LABANA (לבנה) and HAMMA (חמה), which Aquila renders white and heat, and by which he signifies the moon and the sun, as brick and wall, in the place where it is written: And the moon shall blush, and the sun shall be confounded; for which they translated: the bricks shall melt, and the wall shall fall. Hence the suspicion comes to me that they did not err from the beginning, but were gradually corrupted by the fault of copyists. For it cannot be that those who in this place translated the same words well should have erred in the earlier passage. In the day, then, of the slaughter of many, when the arrogant and proud have fallen, and those who set their mouth against heaven have learned that they are earth, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun: when the Lord gives a new heaven and a new earth, and the fashion of this world passes away, so that the moon and the sun may obtain the rewards of their labor and their course. For the expectation of the creature waits for the revelation of the sons of God, because the creature itself also will be set free from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God (Rom 8:19); although some, understanding them as instruments of light, contend that they are without sense. The moon, then, will receive the brightness of the sun. Nor is it a wonder to think this of a most bright element, to which the rule of the night has been given, since it is written of the saints too: The righteous shall shine like the sun (Matt 13:43). And the sun will receive a sevenfold light, as was the light of seven days when the world was created in the beginning (although the Seventy did not translate seven days), when the Lord binds up the wound of his people, or heals the crushing of his people: when what is written will be fulfilled: Sorrow and mourning and sighing shall flee away (Isa 35:10): when, the fullness of the nations coming in, all Israel shall be saved; or certainly when the vengeance comes of those whose souls cry out beneath the altar: How long will you not avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth (Rev 6:10)? And consider this too: that he did not say, when he heals the crushing of his people Israel, or Jacob, but absolutely, of his people, so as to signify all who serve God. Some refer this place, and all that is contained in this chapter of promises, to the heavenly Jerusalem and to the return of its people, when what is written will be fulfilled: Heaven and earth shall pass away (Matt 24:35). Others refer it to the times of Elijah, and say that he is the one of whom it is written above: Your eyes shall see your instructor, and your ears shall hear the word of one admonishing behind your back: that then, according to the fables of the poets and the golden age of Saturn, streams of milk will flow from the mountains and hills, and the purest honey will drip from the leaves of the trees. Those who accept these things will also, by a Jewish error, take up the fable of the thousand years and the earthly kingdom of the Savior, not understanding that the Apocalypse of John, under the surface of the letter, weaves together the inmost mysteries of the Church.
Book Ten
The tenth book, which we now have in hand, will be smaller than the ninth and the eleventh in the number of its verses, not in the greatness of its meanings. For it is followed by the history of Sennacherib and Rabshakeh and of King Hezekiah, which could neither be joined to what precedes, because of the enormous size the volume would then reach, nor be divided, because of the continuity of the events. And so, as you wished, Eustochium, virgin of Christ, and as it pleased us in common, just as I dictated the earlier books, so I shall dictate both this one and the rest, if Christ grants it: so as to keep the prophecies joined together, and not to tear them apart from one another and scatter them, at the end of one book and the beginning of another. I hear, moreover, that a scorpion, a mute and venomous animal, is muttering something about the answer I once gave in my little Commentary on the prophet Daniel; nay, that he is trying to strike, though he is destined to die in his own pus. His dirges and mournful chants have not yet been published to me, and therefore my reply is put off: and I must rather obey you, and your brother Pammachius, a holy and most learned man, who with insatiable zeal presses me by letters to pass on to Ezekiel once Isaiah is finished, while I, worn out by the weakness both of age and of body, and by the lack of secretaries who could help me with their services, still stick fast in the same mud, and can scarcely believe that I shall finish the middle part of Isaiah in this volume. But if, through your prayers, I complete it, the rest too must be taken up, which will have their beginning from the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah.
30:27ff.
Behold, the name of the Lord comes from afar: his fury is burning and heavy to bear. His lips are filled with indignation, and his tongue is like a devouring fire. His spirit is like an overflowing torrent reaching to the middle of the neck, to destroy the nations unto nothing, and the bridle of error that was in the jaws of the peoples. You shall have a song, like the night of a hallowed solemnity, and gladness of heart, like one who goes with the pipe to enter into the mountain of the Lord, to the Mighty One of Israel. LXX: Behold, the name of the Lord comes after a long time: his fury burning with glory, the utterance of his lips, an utterance full of wrath, and the wrath of his fury shall devour like fire; and his spirit, like water in a valley, dragging, shall come up to the neck, and shall be divided to confound the nations for their vain error, and error shall be cast away, and it shall take them in their sight. Must you always rejoice and enter continually into my holy places, as though celebrating feasts and rejoicing, that you may enter with the pipe to the mountain of the Lord, to the God of Israel? Let us speak first according to the Hebrew. What is said here hangs on what precedes. The prophetic word had rebuked those who, scorning the help of God, were fleeing to the Egyptians for fear of the Babylonians, and it threatened those who went down that they would die there. And again, after the punishments, it promises that those who were willing to listen to him would not only dwell in Jerusalem under Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah, but it pledges a greater blessedness to all who believe the word of God at the consummation of the world, when rivers of waters will run over all the mountains and hills, and, when many have been slain, the towers will fall. The moon too and the sun will receive a brighter light, when the Lord binds up and heals the wound of his people; although some contend, ὑπερβολικῶς, that these things were fulfilled in the land of Judea in the times of Cyrus, who released the people from captivity. Since, then, rewards were promised to the good and obedient, now, on the contrary, punishments are announced to the wicked and the scorners: that the Lord will fulfill his purpose, and will come after a long time to punish sinners, and will pronounce sentence upon all, and with the breath of his mouth will slay the impious one, whom he calls the bridle of the peoples: not one by which he might govern those subject to him, but one by which he might drag those subjected to him to ruin. He also sets down the likeness of a torrent flooding up to the neck, to testify that the end of all things has come. For as a torrent chokes the one up to whose neck it has reached, so the judgment of God will let no one go away unpunished. And when he has destroyed the bridle that was in the jaws of all the nations, together with the nations subject to it, and has brought it to nothing, then, he says, you, the saints, who obey my commands, shall have a song, like the night of the hallowed solemnity when you went out of Egypt, and in the solemnity of the Passover threw off the yoke of Egyptian slavery, saying at the Red Sea, when Pharaoh had been drowned: Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified (Exod 15:1); and such gladness of heart that you will imitate those who, bringing first fruits to the temple and carrying gifts into the winepresses of God, go with pipes, showing the joys of their heart in song. These things according to the Hebrew I have touched on briefly. But in both editions it must be noted that it is not the Lord, but the name of the Lord, that comes after a long time, of which it is said in the Psalms: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; the Lord is God, and he has shone upon us (Ps 117 [118]:26). And he himself says in the Gospel: I have come in the name of my Father, and you have not received me (John 5:43). And it is well said that he comes after a long time, since human impatience says: How long, O Lord, will you forget me unto the end? How long do you turn your face away from me? (Ps 12 [13]:1). His burning fury also comes with glory, so that him whom we despised in humility we may fear in majesty. This very thing is written in the psalms too: God manifestly will come, our God, and will not keep silence. Fire will burn in his sight, and round about him a mighty tempest (Ps 49 [50]:3, 4). For he himself says in the Gospel (Luke 12:49): I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish that it may burn! Again, in another psalm we read: The voice of the Lord cutting off the flame of fire (Ps 28 [29]:7), so that the seizing flame may consume whatever there is in the world of hay, wood and stubble. Hence God is also said to be a consuming fire (Deut 4). And as for what follows: The wrath of his fury shall devour like fire, most of our writers interpret the wrath of the Lord's fury as the devil, to whom we are handed over for punishment, who, according to the book of Samuel, moved David to number the people of God (2 Sam 24). And the Apostle says: to hand such a one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved (1 Cor 5:5). But this fury itself, and the wrath of the Lord's fury, will do nothing by its own will, but only what it has been commanded. Hence there follows: The utterance of his lips, an utterance full of wrath. His spirit too, like water in a valley, dragging, will come up to the neck, to make punishments overflow upon sinners. It will be divided according to the quality of their deserts, to destroy and confound the nations which vain error had led astray, so that they may understand that they have been overthrown. Hence it is said to men of this kind, who prevailed in the power of this world and took delight in their own error, that they will not always be doing this. And some of our writers think that this passage especially, and the whole tenor of the chapter, is spoken against the heretics and all the doctrines that are contrary to the truth: that when the time of judgment has come, they shall by no means enter his holy places and his mountain, that is, the Church of the Lord, lest under the name of religion they gather riches and abandon themselves to luxury, as though celebrating the feasts of the Lord. The Jews understand these things of the nations Gog and Magog, which they think will come from the North, that is, from the regions of Scythia, of whom Ezekiel speaks more fully (Ezek 38-39).
30:30ff.
And the Lord will make the glory of his voice heard, and will show the terror of his arm in the threatening of his fury and in the flame of devouring fire: he will dash them down with whirlwind and with hailstone. For at the voice of the Lord Assyria, struck with the rod, will tremble, and the passing of the rod will be founded, which the Lord will make to rest upon him with timbrels and with harps, and in chief battles he will overthrow them. For Topheth has been prepared from yesterday, prepared by the king, deep and wide; its fuel is fire and much wood: the breath of the Lord like a torrent of sulphur kindling it. LXX: And the Lord will make the glory of his voice heard, and will show the fury of his arm with fury and wrath: and with a devouring flame of fire he will strike with lightning vehemently, and like water and hail coming down with violence. For at the voice of the Lord the Assyrians will be overcome by the stroke with which he will strike them, and there will be round about him that from which he had the hope of help, in which he trusted; they themselves with timbrels and harp will fight against him by a change. For you will be deceived before the days: is a kingdom prepared for you too? A deep valley, wood laid, fire and the wood of many; the fury of the Lord, like a valley kindled with sulphur. I could have shown readers in passing what seems right to me according to the Hebrew; but what am I to do about the zeal of certain people, who declare that unless I also discuss the edition of the Seventy Translators, I shall have an imperfect work? I shall therefore follow the order of discussion I have begun. The voice of the Lord and his command will become known to all, and the strength of his arm will be plain to everyone, when the time of retribution has come, and it will be brought down with the greatness of flame and whirlwind and hail, and with the weight of stones. Of this, as we have said, Ezekiel writes at full length in his prophecy of Gog and Magog (Ezek 38 and 39). At the command of his voice Assyria, struck with the rod, will tremble: every impious man, every imitator of the hostile nation; not that on the day of judgment the Assyrian alone is to be struck, but that by the Assyrian we should understand the devil. Then there follows: And the passing of the rod will be founded, which the Lord will make to rest upon him. And the sense is: the rod will not strike him and then be lifted again, and, in the manner of those who flog, make an end of beating; but he will make it remain in his punishments as if founded and fixed with a deep root. And if it is understood in this way, where will the repentance of the devil be? Especially since it is said to sinners: Go into the eternal fire, which God has prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41). With timbrels and with harps, and in chief battles, he will overthrow them: that is, the Lord will overthrow the demons and all the impious, to the joy of all. For from yesterday, that is, from time past, Topheth, that is, a broad and spacious Gehenna, has been prepared by the king, the Lord, to burn them with eternal fires. Its nourishment and kindling is fire and much wood, that is, perpetual flame and the punishments of sinners. And since the prophetic word had foretold this as of a furnace and an oven of burning fire, it keeps the metaphor, so that we may know that it is kindled by the breath and spirit and will of the Lord, with sulphur mixed in, which rouses the flames, to make the torments more bitter. Further, what is said according to the Seventy: At the voice of the Lord the Assyrians will be overcome by the stroke, when he has struck them, and there will be round about him that from which he had the hope of help, in which he trusted; they themselves with timbrels and harp will fight against him by a change, signifies that those who were once subject to the devil rise up against him, and fight against him with joy and gladness by a sudden change, when, understanding their error, they destroy him by whom they had been deceived. And it is said to him that from the beginning he deceived himself, thinking his kingdom everlasting, he for whom Gehenna and eternal punishments are prepared.
31:1ff.
Woe to those who go down into Egypt for help, hoping in horses, and having confidence in chariots, because they are many, and in horsemen, because they are exceedingly strong, and have not trusted in the Holy One of Israel, and have not sought the Lord. But he, being wise, has brought evil, and has not taken away his words; and he will rise up against the house of the most wicked, and against the help of those who work iniquity. Egypt is man and not God, and their horses are flesh and not spirit: and the Lord will incline his hand, and the helper will collapse, and he to whom help is given will fall, and all of them together will be consumed. After the burden of the beasts of the South, and of those who carried their riches into Egypt to a people that could not profit them, who hoped for help in the strength of Pharaoh and had confidence in the shadow of Egypt, the prophetic word had spoken, under the figure of the return to Jerusalem and of the release of the captivity under Cyrus, of the consummation of the age and of the perfect blessedness of the righteous: now it returns to the same people to whom it had spoken above, that they should not go down into Egypt. And this is the difference between the present passage and the earlier one: there the tribe of Judah is commanded not to go down into Egypt; here it is prophesied that, scorning the command of the Lord, they will go down, and that by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon Israel and the Egyptians alike, the fugitives and their helpers alike, will be slaughtered together. Of this Jeremiah speaks most fully (Jer 42). Woe, then, to those who go down into Egypt and, for fear of the Chaldeans, scorn the precepts of the Lord, hoping in idolaters, while they boast that they hold the worship of God; and, trusting in the help of horses, they do not know that it is written: A horse is a deceitful thing for safety (Ps 32 [33]:17); and they have confidence in four-horse chariots and carriages and horsemen, and do not remember that Song: Horse and rider he has cast into the sea (Exod 15:1). And they have not trusted in the Holy One of Israel, who was promising his help through Jeremiah to those who remained in the land of Judea. And they have not sought the Lord: not that they did not seek him, but that, having sought him, they scorned his words. Hence it is also said of the wicked priests: Who devour my people, they have not called upon the Lord (Ps 52 [53]:5, 6). But he, being wise, that is, the Lord, brought evil upon them, and the worst, namely Nebuchadnezzar; or evil in the absolute sense, signifying a thing, not a person; and he did not take away his words, which he had spoken through the prophets. Wherefore he will rise up against the tribe of Judah, the house of the most wicked, and against the help of the Egyptians, who work iniquity. For Egypt, or the Egyptian, as the Seventy translated, is man and not God, and their horses are flesh and not spirit. Hence it is also written in Jeremiah: Cursed is the man who has his hope in man, and has made firm the flesh of his arm, and whose heart has departed from the Lord. And he will be like a tamarisk in the desert, which will not see when good things come (Jer 17:5, 6). And in another place it is written: Vain is the salvation of man (Ps 59 [60]:13), or, as it stands better in the Hebrew, in man. And when the Lord stretches out his hand to punish, or inclines it, under the metaphor of a charioteer, and slackens the reins of the running horses, the Egyptian helper will collapse, and Israel, to whom help was being given. These things, indeed, we can also understand of those who, in a time of persecution and of tribulation and distress, do not trust in the Lord, but in the help of the Egyptians, that is, of worldly men; not knowing that Abraham was endangered in Egypt, and that the people of God served with clay and bricks in that region, which is spiritually called the iron furnace. Hence in the Apocalypse of John too we read: The place in which the Lord was crucified is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt (Rev 11:8).
31:4-5
For thus says the Lord to me: as when a lion roars, and a lion's whelp, over its prey, and a multitude of shepherds comes against it, it will not dread their voice, nor be afraid at their multitude: so will the Lord of hosts come down to fight upon Mount Zion and upon its hill. Like birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts protect Jerusalem, protecting and delivering, passing over and saving. In plain passages we set down one edition, especially where there is no difference of sense. When the Israelites, and the Egyptians in whose help they trusted, have been slain in Egypt, the captives will return to Jerusalem in the reign of Cyrus. And by two likenesses the strength of the Lord, who had promised that he would be their helper, is shown. As a lion and a lion's whelp, when hungry, if it sees a flock of sheep, is not frightened by any voice of the shepherds, and, conscious of its own strength, despises their multitude: so the Lord of hosts will fight, not against Mount Zion and its hill, but upon Mount Zion, against its adversaries. Let us state the other comparison as well: as birds, to defend their young, fly over their nests, and if they see a serpent or a man, or other birds approaching their chicks, forget their own weakness and fight with beak and claws, and redouble the grief of their breast with chattering cries: so the Lord will protect Jerusalem, and will deliver it, passing over, and will save it. For passing over, in the Hebrew it is PHASE; in the three translators, besides the Seventy, ὑπερβαίνων is set down. From this it is plain that Pascha, that is, the Phase of the Lord, signifies not passion but passage. And that the Lord, in the likeness of birds, was a protector over Jerusalem, he himself testifies in the Gospel: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who were sent to you (Matt 23:37): how often I wished to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not? And in Deuteronomy it is said of the Lord: He spread his wings, and took them up, and carried them on his shoulders (Deut 32:11).
31:6ff.
Turn back, as you had withdrawn into the depth, sons of Israel. For in that day a man will cast away the idols of his silver and the idols of his gold, which your hands have made for you for sin. And Assyria will fall by a sword not of a man, and a sword not of a human being will devour him: and he will flee, not from the face of the sword, and his young men will be tributaries. And his strength will pass away from terror, and his princes will flee in fear, said the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem. LXX: Turn back, as you had withdrawn into the depth, sons of Israel. For in that day a man will cast away the idols of his silver and the idols of his gold, which your hands have made for you for sin. And Assyria will fall by a sword not of a man, and a sword not of a human being will devour him, and he will flee, not from the face of the sword; his young men will be overcome: for they will be surrounded by rock as by a rampart, and will be conquered; and whoever flees will be taken. Thus says the Lord: Blessed is he who has seed in Zion, and kinsmen in Jerusalem. While the Lord fights upon Mount Zion against its adversaries, and protects it like birds: Turn back, O sons of Israel; or, as Symmachus translated: Repent, you who by deep counsel and sin have withdrawn from the Lord. For if you do this, casting away the idols of gold and silver which were to you for sin, on account of which your city was taken, Assyria, for fear of whom you now flee, will fall, not by the sword of men, nor by the strength of an army, but by the power of God. And he means the Angel by whom one hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians were destroyed in one night. The Assyrian king himself will also flee, not from the sword of men, but from the wrath of God: so that his young and strong men become tributaries to the Medes, of whom it is said above, against Babylon: Behold, I will stir up the Medes against you. And the strength of the Assyrian will pass away and go by through the terror of the Lord, and all his princes will tremble. For the Lord has said it and promised it, for whom to have said is to have done; he who has fire in Zion and a furnace in Jerusalem, so that the flame going out from Jerusalem may consume his adversaries like stubble and wood. Another interprets the words: In that day a man will cast away the idols of his silver, and the rest, in such a way as to testify that after the return from the Babylonian captivity until the coming of Christ the sons of Israel never worshipped idols; and that the Assyrian too is signified in the present place as one to be overcome not by the Angel but by the Medes, because a most ancient and once powerful kingdom, after offending the Lord, was destroyed and served its conquerors. The Nazarenes understand this passage thus: O sons of Israel, who by most wicked counsel denied the Son of God, return to him and to his Apostles. For if you do this, you will cast away all the idols which were formerly to you for sin, and the devil will fall before you, not by your own strength, but by the mercy of God: and his young men, who once fought for him, will be tributaries of the Church, and all his strength and his rock will pass away: the philosophers too, and every perverse doctrine, will turn their backs at the sign of the cross. For it is the sentence of the Lord that this should come to pass, whose fire, or light, is in Zion, and his oven in Jerusalem. Fire and light are written in Hebrew with the same letters, ALEPH, VAU, RES; if it is read UR, it means fire; if OR, light. This is said because for fire, which Symmachus alone translated, Aquila and Theodotion translated light. But what is meant by what we read in the Septuagint: They will be surrounded by rock as by a rampart, and will be conquered: and whoever flees will be taken, I am unable to know. Unless perhaps we can say this: that the young men of the Assyrian king, who are to be conquered and taken, are surrounded by rock, that is, by the strength of the Lord, as a city is surrounded by a rampart. Further, what follows: Blessed is he who has seed in Zion, and kinsmen in Jerusalem, we can interpret so as to say that it fits the sense of the present passage, in that the divine word exhorts those fleeing into Egypt to return to Jerusalem and beget sons. To this city so great a blessedness is promised that it is defended and protected by the help of the Lord; and in another place it is written of it: The glory of this latter house will be greater than that of the former (Hag 2:10). This can also be referred to the Church, the vision of peace and the watchtower, of which it is written: Glorious things are spoken of you, city of God (Ps 86 [87]:2). And elsewhere: The rush of the river makes glad the city of God (ibid. 45 [46]:3). For in her is the fire and the furnace, to devour sinners and to consume wood, hay and stubble; or the light and the oven, so that the brightness of the righteous and the punishment of sinners may be shown.
32:1ff.
Behold, a king will reign with righteousness, and princes will rule in judgment. And a man will be like one who is hidden from the wind and conceals himself from the tempest: like streams of waters in thirst, and the shade of a jutting rock in a desert land. The eyes of those who see will not be dimmed, and the ears of those who hear will listen diligently. And the heart of the foolish will understand knowledge, and the tongue of stammerers will speak quickly and plainly. He who is senseless will no longer be called a prince, nor will the deceitful man be called great. For the fool will speak foolish things, and his heart will work iniquity, to accomplish pretense, and to speak deceitfully to the Lord, and to empty the soul of the hungry, and to take away drink from the thirsty. The vessels of the deceitful man are most evil: for he has devised schemes to destroy the meek with the word of a lie, when the poor man spoke judgment. But the prince will think the things that are worthy of a prince, and he himself will stand over the leaders. LXX: For behold, a righteous king will reign, and princes will rule with judgment. And there will be a man hiding his words, and he will be hidden as from water that is borne along: and he will appear in Zion like a running river, glorious in a thirsty land; and they will by no means be trusting in men, but they will give their ears to hear, and the heart of the weak will attend to hearing, and the tongues of the stammering will quickly learn to speak peace: and they will no longer tell the fool to be a prince, nor will your ministers any longer say, Be silent. For the fool will speak foolish things, and his heart will understand vain things, to accomplish iniquity and to speak error to the Lord, to scatter the hungry souls and to make the thirsty souls empty. For the counsel of the most wicked will think unjust things: to slay the humble with unjust words, and to scatter the words of the humble in judgment. But the pious have thought wisdom, and this counsel abides. According to the Seventy Translators, who said: For behold, a righteous king will reign, and princes will rule with judgment, what follows must be joined to what precedes, namely to the words with which the previous section ended: Blessed is he who has seed in Zion, and kinsmen in Jerusalem. According to the Hebrew, the former prophecy, concerning those who were going down into Egypt, is finished, and now begins another oracle, namely concerning the coming of Christ and of his Apostles. For this king will reign righteously, not respecting persons in judgment, and his princes will rule with truth, considering causes, not men. And whoever is under his shelter will be as safe in tribulations and distresses, and in the tempest of this world, as one who, fleeing wind and whirlwind, hides himself in a safe place; and as one who finds the purest springs in the desert; and as one who, in fierce heat, when the blaze of the sun scorches everything, rests under a jutting rock. Where we said: like streams of waters in thirst, the Seventy translated: and he will appear in Zion like a running river. For the Hebrew word about which we argued above, BASAION (בציון), which means in thirst, or in dryness, and in a pathless place, the Seventy and Theodotion translated in Zion, reading SION, which is written with the same letters, for SAION, that is, thirst. When, therefore, Christ has reigned, and his princes have ruled in judgment, the eyes of those who believe will not be dimmed, and the ears of those who hear, which before were deaf, will attend diligently, and the heart of those once foolish will understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammering and the mute, which could not utter Christ, will confess the Lord with full and open speech. He who is foolish will no longer be called a prince (1 Cor 1). For God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. Nor will the deceitful and perverse teacher be called great among the peoples: namely the scribes and Pharisees, to whom the Lord said: Fools and blind, which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? (Matt 23:17). For the fool will speak foolish things, for which in the Hebrew it is written: NABAL NABALA IDABBER (נבל נבלה ידבר). We say this in order to explain the words of Abigail, who says of Nabal the Carmelite: According to his name he is foolish (1 Sam 25:25). For truly the fool will speak foolish things, and his heart will accomplish iniquity: he who feared where there was no fear, and practiced folly in place of wisdom, saying: If this man were from God, he would not break the sabbath (John 9:16). This the master of the synagogues does to this day, to accomplish pretense, for which in the Hebrew is written ONEPH (חנף), that is, ὑπόκρισις. Hence it is said again and again to the Pharisees: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites (Matt 23:14). And he will speak, he says, deceitfully to the Lord: Master, we know that you are from God, and that you have no concern for men; is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? (ibid. 22:16, 17). They empty the souls of the hungry people, and take away drink from the thirsty crowds, neither entering themselves nor allowing others to enter. For all the vessels and weapons of the deceitful teacher and prince are most evil; he contrives snares to destroy the simple with the word of a lie, saying to the deceived people: Search and see, that a prophet does not arise from Galilee (John 7:52). When the poor man spoke to them judgment: he who, though he was rich, became poor for our sake (2 Cor 8). For truly Christ spoke judgment and righteousness to them, saying: If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me: but if I do them, even if you will not believe me, believe the works (John 10:37). This poor man who speaks judgment, the prince and Lord, will think the things that are worthy of a prince, saying: I came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 15:24). And he will be anxious for the unbelieving, desiring to save those who do not believe; and he will stand over his leaders, the Apostles, to one of whom he says: But you, a man of one mind with me, my leader and my familiar friend (Ps 54 [55]:14). These things are according to the Hebrew, from which the Seventy disagree in most places not only in words but also in senses. For when the righteous king has reigned, and his princes have ruled with judgment, there will be a man hiding his words, a man who by nature is God, and he will hide his words, speaking to them in parables (Matt 20:21, 23, 24, and 25). And he will hide them as from running water, that is, from the people of the Jews, which, like water, is borne and drawn this way and that at the will of its teachers. This man, hiding his words among the unbelieving, will appear in Zion, that is, in the Church, like a glorious river running down in a thirsty land. For he will appear to the people of the Gentiles, which before suffered thirst for the truth; and the river of God will water the thirsty fields, the river of which it is written: The rush of the river makes glad the city of God (Ps 45 [46]:4). And in another place: The river of God is filled with waters (Ps 64 [65]:10). For he himself says in the Gospel: He who thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture says, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water (John 7:38). Then they will by no means have confidence in their teachers, but will offer their ears to hear the Lord; and both with heart and with tongue they will confess the peace of the Lord, forsaking the foolish princes and their ministers, who imposed silence on those who believed in Jesus. What follows contains nearly the same sense as the Hebrew, and can be fitted to the heretics. For these speak a lie against the Lord, and pervert the hungry and thirsty souls, and make them go away empty; so that even if they have anything good by nature, they lose it through the fault of their teachers, whose whole counsel is to destroy the humble with unjust words and to scatter the words of the humble in judgment. In which it must likewise be noted that whoever can be deceived by them is humble, and clings to the earth.
32:9ff.
Wealthy women, rise and hear my voice: confident daughters, take in my speech with your ears. After days and a year you too will be troubled, you confident ones: for the vintage is ended; the gathering will come no more. Be astonished, you wealthy women; be troubled, you confident ones: strip yourselves and be confounded. For which Symmachus translated be made naked; there follows: Gird your loins, lament upon your breasts, over the desirable country, over the fruitful vine: thorns and briers will come up over the ground of my people: how much more over all the houses of joy of the exulting city? For the house has been forsaken; the multitude of the city has been left; darkness and groping have come upon the caves for ever: the joy of wild asses, pastures of flocks. Until the spirit is poured out upon us from on high: and the desert will be in Carmel, and Carmel will be counted as a forest. And judgment will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness will sit in Carmel. And the work of righteousness will be peace, and the service of righteousness silence, and security for ever. And my people will sit in the beauty of peace, and in the tabernacles of confidence, and in wealthy rest. But hail in the descent of the forest, and the city will be brought low with lowliness. Blessed are you who sow upon all waters, sending forth the foot of the ox and the ass. The LXX, for the darkness and groping which have come upon the caves for ever, translated and your villages will be caves for ever: what in the Hebrew is called OPHEL (עפל) and BEEN (בחן), which the Hebrews think were two towers in Jerusalem, lofty and very strong, called by these names. The first of them means darkness, or cloud, because it raised its head up to the clouds; the other, proving and firmness, or, as Symmachus renders it, inquiry: because the eyes were deceived in gazing at its summit. At the end of the section too they translated thus: Blessed are those who sow upon every water, where the ox and the ass tread. After the calling of the nations, when Christ the king has ruled with righteousness, and his princes, the Apostles and apostolic men, have presided over the believers with judgment, the prophetic word will be directed to the wealthy women, whom we must take either as the cities of Judea, or as the synagogues of that time, or, as most think, as the matrons of the rich men of the former people of the Jews, to whom, as to women lying prostrate after their ruin, it is said: Rise; and they are nonetheless called confident daughters, or hoping; and they are commanded to hear the words of the Lord, and to remember the days and the year, of which we shall speak in what follows, as the Savior himself says: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me: he has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind, to call the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18, 19); and that this very remembrance may become for them, according to the Seventy, grief with hope, so that they may lament that they denied the Lord, and may have hope of salvation if they repent. For he says that the vintage is ended, and that after the last devastation, which happened under Vespasian and Titus and Hadrian, no other captivity will come, nor will clusters remain among the peoples to be gathered afterward. Hence they are summoned to lamentation, and are commanded to bare their breasts and to gird their loins, because the country once desirable, and the fruitful vine, of which it is written: I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true: how have you turned into the bitterness of a strange vine? (Jer 2:21), has been destroyed by the ravaging Roman. Over the ground, he says, of my people thorns and briers, or grass will come up. And the sense is: if thorns and briers have filled the land of Judea, which is the land of promise, how much more the other cities, which are full of joy, and which that saying of the Gospel will overtake: Woe to you who rejoice now, for you will weep (Luke 6:25)! For the Lord, that is, my temple, has been forsaken, as I said to the Apostles: Rise, let us go hence (John 14:31); and to the unbelieving: Your house will be left to you desolate (Luke 13:35). Palpable darkness has taken possession of the inner sanctuaries of the Temple and its secret mysteries, and they have become no longer storerooms for the vessels of the Lord, but caves for ever. For they had heard from the Lord Savior (Matt 21:13): The house of my Father shall be called a house of prayer: but you have made it a den of robbers. The joy, he says, of wild asses, pastures of flocks. This is to be understood either according to the letter, in that all things are deserted; or spiritually, in that, Israel having been driven out, savage men who have no knowledge of God dwell in Judea. And this is to be until the spirit is poured out upon us from on high, which the Savior, ascending to the Father, promised to believers, saying: Behold, I go, and I will send you the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth (John 16). And again: Until you receive power from on high (Luke 24:49). And what he had said above: Yet a little while, and Lebanon will be in Carmel, and Carmel will be counted as a forest: and in that day the deaf will hear the words of the book, and out of darkness and gloom the eyes of the blind will see (above, Isa 29), he now repeats in other words: that the wilderness of the nations is turned into the riches of Israel, and Israel is counted among the nations: at which time judgment will have dwelt in the desert, the Lord and Savior, to whom the Father has given all judgment (John 3). And righteousness will rest in Carmel, of which it was said above: And the desert will be in Carmel: that judgment and righteousness dwell in the desert, and rest in Carmel, which before was called the desert. The work of righteousness too will be peace, which, according to the Apostle, surpasses all understanding (Phil 4). And the service of righteousness silence, so that they may worship the Lord not with the much speaking of the Jews but with the brevity of faith; and may rest secure in eternal peace, and in their tabernacles may be the riches of which the Apostle spoke (1 Cor 1:5): I give thanks to my God through Jesus Christ, because in everything you have been made rich in him, in all speech and in all knowledge. And when the Christian people sits, or dwells, in beauty, or, as the Seventy translated, in the city of peace, which is without doubt in the Church, then hail and tempest and the raging wrath of the Lord will come down upon the forest, of which it was said above: And Carmel will be counted as a forest; and the city of Jerusalem will be brought low, and, according to another Scripture, will speak from the earth. Since these things are so, and we have learned from the prophetic oracle how great the goods are that the Church will possess, and how great the evils that Jerusalem will suffer: blessed are you, Apostles, and you other teachers, who sow upon all the waters of Holy Scripture, in which the ox and the ass tread. The ox is a clean animal, on account of the election of the fathers; the ass unclean, on account of the former idolatry of the Gentiles; so that the Church of the Lord may be gathered both from the Circumcision and from the Uncircumcision. What was said above according to the LXX: Over the land of my people thorns and grass will come up, can be referred both to the heretics and to all the simple among believers, who do not understand Holy Scripture as befits its majesty. Hence we have fitted each to each: that the land of the people of God brings forth thorns for the heretics, and grass for all the unskilled in the Church.
33:1
Woe to you who plunder: will you not yourself be plundered? And you who despise: will you not yourself be despised? When you have finished plundering, you will be plundered: when, wearied, you have ceased to scorn, you will be scorned. LXX: Woe to those who make you wretched: for no one makes you wretched. And those who reject you do not reject you: those who reject will be taken, and will be handed over, and like a moth in a garment so will they be overcome. He had spoken of the Apostles and of the teachers of the churches: Blessed are those who sow upon every water, where the ox and the ass tread: now he directs a curse at their persecutors, nay, at their prince, who possesses the hearts of the impious: that whatever they have done they may receive back, and their present power may be the material of future torments. Hence according to the LXX it is said: Woe to those who make you wretched: for no one makes you wretched. And the sense is: as far as lies in them, when they persecute you and afflict you with various tortures, they think you wretched once you have been killed and tortured. But no one can make you wretched, for they have power not over the soul, but over the body. And he who rejects you does not reject you, but him who sent you, according to what the Savior says to the disciples: He who rejects you rejects me: and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me (Luke 10:16). The persecutors, therefore, will be taken, and will be handed over to eternal fires. And as a moth consumes a garment, so will the perpetual flame consume them. This is also written at the end of this prophecy: Their worm will not die, and their fire will not be quenched.
33:2ff.
O Lord, have mercy on us: for we have waited for you: be their arm in the morning, and our salvation in the time of tribulation. At the voice of the Angel the peoples fled, at your exaltation the nations were scattered. And your spoils will be gathered as the young locust is collected, as when the ditches are full of it. The Lord is magnified, for he has dwelt on high: he has filled Zion with judgment and righteousness. And there will be faith in your times: the riches of salvation are wisdom and knowledge: the fear of the Lord is itself his treasure. LXX: O Lord, have mercy on us, for we trust in you: the seed of the unbelieving has come to perdition, but our salvation is in the time of tribulation: because of the voice of fear the peoples were astonished at the fear of you, and the nations were scattered. But now your spoils will be gathered, small and great: as if someone were gathering locusts, so will they mock you: holy is God who dwells on high. Zion is filled with judgment and righteousness; they will be handed over in the law; in treasures is our salvation: wisdom has come, and discipline, and piety from the Lord; these are the treasures of righteousness. The Hebrews think that the preceding section, in which we read: Woe to you who plunder: will you not yourself be plundered? and the rest to the end, was spoken against Sennacherib king of the Assyrians: that after he had overthrown the cities of the ten tribes, which were called Israel, and had also taken the cities of Judea, except Jerusalem, he himself would be overcome, and his army would be destroyed when the Angel struck. Hence they contend that the things contained in the present section are now spoken in the person of the people giving thanks to God and saying: O Lord, have mercy on us, we have waited for you: that he himself was the arm and the strength of the people hemmed in by the siege, in the morning time, and their salvation in need and distress. For at the voice of the Angel, which Symmachus rendered just as it is written in the Hebrew, AMUN (המון), and whom the Hebrews hold to be Gabriel and to have the etymology of people, the Assyrian fled, and at the exaltation of God the nations that were with him were scattered this way and that. As they fled, the spoils were gathered by the Jews, as a multitude of young locusts and of locusts is usually gathered when they have been heaped up in ditches. In their victory the Lord was magnified, and Zion was filled with judgment and righteousness, and the faith of the besieged people was proven; and they had all their riches in wisdom, and in the knowledge of God and the fear of the Lord, who alone was their treasure. These things they may say according to the history, striving by every means to overthrow the mysteries of Christ and of his Apostles. But we, after the blessedness of the Apostles, of whom it was said above (cf. Isa 32:20): Blessed are those who sow upon every water, where the ox and the ass tread, and after the lamentation and wailing of those who persecuted them, of whom it is said in what follows: Woe to those who make you wretched; but no one makes you wretched: and as a moth in a garment, so will they be worn away, prove that these things are spoken in the person of the same Apostles and of all believers. And the sense is: Lord, we have hoped in your help, and we trust in you: the seed of the unbelieving has perished for ever, and our salvation has appeared in the time of tribulation. For when you gave help, the whole multitude of the nations was scattered, and became a prey and a mockery to the victors. And this came about because the holy Lord dwells on high, and Zion is filled with judgment and righteousness, of which it was written above: Judgment and righteousness will rest in the desert. This, then, is Zion, which before was called the desert; and whoever dwells in her, to him will be handed over the law of the Gospel, in whose treasure is our salvation, and the wisdom of believers, and discipline and piety, or faith, which properly belongs to Christians, and the fear of the Lord, in which the treasures of wisdom are contained.
33:7ff.
Behold, those who see will cry outside: the Angels of peace will weep bitterly. The ways are laid waste, the one who passed along the path has ceased, the covenant has been made void, he has cast off the cities, he has not regarded men. The earth has mourned and languished, Lebanon is confounded and has become deaf, and Sharon has become like a desert, and Bashan and Carmel are shaken. Now I will rise up, says the Lord: now I will be exalted, now I will be lifted up. You will conceive burning heat, you will bring forth stubble; your spirit, like fire, will devour you. And the peoples will be like ashes from a burning: thorns gathered together will be burned with fire. The Hebrew word ARELLAM (אראלם), for which Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion translated I will appear to them, dividing the last syllable and reading ARE LAHEM (ארא להם), the Hebrews think signifies Angels, and that this is a prophecy, after the calling of the nations and the riches of the Church, of the overthrow of the Temple: that the Angels will weep, no longer dwelling within, but going outside; and those who before were messengers of peace will weep bitterly. Or the Apostles themselves, who had been sent to announce peace to Jerusalem, to which the Lord said: If you too had known the things that belong to your peace (Luke 19:42), and to whom the Lord appeared, to strengthen them by his sight, will weep for Jerusalem, because it did not receive their preaching, because the ways are laid waste, and the one who passed along the righteous path has ceased, according to what is said in the Lamentations of Jeremiah: The ways of Zion mourn, because there are none who come to the solemnity (Lam 1:4). The covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has also been made void: He has cast off the cities of Judea: he has not regarded men, who by their own fault chose to be beasts. The earth has mourned and languished for those who dwelt in the land (Gen 15 and 22). Lebanon is confounded and has become deaf: without doubt it signifies the Temple, of which we read in Zechariah: Open your gates, O Lebanon, that fire may devour your cedars (Zech 11:1). Or Jerusalem, which in Ezekiel is called Lebanon, when the Prophet says: A great eagle with great wings, which has the design of entering into Lebanon (Ezek 17:3); which the divine word afterward interprets: when, it says, Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem; plainly explaining the Eagle as the king of Babylon, and Lebanon as Jerusalem. Sharon has become like a desert, and Bashan and Carmel are shaken. For Bashan, the LXX translated Galilee, the province in place of one place of the province. Sharon, moreover, is the name of the whole region around Joppa and Lydda, in which very broad and fertile plains stretch out. Bashan too is a region beyond the Jordan, which the two and a half tribes possessed, and which means most fruitful and fat (Deut 3); and Carmel, of which we spoke above. The once fertile places of Judea, then, will be turned into a wilderness, by which it is shown μεταφορικῶς that all the opulence of the Jews is to be exchanged for want and poverty. Since, then, they would not receive the word of the Apostles, Lebanon is confounded, and Sharon is turned into a wilderness, and Bashan and Carmel are shaken. Therefore the Lord says that he will rise up, either from his very great patience, or from the underworld, and will be exalted among the nations, and lifted up on the cross. And he turns in apostrophe to the Jews themselves: You will conceive burning heat, and you will bring forth stubble, and your spirit will kindle a fire for you, so that the devouring flame may consume what was conceived and brought forth. And the peoples of the Jews, he says, will be like ashes from a burning, showing the greatness of their misfortune by the remnants of the embers. For their thorns, which have been gathered together by the multitude of their sins, will be devoured by the burning; which most refer to the last captivity and overthrow of Jerusalem. Others affirm that it will come about more fully and perfectly at the time of judgment.
33:13ff.
Hear, you who are far off, what I have done, and you who are near, know my strength. The sinners in Zion are terrified, trembling has seized the hypocrites. Who of you can dwell with devouring fire? Who of you will dwell with everlasting burnings? He who walks in acts of righteousness, and speaks truths, who casts away avarice from calumny, and shakes his hands free of every bribe, who stops his ears lest he hear blood, and shuts his eyes lest he see evil. He will dwell on high; fortresses of rocks are his height: bread has been given him, his waters are faithful. His eyes will see the king in his beauty: they will behold the land from afar. Your heart will meditate fear. Where is the scribe? Where is he who weighs the words of the law? Where is the teacher of little ones? You will not see the imprudent people, the people of deep speech, so that you cannot understand the eloquence of its tongue, in which there is no wisdom. LXX: Those who are far off will hear what they have done: those who draw near will know my strength. The lawless who were in Zion have departed; trembling will seize the impious. Who will announce to you that fire is burning? Who will announce to you the eternal place? He who walks in righteousness, and speaks the right way, and hates impiety and iniquity, and shakes his hands free of gifts, and stops his ears so as not to hear the judgment of blood, and shuts his eyes so that they may not see iniquity, he will dwell in a lofty cave of a very strong rock. Bread will be given him, and his water will be faithful: your eyes will see the king with glory, they will see the land from afar; your soul will meditate fear. Where are the grammarians? Where are the counselors? Where is he who numbers those who nourish both the small and the great people? To whom he did not give counsel: nor did he know his deep voice, so that the despised people did not hear, and there is no understanding for the one who hears. Since the ways are laid waste, the one who passed along the paths has ceased, the covenant with the people of the Jews has been made void, God has cast off their cities and has not counted them among men; therefore you who are far off, hear what I have done, and draw near, that you may know my strength. The sinners, or the impious, who were in Zion are terrified, or have departed, and trembling has seized the hypocrites, to whom the Lord said in the Gospel: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites (Matt 23:14)! Who of you can dwell with him who is a devouring fire? Who will dwell with everlasting burnings? Or according to the LXX: Who will announce to you that the eternal fire is burning, which God has prepared for the devil and his angels? Who, then, will be able to dwell with God, or to announce the punishments to come? Everyone who is such as the prophetic word describes: who walks in many acts of righteousness, and loves acts of righteousness not once but always, and speaks truths not on one occasion but continually; who casts away avarice, which is the mother of calumny. For money is not heaped up for one man except with another's loss and harm. And he shakes his hands free of every bribe; for bribes blind the eyes even of the wise. He stops his ears lest he hear the judgment of blood. All iniquity and oppression and injustice is a judgment of blood: and though one does not kill with the sword, yet he slays by his will. And he shuts his eyes lest he see evil. Happy the conscience that neither hears nor beholds evil. He, then, who is such will dwell on high, that is, in the kingdom of heaven, or in a lofty cave of a very strong rock, in Christ Jesus: the rock that followed the people of Israel, that they might drink from it and be protected by its strength. Bread will be given him, and his waters are faithful: which the fables of the Gentiles understand as ambrosia and nectar. But we shall interpret the bread and the most faithful waters as the law of God. He, then, who is such will behold Christ the king in his brightness, of whom it is said above (cf. Isa 32:1): Behold, a righteous king will reign, and princes will rule in judgment. And his eyes will see from afar the land which they had long desired, the land of the meek and gentle, of which it is written in the Gospel: Blessed are the meek, for they will possess the land (Matt 5:4); or, set in heaven, they will look down on earthly things. Your heart will meditate fear: so that when you have attained all things, you may say with the Apostle: I who am not worthy to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God (1 Cor 15:9). For the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Where is the scribe? Where is he who weighs the words of the law? Where is the teacher of little ones? (Prov 9:1). Where, he says, are the scribes and Pharisees, who, weighing the words of the Law in the balance, deceived the unhappy people? whom the Scripture now calls little ones: little in sense, little in understanding. And when the eyes of the believer have beheld the king in his majesty, and his heart has meditated fear, then he will not see the imprudent people, the people of the Jews, or of the philosophers and orators of the world, who applaud themselves for secular learning and eloquence, of whom he now says: A people of deep speech, so that you cannot understand the eloquence of its tongue; whose whole adornment is in words, who have only the leaves and the shade of speech, and do not possess the fruit of truth. Then there follows: In which there is no wisdom; of whom it is also said in another place: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will reject (1 Cor 1:19). Why? Because God has made foolish the wisdom of this world.
33:20ff.
Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnity: your eyes will see Jerusalem, a wealthy habitation: a tabernacle that can by no means be moved, nor will its pegs be taken away for ever, and none of its cords will be broken. For only there is our Lord magnificent: a place of rivers, streams very broad and open; no ship with oars will pass through it, nor will a great trireme cross it. For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he himself will save us. Your cords are loosened, and will not hold: so will your mast be, that you cannot spread out the ensign. Then the spoils of many preys will be divided: the lame will seize the plunder. Nor will the neighbor say, I am faint: the people that dwells in it, iniquity will be taken away from it. LXX: Behold Zion, the city, our salvation: your eyes will see Jerusalem, a rich city, tabernacles that will not be moved: nor will the stakes of its tabernacle be taken away for ever, and its cords will not be torn apart: for the name of the Lord is great to you: your place will be rivers and streams very broad and spacious: no ship driven by oars will go in through it: for my God is great: the Lord will not pass me by, our judge, the Lord our prince, the Lord our king, the Lord himself will save us. Your cords are broken because they did not hold: your mast is bent, so that it lets the sails go: it will not raise the ensign until it is given over to devastation. Many lame, therefore, will take spoils: and they will not say, I shall labor; the people that dwells in them, their sin will be forgiven them. O righteous one, to whom it was said above: your heart will meditate fear; and, the imprudent people you will not see; and who had heard before, your eyes will see the king in his beauty: look upon Zion, the city of our solemnity, see the Church of Christ, in which is the true solemnity: your eyes will behold the vision of peace, and riches beyond hope, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man, and the tabernacle that can by no means be moved. For the former tabernacle, which the people of the Jews had, was moved and taken away. Nor will its pegs be moved for ever, and all its cords will be firm; so that the Lord dwells in it, which is the place of all the rivers and running streams, through which no one of the opposing side will be able to sail: nor a great trireme, which is interpreted as the devil, will be able to cross it: because the Lord himself is our judge, and prince, and king, and Savior, and under his protection we shall fear the snares of no one. These things are said of Zion, the city of our solemnity, and of Jerusalem, the richest habitation, which the Lord himself will surround and fortify with his rivers. But now he speaks to the earthly Jerusalem: that the cords of its tabernacle are loosened, and could not hold up the tent, and its mast, on which the most beautiful sails once hung, has fallen with its ropes broken, so that it is useless not only for sailing but also for an ensign. And after their ship has been broken up and the tabernacle scattered, so that the cords are torn apart on both sides, the plunder will be divided among the victors: who will be so weak in their own strength that they are called lame; and nonetheless, since the wrath of God gives them strength, they will feel no weakness, nor will they say: I have labored. For whoever is among them, iniquity and sin will be taken away from him, because he has carried out the will of God.
34:1ff.
Come near, you nations, and hear, and you peoples, attend: let the earth hear, and its fullness, the world and all its offspring. For the indignation of the Lord is upon all the nations, and his fury upon all their host: he has slain them and given them over to slaughter. Their slain will be cast out, and from their corpses a stench will rise: the mountains will melt with their blood. And all the host of the heavens will waste away: the heavens will be rolled back (or folded together) like a book: and all their host will fall away, as a leaf falls from the vine and from the fig tree, for my sword has been made drunk in heaven. Behold, it will come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my slaughter, to judgment. The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is fattened with fat: with the blood of lambs and goats, with the blood of rams full of marrow; for the Lord has a victim in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. And the unicorns will come down with them, and the bulls with the mighty. Their land will be made drunk with their blood, and their ground with the fat of the fat ones. After the overthrow of Jerusalem and the shipwreck of the once most solid ship, and the plundering of all its furnishings, it speaks of the destruction of all the nations, and of the consummation of the world, which is on the future day of judgment. Hence all the nations and peoples, the earth and its fullness, the world and all its offspring, both the places that are inhabited and those that are uninhabitable through excess of cold and of heat, are commanded to hear, and to learn with all trembling of mind what is to come. For the indignation of the Lord is described as coming not upon the one nation of Judea alone, and upon the Assyrians and Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Moabites and the Ammonites and the Philistines, but against all the nations, and upon all their host, or, as the LXX translated, their number, to slay them and to make the stench of rotting bodies rise on high, signifying the sins of all the nations; so that the mountains are filled with their gore and filth and blood: all the lofty powers and the Angels who presided over the several nations; and all the host or strength of the heavens wastes away: the heavens are rolled back, or folded together, like a book, and all their host and army, and, as the LXX translated, the stars will fall away, in the likeness of leaves which, as the cold draws near, fall withered and shrivelled from the vine and the fig tree. Which indeed the Savior also says in the Gospel: The stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be moved, and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven (Matt 24:29, 30). And this must be considered, that he does not say that the heavens perish, but that they are rolled back, or folded together, like a book: so that after all sins have been laid open and read through, the heavens which before were open are folded together, so that the offenses of many are no longer written in them. Of books of this kind Daniel speaks in his volume: The judgment sat, and the books were opened (Dan 7:10), in which the works of each had been written down. Most think that the stars fall according to the Apocalypse of John (Rev 6 and 8), and according to what is written elsewhere: All the stars, burning, will be dissolved, and heaven and earth will pass away (Luke 10:2). For the form of this world passes away. Some think that this is said of the stars that glitter in the heaven, so that the whole is shown in the part: namely, that through the ruin of the stars the destruction of the heavens too is shown (1 Cor 7). Others, however, think that those stars will fall of which the Apostle Paul also writes: Our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12). Nor is it surprising if the demons who dwell in the air are called heavenly, since the Scripture also names the birds of heaven, which certainly fly not in heaven but in the air. For Satan too transforms himself into an Angel of light (2 Cor 11), pretending to be a star. And the Savior saw him falling like lightning from heaven (Luke 10). And tropologically it is said of him as of a great star: How has Lucifer fallen, who rose in the morning? (Isa 14:12). All these things will come about because his sword has been made drunk in heaven: the punishment and sentence and vengeance upon sinners which is pronounced by the Lord. This sword and blade is sharpened against the impious in Ezekiel (Ezek 21), and, when very many have been slain, is commanded to go back into its sheath. And when it has been made drunk and filled in heaven, that is, in the air, which by the usage of the Scriptures is called heaven, then it will come down to Idumea too, that is, to earthly things: so that after the punishment of the demons the souls of men too may be judged. For Idumea in our language means earthly. And it is filled with blood and fattened with the fat of lambs and goats, and of rams full of marrow, and of bulls: so as to signify that princes and people alike are to be punished. For the Lord has a victim in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. Of this Bozrah and Idumea the same Prophet also testifies in what follows (cf. Isa 63:1), saying: Who is this who comes from Edom, with his garments red from Bozrah? And some think that, because Bosor means flesh, the torments of all in the flesh are shown by the Lord's victim in Bozrah: they fall into a pious error. For in the present place it is written not with the letter SIN, which is set in BOSOR (בשר), that is, flesh, but with SADE, and it is called BOSRA (בצרה), which according to Joshua and Jeremiah is found not in Edom, that is, Idumea, but in the land of Moab (Jer 48). And Bosra in our language means fortified and surrounded, or strengthened: to teach that the world has been made firm by the will of the Lord, according to what is sung in the psalm: He has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the rivers (Ps 23 [24]:2); and of the firmness of the earth it is said in the person of God: I have made firm its pillars (Ps 74 [75]:3). And when the Lord's victim has been in Bozrah, and his slaughter in Idumea, the unicorns will come down with the mighty bulls, namely the kings and princes of the earth; and all things will be filled with slaughter and blood, and with the fat of those once rich and mighty. By these words, which, after the manner of human speech, strike terror into the hearers, torments are shown against all princes and mighty men, and against peoples and small ones. By Bosra, that is, fortified and strengthened, and by Edom, or Dumah, and Idumea, the teachers of the Jews want Rome to be understood, and all the things contained in the following section to be said of it.
34:8ff.
For it is the day of the Lord's vengeance, the year of the recompenses of the judgment of Zion. And its torrents will be turned into pitch, and its ground into sulphur: and its land will become burning pitch. Night and day it will not be quenched, for ever: its smoke will go up: from generation to generation it will be desolate; for ages of ages there will be none passing through it. And the pelican and the hedgehog will possess it, and the ibis and the raven will dwell in it, and the measuring line will be stretched over it, to bring it to nothing, and the plummet unto desolation. Its nobles will not be there: they will rather call upon the king, and all its princes will be as nothing. And thorns will spring up in its house and nettles, and the thornbush in its fortresses: and it will be the lair of dragons and the pasture of ostriches. And demons will meet with onocentaurs, and the hairy one will cry out one to another: there will lie down the lamia, and will find rest for herself. There the hedgehog has had its hole, and has reared its young, and has dug round about, and cherished them in its shade: thither the kites have gathered, one to another. Search diligently in the book of the Lord, and read: not one of them was missing, one did not seek the other: for what proceeds from my mouth, he has commanded, and his spirit, he himself has gathered them. And he himself has cast the lot for them and his hand has divided it to them by measure; they will possess it for ever: from generation to generation they will dwell in it. The Hebrews, as we said above, contend that these things were prophesied of the Roman empire, and that the devastation of a once most powerful kingdom is foretold in vengeance for Zion; and most of our writers think that this, according to the letter, is also written in the Apocalypse of John. But we, from what is said, the day of the Lord's vengeance, the year of the recompenses of the judgment of Zion, judge this to be the year of which the Savior himself speaks: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and to the blind that they may see, to call the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of recompense for our God: to comfort all who mourn, and to give glory to those who lament for Zion (Luke 4:18, 19; Isa 61:1-3); and of which it was said above: Wealthy women, rise (Isa 32:9), and remember the days of the year in grief with hope; and therefore we judge that after the general consummation of the whole world the Scripture returns to Jerusalem, to which it was speaking at that time, and describes its devastation at full length: namely, that after the time of the Roman siege has come, all things will be filled with pitch and sulphur and burning flames, and its smoke will remain for ever, and the pelican and the hedgehog and the ibis and the raven will dwell there, animals which are accustomed to dwell in desert places; and that this will come about because the line and the plummet of the Lord, that is, his sentence, cannot be changed. Its nobles, that is, the Apostles and the believers, will not be there, nor will they be joined to the number of the lost, but will rather call upon Christ the king. But all its princes, namely the scribes and Pharisees, will be brought to nothing, and in the once most adorned houses thorns and nettles and the thornbush will spring up. And it will be the lair of dragons and the pasture of ostriches, which are themselves also signs of utter desolation. And there will meet one another in it, according to the LXX, various phantoms of demons, or, as all the others translated according to the Hebrew, SIIM (ציים) and IIM (איים), onocentaurs and hairy ones and the lamia, which the fables of the Gentiles and the fictions of the poets describe. The hedgehog too rears its young there, and has a most secure lodging: thither the kites are gathered, a most rapacious bird, which in Hebrew is called DAJOTH (דיות), or, as the LXX translated, stags, of which we shall speak below. Among these things the Prophet speaks to his hearers: O men who hear me speaking, what I announce as to come will all be fulfilled in deed. For they are written in the book of the Lord, and his sentence is fixed, and not even one will be void. For what proceeds from my mouth, he has commanded; that is, I indeed speak, but the words are the Lord's, and by his spirit whatever has been said will be accomplished. By his decree and measure each thing will be fulfilled, and they will not abandon their order unto everlasting generations. Let these things be said according to the Hebrew and the historical explanation. But those who follow tropology affirm that, once the people of the Jews has been driven out, idolaters and those who serve various superstitions will dwell in Jerusalem under the names of beasts and monsters; and that these are the pelicans and hedgehogs, the ibis and the raven, the dragons and ostriches, and the onocentaurs, and the demons, and the hairy ones, and the lamia, which in Hebrew is called LILITH (לילית), and was translated lamia by Symmachus alone, and which some of the Hebrews suspect to be ἐριννὴν, that is, a fury. And indeed, if we consider that colonies brought from various nations were settled in Jerusalem, and that according to the rite of their own provinces the several households worshipped the monstrous forms of their own demons, we shall affirm that all these dwelt in Jerusalem. And what the LXX translated: There the stags met one another, and saw one another's faces: they passed by in number, not one of them perished, nor did one seek the other. For the Lord commanded them, and his spirit gathered them: and he himself gave them lots, and his hand will divide for them, that they may feed for ever, and possess it from generation to generation, and rest in it: this we shall interpret allegorically, to teach that the stags, that is, the Apostles and all holy teachers, of whom it is written: As the stag longs for the springs of waters, so my soul longs for you, O God (Ps 41 [42]:1); and elsewhere: The voice of the Lord perfecting the stags (Ps 28 [29]:9); and again: Let the stag of friendship and the foal of your graces speak with you (Prov 5); and in Job: But you have watched the months of the stags, and you will bring forth their young (Job 39:2); and in the Song of Songs it is said: My kinsman is like a roe, or a young stag upon the mountains of spices (Song 2:9); met one another in Jerusalem and saw each other's faces, and passed through it and left it, and went on to various provinces, because the Lord commanded them: Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19); and that his spirit gathered them, and gave them lots and divided them, so that one went to the Indians, another to the Spains, another to Illyricum, another to Greece, and each rested in the province of his own Gospel and teaching. What we have said is prophesied of Jerusalem, and what the Jews suspect is said of the Roman empire, some refer to the whole world, so as not to seem to disagree with what precedes.
35:1-2
The desert and the pathless land will be glad, and the wilderness will exult, and will flower like the lily. Budding, it will bud forth, and will exult, joyful and praising. The glory of Lebanon has been given to it, the beauty of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the Lord, and the beauty of our God. LXX: Rejoice, thirsty desert, and let the wilderness exult, and let it flower like the lily. The deserts of the Jordan will flower and exult: the glory of Lebanon has been given to it, and the honor of Carmel: and my people will see the glory of the Lord, and the height of our God. Since Jerusalem has been turned into pitch, and its everlasting smoke has gone up, and the pelican and the hedgehog, the ibis and the raven, dragons and ostriches, demons and onocentaurs, the lamia and the hairy ones dwell in it, and the sentence of the Lord has been fulfilled upon it: Your house will be left to you desolate (Luke 13:35): therefore she who before had been deserted, of whom it is said in the psalm: The voice of the Lord shaking the wilderness, and the Lord will shake the desert of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord preparing the stags; and he will lay bare the thickets of the forests (Ps 28 [29]:8, 9), will be changed into an abundance of all things; and, as the stags fight, the beasts which formerly possessed all the forests of the nations will be driven out of them, so that what is said in this same Prophet may be fulfilled: Rejoice, barren one, who do not bear: break forth and cry, you who do not travail; for more are the children of the desolate than of her who has a husband (Isa 54:1). She who before was thirsty, or pathless, not having life-giving waters, and through whom the Lord did not walk, will now flower into a lily, or, as Aquila expressed it more significantly, καλύκωσις, which we can call a swelling rose whose petals have not yet opened. And she will flower, so as to declare with the Apostle: We are the good fragrance of Christ in every place (2 Cor 2:15); and that saying of the Song of Songs: Flowers have appeared in the land: the mandrakes have given their fragrance (Song 7:12, 13). And what is set down in the LXX, and the deserts of the Jordan will exult, is indeed not found in the Hebrew; but we can say that by the river Jordan John's baptism of repentance is shown, which the Lord sealed and confirmed by his own washing. And since this is said figuratively of the wilderness, which refers to the nations, and in which John was, the Jordan can fittingly be joined to it, so that through the desert of the nations we may come to the baptism of the Savior. And what follows, the glory of Lebanon has been given to it, and the beauty of Carmel and Sharon, we must take according to the earlier explanation, in which we said that by Lebanon the Temple or Jerusalem is understood, as Zechariah says: Open your gates, O Lebanon (Zech 11:1); and Ezekiel: A great eagle with great wings, full of talons, which has the design of entering into Lebanon and Carmel (Ezek 17:3); and that Carmel signifies the former people, of which it was said above: And the desert will be in Carmel, and Carmel will be counted as a forest (Isa 32:15); and that Sharon has the same meaning, since the Scripture says: Sharon has become like a desert. All the brightness, then, the worship of God, and the knowledge of circumcision, and the most fruitful and level places, which are called Sharon, for which Symmachus translated plains, will be given to the once deserted Church, and its inhabitants will see the glory of the Lord, and the beauty, or height, of our God.
35:3-4
Strengthen the slackened hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to the faint-hearted (or to the fearful), Be strengthened, and do not fear; behold, your God will bring the vengeance of recompense: God himself will come and will save you (or, as the LXX translated, us). Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped (or will hear). Then the lame man will leap like a stag, and the tongue of the dumb will be opened, for waters have broken out in the desert, and torrents in the wilderness, and what was dry ground will become a pool (or marshes), and the thirsty land springs of water. In the lairs in which dragons dwelt before, the green of reed and rush will spring up (for which the LXX translated: There will be the gladness of birds, and folds of flocks). And there will be a path there, and a way (or a clean way), and it will be called the holy way; the polluted will not pass through it. And this will be for us a straight way, so that fools may not go astray in it (or, as the LXX translated, nor will there be an unclean way there, but those who have been scattered will pass through it, and will not go astray). There will be no lion there, he says, and no evil beast will go up by it, nor will one be found there, but those who have been set free will walk in it. And the redeemed of the Lord will return, and will come to Zion with praise, and everlasting gladness will be upon their head. They will obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and groaning will flee away. We have mingled both editions, lest, by setting out each one, the size of the books be stretched, which already exceeds the measure of brevity. The Apostles, of whom it was said above: They will see the glory of the Lord and the beauty of our God, are commanded to strengthen the hands that had grown slack among the nations, and to make firm the feeble knees; so that those who before could not do the work of God with slackened hands, and had a withered right hand, may stretch it out to good works; and those who long limped among idols with various errors may walk with firm step upon the truth; and that, strengthening the faint-hearted or timid by faith in the Lord, they may make them not fear, and the fear of the one God may drive out the fears of all error. And the cause of their security and constancy is that Christ is to come, to whom the Father has given all judgment, and he will render to each according to his works (John 5). He himself will come and will save you, you to whom it is said, Do not fear; or us, so that the Apostles may say that salvation is common to them with the believers. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame man will leap like a stag, and the tongue of the dumb will be opened. And although this was fulfilled by the greatness of signs, when the Lord said to the disciples of John who had been sent to him: Go and report to John what you have heard and seen: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the gospel preached to them (Luke 7:22); yet it is fulfilled daily among the nations, when those who before were blind, and stumbled against wood and stones, behold the light of truth. And those who with deaf ears could not hear the words of the Scriptures now rejoice at the precepts of God; when those who before were lame, and did not keep the right way, leap like stags, imitating their teachers; and the tongue of the dumb is opened, whose mouths Satan had shut, so that they could not confess the one Lord. And for this reason the eyes will be opened, the ears will hear, the lame will leap, and the tongue of the dumb will be opened: because in the once deserted Church the waters of saving baptism have broken out, or burst forth, and torrents and streams in the wilderness, namely the various spiritual graces; and what was dry ground has been turned into a pool and marshes, so that it is not only free from the burning of thirst, but is navigable and well watered, and has very many springs, which the stag longs for, and of which whoever has drunk can bless the Lord, according to what is written: Bless the Lord from the springs of Israel (Ps 67 [68]:27). In the lairs of the Gentile souls, in which dragons dwelt before, there will be the reed and the rush, with which the faith of the Lord may be written, and on which limbs once weary may rest; or there will be the gladness of birds, and folds of flocks: so that they may take the wings of a dove, and, leaving lowly things, hasten to the heights, and be able to say with the Psalmist: The Lord shepherds me, and I shall lack nothing: in a place of pasture, there he has set me: beside the waters of refreshment he has brought me up. There will be a path there, and a most clean way, which will be called holy, and which says of itself: I am the way (John 14:6), through which he who is polluted will not be able to pass. Hence it is also said in the psalm: Blessed are the undefiled in the way (Ps 118 [119]:1). And this way, that is, our God, will be for us so straight and level and plain that it has no error: and fools and the senseless may be able to walk in it, to whom Wisdom speaks in Proverbs: If anyone is a little one, let him come to me. And to the unwise she said: Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine which I have mixed for you. Leave childishness, and live, and walk in the ways of prudence (Prov 9:4-6). For God has chosen the foolish things of the world (1 Cor 1): the prince of which fools speaks in the psalm: O God, you know my foolishness. And the foolishness of God is wiser than men (Ps 68 [69]:6). Hence the LXX translated: And those who had been scattered (1 Cor 2), and separated from the fellowship of the Lord, will by no means go astray. There follows: There will be no lion there: our adversary the devil, who goes about roaring, seeking how he may enter the sheepfold of the Lord (1 Pet 5). And the evil beasts, his attendants, will not go up by it. For the track of a serpent cannot be found upon a rock. But those will walk in it who have been set free from the chains of sins, and redeemed by the blood of the Savior, and have repented, and have come to Zion, of which we have often spoken: You have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22); lest after the Jewish fashion we seek a golden Zion and a jewelled Jerusalem, which, according to the prophecy of Daniel, has been dissolved into everlasting ashes (Dan 9). And the everlasting gladness of those who praise the Lord will be upon their head, so that after they have conquered the world they may be able to say with the Apostle and with the Prophet: I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; for the rest, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness (2 Tim 4:7, 8); and, O Lord, as with the shield of your good will you have crowned us (Ps 5:13). Then, as joy and gladness take their place, sorrow and groaning will flee away, when he comes out of Zion who will deliver. All these things we, following the apostle Paul, interpret of the first coming of the Savior: but the Jews, and our Judaizers, refer them to the second, on the strength of a single little verse, They will return and come to Zion with praise, longing for the blood of victims, and the servitude of all the nations, and the beauty of wives.
Book Eleven
It is difficult, nay impossible, to please everyone: and there is not as great a diversity of faces as there is of opinions. In my explanation of the twelve prophets I seemed to some longer than I ought to have been; and for this reason in my short Commentaries on Daniel I aimed at brevity, except in the last and the second-to-last vision, in which, because of the greatness of their obscurity, I had to stretch out my discourse: and especially in the exposition of the seven and the sixty-two and the one weeks, in discussing which I briefly gathered what Africanus, the writer on chronology, what Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea, Clement too, presbyter of the Church of Alexandria, and Apollinaris of Laodicea, Hippolytus, the Hebrews and Tertullian thought, leaving it to the reader's judgment which of the many he should choose. So what I did out of modesty in judging, and out of respect for those who were going to read, may perhaps not please some, who desire to know not the opinions of the ancients but my own view. To them the answer is easy: that I did not wish to accept one in such a way as to seem to condemn the others. And certainly, if men so great and so learned displease fastidious readers, what would they have done with me, who, for the slenderness of my little talent, lie open to the bites of the envious? But if I have named the aforesaid men masters of the Church, let them understand that I do not approve the faith of all of them, who certainly contradict one another, but that I spoke so to distinguish them from Josephus and Porphyry, who have disputed a great deal on this question. And if, in expounding the statue and the discrepancy of its feet and toes, I interpreted the iron and the clay of the Roman kingdom, which Scripture foretells as strong at first and then weak, let them impute it not to me but to the Prophet. For princes are not to be flattered in such a way that the truth of the holy Scriptures is neglected; nor is a general discussion an injury to one person. And while this was being guarded against by the kind zeal of my friends, it was suddenly removed by the judgment of God, so that both my friends' zeal for me and the snares of my rivals might be shown. But of this elsewhere: now let us carry out what we have begun. The eleventh book on Isaiah, O virgin of Christ Eustochium, because it is going to discuss a great part of history, will be easier at the beginning, up to two thirds of it; the rest must be dictated in a like manner: and brevity must be so pursued that no loss is done to understanding.
36:1ff.
And it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of the Assyrians came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. And the king of the Assyrians sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to king Hezekiah with a heavy hand, and he stood at the aqueduct of the upper pool, in the way of the fuller's field. And there went out to him Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder; and Rabshakeh said to them: Say to Hezekiah: Thus says the great king, the king of the Assyrians: What is this confidence in which you trust? Or with what counsel and strength are you planning to rebel? In whom do you have confidence, that you have withdrawn from me? Behold, you are trusting in this broken staff of reed, in Egypt: on which if a man leans, it will enter into his hand and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. But if you answer me, We trust in the Lord our God, is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and Jerusalem: You shall worship before this altar? And now deliver yourself to my lord the king of the Assyrians, and I will give you two thousand horses, and you will not be able on your part to furnish riders for them. And how will you withstand the face of the judge of a single place, one of the lesser servants of my lord? But if you trust in Egypt, and in chariots, and in horsemen: and now, have I come up without the Lord against this land to destroy it? The Lord said to me: Go up against this land, and destroy it. The history is plain and needs no interpretation; and these same things are related, written more fully, in the volumes of Kings and of Chronicles: that in the third year of Hoshea son of Elah, king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign. He was twenty-five years old, it says, when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem, and he did what was good before the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. And a little after: He hoped in the Lord God of Israel, and after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him: he clung to the Lord and did not depart from his footsteps, and he did his commandments which the Lord had commanded Moses: whence also the Lord was with him, and in all things to which he went forth he conducted himself wisely (2 Kgs 18:2, 7). And he rebelled against the king of the Assyrians and did not serve him: in the sixth year of whose reign Shalmaneser king of the Assyrians took Samaria and the ten tribes which were called Israel, and carried them away to the Assyrians, and settled them in Halah and in Habor, the rivers of Gozan, in the cities of the Medes (2 Kgs 17 and 18). And after seven years, that is, in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of the Assyrians entered Judea and besieged its fortified cities, wishing to take them. And when he was besieging Lachish, Hezekiah sent messengers to him, saying: I have sinned; withdraw from me, and whatever you lay upon me I will bear. And when he had paid three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold at the king's command, having broken off the doors of the Temple of the Lord and stripped off its plates, which he himself had fastened on, the king of the Assyrians sent Tartan and Rabshakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a strong hand to Jerusalem: and when they had gone up, they came to Jerusalem and stood by the aqueduct of the upper pool, which is in the way of the fuller's field, and called the king to them. And there went out to them Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the overseer of the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder; and Rabshakeh said to them: Speak to Hezekiah: Thus said the great king, the king of the Assyrians, and the rest that is contained in the history. In this the arrogance of Rabshakeh is to be considered: that, like some opposing power, he imitates the custom of the Prophets, so that what they are accustomed to put in their prologues, Thus says the Lord, to show the authority and greatness of the speaker, this man now said: Thus says the great king, the king of the Assyrians. And there went out to him Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was overseer of the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder. This is the Eliakim son of Hilkiah of whom we read above, in the Vision of the valley of Zion (cf. Isa 22:20, 21): I will call my servant Eliakim son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your tunic, and strengthen him with your girdle, and give your power into his hand, and he shall be as a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah, and the rest. Now these things are said to Shebna, who before him was overseer of the Temple, of whom it is written in the same vision: Go and enter in to him who dwells in the tabernacle, to Shebna the overseer of the Temple (ibid., 15); and the Hebrews relate that he, terrified by Rabshakeh's threats, surrendered to the Assyrians and betrayed the lower part of Jerusalem to the enemy, so that, apart from the citadel of Zion and the Temple, nothing else remained that the Assyrian did not hold. Hence those err who think that the Shebna who now goes out with Eliakim and Joah to Rabshakeh is the same as the one above. For there Shebna is set down as overseer of the Temple, who is said to be destined for capture by the Assyrians; but here Shebna is a scribe, that is, γραμματεὶς, which in Hebrew is called SOPHER סופר, and he is ὁμώνυμος with the former. As for Rabshakeh, who spoke in the Hebrew tongue, the Jews suppose him to have been a son of the prophet Isaiah, who was himself also a traitor; and that the other son of Isaiah, who was left, was called Jasub, which in our language means left. Others, again, think that he was a Samaritan, and that for this reason he knew the Hebrew speech and blasphemed the Lord so boldly and impiously. Let us then consider the words of Rabshakeh; and first, what he says: You are trusting in this broken staff of reed, in Egypt, is false: for no history relates that Hezekiah sent to the Egyptians and asked for Pharaoh's help. And what he adds: If you answer me, We trust in the Lord our God, is true. But again he joins a lie to the truth: that Hezekiah had taken away His high places and altars. For he had done this not against God but for God, so that, idolatry and the old error being destroyed, he might command God to be worshiped in Jerusalem, where his Temple was; although we read that by a very bad custom the people sacrificed victims to God on the mountains and hills, even when the altar had already been built. And his promising two thousand horses, wishing to show the fewness of the besieged, for which Hezekiah could not furnish riders, does not come from the weakness of the people of the Jews, as if it lacked the skill of riding, but from the observance of the commandments of God, who through Moses had commanded concerning the king of Israel: He shall not multiply horses for himself, and he shall not have very many wives (Deut 17:16, 17). But if, he says, you cannot withstand me, the servant of Sennacherib, who am the least of his servants, how will you withstand the so great might of the king? And to what he had said, If you answer me, We trust in the Lord God, he replied cunningly and shrewdly that he had come not by his own will but by the Lord's commands: The Lord said to me: Go up against this land and destroy it. And the argument is: certainly I could not have come here without the Lord's will. But since I have come and taken many cities, and only part of Jerusalem remains untouched, it is clear that I came by his will. I have read in someone's Commentary that this Sennacherib is the same who also took Samaria, which is altogether false. For the sacred history relates that first Pul king of the Assyrians, under Menahem king of Israel, laid waste the ten tribes; second, that Tiglath-pileser came to Samaria under Pekah son of Remaliah of Israel; third, that Shalmaneser under Hoshea king of Israel took all Samaria (2 Kgs 15, 17); fourth, that it was Sargon who stormed Ashdod (Isa 20); fifth, Esarhaddon, who, when Israel had been carried away, sent the Samaritans into the land of Judea as guards (2 Kgs 17); sixth, Sennacherib, who under Hezekiah king of Judah, having taken Lachish and the other cities of Judea, besieged Jerusalem (2 Kgs 18). Others, however, think that one and the same king is called by many names.
36:11ff.
And Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh: Speak to your servants in the Syrian tongue, for we understand it: do not speak to us in the Jewish tongue in the ears of the people who are on the wall. And Rabshakeh said to them: Has my lord sent me to your lord and to you to speak all these words, and not rather to the men who sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung and drink the urine of their feet with you? And Rabshakeh stood and cried out with a loud voice in the Jewish tongue, and said: Hear the words of the great king, the king of the Assyrians. Thus says the king: Let not Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to rescue you; and let not Hezekiah give you confidence in the Lord, saying: The Lord will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of the Assyrians. Do not listen to Hezekiah. For thus says the king of the Assyrians. The accusation of Rabshakeh is a testimony to Hezekiah: that when all the cities of Judea had been taken he trusted in the Lord and said to the people: Do not fear, nor be afraid of the king of the Assyrians and of all the multitude that is with him; for there are many more with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh; with us is the Lord our God, who is our helper and fights for us. And the people, it says, were strengthened by such words of Hezekiah king of Judah. Hence Rabshakeh wishes to destroy what the other had built up, and he speaks to the people: Let not Hezekiah deceive you; and let him not give you confidence in the Lord God. And the humble entreaty of Eliakim and Shebna and Joah, Speak to your servants in the Syrian tongue, for we understand it; and do not speak to us in the Jewish tongue in the ears of the people who are on the wall, has this sense: What need is there for the people to be stirred by false terrors, and for you to boast of a vain strength? Speak a language which the people do not understand. For we have knowledge of your language, and we know the Syrian speech, which is common to both. To which Rabshakeh arrogantly: Has, he says, my lord sent me to your lord and to you, and not rather to the men who sit on the wall? And again, increasing the terror with a threat, that they may eat, he says, their own dung, and drink the urine of their feet with you? By this he shows that they will be taken by hunger and want and thirst. And at the same time he joins enticement to fear, so that those whom he had not conquered by terror he might deceive by promises and persuasion, saying, in the words of the king of the Assyrians:
36:16, 18
Make a blessing with me, and come out to me, and eat each one of his vine, and each one of his fig tree, and drink each one the water of his cistern: until I come and take you away to a land that is like your land: a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. Let not Hezekiah trouble you, saying: The Lord will deliver us. Have the gods of the nations delivered each one his land from the hand of the king of the Assyrians? For which in the volume of Kings one reads: Do with me what is profitable, and come out to me (2 Kgs 18:31). So the sense is the same. Do, he says, what may benefit you and turn to your blessing. Or he says this: Bless the Assyrian king and praise him, and confess him your lord, so that you may obtain rewards; and until I return from Egypt, or, having taken Libnah, come back, dwell in your city and enjoy your goods. But afterward I will come and transfer you to a land which is like your land, of grain, wine and olives. And he does not say the name of the region, because he could not find one equal to the land of promise; but he promises a likeness. For this is what each one desires: the land in which he was born. Some think that Media was promised them, which had a likeness to the land of Judea both in situation and in its crops. And what he adds:
36:19ff.
Where is the God of Hamath and Arpad? Where is the God of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who is there among all the gods of these lands that has rescued his land out of my hand, that the Lord should rescue Jerusalem out of my hand? And they were silent and answered him not a word. For the king had commanded them, saying: Do not answer him. This shows that Samaria served all these gods, and was taken for that reason. But if, he says, with so many gods presiding, we easily overcame the ten tribes, how much more easily shall we conquer you, nay, Jerusalem alone, with one God as its guardian? And all the people kept silent and answered him nothing; for they had received the king's command not to answer him. Truly righteous was Hezekiah, doing all things faithfully and everything with counsel. And he had commanded that the blaspheming Assyrian not be answered for this reason: lest he provoke him to greater blasphemies. Hence it is written: Do not kindle the coals of the sinner (Sir 8:13); and in the psalm we read: When the sinner stood against me, I was dumb, and was humbled, and kept silent from good things (Ps 38 [39]:2-3); and again: Set, O Lord, a guard to my mouth, and a fortified door to my lips: incline not my heart to words of malice (Ps 140 [141]:3).
37:1ff.
And Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, came in to Hezekiah with their garments torn, and reported to him the words of Rabshakeh. And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah had heard, he tore his garments, and was covered with sackcloth, and went into the house of God. And he sent Eliakim, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah, the son of the prophet Amos, and they said to him: Thus says Hezekiah: This day is a day of tribulation and of rebuke and of blasphemy, for the children have come to the birth, and there is no strength to bring forth. If by any means the Lord your God may hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of the Assyrians his master sent to blaspheme the living God and to reproach him with words which the Lord your God has heard. Lift up therefore a prayer for the remnant that is found. And the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah; and Isaiah said to them: Thus shall you say to your master: Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid before the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of the Assyrians have blasphemed me. Behold, I will give him a spirit, and he shall hear a report, and shall return to his own land, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land. Leaving aside what is plain, let us discuss only those things in which a hidden sense lies. They tear their garments because they hear Rabshakeh blaspheming. The king himself also tears his garments, because he believed it was owing to his own sins and the people's that Rabshakeh had come up to the gate of Jerusalem and had spoken such things against the Lord. Hence the high priest, because he believed the Savior had blasphemed, tore his garments (Matt 26); and Paul and Barnabas, when the Lycaonians offered them the worship due to God, tore their garments (Acts 14). In place of royal attire, then, he was covered with sackcloth; and going from the palace to the Temple, he sent Eliakim the high priest, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests to Isaiah, the son of the prophet Amos. In this the humility and prudence of the king is to be considered. He himself goes to the Temple; the princes of the people and the elders of the priests, covered not with priestly stoles but with haircloth, he sent to Isaiah, the son of the prophet Amos. For which in the volume of Kings one reads: He himself was covered with sackcloth and entered the house of the Lord, and he sent Eliakim the overseer of the house, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amos (2 Kgs 19:1, 2). Here, because Isaiah was writing the history about himself, he did not call himself a Prophet but the son of a Prophet; there, however, because the writer of the history was another, he writes that he himself was a Prophet. This we read also of Matthew the Evangelist: that Matthew himself called himself a publican (Matt 9), while the other Evangelists were silent about the name of publican and set down only the apostolic dignity; and that in the pairings of the Apostles he is second in his own list and first in the others'. And they said, it says, to him: Thus says Hezekiah, not 'the king', not swelling with the title of empire: This day is a day of tribulation and of rebuke and of blasphemy: of our tribulation, of God's rebuke, of the enemies' blasphemy. And he sets down the likeness of a woman in labor and in pain, who has come up to the birth and cannot bring forth, nor say: From fear of you, O Lord, we have conceived, and have been in pain, and have brought forth the spirit of salvation. There follows: If by any means the Lord your God may hear the words of Rabshakeh (Isa 26:18 LXX). For we do not dare to call the Lord of all our Lord, since through his anger we suffer so much; but we call him your Lord. And we have this confidence of vengeance: that the living God is blasphemed by a worshiper of dead idols. And they have reproached with words which the Lord your God has heard. Lift up therefore a prayer, our prayer, which lies prostrate: not for the whole people, which has already perished, but for the remnant, which is besieged. And when the servants of king Hezekiah had come to Isaiah: again he was silent about the name of Prophet, in order to keep the humility he had begun. And Isaiah anticipated them: for by the same spirit by which he knew things to come, he had heard the king too, though absent; and he tells them what they should answer to their master, humbled in this confidence of conscience. Say, he says, to your master, who is your lord; for my Lord says this: Do not fear the words with which not you but I have been blasphemed. Nor do I tell all that I am going to do to the king of the Assyrians, lest I seem to boast of my power; but only that a spirit is to be given him, not of God but an adverse one. And having heard a report, let him return to his own land and fall in it by the sword: so that Hezekiah might hear both things he desired together, that he was to be freed from siege and danger, and that the hostile and angry king would die in his own land. If anyone asks why in a book of Prophecy the history written in the volumes of Kings and Chronicles seems to be mixed in, let him consider that prophecy is coupled with the history, as much concerning the liberation of the city as concerning the destruction of the Assyrian, and the turning back of the sun by ten hours, and the prolonging of life by a space of fifteen years, which belongs both to prophecy and to history.
37:8ff.
And Rabshakeh returned and found the king of the Assyrians fighting against Libnah: for he had heard that he had departed from Lachish. And he heard concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, people saying: He has come out to fight against you. And when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying: Thus shall you say to Hezekiah king of Judah, speaking: Let not your God, in whom you trust, deceive you, saying: Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of the Assyrians. Behold, you have heard all that the kings of the Assyrians have done to all the lands which they overthrew, and will you be able to be delivered? Have the gods of the nations rescued them, whom my fathers overthrew, Gozan and Haran, and Rezeph, and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Ana and Ava? In the same words and with the same sense it is written in the volume of Kings and of Chronicles that Rabshakeh, according to the will of the Lord, abandoned the siege of Jerusalem and went on to his master, who, as he had learned, was going to attack Libnah, Lachish having been either abandoned or taken. Sennacherib himself too, hearing that Tirhakah king of the Ethiopians was bringing war against him, went to meet him as he came, and nonetheless sends messengers and letters to Hezekiah, so that those whom he had not yet taken by force he might terrify by words. And just as he had said to the people, Let not Hezekiah deceive you (2 Kgs 18:29), so he speaks the same blasphemy to the king: Let not your God deceive you (2 Kgs 19:10). And he sets out the examples of his forefathers: that just as their gods could not deliver the other lands out of their hands, so neither would Jerusalem be delivered. In the enumeration of the other nations he sets down ANA (הנע) and AVA (ועוה), which the Seventy ran together, saying anavegava; and the conjunction and, that is, vau, between the two nations Ana and Ava, they set down in the Hebrew tongue, so that to the ignorant it seems one nation or city. We pass quickly over the plain things in order to dwell on the doubtful ones. That Sennacherib king of the Assyrians fought against the Egyptians and besieged Pelusium, and that, when the mounds had already been built to take the city, Tirhakah king of the Ethiopians came to its help, and that in one night near Jerusalem one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the Assyrian army fell by pestilence, is related by Herodotus, and most fully by Berosus, the writer of Chaldean history, whose credibility must be sought from their own books.
37:14ff.
And Hezekiah took the books from the hand of the messengers and read them; and he went up into the house of the Lord and spread them out before the Lord, and prayed to the Lord, saying: O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, who sit upon the Cherubim, you alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth: for you made heaven and earth. Incline, O Lord, your ear and hear; open, O Lord, your eyes and see, and hear all the words of Sennacherib which he sent to blaspheme the living God. For truly, O Lord, the kings of the Assyrians have made desolate the lands and their regions, and have given their gods to the fire: for they were not gods, but works of men's hands, wood and stones; and they broke them in pieces. And now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, and let all the kingdoms of the earth know that you alone are God. Against the blasphemies of king Sennacherib Hezekiah seized his accustomed weapons. And again he goes to the Temple and spreads out his letters before the Lord. Before, he had been silent: for, terrified by fear of the Lord, he did not dare to open his mouth in the Temple or to pour out free prayers to God. But now, because he had already heard Isaiah saying: Do not be afraid before the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of the Assyrians have blasphemed me, and the rest, he boldly entreats the Lord and asserts that God alone is living; whereas the idols we understand as images of the dead. And what he adds: For truly, O Lord, the kings of the Assyrians have made desolate the lands and their regions, and have given their gods to the fire: for they were not gods, but works of men's hands, wood and stones; and they broke them in pieces, is proved by many histories, which write that the kings of the Persians came into Greece and overthrew and plundered the temples of the Greeks. And he asks for vengeance, so that through his occasion all kingdoms may know that he alone is God, who can deliver his own from danger.
37:21ff.
And Isaiah son of Amos sent to Hezekiah, saying: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: As to what you have asked me concerning Sennacherib king of the Assyrians, this is the word which the Lord has spoken concerning him: The virgin daughter of Zion has despised you and mocked you; behind you the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head. Whom have you reproached, and whom have you blasphemed, and against whom have you raised your voice and lifted up the height of your eyes? Against the Holy One of Israel? By the hand of your servants you have reproached the Lord and have said: With the multitude of my chariots I have gone up to the height of the mountains, the ridges of Lebanon, and I will cut down its lofty cedars and its choice fir trees, and I will enter the height of its summit, the forest of its Carmel. I dug, and drank water, and dried up with the sole of my foot all the streams of the embankments. Because Hezekiah had entreated the Lord so boldly and did not send to Isaiah as he had sent before, the Prophet himself does not go to him, but sends messengers to tell him in the words of God: Concerning Sennacherib, against whom you pray, this is the Lord's sentence: The virgin of Zion and daughter of Jerusalem (who is called virgin and daughter for this reason, that while all the nations worship the images of dead men, she alone preserves the chastity of the religion of God and the worship of the one Godhead) has mocked you and despised you; and she who, lest she provoke you to greater blasphemy, had not answered you when you were present, has shaken her head behind you as you go away, sure of vengeance, secure about punishment. And she has said this: Not against me, but against the Lord you have been proud; and not you yourself, but through your servants, so that the arrogance of the blasphemer might be the greater. For you said that with the multitude of your chariots you would climb the height of the mountains and the ridges of Lebanon, and cut down its lofty cedars and fir trees. This we ought to take either μεταφορικῶς of all the nations and their princes, or of Jerusalem, which is what Lebanon means, so that we refer its cedars and firs to all its powerful and noble men, and the height of its summit and the forest of Carmel to the Temple. For he himself had said above: Have you not heard what the kings of the Assyrians have done to all the lands which they overthrew? Therefore neither will you be able to be delivered. And what he adds: I dug and drank water, and dried up with the sole of my foot all the streams of the embankments, can be understood according to the history: that because of the multitude of his army he dried up all the streams, so that he was compelled to dig wells for himself; according to the metaphor: that he laid waste with his army all the peoples, who are sometimes described under the name of waters. For which the Seventy alone translated: and I have set a bridge, and I have made desolate the waters, and every gathering of waters: that is, that no nation was impassable to him, but he trod with his foot upon all the waters of the peoples.
37:26ff.
Have you not heard what I did to it long ago? From the days of old I formed it, and now I have brought them, and it has come to be for the uprooting of the hills that fight together, and of fortified cities. Their inhabitants, with shortened hand, trembled and were confounded: they became like the hay of the field, and the grass of the pasture, and the herb of the housetops, which withered before it ripened. Your dwelling, and your going out, and your coming in I have known, and your madness against me, when you raged against me. Your pride has come up into my ears; I will therefore put a ring in your nostrils, and a bridle in your lips, and I will lead you back by the way by which you came. These things are to be understood as spoken in the person of God against the words of the Assyrian: that the Lord answered his blasphemy thus: Do you not know that these things which you have done, you did by my will, and that I foretold them as to come, and commanded that they be done through you? So what I decreed long ago has been fulfilled in its time: that the hills, that is, the princes who formerly fought among themselves, and the most fortified cities, when I drew back my hand and did not furnish my accustomed help, should be uprooted and tremble and perish, and be compared not to the olive and the vine and fruitful trees, but to hay and grass and the herbs of the housetops, which are a hindrance to the crops and wither before they come to maturity. So I knew beforehand your sitting, and your going out, and your coming in, and I spoke of the madness with which you were going to rage against me, through the Prophets as they prophesied (above, on Isa 14:13): through whom I had long ago known that you would say: I will ascend into heaven; above the stars of heaven I will set my throne, and I will be like the Most High. So your fury and your pride have reached my ears, and I will by no means bear with you any longer, so that you may understand that what you were able to do, you were able to do not by your own strength but by my decision. For the impious nations and the unfruitful trees deserved to be cut down and to fall through you, as through my axe and saw. So I will put a ring, or a muzzle, in your nostrils, to bind fast your blaspheming mouth, so that you may by no means dare to speak such things any more; and I will put a bridle on your lips, to tame your ferocity and lead you back to the Assyrians. This figure Scripture also uses in the Psalms against the impious: With bridle and muzzle bind fast the jaws of those who do not draw near to you (Ps 31 [32]:9).
37:30ff.
But this shall be a sign to you: Eat this year what springs up of itself, and in the second year feed on fruits; but in the third year sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. And what has been saved of the house of Judah, and what is left, shall send down root downward and bear fruit upward: for out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and salvation from mount Zion. The zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this. All these things the Prophet speaks to Hezekiah through messengers: what Sennacherib said, what the Lord answered him. Now he addresses his speech to the king himself, lest perhaps he doubt that the things spoken will come. And it was for this reason above all that the Prophets had credit for their words among the people: because they told not only of things that were to come many ages later, but also of things to be fulfilled at once and after no great space of time; and that within two years both the Assyrian king would perish and security would be restored to the city of Jerusalem. This, he says, will be the sign of the things to come that I foretell: that this year you will eat what springs up of itself; or, according to the Seventy, what you sowed before. And in the second year, according to Symmachus, feed on fruits; or, according to the same Seventy, on what has sprouted from the former crops and from seed falling to the ground. But in the third year, the Assyrian now put to flight and the siege lifted, sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruits. For the remnant of this small city, which is now walled in by a hostile army and does not believe it will escape, will receive such abundance and happiness in all things that, like a tree founded on a deep root, they will be filled with the thickest fruits. For out of Jerusalem and out of mount Zion a remnant shall go forth and fill the land of Judea, not by its own merit but by the mercy of God, nay by the zeal with which he was jealous for his people against the impious.
37:33-34
Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of the Assyrians: He shall not enter this city, and he shall not shoot an arrow there, nor shall a shield seize it, and he shall not cast up a mound around it. By the way by which he shall come, by it he shall return, and he shall not enter this city, says the Lord; and I will protect this city and save it for my own sake and for the sake of David my servant. He returns to his subject, and after the hope of things to come he shakes off the present fear. For there was not as much gladness over the things he had promised would come long afterward as there was anxiety about those that were imminent. And when he says that the Assyrian will withdraw, and will not raise a shield against Jerusalem nor shoot darts, nor is the city to be walled in with siege works and a mound, and that the adversary will return by the way he came, and the city will be freed from the present siege, and at the end adds: for my own sake and for the sake of David my servant, this signifies that they are preserved not by their own merit but by God's clemency, nay by the memory of their father David. In this they are reminded both of their own negligence and of his faith and righteousness: that God so loves righteousness that he protects even the descendants of holy men, not by their own merit but by the virtue of their forefathers.
37:36ff.
And the Angel of God went out and struck in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand; and they arose in the morning, and behold, all were corpses of the dead. And Sennacherib king of the Assyrians went out and departed and returned, and dwelt in Nineveh. And it came to pass, while he was worshiping in the temple of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons struck him with the sword; and they fled into the land of Ararat; and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place. One hundred and eighty-five thousand of the bravest men are slain by one Angel in one night, and without wounds on the slain a cruel death runs through them, driving the souls out of the bodies by the will of God. Concerning which one reads in Chronicles: And the Lord sent an Angel, who struck every strong man and warrior and the commander of the army of the king of the Assyrians; and he returned with disgrace to his own land (2 Chr 32:21). He was preserved for this reason, that he might know the power of God and restrain his blaspheming mouth, and become a witness of that majesty which a little before he had despised. As for what he added, And they arose in the morning, let us take it either of the Israelites or of the rest of his army: although it is written in the volume of Kings that when the king himself had risen at daybreak, he saw all the bodies of the dead (2 Kgs 19). Pharaoh too is preserved through the ten plagues of Egypt, so as to perish last: which this man also suffered. For when he had returned to Nineveh, the chief city of his kingdom, and was worshiping in the temple of Nisroch his god, as though bringing back a victory over his enemies, and was entering the shrine of his idol triumphant and giving thanks, the despiser of the true God is slaughtered in the sanctuary of a false deity: and he perishes not by the Angel's sword, which would have been a fate shared with many, but by the parricide of his sons. And when they had fled into the land of Ararat, which is understood as Armenia, Esarhaddon succeeded to his father's place, who, as Scripture testifies, sent inhabitants to Samaria, so that the land should not remain uncultivated. Ararat is a level region in Armenia, through which the Araxes flows, of incredible fertility, at the roots of mount Taurus, which extends as far as there. So the Ark too, in which Noah was delivered with his children when the Flood ceased, was carried not to the mountains of Armenia in general, which is called Ararat, but to the highest mountains of Taurus, which overhang the plains of Ararat.
38:1ff.
In those days Hezekiah was sick unto death; and Isaiah son of Amos, the Prophet, came in to him and said to him: Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live. And Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, and prayed to the Lord, and said: I beseech you, O Lord, remember, I pray, how I have walked before you in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done what is good in your eyes: and Hezekiah wept with a great weeping. Whom the Lord loves he rebukes, and he chastises every son whom he receives (Prov 3). Lest the heart of Hezekiah be lifted up after his incredible triumphs and the victory won out of the midst of captivity, he is visited with infirmity of body and hears that he is going to die, so that, turning to the Lord, he may bend his sentence. This indeed we read also in the prophet Jonah, and in the threats against David, which are said to be coming and were not done: not because God changes his sentence, but because he calls mankind to the knowledge of himself. For the Lord repents over evils. And Hezekiah turned his face to the wall because he could not go to the Temple: to the wall of the Temple, that is, next to which Solomon had built the palace. Or simply to the wall, lest he seem to display his tears to those sitting by. Or certainly, according to Jeremiah, to his heart; who calls CIR (קיר), that is, wall, the heart: so that he entreated the Lord with his whole mind. And he says: I beseech you, O Lord, remember, I pray, how I have walked before you in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done what is good in your eyes. And hearing that he is going to die, he does not pray for life and many years, but leaves to God's judgment what he wishes to grant. For he knew that Solomon had pleased God for this reason, that he did not ask for more years of life; but as one about to go to the Lord, he recounts his works, how he walked before him in truth and with a perfect heart. Happy the conscience that in time of affliction remembers its good works: For blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8). And what of its being written elsewhere: Who shall boast that he has a pure heart (Prov 20:9)? This is solved thus: perfection of heart is ascribed to him here because he destroyed the idols, overturned the vessels of the temple of Baal, broke the bronze serpent in pieces, and did the other things which Scripture records. And he wept with a great weeping because of the Lord's promise to David, which he saw would perish in his death. For at that time Hezekiah had no sons; for after his death Manasseh began to reign in Judea when he was twelve years old. From which it is clear that Manasseh was begotten after the third year of the life granted to him. So all this weeping is because he despaired that the Christ would be born of his seed. Others assert that even holy men are terrified by death, because of the uncertainty of judgment and their ignorance of God's sentence as to what abode they will have. And at the same time the question of fate is solved, and of the chains of necessity and of causes: that the day of death is by no means fixed beforehand for each person, but that by the will of God and by causes unknown to mortals one either lives or dies; especially since the necessity of death, once set, is here postponed, and we have read that very many were raised up after death.
38:4ff.
And the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying: Go and say to Hezekiah: Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add to your days fifteen years, and I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of the Assyrians, and I will protect it. And this shall be a sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do this word which he has spoken: Behold, I will make the shadow of the lines, by which it had gone down on the dial of Ahaz in the sun, go back ten lines: and the sun went back ten lines by the steps by which it had gone down. Here, as in a prophecy, the history is related in reversed order, which in the volume of Kings is read in better sequence. While Hezekiah was weeping with a great weeping, before Isaiah had gone out of the middle part of the court, the word of the Lord came to him, saying: Go back and say to Hezekiah, the leader of my people: I have heard your prayer and seen your tear: Behold, I have healed you. And Hezekiah said to Isaiah: What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me (2 Kgs 20:4 and 5)? To him the Prophet answered: This shall be the sign from the Lord that the Lord will do the word which he has spoken: Do you wish the shadow to advance so many lines, or to go back as many steps? And Hezekiah said to him: It is easy for the shadow to increase by ten lines, and I do not wish this to be done; but that it go back ten steps. And when, at Isaiah's calling upon the power of the Lord, the sign had been accomplished, Isaiah commanded that a lump of fresh figs be brought: and when they had brought it and laid it upon his wound, he was cured. The Prophet returns to the king at the Lord's command, so that he who had struck might himself heal; and Hezekiah is called the leader of his people, and son of David, whose works he followed, for he had done what was right according to all that David his father did: and his prayer is heard and his tears are seen, because he had walked before the Lord in truth and with a perfect heart, and had wept with a great weeping, and had done what was pleasing in his eyes. Fifteen years are added to his life, which he had not asked for, and besides, the security of the kingdom during his lifetime is promised. But if, as some think, to live in the body is a condemnation, and, according to what is said: Return, my soul, to your rest (Ps 114 [116]:7), and in another place: Bring my soul out of prison (Ps 141 [142]:8), death is to be desired, that we may be freed from prison: how does the Lord now grant it as a benefit that one who was about to be freed should live yet fifteen years in prison? And a sign is given, that the sun should go back ten steps, which we, following Symmachus, have rendered as lines and dial; for he understood the steps as lines, to make the sense clearer to readers. Or else the steps had been built by mechanical art in such a way that the shadow, descending through each one, marked off the spaces of the hours. This sign was a type both of the present time and of the future: that as the sun went back to its beginning, so Hezekiah's life too returned to years already unwoven; and that for us, who live in the hebdomad and the ogdoad, the spaces of life are prolonged through the resurrection of Christ. The guides to the holy Places in this province are accustomed to show, within the enclosure of the Temple, the steps of the house of Hezekiah, or of Ahaz, down which the sun descended. But I will never believe that the house, I do not say of Ahaz, who was an impious king, but of any righteous king whatever, was in the Temple of God: since Solomon is said, among other things, to have offended God for this reason, that he built Millo on high, from which, walking in the tower of his palace, he used to look down on the court of the Temple (1 Kgs 9).
38:9
The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick and had recovered from his infirmity. LXX: The prayer of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he was sick and rose up from his infirmity. I wonder how the Seventy alone put prayer for writing, since prayer is called THEPHELLATH (תפלת), and not MACHTHAB (מכתב), which is what is written in the present place; otherwise prayer would fittingly be said if it concerned the present time and not the past. For it is clear that after his health was restored, rising from his infirmity, he wrote these things down; from which it follows that it is not a prayer but a thanksgiving for the benefit he had received.
38:10ff.
I said: In the half of my days I shall go to the gates of hell: I sought the remainder of my years. I said: I shall not see the Lord God in the land of the living: I shall not behold man any more, and the dweller of rest. My generation has ceased: it is taken away and rolled up from me like a shepherds' tent. My life is cut off as by a weaver: while I was yet beginning, he cut me off: from morning to evening you will make an end of me. I hoped until morning: like a lion, so he has broken all my bones. From morning to evening you will make an end of me. LXX: I said: In the height of my days I shall go to the gates of hell: I will leave the remaining years. I said: I shall by no means any more see the salvation of God in the land of the living, nor shall I see man any more with the inhabitants: I have failed from my kindred. It has gone out and departed from me, as one takes down a tent who had pitched it: like a web my spirit has departed, when it is cut off by the weaver. In that day I was given up until morning: like a lion, so he has broken all my bones. From day to night I was given up. He relates what he thought silently in the time of pressing distress and imminent sickness. I said, he says, in my heart, in the half of my days, or, as Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion translated, in the infirmity and silence of my days; for which the Seventy translated height, because of the likeness of a letter, reading RAME (רמי) for DAME (דמי): although some have rendered DAME as blood, so that the sense is, In the blood of my days, when my blood and my death were being sought. So in despair I said: I shall go to the gates of hell, either by the common law of nature, or those gates from which the Psalmist sings that he was freed: You who lift me up from the gates of death, that I may announce all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion (Ps 9:15). These I think are the gates of hell which do not prevail against Peter (Matt 16), because he slept in the fullness of his days. The saints fill up their days, as Abraham did, who died full of days in a good old age (Gen 25). But sinners and the impious die in the half of their days, of whom the Psalmist also speaks: Men of blood and deceitful men shall not live out half their days (Ps 54 [55]:25). For they do not fulfill the works of virtue, nor are they eager to amend their faults by penance. Hence in the middle of life's course and in the darkness of their errors they will be led to Tartarus. I sought, he says, the remainder of my years, thinking that he would live no longer. I said: I shall not see the Lord, the Lord in the land of the living. For Lord and Lord, IA (יה) is set twice in the Hebrew, which sounds in the last syllable of ALLELUIA (הללויה); for which the Seventy translated: I shall by no means any more see the salvation of God in the land of the living. Of which it is written in another place: I will please the Lord in the region of the living (Ps 114 [116]:9). And again: I will please the Lord in the light of the living (Ps 55 [56]:9). The region of the Saints, then, is the very one that is called the light of the living. For he is not the God of the dead but of the living (Matt 22). And this is all that he fears: that, led down to hell, he may by no means deserve to behold the salvation of God. There follows: I shall not behold man any more, and the dweller of rest. This we had formerly joined to the following verse because of the ambiguity of the word; for the Hebrew word HOLED, if it is read or written ELED (חלד), means rest; if EDEL (חדל), it means setting. So he fears that he may not dwell in rest with the saints and the men of God, that he may not see the Lord in the land of the living, that his generation may be dissolved like a tent, that like a web it may be cut off at the very beginning of the light, and that the Christ may by no means arise from his seed. And that our body is called a tent the Apostle too teaches, saying: We who are in this tent groan, being burdened (2 Cor 5:4). From morning, he says, to evening you will make an end of me: I hoped until morning: which Job too says he endured in his distress and in the torments of his body (Job 4), when in the day he awaited the night, and in darkness looked for the light, thinking that with the change of the times his torments could change. That this is true he knows who burns with high fevers, whose inner fire, like a lion, consumes all his bones, and who, for the greatness of his pain, does not think he will live any longer.
38:15
Like the young of a swallow, so will I cry: I will meditate like a dove: my eyes are worn thin looking upward. O Lord, I suffer violence; answer for me: what shall I say, or what will he answer me, since he himself has done it? LXX: Like a swallow, so will I cry; like a dove, so will I meditate. For my eyes have failed with looking to the height of heaven, to the Lord, who has rescued me and taken away the pain of my soul, and he himself has done it. Imminent death and the pressing pain of sickness, like a lion, were breaking all the bones of my body; but I, like the swallow and the dove, joined days and nights with weeping and groaning; and from God alone, who could help, with my eyes lifted on high, I awaited aid. And I said to him: I suffer more than my deserts require; but even if I have erred in anything, I will turn to the better; do you answer for me: For it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9:16). And again he turns back into himself: What shall I say, or what shall I plead against you, my maker? Or what will he answer me, who himself has done what he willed? Whatever he has decreed, then, must be endured. For young of a swallow, or swallow, as the Seventy translated, in the Hebrew is written SUS AGOR (סוס עגור), which Aquila translated the horse Agor; Theodotion, SIS AGUR (סיס עגור); for the middle vowel-letter, if vau is put between two Samec, is read sus and means horse; if jod, it is read sis and is called swallow. Symmachus translated thus: Like a shut-in swallow, so will I sing. This word agor is also read in Jeremiah, where it is written: The kite in heaven has known its time: the turtledove and the swallow and the stork have kept their times (Jer 8:7).
38:16ff.
I will reckon up all my years in the bitterness of my soul. O Lord, if one lives thus, and if in such things is the life of my spirit, you will rebuke me and you will give me life. Behold, in peace my bitterness is most bitter. But you have rescued my soul, that it should not perish: you have cast all my sins behind your back. For hell will not confess to you, nor will death praise you: those who go down into the pit will not await your truth. The living, the living, he will confess to you, as I also do today. The father will make your truth known to the children. O Lord, save me, and we will sing our psalms all the days of our life in the house of the Lord. LXX: O Lord, concerning it, it was announced to you: and you have raised up my spirit, and, having comforted me, you have given me life. Behold, in peace is my bitterness: for you have delivered my soul, that it should not perish, and you have cast all my sins behind me. For in hell they will not praise you, nor will the dead bless you. Nor will those who are in hell hope for your mercy: the living will bless you, as I also do. For from today I will make sons, who will announce your righteousness, O Lord of my salvation, and I will not cease blessing you with the psaltery all the days of my life before the house of God. Nothing belonging to mortals is long-lasting, and all the happiness of the world is lost even while it is held. For when the time of tribulation has come, all that is past is no help to the one who endures it. Hence the foolish opinion of Epicurus, who asserts that present evils are softened by the remembrance of past goods. So Hezekiah says that he reckons up all the years of his reign, and of his past happiness, as he thought it, in his present bitterness. And because he is now secure and no longer suffers what he relates, he philosophizes on the human state and says: O Lord, if one lives thus: if we have been born in such a condition, you have rebuked me, but you have given me life, and you have granted peace, the Assyrian being put to flight; but my peace was more bitter to me than all bitterness, because, when tranquillity was restored to the peoples and the city was secure, I alone entered the threshold of death. But you have rescued my soul, that it should not perish, either for the present life or for the future. For you have cast all my sins behind your back, lest I should look upon them in sadness, but that I might contemplate your mercy. For hell and death will not confess, nor will they praise you, according to what is written: But in hell who will confess to you (Ps 6:6)? And confession in this place is taken not for penance but for glory and praise, as we read also in the Gospel: I will confess to you, O Lord, Father of heaven and earth (Matt 11:25). Those who go down into the pit, he says, will not await your truth: better than mercy in the Seventy. For he who is in hell does not await the truth of judgment but the mercy of God: especially since the Savior descended into hell to free the prisoners from the lower world. For pit the same translators more plainly rendered hell. The living, the living, he will confess to you, as I also do today. Here too confession is put for praise. For he does not confess his crimes, but gives thanks to God: and praise is not beautiful in the mouth of a sinner (Sir 15). And while hell and death do not confess nor praise God, on the contrary life and the living glorify the Lord. And what follows: The father will make your truth known to the children, signifies what is said in Deuteronomy: Ask your father, and he will declare it to you; your elders, and they will tell you (Deut 32:7), so that through the successions and each generation the clemency of God may be proclaimed to posterity. For which the Seventy set: For from today I will make sons, who will announce your righteousness. And the causal conjunction joins what follows to what precedes: namely, that the living, and he himself living, bless God for this reason, that from this day he would make sons who would announce his truth, which certainly was not in his own power. For those children were not promised him through the Prophet; only the present life was granted. Especially since he begot a most impious son, Manasseh, who filled Jerusalem with blood from gate to gate, and did not bless but cursed God, persecuting his saints. We can therefore say this according to the Seventy: that he did not say I will make sons, but παιδία, which we understand either as little ones, or boys, or little infants, and descendants, so that from the fact that he himself obtained mercy, all posterity to come, knowing this, might praise his incredible clemency. Save me then, O Lord; and all of us who believe in you and have been delivered by your help will sing to you in the Temple all the days of our life.
38:21-22
And Isaiah commanded that they take a lump of figs and plaster it upon the wound, and he would be healed. And Hezekiah said: What will be the sign that I shall go up into the house of the Lord? This is to be read before the prayer of Hezekiah, or Writing, which we have now interpreted: for the plaster was laid on the wound, and the sign of future health was asked by him, before he gave thanks to the Lord, which he is said to have done when healed. The Hebrews say that the word SIIN (שחין), which the Seventy passed over, means ulcer, not wound. For Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion also translated ἕλκος, by which they wish the royal disease to be understood, to which whatever is sweet, whether taken as food or applied to the body, is thought to be contrary. So, that the power of God might be shown, health was restored through things harmful and contrary. Others suppose SIIN to be not ulcer but abscess: when the swelling body is filled with ripened and putrefying pus. And according to the art of physicians, all matter is drawn out to the surface of the skin by dried and pounded figs: and hence a medicine established by use and experience is not to be despised, since God too made this one. So the prayer and thanksgiving is written up to this point. As for the sign that was given, the earlier order of the history has narrated it.
39:1ff.
At that time Merodach-baladan, son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent books and gifts to Hezekiah: for he had heard that he had been sick and had recovered. And Hezekiah was glad over them, and showed them the storehouse of spices, and of silver, and of gold, and of perfumes, and of the best ointment, and all the storerooms of his furnishings, and all that was found in his treasuries: there was not a word that Hezekiah did not show them in his house and in all his dominion. Above we read that in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of the Assyrians came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them, and afterward besieged Lachish, passed on to Libnah, and sent part of his army to Jerusalem; and that, when one hundred and eighty-five thousand of his army had been slain by the Angel, he himself fled to Nineveh and was killed by his sons in the shrine of his god, and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place; that Hezekiah fell sick and recovered his health at the Prophet's message; that an incredible sign was done, so that the sun went back by the space of ten hours toward its rising, and the day became almost double. Now we read that at that time, that is, in the same year in which all these things were done, Merodach-baladan, son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent books and gifts to Hezekiah; not Esarhaddon, who had succeeded his father Sennacherib in the kingdom among the Assyrians, about whose death or life Scripture is silent. From which it is clear that the kingdom of the Assyrians was then one thing, and that of the Babylonians another. Indeed, the Assyrians took Samaria, that is, the ten tribes; but Judah and Jerusalem, we read, were taken later by the Chaldeans, whose king was Nebuchadnezzar. And because among them there is the observation of the heavenly bodies, and the course of the stars is known by long practice and exercise, as is shown also at the Lord's nativity, they understood that the sun had gone back and the spaces of the day had been doubled, in the service of him whom they thought the only God. And when they inquired into the causes and reason of this miracle, as the report flew through all the nations, they learned that because of the sickness of the king of Judah even the course of the brightest sign had been changed. That this is not my opinion but the faith of holy Scripture, the words of Chronicles testify, which say after other things: This is Hezekiah who stopped the upper spring of the waters of Gihon, and turned them down to the west of the city of David. In all his works he accomplished prosperously what he wished; but in the embassy of the princes of Babylon, who had been sent to him to inquire about the portent that had happened on the earth, God left him, that he might be tested, and that all that was in his heart might be made known (2 Chr 32:30, 31). And he was left to temptation for this reason, because after so great a victory, and the sun's going back, and the congratulation of a most powerful kingdom, his heart was lifted up. Indeed, in the same volume it is written: Many brought victims and sacrifices to the Lord in Jerusalem, and gifts to Hezekiah king of Judah: and he was exalted before all the nations. In those days he was sick unto death, and he prayed to the Lord; and he heard him and gave him a sign; but he did not make return according to the benefits he had received: for his heart was lifted up, and there was wrath against him, and against Judah and Jerusalem (2 Chr 32:23, 24). And again holy Scripture says that the lifting up of his heart was softened by penance, adding: And afterward he was humbled because his heart had been lifted up, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: and therefore the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah. He was glad, then, at the coming of the envoys of Merodach, whom the Hebrews suppose to have been the father of Nebuchadnezzar, and at the offering of gifts and the congratulation on his recovery. And he showed them, according to the Seventy, the house NECHOTHA (נכתה), for which Symmachus translated of his spices; and the treasuries of silver, and of gold, and of perfumes, and of the best ointment, which in the Hebrew is written of good oil; and all the treasuries of the vessels of his gaza, or, as is read there, of his vessels. Now in the language of the Persians riches are called gaza; nor is it a Hebrew word, but a Barbarian one. There was not, he says, a word (which according to Hebrew usage is frequently taken for thing) that he did not show them in his house and in all his dominion. Hence the most just wrath of God, because he showed not only his own treasures and those of the palace but also those of the Temple, which certainly was within his dominion, and from whose doors he had already earlier taken the plates of gold.
39:3ff.
Then Isaiah the Prophet came in to king Hezekiah and said to him: What did these men say, and from where did they come to you? And Hezekiah said: From a far country they came to me, from Babylon. And he said: What did they see in your house? And Hezekiah said: They saw all that is in my house: there was not a word, or thing, that I did not show them in my treasuries. And Isaiah said to Hezekiah: Hear the word of the Lord of hosts. Behold, the day will come, and all that is in your house, and what your fathers have stored up until this day, shall be carried away to Babylon: nothing shall be left, said the Lord. And of your sons who shall come forth from you, whom you shall beget, they shall take away: and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. And Hezekiah said to Isaiah: Good is the word of the Lord which he has spoken. And he said: Only let there be peace and truth in my days. The Hebrews relate that Hezekiah fell sick for this reason, because after the unheard-of victory of the Jews and the destruction of the Assyrian king he did not sing praises to the Lord, as Moses sang when Pharaoh was drowned (Exod 15), and Deborah when Sisera was killed (Judg 4), and Hannah when Samuel was born (1 Sam 2); and that hence he was reminded of his frailty. And again, after the health of his body and the greatness of the sign, another occasion of pride was offered him, which, as a prudent man and a worshiper of God, he ought to have avoided; nor ought he to have shown to foreigners his riches, which he possessed by God's gift. From which, according to the laws of tropology too, we learn that pearls are not to be cast before swine, nor what is holy given to dogs (Matt 7). For he who is of a faithful spirit hides matters; and whoever does not do this, all his strength is unnerved, and his posterity perishes, and, its manly vigor lost, is reduced to womanly softness (Prov 11:13-15). So Isaiah goes in to the king and, as though not knowing, inquires: What did these men say, and from where did they come? He asks two things: what they said, and from where they came. The king answered one, passing over the other, which is to be read with ἐμφάσει and a lifted brow: From a far country they came to me, from Babylon: meaning that the farther the land from which they came, the more glorious is he on whose account they came. And they came, he says, to me, when he ought to have said: they came to glorify God for the greatness of the sign; from Babylon, which is the most powerful city in the whole world. And again Isaiah: What, he says, did they see in your house? And he answered with part of the truth: that they saw everything in his house, and there was nothing that he did not show them in his treasuries. But he is silent about the other thing, for which he feared offense: that he showed them all that he had in his dominion; no doubt the furnishings of the Temple as well. For these reasons Isaiah pronounces the sentence in the word of God: Hear the word of the Lord of hosts: The time will come when all these things which are in your house, acquired not by your labor but by your fathers', will be carried over to Babylon, and of your seed eunuchs will be made in the royal court. From this the Hebrews hold that Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, who were of the royal seed, were made eunuchs; that they were in the service of king Nebuchadnezzar there is no doubt. So Hezekiah said: Good is the word of the Lord which he has spoken. In this he is reproached by the Hebrews for not imitating the goodness of Moses, who spoke to the Lord: Either forgive them this offense; or if you do not, blot me out of your book which you have written (Exod 32:32). Hence the apostle Paul too wishes to be anathema from Christ for his brethren who are Israelites (Rom 9); and they say that for this reason Hezekiah was not approved by the words of God, who in what follows says: Comfort, comfort, O my people, says your God, so that those for whom he had not prayed might be comforted by the Lord's clemency.
40:1ff.
Comfort, comfort, O my people, says your God: Speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and call to her; for her evil is fulfilled, her iniquity is forgiven. She has received from the hand of the Lord double for all her sins. LXX: Comfort, comfort my people, says God; ÷ O priests ⁚ speak to the heart of Jerusalem: comfort her: for her humiliation is filled up. Her sin is loosed, for she has received from the hand of the Lord double her sins. According to the other translators, others are commanded to comfort the people of God and Jerusalem alike; according to the Hebrew, the people itself is commanded to comfort, and to speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and to call to her. To speak to the heart of Jerusalem is an idiom of the Scriptures. For he who speaks to one who mourns, and comforts with soothing words, is said to speak to the heart. Let Shechem son of Hamor teach us, who, after he had violated Dinah, spoke to her heart and comforted her (Gen 34). And wherever you find anything similar, it has this sense. And the cause of the comfort is the remission of sins; and the cause of the remission, that she has received from the hand of the Lord double for all her sins. For he who knows the will of his Lord and sins will be beaten with many stripes (Luke 12). And everyone who has the Holy Spirit dwelling in him, whom the Savior promised to the Apostles, saying: I will ask my Father, and he will give you another comforter, to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth (John 14:16); and again: But when the comforter, the Holy Spirit, has come, whom my Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things (ibid., 26); and again: When the comforter has come, whom I shall send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness of me (John 15:26); and: It is to your advantage that I go: for if I do not go away, the comforter will not come to you (John 16:7); he is a comforter, and he is now commanded to comfort the people of God. Hence the Apostle Paul too said to the believers: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any tribulation, through the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God: for as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so through Christ our comfort also will abound (2 Cor 1:1-6); and again: And our hope for you is firm: knowing that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so you will be also of the comfort (2 Cor 1:7). But who this people is that is comforted through the Apostles and churchmen, not Israel and Jacob and Judah, as Scripture records in other places, but the people of God, the prophet Zechariah testifies, saying: Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Zion: for I will come and dwell in the midst of you, says the Lord. And many nations shall flee to the Lord in that day, and shall be his people, and they shall dwell in the midst of you, and they shall know that the Lord almighty has sent me to you (Zech 2:10, 11). By this testimony it is clearly shown that very many nations are to be turned into the people of God. And these things the Lord says, sent by the Lord whose name is Almighty. And this is to be noted, that our sins are not loosed unless we have received them from the hand of the Lord. Nor is it the same for sins to be loosed and to be forgiven. For he to whom they are forgiven does not need loosing, as he hears in the Gospel: Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven you (Matt 9:2). But he for whom they are loosed, for him they are loosed for this reason, that they have been purged and paid off through punishments. According to the history, Jerusalem received from the hand of the Lord double her sins: once from the Babylonians, the second time from the Romans. And what is added by the Seventy, O priests, is to be marked beforehand with an obelus.
40:3ff.
The voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness the paths of our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low: and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways plain; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh together shall see that the mouth of the Lord has spoken. LXX: The voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare the way of the Lord: make straight the paths of our God. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways plains. And the glory of the Lord shall appear, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God, for the Lord has spoken. Mindful of this voice, the Scribes and Pharisees and the princes of the Jews, when they heard that John was preaching in the wilderness a baptism of penance and teaching the people, send men to ask him whether he was the Christ, or Elijah, or the Prophet; and when he had answered that he was none of these, they ask again: Tell us then, who are you? that we may give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say of yourself? And he answered: I am the voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare the way of the Lord; as Isaiah the Prophet said (John 1:22, 23). In this it is to be noticed that the straight ways of the Lord and the paths of our God, the filling of the valleys, and the lowering of the mountains and hills, and the correction of the crooked, and the level plains made of rough places and rocks, and the glory of the Lord and the salvation of our God, are proclaimed not in Jerusalem but in the wilderness of the Church and in the deserted multitude of the nations, of which we read above (cf. Isa 35:1): Rejoice, thirsting desert: let the wilderness exult and flower like the lily. For this multitude was deserted of the knowledge of God, and was held by idols: low in confession, lifted up in pride, rough and intractable in savagery. But after the glory of the Lord appeared, and all flesh saw the salvation of God, all things were suddenly changed and the way of the Lord prepared, so that the glory of God appeared in the wilderness: when the Lord was baptized in the Jordan, and the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove and remained on him; and the voice of the Father thundering from above was heard: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear him (Matt 3:17). And all flesh saw the salvation of God. It was called flesh for this reason, that before it did not have the Holy Spirit. Of it the Lord also says: My spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh (Gen 6:3). But that flesh will see the salvation of God of which the same Lord spoke through Joel: I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh, and they shall prophesy (Joel 2:28). This was cried out not only at that time by John, who, as the forerunner and precursor of the Word of God, is rightly called a voice (Matt 3); but to this day in the desert of the Gentiles the teachers of the Churches cry out: that we should make straight ways and paths for God in our hearts, and be filled with virtues, and be bowed down by humility; that we should change the crooked into straight and turn the rough into smooth: and so deserve to see the glory of the Lord and the salvation of God.
40:6ff.
The voice of one saying: Cry. And I said: What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all its glory is like the flower of the field. The grass is withered, the flower has fallen; because the spirit of God has blown upon it: truly the people is grass. The grass is withered, the flower has fallen; but the word of our Lord shall stand for ever. LXX: The voice of one saying: Cry: and I said: What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man is like the flower of grass. The grass has dried up, and the flower has fallen ※ because the spirit of God has blown upon it ※ truly the people is grass ※ the grass is withered, the flower has fallen ⁚ but the word of our God abides for ever: What is marked with asterisks, because the spirit of God has blown upon it: truly the people is grass: the grass has dried up, the flower has fallen, has been added from the Hebrew and the edition of Theodotion. From which it is clear that it was either passed over by the Seventy or gradually lost by the fault of copyists, since both the former and the following verse end in flower. Above we read, the Prophet saying: And I heard the voice of the Lord saying: Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people? And I said: Behold, here am I, send me; and he said: Go and say to this people: With the ear you shall hear and not understand: and seeing you shall see and not see, and the rest. Having suffered hard things for that preaching, now, when the Lord's voice says Cry, fearing the like, he asks what he ought to cry; and beginning from the general, All flesh is grass, and all its glory is like the flower of grass, he comes to the particular, so as to say none the less of the people: Truly the people is grass. And indeed, if anyone looks at the frailty of the flesh, how from moment to moment we grow and decline and do not remain in the same state, and how the very time in which we speak, dictate and write flies away from the portion of our life, he will not hesitate to call flesh grass, and its glory like the flower of grass, or the meadows of the fields. He who was lately an infant is suddenly a boy; he who was a boy, suddenly a young man; and up to old age he is changed by imperceptible stages; and he perceives himself an old man before he wonders that he is no longer young. A beautiful woman who drew flocks of young men after her is shrunk with a furrowed brow; and she who before was an object of love is afterward one of disgust. This the distinguished orator among the Greeks also writes: that the beauty of the body either fails with time or is consumed by sickness. So the flesh has withered and its beauty has fallen, because the spirit of the fury and sentence of God has blown upon it (to return from the general discussion to the order of Scripture): the flesh of him who bears the image of the earthly and serves vices and luxury; and it is grass and a passing flower. But he who has and keeps the image of the heavenly, he is the flesh that sees the salvation of the Lord, that is renewed daily unto knowledge according to the image of the Creator, and, receiving an incorruptible and immortal body, changes its glory, not its nature. But the word of our Lord, and those who are joined to the word, abide for ever.
40:9ff.
Go up on a high mountain, O woman who brings good tidings to Zion: lift up your voice with strength, O woman who brings good tidings to Jerusalem: lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah: Behold your God: behold, the Lord God will come in strength, and his arm shall rule. Behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. Like a shepherd he will feed his flock: in his arm he will gather the lambs, and in his bosom he will lift them up: he himself will carry the ewes with young. LXX: Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good tidings to Zion: lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good tidings to Jerusalem: lift it up, do not fear: say to the cities of Judah: Behold your God, behold the Lord God will come with power, and his arm with dominion: behold, his reward is with him, and his work in his sight. Like a shepherd he will feed his people, and in his arm he will gather the lambs: and he will comfort those that are with young. The choir of the Apostles is commanded to climb the heights for the preaching to all flesh which is to see the salvation of God, and, being about to speak of great things, to abide on the heights. Moreover, the Hebrew and the other translators put it in the feminine gender, so as to say: O woman who brings good tidings to Zion, and O woman who brings good tidings to Jerusalem. In the Greek this word is ambiguous, so that we can take it either of her who announces or of her to whom it is announced. Whether, then, Zion and Jerusalem announce the word of God and the salvation of the Lord, For out of Zion has gone forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Isa 2:3), or it is announced to them through the Apostles, they must climb the heights and pass over to the mountains. And in a wonderful way, although Zion itself is a mountain, as Scripture says, Mount Zion, in which you have dwelt (Ps 73 [74]:2), she is commanded to ascend another, higher mountain, by which the prince of Tyre was wounded. And because there were to be many things opposed to the teaching of the Apostles, and they were to be led and set before governors and tribunals, there is joined: lift it up, do not fear: say to the cities of Judah, that is, to the Synagogues and peoples of the Jews, of whom the Lord said: I have not come except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 15:24). And the apostle Paul: To you, he says, the word of God had to be announced first (Acts 13:46). And what is it that they are commanded to say? Behold your God, whom you were always expecting: Behold, the Lord God will come in strength, whom you despised when he came in humility. And his strength will rule, who before had taken the form of a servant, made obedient to the Father unto death (Phil 2). Behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him (Isa 40 and 62). According to what he himself says in the Gospel: For the Son of man is to come in the glory of his Father, and he will render to each according to his work (Matt 16:27). Like a shepherd he will feed his flock. He who afterward is to come in majesty first takes the form of a shepherd, and says of himself: I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep, and mine know me, and I lay down my life for my sheep (John 10:14, 15). Of him the Father speaks in Zechariah: I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered (Zech 13:7). In his arm, he says, he will gather the lambs; not the bulls and rams and he-goats and great sheep, whom he threatens through Ezekiel (Ezek 34) because they feed on the milk and are clothed with the wool and crush the weak of the flock, but the lambs, still tender and of an unformed infancy in Christ, who have lately been reborn in baptism, of whom the Lord himself spoke to Peter: Feed my lambs (John 21:15). Hence also in the same Ezekiel it is written: I will raise up over them one shepherd, and he shall feed them, my servant David; and he shall be their shepherd, and I the Lord will be their God, and David a prince in their midst. I the Lord have spoken, and I will make with David a covenant of peace (Ezek 34:23-25). In this it is to be considered that, long after the time of David, the gluttonous shepherds being rejected, he says he will raise up our Lord, who is of the stock of David, to gather the lambs and cherish them in his bosom, and himself to carry on his shoulder the young of the sheep, or the ewes with young; as we read in the Gospel that he carried back to the fold on his shoulders the sheep that had strayed and stayed behind from its accustomed flock (Luke 15). We can call the ewes with young the Apostles and apostolic men and all the teachers of the Church, who are in labor with the salvation of very many, and say with the Apostle: My little children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ be formed in you (Gal 4:19). The Hebrews assert, and there is no doubt about this matter among them, that the Holy Spirit is called in their tongue by the feminine gender, that is, RUA CODSA (רוח קדשה). And what is said in Psalm 67 (68): The Lord will give the word to those who bring good tidings with great power, they understand thus: The Lord will give the word to those women who bring good tidings with great power (Ps 122 [123]:3): namely, to those souls which have obtained the Holy Spirit. And also the verse: As the eyes of a maidservant are on the hands of her mistress: they interpret the soul as the maidservant and the Holy Spirit as the mistress. But also in the Gospel written according to the Hebrews, which the Nazarenes read, the Lord says: just now my mother, the Holy Spirit, took me. No one ought to be scandalized in this matter, that spirit is said among the Hebrews in the feminine gender, while in our language it is called in the masculine gender, and in the Greek speech in the neuter. For in the Godhead there is no sex. And therefore in the three principal languages in which the title of the Lord's passion was written, it is called by three genders, so that we may know that what is diverse is of no gender.
40:12ff.
Who has measured the waters in his fist, and weighed heaven with his palm? Who has poised the mass of the earth with three fingers, and weighed the mountains in a weight, and the hills in a balance? Who has helped the spirit of the Lord, or who was his counselor and showed him? With whom did he take counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him the path of righteousness, and schooled him in knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are like a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the tipping of a balance: behold, the islands are like a little dust. And Lebanon is not enough for burning, and its beasts will not be enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are before him as if they were not, and they are counted to him as nothing and void. LXX: Who has measured the water with his hand, and heaven with his palm, and all the earth with his fist? Who has set the mountains in a weight, and the rocks in a balance? Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who was his counselor? Who taught him, whose counsel did he receive, and who instructed him? Or who showed him judgment, and who showed him the way of understanding? If all the nations are counted like a drop of a bucket, and as the tipping of a balance, they are counted also as spittle. Lebanon is not enough for burning, and all the four-footed beasts are not enough for a burnt offering, and all the nations are as nothing, and are counted to him as nothing. Lest anyone should think the calling of the nations difficult, and that all flesh should see the salvation of God, that those who bring good tidings to Zion should be commanded to climb a high mountain, and that the Lord himself should come in strength and render to each according to his work, and like a shepherd cherish the lambs in his bosom and himself carry the ewes with young, his greatness is described: that nothing is impossible to him; and that he who founded all things and is the Creator of all can accomplish also these things, which are small in comparison with those. In calling it fist and palm, he uses the words and measures of human custom, so that we may learn the power of God through our words. Where the Seventy translated: Who has measured the water with his hand? or, as we rendered: Who has measured the waters in his fist? Aquila translated: Who has measured the waters with his smallest finger? For this is what λιχὰς means: that, namely, not with the whole hand but with the little finger, which is commonly called the taster, the whole vastness of the waters is weighed; while σπιθαμὴ, that is, the palm, signifies the hand stretched out from the thumb to the tip of the last finger. But if we close the hand, it becomes a fist: so that through the palm and the fist we may know the outstretched heavens and the globe of the earth. For fist, which the Seventy translated in the grasping of the earth, in the Hebrew is written SALIS (שליש), which Symmachus translated τρίτον, Aquila τρίσωμον: and we, to make it plainer, rendered it three fingers; namely, that he weighed the mass of the earth and the heights of the mountains and hills as if with three little fingers and with the small tipping of a balance: by which the majesty of God and the power of the Creator is shown. Who, he says, has helped the spirit of the Lord, or who was his counselor and showed him? etc. For which Symmachus translated: Who has prepared the spirit of the Lord, and who has shown him the man of his counsel? With whom did he take counsel, and who gave him understanding, and taught him the way of judgment, and instructed him in knowledge, and showed him the road of prudence? By this he shows more plainly that the spirit was prepared, or established, the one of whom one reads in the Apostle: Now the Lord is the Spirit. And: Upon whom the Spirit of God rested, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, and the rest. Who says in what follows: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me: because he has anointed me (Isa 61:1). For he himself is the spirit of the Lord and the man of his counsel, in whom dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col 2). With him he took counsel, of whom we spoke above (cf. Isa 9:6): Wonderful, Counselor. And in Proverbs it is written: God founded the earth by wisdom, and prepared the heavens by understanding (Prov 3:19). Moreover, the Seventy, who said: Who has known the mind of the Lord, and who was his counselor? wish it to be understood that the mind and reason and sense of God, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made, is he of whom it is sung in the Psalms: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth (Ps 32 [33]:6). All the nations that did not know their Creator, or the whole race of mortals, are in comparison with God like a drop of a bucket, and like the tipping of a balance, which with a light weight inclines to one side. And just as, if a small drop flows from a bucket, it is disregarded by the one who carries it, so the whole multitude of the nations, compared with the heavenly ministries and the multitude of the Angels, is counted as nothing. The islands too are counted as spittle, or, as Symmachus and Theodotion have it, setting down the Hebrew word itself, as DOC (דק), which falls off: for which Aquila translated λεπτὸν βαλλόμενον. And the Hebrews say that this word signifies the finest dust, which, snatched up by the wind, is often thrown into the eyes and is felt rather than seen. The tiniest and almost invisible particles of dust, then, are called by this word: what perhaps Democritus with his Epicurus calls atoms. And there are many words which are read in the Greek just as they are set down in the Hebrew, because of the difficulty of translating, and because of the poverty of both the Greek and the Latin speech in comparison with the Hebrew language. And at the same time, to draw men away little by little from idolatry, he takes away the ceremonies of victims, and teaches that all the wood of Lebanon and the herds that graze on it could not suffice for his burnt offerings. But if all the nations are in his sight as if they were not, and are counted as nothing and void (and among all the nations is Israel too), then Israel too is as if it were not, and is counted as nothing and void. This we say so that its pride may be broken, and they may know that they are like the other nations.
40:18ff.
To whom then have you likened God, or what image will you set up for him? Has the smith cast a graven image, or has the goldsmith shaped it with gold, and the silversmith with plates of silver? The wise craftsman has chosen strong and incorruptible wood: and he will seek how to set up an idol that will not be moved. Having described the greatness of God and shown his power in part, the nations and islands being counted as a drop of a bucket and the tipping of a balance, and as dust, and the ceremonies of victims being rejected, he teaches in what follows why all the nations are as nothing in his sight and are counted as void: To whom have you likened God, or what image will you set up for him, who is spirit, and is in all things, and runs everywhere, and holds the earth as in his fist? And at the same time he mocks the folly of the nations, that a craftsman or bronze-smith, or goldsmith or silversmith, should make a god for themselves, and fasten it together with plates and nails and set it firmly, lest it be pushed over by the blasts of the winds. And what he added: the wise craftsman has chosen strong and incorruptible wood, in the Hebrew is said AMSUCHAN (המסכן); which is a kind of incorruptible wood from which idols are especially made. He says these things so that, idols being rejected, he may prepare the way for the teaching of the Gospel, and all crooked things may be directed into straight; the valleys exalted and the hills brought low; and the glory of the Lord revealed, so that all flesh may see the salvation of God. According to tropology we can say that the chiefs of the heretics are rebuked, who fashion various idols from their own heart: whether by the charm of eloquence, which silver signifies; or by the splendor of gold, which is referred to the understanding; or by incorruptible wood, which are the baser doctrines: and these are thought perpetual by those who fashion them, and are strengthened by the dialectical art, so that they may not be moved and fall, but stand on a solid root.
40:21ff.
Will you not know? Will you not hear? Has it not been announced to you from the beginning? Have you not understood the foundations of the earth? He who sits upon the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like locusts; who stretches out the heavens like nothing, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in; who makes the searchers of secrets as though they were not; he has made the judges of the earth as void. Indeed, their stock was neither planted, nor sown, nor rooted in the earth: suddenly he blew upon them and they withered, and the whirlwind will carry them off like stubble. And to whom have you likened me and made me equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things: who brings out their host by number, and calls them all by name. Because of the greatness of his might and strength and power, not one was left behind. LXX: Will you not know? Will you not hear? Has it not been announced to you from the beginning? Have you not known the foundations of the earth? He who holds the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants as locusts; who has set up the heaven as a vault, and stretched it out as a tent to dwell in; who makes princes reign as nothing, and has made the earth as nothing. For they shall not be planted, nor sown, nor shall their root be made firm in the earth. He blew upon them, and they were dried up, and the tempest will take them up like stubble. Now therefore to whom have you likened me? Shall I be made equal to them? said the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has shown all these things. He who brings out his array by number, he will call them all by name, from much glory and in the strength of might: nothing is hidden from you. From the beginning, he says, I taught you by the natural law, and afterward through Moses I testified by the written Law that idols were nothing, and that the Creator of the world was himself God, who had founded so great a mass of earth upon the seas and set it upon the rivers, so that the heaviest element hangs over thin waters at the will of God, who like a king sits upon the circle of the earth: from which some contend that it is like a point and a globe; and its inhabitants are like locusts. For if we consider the various nations in the whole world, from Ocean to Ocean, that is, from the Indian sea to the British, and from the Atlantic to the frozen North, where the waters congeal and beautiful amber grows solid, we see the whole race of men in between dwelling like locusts. Why then is earth and ashes proud? Since the heaven, or rather, to use the authority of the Scriptures, the heavens, are stretched out like a vault; or, as it stands in the Hebrew, like DOC, of which we spoke above, for which the Seventy there translated spittle: and the one word they rendered now spittle, now vault, that is, arch; and since he stretches out their so great breadth above like a tent and a pavilion, so as to cover men like a roof and make them dwell as in a most spacious house: why should we wonder if the small bodies of men are counted like locusts and tiny creatures? Again, those who in this place too contend that the heaven hangs over the earth as a ἡμικύκλιον, and that the heaven is in the likeness of a sphere, misuse the word vault, as though the middle part of a sphere covered the earth: whereas in the Hebrew we have read not vault but DOC, that is, the finest dust. For which the spittle that is spat upon the ground, and is mixed with dust, and perishes, shows that the whole greatness of bodies is to be counted as nothing. And he who stretched out the heavens and spread them out, so that either the multitudes of Angels might dwell above or men might abide beneath, and made, as it were, a great house for rational creatures, he himself according to the character of the times appoints princes, or searchers of secrets, so that they are as though they were not; and he has made the judges of the earth as void. For which the Seventy translated: and has made the earth as nothing; since also at the beginning of Genesis, where it is written: But the earth was invisible and unformed (Gen 1:2), the others translated: But the earth was void and nothing. How many kings Greek and Barbarian and Roman history recounts! Where is that countless army of Xerxes? Where the multitude of Israel in the desert? Where the incredible power of kings? Why should I speak of ancient things? Present examples teach us that princes are as nothing, and that the judges of the earth are counted as void. These princes and judges of the earth (or, as others suspect, of heaven) were neither sown nor planted nor made firm with a solid root, and suddenly, at God's command, they are carried off and perish, as stubble is snatched away by whirlwind and tempest; according to what is written: And I passed by, and he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found (Ps 36 [37]:36). Since, then, so great is the power and majesty of the Creator, to what likeness do you compare God? And do you not rather understand the maker from the greatness of his creatures? If you do not believe words, at least believe your eyes; and from the service of the heavens and of all the elements consider the power of the Lord. Who brings out their host by number, that is, of the heavens; and calls them all by name: understand, the stars. Of which it is also sung in the Psalms: Who numbers the multitude of the stars, and calls them all by name (Ps 146 [147]:4). Or let us interpret the host of heaven as the Angels and all the armies of the heavens, of whom Daniel also speaks: Thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten times a hundred thousand stood before him (Dan 7:10). Hence he is also called the Lord Sabaoth, which in our language is said the Lord of the army and of hosts, or of powers. And he brings out the host of the heavens by number, so that the sun and the moon and the other stars, which Abraham could not number, are numbered by him and serve in the office assigned them (Gen 15): while the sun completes the same course of heaven in one year, Lucifer and Vesper in two years, the moon in each month, and all the stars accomplish it in fixed times; and some of them are called wandering, and we perceive their unequal motions with the eyes, not the mind, and we do not so much understand as wonder. For the greatness of God's might makes all things serve in their order. Or, according to the Seventy, because of the multitude of his glory and the power of his strength, nothing can be hidden from him: but by the majesty of the Creator he knows the ways and reasons and courses of all things.
Book Twelve
No writer is so unskilled that he does not find a reader like himself; and far the greater part are those who turn over Milesian tales than those who turn over the books of Plato. For in the one there is play and amusement, in the other difficulty and sweat mixed with toil. Indeed, Tullius himself, who translated it, confesses that he does not understand the Timaeus, which discusses the harmony of the world and the course and numbers of the stars; but the Testament of Grunnius Corocotta the Piglet is chanted in the schools by troops of cackling boys. So let our Luscius Lanuvinus too enjoy his witnesses, or rather his partisans, and let him win by numbers, since perhaps he wins by talent. For me the testimony of a few suffices, and I am content with the praise of friends, who, in seeking out my little works, slip through love for me and through zeal for the Scriptures. And I think there will be some who will contend that this very thing, that I address my discourse to you, Eustochium, lies open to detraction, not considering that Huldah and Anna and Deborah prophesied while men were silent, and that in the service of Christ it is not the difference of sexes that counts, but of minds. The twelfth book of explanations on Isaiah, then, will have this beginning.
40:27ff.
Why do you say, Jacob, and speak, Israel: My way is hidden from the Lord, and my judgment will pass away from my God ? Do you not know, or have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord who created the ends of the earth, will not fail, nor will he labor, nor is there any searching out of his wisdom. He gives strength to the weary, and to those who have no might he multiplies strength. Boys will fail and will labor, and young men will fall in weakness. But those who hope in the Lord will change their strength, they will take on wings like the eagle, they will run and not labor, they will walk and not fail. LXX: For do not say, Jacob, and why have you spoken, Israel: My way is hidden from God, and my God has taken away my judgment and has departed? And now do you not know, and have you not heard? The eternal God, the God who created the ends of the earth, will not hunger, nor will he labor, nor is there any finding out of his understanding. He gives strength to the hungry, and sorrow to those who do not grieve. For young men will hunger, and youths will labor, and the chosen will be weak. But those who wait for God will change their strength. They will take on wings like eagles; they will run and not labor; they will go on and not hunger. Since the greatness of Almighty God is so great that nothing escapes him, and all things are governed by his will, why do you say, Jacob, that is, the two tribes which were called Judah, and speak, Israel, the other ten tribes in Samaria, you who have already been led captive to the Assyrians: My way is hidden from the Lord, and my judgment will pass away from my God? And the sense is: You say, earthly things do not concern God, nor does he consider what each one of us does; hence we too are unjustly oppressed by our enemies, and, according to Habakkuk, we are destroyed like beasts and fishes, without any ruler (Hab 1). To them God answered: Do you not know, and have the words of the preceding Scriptures not taught you? or, according to the Seventy, are you ignorant, because you have not heard, that the eternal God and Creator of all, the Lord, knows all things, holds all things together, and orders all things by his majesty? Nor does he ever fail or labor, so that he should not understand your judgment, and your ways should be hidden from him. Nor is there, he says, any searching out of his wisdom; from which place I think that saying of the Apostle was taken: Incomprehensible are his judgments, and unsearchable his ways (Rom 11:33); or, as the Seventy translated, he will not hunger, and he will not labor. For where there is food, there is often hunger, if you take the food away; and where there is hunger, there is also labor. But since these things are not in God, why do you attach human passions to him? Rather, he himself gives strength to the hungry and the weary, and to those who seem to be as nothing in the world he multiplies power and might; or, according to the Seventy, he gives sorrow to those who do not grieve; for there is a sadness that leads to death, and there is a sadness that leads to life. Hence to those who have an impenitent heart he gives sadness, so that they may understand their sins. And because many rejoice in the health of the body, and think youth and boyhood to be perpetual, he adds and says that the flowering age quickly falls, and robust bodies wither. But those who have their trust not in their own strength but in God, and always await his mercy, change their strength and go from strength to strength, and take on wings like the eagle, and hear: Your youth will be renewed like the eagle's (Ps 102 [103]:5); they run to the Lord and do not labor in their desire for him; they walk and never fail. We have often said that the old age of eagles grows green again by the changing of their feathers, and that they alone can look at the radiance of the sun and gaze with flashing eyes upon the splendor of its rays, and that by this test they prove their young, whether they are true-born. So too the saints grow young again, and, having put on an immortal body, do not feel the labor of mortals, but are caught up in the clouds to meet Christ, and, according to the Seventy, never hunger, because they have the Lord present as their food.
41:1ff.
Let the islands be silent before me, and let the nations change their strength; let them approach, and then let them speak; let us draw near together to judgment. Who raised up the Righteous One from the East, called him to follow him? He will give the nations before him, and he will hold kings. He will give them as dust to his sword, as stubble swept off by the wind to his bow. He will pursue them; he will pass on in peace; the path will not appear in his feet. Who has wrought and done these things, calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord, I am the first and the last. The islands saw and were afraid; the ends of the earth were astounded; they drew near and came. Each will help his neighbor, and will say to his brother Be strong. The coppersmith strengthened the one who was forging at that time, striking with the hammer, saying, It is good for gluing; and he strengthened it with nails, so that it should not be moved. LXX: Be renewed toward me, you islands, for the princes will change their strength; let them draw near and speak together; then let them declare judgment. Who raised up righteousness from the East, called it to his feet, and it will go? He will give before the nations, and will cast kings into amazement, and will give their swords into the earth, and their bows like stubble cast away; and he will pursue them; the way of his feet will pass over in peace. Who has wrought and done these things? He will call it, he who calls it from the beginning of the generations. I God am first, and for the things that are to come I am. The nations saw and were afraid; the ends of the earth were astounded and drew near; they came together, each judging to help his neighbor and his brother; and he will say: The craftsman and coppersmith has prevailed, striking with the hammer, at the same time drawing out; at one time indeed he says, The soldering is good. They strengthened them; they will fix them with nails; and they will not be moved. The nations, that is, the islands, which are beaten by the false and bitter waves of this world, are bidden to listen and to close their mouths, and to know what was said to Israel: Hear, Israel, and be silent; and to change their strength, lest through their former weakness they be unable to hear the word of God, so that they may first approach the Lord, and not be content with their own salvation, but teach others what they have learned, and dispute with the Lord whether the God of all has kept what is just. And he so questions them and challenges them to answer, as to teach by questioning what they do not know: Who raised up the righteous one from the East, or righteousness? For he is not the God of the Jews only, but also of the nations, who called Christ the Lord, the Savior, who was made for us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Cor 1); in whom, according to the same Apostle, the righteousness of God is revealed (ibid.). And he called him to follow him in all things and to do the works of the Father, and to fulfill that which he says: O God, I have willed to do your will (Ps 39 [40]:9). In his sight kings and nations will bow their necks, and to his sword and arrows the adverse powers will be made subject like stubble and dust. He will pursue them, namely the kings and princes of the several nations; and he will pass through in peace, calling all to peace, so that they may be reconciled to God. The path will not appear in his feet, that is, he will not feel the labor of the way, nor any weariness of human weakness, but will drink of the brook in the way, and therefore will lift up his head (Ps 109 [110]). Who, he says, has wrought and done these things? Who raised up the righteous one, or righteousness? Who delivered nations and kings to him? Who subjected all things to his sword and bow? Surely he who from the beginning of the world foretold that these things would come, who is the Founder of all. And because he had said, with the feeling of one inquiring, Who raised up the righteous one from the East, and so on, while all were silent he answered himself: I am the Lord, I am the first and the last. It is he who speaks also in the Apocalypse of John: I am the alpha and the ω, the beginning and the end (Rev 1:8; and 22:13). The islands saw, that is, the nations, or the Churches gathered from the nations, which endure the storms of this world; and they feared the Lord: For the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10). All the ends of the lands trembled at the words of the Apostles, drawing near and coming together to the Gospel of Christ. And when they saw that they themselves were saved, they fulfilled in deed what they had heard above: let them approach, and then let them speak, so that they helped their neighbors and wished to strengthen their brothers in the Lord, and said to them: Depart from idols, despise the ancient images of demons, which a human hand fashioned, which were produced by the beating hammer, which were joined with glue, which were made fast with nails so that they should not be moved, and which, when they stand, cannot walk. What we have interpreted of the person of Christ, and the calling of the nations, and the preaching of the Gospel, and the condemnation of idols, some refer to Cyrus king of the Persians: that God raised him up from the East against the Babylonians and made him obey his command, laying many nations low before him and subjecting all things to his sword and bow; and they refer what follows to his person, namely that their idols, made by human effort and called into being by the coppersmith's art, did not profit the Babylonians. Some of the Hebrews think it is said of Abraham, who was called righteous from the East, that is, from the Chaldeans, because he alone was found righteous; and he followed him, going out of his native land into a land he did not know; and God delivered into his hand the kings who had come against Sodom and Gomorrah, and before his sword and bow made them like stubble and dust; and he pursued them and returned in peace, and did not feel the course of the long journey; and this he did not by his own strength but by the mercy of the Lord, who from the beginning knew that these things would come. Saw, he says, the islands, that is, the nations round about, and were terrified by his power: and the ends of the earth: namely Shem the son of Noah, who at the furthest time of the lands had escaped from the Flood with his father and his brothers, and had been preserved until that time (Gen 14). Him they want to be understood as Melchizedek, and that he came to meet Abraham as he returned from the battle, and received him, and blessed him, and strengthened him with the blessings of God; and that he is the coppersmith who forged Abraham and with the hammer of his art brought him out into better things, and said to him: It is good that you be glued to the fear of the Lord and joined to him. And he strengthened him, or made him solid, with the nails of the Lord's precepts, so that he should not be moved but should abide in his fear,
41:8ff.
And you, Israel my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham my friend. In whom I took hold of you from the ends of the earth, and called you from its far places, and said to you: You are my servant; I have chosen you and have not cast you off. Do not fear, for I am with you; do not turn aside, for I am your God; I have strengthened you and have helped you and the right hand of my righteous one has upheld you. Behold, all who fight against you will be confounded and will blush; they will be as though they were not; and the men who contradict you will perish. You will seek them and will not find them; the men who rebel against you will be as though they were not; and the men who war against you, as a thing consumed. For I the Lord your God have taken hold of your hand, saying to you: Do not fear, I have helped you. Do not fear, worm Jacob, you who are dead out of Israel. I have helped you, says the Lord, and your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. I have made you like a new threshing wagon, having sawing teeth. You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and you will make the hills like dust. You will winnow them, and the wind will carry them off, and the whirlwind will scatter them; and you will exult in the Lord, you will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. LXX: But you, Israel my child, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham whom I loved, whom I took up from the ends of the earth, and from its heights I called you, and said to you: You are my child; I have chosen you and have not forsaken you. Do not fear, for I am with you, lest you go astray; for I am your God, who have strengthened you, and I have helped you, and have made you firm with my righteous right hand. Behold, all your adversaries will be confounded and will blush; for they will be as though they were not; and all your enemies will perish. You will seek them and will not find them, the men who will rage against you. For they will be as though they were not, and those who fight against you will not be. For I am the Lord your God, who hold your right hand, who say to you: Do not fear, Jacob, little Israel. I have helped you, says God, I who redeem you, the Holy One of Israel. Behold, I have made you like the new wheels of a threshing wagon, in the manner of saws; and you will thresh the mountains and crush the hills, and you will make them like dust and winnow them, and the wind will carry them off, and the tempest will scatter them. But you will rejoice in the Lord and in the holy ones of Israel. That there is a fleshly Jacob and Israel and a spiritual one, the Apostle Paul teaches: Behold Israel according to the flesh (1 Cor 10). From this we understand that there is also another according to the spirit; and to the fleshly Israel it is said: If you were sons of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham. To them also it is said above (cf. Isa 40:27): Why do you say, Jacob, and speak, Israel: My way is hidden from the Lord, and my judgment has passed away from my God? Now, on the contrary, God speaks to the spiritual Israel, which received the coming of its Lord, which he calls first servant, then chosen, and finally the seed of Abraham. For first we received the spirit of bondage in fear (Rom 8); and afterward, being chosen, we are joined in friendship with God. So after the calling of the nations, when the islands saw and feared, the ends of the earth were astounded, drew near and came, the remnant according to the election of grace is called, of whom the Gospel also writes: These twelve Jesus chose, whom he also named Apostles (Luke 6); who, after the bondage of the Law as tutor, were chosen in the Gospel, and were found worthy to be the seed of Abraham the friend of God. For in him he took hold of them from the end of the earth, and from its far-off borders he called Israel out of all the nations, gathering first the people of the Jews, of whom the Apostle Paul also says: It was necessary that the word be preached first to you; but since you turn us away, we go to the nations (Acts 13:46). To you, therefore, who are both my servant and my chosen one, who are to preach among the nations and to suffer very many persecutions, I say: Do not fear, for I am with you, to whom I speak in the Gospel: Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the age (Matt 28:20). Do not go astray, nor turn aside from the truth, nor deceive yourself with a false persuasion that by your own strength, unskilled and naked, you will penetrate the forest of the nations and call the fiercest peoples to gentleness. It is I who have strengthened you and have helped you; and the right hand of my righteous one has upheld you, or protected you, that is, of the Lord the Savior; or my right hand, as the Seventy translated. For behold, your adversaries, the people of the Jews, and all who fight against you, and your persecutors, will be turned into nothing, and you will seek your adversaries and will not find them. And the reason is given why he does not find his adversaries: Because they will be as though they were not. These adversaries are said to rage against the Apostles, or, according to the Hebrew, to be consumed. And for this reason you ought not to fear, because I have taken hold of your hand, I who say to you: Do not fear, I have helped you; do not fear, worm Jacob, you who are dead out of Israel, or, as the Seventy have it, very few out of Israel. What we have set down, I have helped you: do not fear, worm Jacob, is not found in the Seventy. Now the worm, which in Hebrew is called THOLATH (תולעת), is the name given, for its lowliness and contempt, to the choir of the Apostles, imitating the Savior, who speaks in the psalm: I am a worm, and no man, a reproach of men, and the outcast of the people (Ps 21 [22]:7). For as a worm penetrates the earth, so the apostolic word penetrated the cities of the nations, and entered first into the hardest hearts. And rightly they are called few out of Israel, because in comparison with the whole world very few of the Jewish nation believed, to whom the Lord says in the Gospel: Do not fear, little flock (Luke 12:32). Or, according to the Hebrew, dead out of Israel, who say with the Apostle: I die daily (1 Cor 15:31); and elsewhere: I am crucified with Christ. Yet I live, not I; but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20). And what follows, I have made you like a new threshing wagon, having sawing teeth, signifies this: that the preaching of the Gospel crushes the adverse powers and the spiritual wickedness that lifts itself up against the knowledge of God, which, according to the variety of their pride, are called mountains and hills; and when these are carried off and scattered after the manner of a whirlwind, let Israel exult and rejoice in the Lord, the Holy One of Israel. We can also say that the churchman, having the sawing teeth of the Gospel preaching on a new wagon, which works not in the oldness of the letter but in the newness of the spirit, crushes the hardest hearts of unbelievers, separating the wheat from the chaff and crushing the mountains and hills, that is, all the chiefs of the heretics, so that, crushed and ground down, they are reduced to dust and are taught that they are nothing, so that those who had been wrongly gathered together may be divided for their own good.
41:17ff.
The needy and the poor seek water, and there is none; their tongue is parched with thirst. I the Lord will hear them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the sloping hills, and fountains in the midst of the plains. I will make the desert into a pool of waters, and the trackless land into streams of waters. I will put in the wilderness the cedar and the thorn, and the myrtle, and the olive tree. I will set in the desert the fir, the elm and the box together, that they may see and know and consider and understand together that the hand of the Lord has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it. LXX: And the poor and the needy will exult; for they will seek water, and there will be none; their tongue has dried up for thirst. I the Lord God will hear them, the God of Israel, and I will not forsake them; but I will open rivers on the mountains, and fountains in the midst of the plains; I will make the desert into marshes, and the thirsty land into watercourses. I will put in a land without water the cedar, and the box, and the myrtle, and the cypress, and the poplar, that they may see and know and think and understand together that the hand of the Lord has done these things, and the Holy One of Israel has shown it. The people of the nations, poor and meager, which did not have the knowledge of the truth, seeks wholesome waters through various teachers and the diverse doctrines of the philosophers, and does not find them, because there are none; their tongue is parched with thirst, without the Law and the Prophets. For, according to the faith of the Gospel, it had spent all its substance on physicians (Luke 8), and could not be freed from the gore of idolatry and the blood of victims. Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, did not wholly forsake them, nor let them perish for ever, but opened rivers on the sloping hills, or on the mountains, and fountains in the midst of the plains. These rivers took their beginning from that river which is read of in the Psalms: The rush of the river gladdens the city of God (Ps 45 [46]:4); and in another place: The river of God is filled with waters. These waters and fountains flowed from that fountain who speaks through Jeremiah: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water (Jer 2:13). And above in this same Prophet it is said: They will drink waters from the fountains of the Savior. Of these also it is sung in the Psalms: Bless the Lord God from the fountains of Israel (Ps 67 [68]:27). And he made, he says, the desert into a pool of waters, and the trackless land into streams of waters. Of these waters the Savior too spoke in the Gospel in mystical language (John 4:13-14): Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will not thirst for ever; but the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life. And again: If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water (ibid. 7:37-39). But this, says the Evangelist, he spoke of the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive. Since, then, the multitude of the Church, once a desert, had been watered with life-giving waters, therefore, according to the Seventy, there spring up in it the cedar, and the box, and the myrtle, and the cypress, and the poplar; according to the Hebrew and the other translators, the cedar, the setta, and the myrtle, and the olive tree, and the fir, and the elm, and the box together. These varieties of trees signify the diversity of spiritual grace. And because the nature of the others is known to all, let us discuss only the Hebrew SETTA (שטה), which Theodotion translated thorn. It is a kind of tree growing in the desert, resembling the white thorn, of which all the wood of the ark and the furnishings of the tabernacle were made, which are called Settim (Exod 37): a wood that does not rot and is very light, and that surpasses all woods in solidity and beauty, as much in strength as in sheen. The cedar, too, and the cypress and the myrtle are of the finest fragrance and do not rot. The elm also and the poplar, or the box, are either joined to vines to wed them, or are most fit for various works. And all these are set together in the wilderness, so that not even one string of the Lord's lyre, and no power of the graces of the Church, may seem to be lacking: so that all may understand, and together know in their mind, that the hand of the Lord has accomplished all these things, so that in the dryness of the nations streams of virtues should be found, and in a land once deserted and full of salt the cedar and the cypress and other trees should spring up, whose loftiness and crown hastening toward heavenly things the olive tree should illuminate, which is the nourishment of light and the rest of those who labor.
41:21ff.
Bring your judgment near, says the Lord; bring forward whatever you may have, said the king of Jacob. Let them approach and tell us whatever things are to come; tell the former things that have been, and we will set our heart on them and we will know their last end; and show us the things that are to come. Declare the things that are to come hereafter, and we will know that you are gods. Do good also, or evil, if you can, and let us speak and see together. Behold, you are of nothing: and your work is of that which is not; an abomination is he who has chosen you. LXX: Your judgment is near, says the Lord God; your counsels have come and drawn near, says the king of Jacob. Let them draw near and declare to us the things that are to come; or tell the former things that were, and we will apply our mind, and we will know what the last things are. Tell us also the things to come, and declare the things that are to come at the last, and we will know that you are gods. Do good and evil, and we will marvel, and we will see together whence you are and whence your work is: from a land of abominations they have chosen you. As we said above that there are two Jacobs and two Israels, of those who do not believe and of those who believe in the Lord the Savior, so, when the nations have been called, and rivers and fountains have burst forth in the once desert Church, and it is wonderfully leafy with a variety of trees, all of them full of abundance, those of the nations who refused to believe in Christ are summoned to judgment, to answer why they refused to see and know and consider and understand that the hand of the Lord has done these things and the Holy One of Israel has created all things. Let your idols approach, he says, which you think most mighty. Or bring forward whatever you may have in yourselves, and lay open your counsels: on what ground, with what mind, you refused to receive the manifest truth. And at the same time an apostrophe is made to the idols themselves, which are without sense and possess the faculty neither of hearing nor of answering. Tell us, he says, either things past or things to come, and show your power by the outcome of events. Now this signifies that after the coming of Christ all the idols fell silent. Where is Delphic Apollo, and Loxias, and the Delian, and the Clarian, and the other idols that promised knowledge of the future, which deceived the most powerful kings? Why could they foretell nothing of Christ, nothing of his Apostles, nothing of the ruin and abolition of their temples? If, then, they could not foretell their own destruction, how could they announce what concerned others, whether evil or good? But if anyone says that many things were foretold by idols, it must be known that they always joined falsehood to truth, and so tempered their sentences that whether something good or something evil happened, either could be understood. Such is that oracle to Pyrrhus king of the Epirotes: I say that you, son of Aeacus, the Romans can conquer. And to Croesus: Croesus, having crossed the Halys, will destroy the greatest kingdoms. There is also another sign that idols are not gods: that they can do neither good nor evil. Not that idols, or the demons that sit by idols, have not often done evil; but that, unless power has been granted to them by the Lord, they cannot do it. Indeed, in the Gospel they beg to have power over the herd of swine (Matt 8). And in Job we read that without the Lord's command he [the devil] could not destroy even the beasts and possessions of the holy man (Job 1). Nor is this to be wondered at in God's case, since even the Apostle Paul delivers some to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme (1 Tim 1). Or else it must be said that mute images of men, without sense, can do neither good nor evil, nor know things past nor things to come, because they are of nothing and of that which is not, and it is not so much they as he who worships them that is worthy of abomination. For the idols of the nations are silver and gold, the works of men's hands. They have a mouth, and will not speak (Ps 113 [115]:13). How then can they know and announce things to come, or relate things past, and do good or evil, when they have neither the sense of men nor that of brute animals? Nor does it matter of what material they seem to be made, since all are earthly.
41:25f.
I have raised up from the North, and he will come from the rising of the sun; he will call upon my name, and he will bring on rulers as mud, and as a potter treading the ground. Who has announced it from the beginning, that we may know; and from the first, that we may say: You are righteous? There is none announcing, nor foretelling, nor hearing your words. The first will say to Zion: Behold, they are here; and to Jerusalem I will give a bearer of good tidings. And I looked, and there was not even any of these who would enter into counsel, and, when asked, would answer a word. Behold, all are unrighteous, and their works are vain; their images are wind and emptiness. LXX: But I have raised up him who is from the North, and him who is from the rising of the sun; they will be called by my name. Let princes come, and as the clay of the potter, and as a potter treading clay, so you will be trodden down. For who will announce to you the things that are from the beginning, that we may know the things that are in the future, and we will say that it is true? There is none who foretells , nor who hears your words. I will give a beginning to Zion, and I will comfort Jerusalem on the way; for of the nations there is none, and of their images there was none who announced; and if I ask them, Where are you from? they will not answer me; for they are your makers, and they lead you astray in vain. He still speaks against the idols, and against those who after the coming of Christ refused to forsake them. And while they remain in error, he says that he himself has raised up the people of the nations from the North. For from the North evils will blaze forth upon all the inhabitants of the earth. And to Jeremiah it is said: What do you see, Jeremiah? And he answered: A pot set on fire, and its face from the face of the North (Jer 1:13). But they are raised up from the North, so that they may believe in him who has come from the rising of the sun, of whom we read above: Who raised up the righteous one from the East, or righteousness? And in another place: Behold a man, the Dayspring is his name (Zech 6:12). He will call them by my name, so that, forsaking their images, they may worship the one God. For he himself says in the Gospel: I have come in the name of my Father, and you did not receive me; another will come in his own name, and you will receive him (John 5:43). He will tread down the princes and rulers and all the pride of the world, and they will be made subject to him as clay to the potter, so that from them he may make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor (Rom 9). These things, which, according to prophetic custom, I say that I have done as though they were already past, or, according to Symmachus, which I promise as future, none of the demons and idols can foretell. Hence all the oracles fell silent, because there is no one who announces, no one who hears, while the once brutish hearts of the Gentiles have understood their error and forsaken false prophecies. And the Lord will speak first to Zion, that is, to his Church, and will say to her: Behold, here are your sons, whom I have given to you through faith in me. And he means the Apostles, who preached the Gospel in the whole world. Zion and Jerusalem differ in name; but as there is one city, so also there is one Church. Let all the nations, therefore, which follow the error of idols, be questioned by us, so that they may answer whence they are. And this will be the answer of them all: that all follow vanity and the winds, and worship the works of their own hands. Whatever we have said of the idols and the nations, let us refer to the doctrines of perversity, and to their chiefs, the heresiarchs: that while Christ announces the peace of the Church and shows them the way of truth, they follow error and are likened to wind and whirlwind. The Hebrews interpret the one raised up from the North and coming from the rising of the sun as the Assyrian and the Persian, who came to Jerusalem and trod down all its princes; and none of the idols which they worshiped knew that this would come, but the Lord alone, who punished them for their sins.
42:1f.
Behold my servant, I will uphold him; my chosen one, in him my soul is well pleased. I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth judgment to the nations. He will not cry out, nor will he accept a person, nor will his voice be heard outside. A bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench; in truth he will bring forth judgment. He will not be sad nor troubled, until he sets judgment in the earth; and the islands will wait for his law. LXX: Jacob my child, I will take him up; Israel my chosen one, my soul has received him. I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth judgment to the nations; he will not cry out, nor will he let go, nor will his voice be heard outside. A broken reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench; but in truth he will bring forth judgment. He will shine and will not be broken, until he sets judgment upon the earth; and in his name the nations will hope. Jacob and Israel are not found in the present passage, which the Evangelist Matthew too did not set down, following the Hebrew truth. We say this to the shame of those who despise our work. This has been discussed more fully in the little Commentaries on Matthew, and in the book which we recently wrote to Algasia. Meanwhile it must be noted that where it is written of the choir of the Apostles, they are called both Jacob and Israel and the seed of Abraham, to whom, as to men and servants, it is said accordingly: Do not fear, worm Jacob, and Israel small in number. But where the prophecy is of Christ, it is read without Jacob and Israel: Behold my servant, I will uphold him; my chosen one, in him my soul is well pleased. And in what follows: I have given you as a covenant of the race, as a light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, and to bring the bound out of their chains, and those who dwell in darkness out of the prison house. Nor is it to be wondered at if he is called a servant, made of a woman, made under the law (Gal 4); he who, though he was in the form of God, humbled himself, taking the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man (Phil 2). In him the soul of God was well pleased, seeing that all virtues were in him; nay rather, that he himself was the power and wisdom of God. I have put, he says, my spirit upon him: the Spirit who descended in the form of a dove. He will bring forth judgment to the nations, which before they did not know. He will not cry out: for he will be gentle and meek; and he will not accept a person in judgment, or he will not lift up (it is understood) his voice on high. Or, according to Symmachus, he will not be deceived, understanding all the snares of the devil; or, according to the Seventy, he will not let go, namely the people of the Jews, calling them to repentance. Nor will his voice be heard outside: for he did not preach the Gospel outside Galilee and Judea among the other nations. And if we read that he was in the borders of Tyre and Sidon (Matt 15), or in the region of Caesarea Philippi, which is now called Paneas, still it must be known that it is not written that he entered those cities themselves. A bruised reed, or a broken one, he will not break. For he will be easy to appease toward all, and will give pardon to sinners, saying to the woman: Take heart, daughter, your sins are forgiven you (Luke 7:48). And smoking flax, or, as the others translated, dim and dark, he will not quench: those who were near to being quenched were preserved by the clemency of the Lord (which we have discussed in the works mentioned above concerning the Jews and the nations); but he will judge all things with truth, in no way fearing the scribes and Pharisees, whom he boldly called hypocrites (Matt 7, 15, 22, 23 throughout, and Luke 6, 12). But what follows, He will shine and will not be broken, until he sets judgment upon the earth, the Evangelist Matthew did not set down (Matt 12); or else the words in the middle, between judgment and judgment, were removed by a scribe's error. And it signifies that, rising from the dead, he enlightened all, and was not broken by death, until he set judgment upon the earth, he who said in the Gospel: For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind (John 9:39). For this we translated: He will not be sad, nor troubled, but he will keep an evenness of countenance at all times: what the philosophers falsely boast of Socrates, that he was never sadder or happier than usual. For this Aquila and Theodotion translated: He will not darken, and he will not run, until he sets judgment in the earth. And the sense is: he will deter no one by sadness of countenance, nor will he hasten to punishment, he who has reserved the truth of judgment for the last time. And what follows, and the islands will wait for his law, the Seventy set down more plainly: in his name the nations will hope; these are called islands in the Scriptures because they lie open on every side to the inroads of persecutors. And by his law let us understand not that which was given through Moses, but the Gospel: For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (above, Isa 2). Of this law Jeremiah too prophesies: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will make a new covenant, not according to the covenant which I once made with their fathers (Jer 31:31-32).
42:5-6f.
Thus says the Lord God, who creates the heavens and stretches them out, who makes firm the earth and the things that spring from it, who gives breath to the people that is upon it, and spirit to those who tread on it: I the Lord have called you in righteousness, and have taken hold of your hand, and have kept you, and have given you as a covenant of the people, as a light of the nations, that you might open the eyes of the blind, and bring the bound out of confinement, out of the prison house those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I will not give to another, nor my praise to graven images. The former things, behold, they have come; new things too I declare; before they spring up, I will make you hear of them: It was uncertain who had said before: Behold my servant, I will uphold him; my chosen one, in him my soul is well pleased. I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth judgment to the nations. For after the condemnation of the idols the speech had burst out suddenly: Behold my servant, and the rest, which we interpreted as spoken in the person of the Father concerning Christ. So, lest he leave it ambiguous who had said the foregoing, he adds and says: Thus says the Lord God, who creates the heavens and stretches them out. Or, as the Seventy translated: Who made the heaven and fixed it. The Creator and Lord of the universe, therefore, himself promised the coming of his Christ, he who not only stretched out the heavens and fixed them, but also made the earth firm with its lofty mass, and all things that spring from it: so that his invisible things may be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made (Rom 1), his eternal power also and divinity. He gave breath to all who dwell on the earth, by the first law of mortals: for God breathed into the face of Adam the spirit of life, and he became a living soul (Gen 2). But spirit he gave properly to those who tread on the earth and subject the wisdom of the flesh to their own power. He, then, whose praises are so great, spoke these things to him whose law the islands and the nations await: I the Lord have called you in righteousness: of whom he himself speaks in the Gospel: Righteous Father, the world does not know you (John 17:25); so that he might be the God not only of the Jews but also of the nations. And I have taken hold of your hand, because whatever the Son works, the Father works. And I have kept you, you who yourself preserve all things. And I have given you as a covenant of the people of Israel, to whom I had promised beforehand that you would come. And as a light of the nations, which sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, that you might open the eyes of the blind, who before did not see God. And bring the bound out of confinement (Prov 5); for each one is bound fast by the cords of his own sins. And in the Gospel the Lord loosed him whom Satan had bound (Matt 8). Out of the prison house those who sit in darkness, those who were living in the night and gloom of error. And what he adds, I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I will not give to another, does not exclude the Son; for when he says in the Gospel, Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world was (John 17:5), the Father himself answered: I have both glorified it, and will glorify it. For he did not say: My glory I will give to no one, for if he had said that, he would have excluded the Son too; but my glory I will not give to another, besides you, to whom I have given it, to whom I will give it. Hence I greatly admire the propriety of holy Scripture, in that all the translators, who are accustomed to disagree in many other places, translated the word AHER (אחר) with one voice another. And that we may know that by this sentence not the Son but the idols are excluded, the following words bear witness: Nor my praise to graven images. For which the Seventy have: nor my powers to images. For since Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, he contains in himself all the powers of the Father. There follows: The former things, behold, they have come. And the sense is: What I have spoken, what I have promised through Moses and the Prophets, all has been fulfilled. But now I announce to you the Gospel, the calling of the nations, the passion of Christ, the newness of faith: so that as you see the former things fulfilled in fact, so you may also believe that the things I now promise will come,
42:10-11f.
Sing to God a new song, his praise from the ends of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and its fullness, the islands and their inhabitants. Let the desert and its cities lift up; Kedar will dwell in houses; give praise, you inhabitants of Petra; from the top of the mountains they will cry out. They will give glory to the Lord, and will declare his praise in the islands. The Lord will go forth as a mighty one, as a man of war he will stir up zeal; he will shout and cry aloud; he will prevail over his enemies. I have always held my peace, I have kept silent, I have been patient; like a woman giving birth I will speak; I will scatter and swallow up at once. I will make the mountains and hills desolate, and I will dry up all their grass; and I will turn the rivers into islands, and I will dry up the pools. And I will lead out the blind into a way that they do not know, and in paths of which they are ignorant I will make them walk. I will turn darkness before them into light, and crooked things into straight. These words I have done for them, and I have not forsaken them. They have turned back; let them be confounded with confusion, who trust in a graven image, who say to a molten image: You are our gods. LXX: Sing to the Lord a new song; his dominion is glorified, and his name from the top of the earth; those who go down to the sea and sail it, the islands and their inhabitants. Rejoice, O desert, and its villages, the farmsteads and the inhabitants of Kedar. Those who dwell in Petra will rejoice; from the top of the mountains they will cry out. They will give glory to God; they will declare his powers in the islands. The Lord God of powers will go forth and will crush war; he will stir up zeal, and will cry out over his enemies with strength. I have held my peace from the beginning; shall I always hold my peace and endure? Like a woman giving birth I have been patient; I will burst forth and will dry up at once; I will lay waste mountains and hills, and I will dry up all their hay. And I will turn the rivers into islands, and I will dry up the marshes. And I will lead the blind by a way that they do not know, and I will make them tread paths of which they have been ignorant; I will turn darkness into light for them, and crooked things into straight. These words I will do for them, and I will not forsake them; but they have turned back. Be confounded with confusion, you who trust in graven images, who say to molten images: You are our gods. He who had said before, The former things, behold, they have come; new things too I declare; before they spring up, I will make you hear of them, and had promised that he would tell what they did not know, declares in the following discourse what those new things are, commanding the Apostles and apostolic men to sing a new song, in no way in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the spirit; and not only in the old Instrument, but in the new; and that his praise should reach even to the ends of the earth. For his going forth is from the highest heaven, and his circuit even to its height (Ps 18 [19]). The sound of the Apostles went out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. Or, according to the Seventy: Glorify his name in the ends of the earth: so that in the whole world the name of Christ may be announced to the nations. And who these are who are to sing the new song, the following words declare: You who go down, he says, to the sea, and sail it, or the fullness of the sea. For Jesus, seeing the Apostles on the shore by the sea of Gennesaret mending their nets, called them and sent them into the great sea (Luke 5), so that from fishers of fish he might make them fishers of men; and they preached the Gospel from Jerusalem as far as Illyricum and the Spains, capturing in a short time even the might of the city of Rome itself. Or certainly they went down to the sea and sailed it, enduring the storms and persecutions of this world. By the islands too and their inhabitants understand either the diversity of the nations or the multitude of the Churches. Let, he says, the desert and its cities lift up their voice, of which we have also spoken above. Or let the desert rejoice, and its villages, and Kedar, which was once an uninhabitable region beyond Arabia, of the Saracens; and the inhabitants of Petra, which itself is also a city of Palestine. And this signifies that the people of the nations, formerly a desert as regards the knowledge of God and bound by the errors of idolatry, is turned to the praises of the Lord. Or, because Kedar means darkness, and, according to the Apostle (1 Cor 10), the rock is Christ, all believers are commanded that those who were before in darkness, and now believe in the Lord the Savior, should cry aloud from the top of the mountains and openly preach Christ, those to whom it was said also above (cf. Isa 40:9): Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good tidings to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good tidings to Jerusalem. And I will set his glory in the islands, of which we spoke before. And the prophetic word describes the glorious coming of the Savior, of which the Apostle Paul also speaks: According to the illumination of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ (2 Cor 4; 2 Tim 1:10); and compares him to a most mighty man, who is about to fight against his adversaries and to stir up zeal. Of this it was prophesied also in the Song of Deuteronomy: They have moved me to jealousy with that which was not God, and have provoked me with their idols; and I will move them to jealousy with a nation that is not, and with a most foolish nation I will provoke them (Deut 32:21). He will also shout and cry aloud against his enemies, openly rebuking their unbelief and declaring with a loud cry: I have held my peace, I have always kept silent, I have been patient, or, as the Seventy translated: I have held my peace; shall I always hold my peace (Eccl 3:7)? So that what is said through Solomon may be fulfilled: A time to keep silence, and a time to speak. And the sense is: For a long time I have often borne you when you sinned; but because I had kept silent before, I will no longer keep silent. And as a woman giving birth pours forth the infant into the light, and makes open what was before held shut in her womb, so I will now bring forth my pain and the forbearance which I always had over your crimes, and I will scatter your counsels; and at one time I will swallow up the whole nation, and all the pride of your mountains and the swelling of your hills. And the grass, of which it was said above, Truly the people is grass, that is, princes as much as the common herd, I will reduce to a desert. This was added in the Seventy, which had passed over these words in silence, from the edition of Theodotion (see above, Isa 40:7). And when I have dried you up and destroyed you from head to foot, then I will make the rivers of my teaching run in the islands of the nations, and I will reduce your pools or marshes to dryness, so that among the nations there may be the knowledge of the Scriptures, and among you the dryness of teaching. And I will lead the blind by the way which before they did not know, of whom we also read above: I have given you as a covenant of the people, as a light of the nations, that you might open the eyes of the blind. These will be led by the way of which Christ speaks: I am the way, or by the way of the knowledge of God; and I will make them walk by the paths of the Prophets. Then their darkness will be changed into light, and crooked things will be turned into straight, so that they may understand what they read, and with the eyes of the heart behold the clear light of Christ in the Old Testament. And at the same time he adds: These words which I have done, or I will do for them: no longer promising things to come, but rendering what I had promised before. But while I say these things, the people of the Jews has turned back, so as not to believe him who promises, and to be confounded in its errors, and to neglect the pledge of God, having before believed in idols. Or, when the fullness of the nations has come in, then the people of Israel too will be converted (Rom 11), and will repent of its error, through which it had before served idols. Or certainly, after the calling of the nations, he returns to the beginning, so as to say that all the nations which refused to believe the Gospel are to be confounded in their idols.
42:18-19ff.
You deaf, hear, and you blind, look, that you may see. Who is blind but my servant? and deaf but he to whom I have sent my messengers? Who is blind but he who has been sold? and who is blind but the servant of the Lord? You who see many things, will you not keep them? you who have open ears, will you not hear? And the Lord willed to sanctify him, and to magnify the law and exalt it. But this is a people plundered and laid waste; all are the snare of young men, and they are hidden in prison houses; they have become a prey, and there is none to rescue; a plunder, and there is none to say: Give back. Who is there among you who will hear this, who will attend and listen for the time to come? Who gave Jacob up to plunder, and Israel to those who lay waste? Was it not the Lord himself, against whom we have sinned? And they would not walk in his ways, and they did not hear his law. And he poured out upon him the indignation of his fury, and strong war; and he burned him round about, and he did not know it; and he set him on fire, and he did not understand. LXX: You deaf, hear, and you blind, look up, that you may see. Who is blind but my children, and deaf but those who rule over them? Who is blind but he who has received; and the servants of God have been blinded. You have often seen, and have not kept watch; your ears are open, and you have not heard. The Lord God willed that he should be justified, and should magnify praise. And I saw, and the people was laid waste and plundered. For there is a snare in the chambers everywhere, and in the houses together, in which they hid them. They became a plunder, and there was none to rescue the prey, and there was none to say: Give back. Who is there among you who will hear these things and know the things to come? Who gave Jacob up to plunder, and Israel to those who lay waste? Was it not God, against whom they sinned? And you would not walk in his ways, nor hear his law. And he brought upon them the anger of his fury, and war prevailed against them, and those who burned them round about; and each one did not know, nor did they lay it to heart. Lest anyone should think that what is said, You deaf, hear, and you blind, look, that you may see, belongs to the people of the nations, which before was deaf and blind (as the Jews strive to prove by a foolish interpretation), the prophetic word itself shows who ought to be understood as the deaf and the blind. Who, he says, is blind but my servant, and deaf but he to whom I have sent my messengers? There is no doubt that he means the Prophets. Who is blind but he who has been sold by his sins? Who is blind but he who formerly was the servant of the Lord? To him it is said: O Israel, you who see many things, and have very many Prophets through whom to know the commandments of God, will you not keep what has been commanded you? You who have open ears, will you not hear what is said? Of whom we also read above: Hearing you will hear, and will not understand; and seeing you will look, and will not see; for the heart of this people has been made fat (Isa 6:9). The Lord, he says, willed to sanctify him, and to magnify his Law, and to exalt and raise up the people lying prostrate. But he refused to do the will of God, and therefore he was plundered and laid waste by his adversaries, whom we ought to understand either as demons or as enemies. All are the snare of young men, and they are hidden in prison houses. Or, as the Seventy translated, There is a snare in the chambers everywhere, and in the houses together, in which they hid them: signifying the scribes and Pharisees, who deceived the wretched common people and everywhere laid snares against the Lord the Savior and his Apostles (Luke 11), having the key of knowledge, neither entering themselves, and forbidding others who wished to enter. And beautifully he called their breasts, in which the worst thoughts dwelt, prisons. Therefore they became a prey and a plunder, and there was none to free them and to speak a word on their behalf. And at the same time the Prophet exhorts them that, if all cannot hear, at least a few may know the things to come and understand from whom they have suffered these things, and may recognize the causes of their devastation, they who would neither hear nor do what had been commanded in the Law. Therefore the Lord poured out upon them all his anger and an indignation full of fury, so that he who before had kept silent would no longer hold his peace, and would chastise them not with words but with punishments and torments; and a most mighty war would seize them, which they could in no way escape, showing the ferocity of the Romans. And though he has been burned on every side and has no soundness in him, yet he does not understand the cause of his punishment: that he has been punished because he did not receive the Son of God.
43:1ff.
And now thus says the Lord who creates you, Jacob, and forms you, Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you, and I have called you by your name: you are mine. When you pass through the water , I will be with you, and the rivers will not cover you. When you walk into the fire, you will not be burned, and the flame will not burn in you; for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I have given Egypt as your propitiation, Ethiopia and Saba for you. Since you have become honorable in my eyes and glorious, I have loved you, and I will give men for you, and peoples for your life. Do not fear, for I am with you; from the East I will bring your seed, and from the West I will gather you. I will say to the North: Give; and to the South: Do not hold back; bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the end of the earth. And everyone who calls upon my name, I have created him for my glory, and I have formed him, and I have made him. Bring forth the people that is blind and has eyes, that is deaf and has ears. All the nations are gathered together, and the tribes are assembled. Who among you will declare this, and will make us hear the former things? Let them bring their witnesses and be justified, and let them hear and say: Truly you are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me, and understand that I myself am he. Before me no god was formed, and after me there will be none. I am, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior. I have declared, and I have saved; I have made it heard, and there was no stranger among you. You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and I am God, and from the beginning I myself am, and there is none who can deliver from my hand; I will work, and who will turn it back? LXX: And now thus says the Lord who made you, Jacob, and created you, Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine; and if you pass through water, I am with you, and the rivers will not overwhelm you; and if you pass through fire, you will not be burned; the flame will not consume you; for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your savior. I have made Egypt your exchange, and Ethiopia and Syene for you. Since you have become honorable, and have been glorified in my sight, I also have loved you, and I will give men for you, and princes for your head. Do not fear, for I am with you; from the East I will bring your seed, and from the West I will gather you. I will say to the North: Bring; and to the Southwest: Do not hold back; bring my sons from a far land, and my daughters from the ends of the earth, all who are called by my name; for in my glory I have created him, and I have fashioned him, and I have made him; and I have brought forth the blind people, who have eyes and are blind, and their ears are deaf. All the nations are gathered together, and their princes have assembled. Who will declare these things? or who will declare to you the things that are from the beginning? Let them bring their witnesses, and be justified, and let them hear and speak true things. Be witnesses for me, and I am a witness, says the Lord God, and my child whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe and understand that I am. Before me there was no other god, and after me there will be none. I am God, and besides me there is no Savior. I have declared, and I have saved; I have reproached, and there was no stranger among you. You are my witnesses, and I am the Lord God from the beginning, and there is none who can deliver out of my hands. I will do it, and who will turn it back? The Hebrews interpret these things of the second coming of the Savior, when, after the fullness of the nations, all Israel is to be saved. But we in no way think that the promise is made to those to whom it was said above: Who is blind but my children, and who are deaf but those who rule over them? and the servants of God have been blinded. And again: The people has been laid waste and plundered, and things like these. Finally he adds: He poured out upon him the indignation of his fury, and strong war; and he burned him round about, and he did not know it; and he set him on fire, and he did not understand. Therefore, as we said above that there are two Jacobs and two Israels, one fleshly and the other spiritual, of those who refused to believe in the Savior and of those who received the Son of God, so this too is now to be understood: that the choir of the Apostles is summoned, and the first Church of Christ gathered from the people of the Jews, to understand its Creator and Maker, who is the founder both of its soul and of its body; and not to fear persecutors, because it has been redeemed by the blood of Christ, who has called it by his name and, out of intimacy, calls it in a special way his own people; but to preach without hesitation and to dread no dangers. And what he adds, waters and rivers, and fire and flames, describes the onslaught and fury of the persecutors, who begrudge the salvation of the nations and do not want the word of the Gospel to be preached. The Jews, however, would have the Egyptians understood by the waters, the Babylonians by the rivers, the Macedonians by the fire, the Romans by the flame. And he commands them not to fear for this reason, that the Lord God, their Savior and the Holy One of Israel, is with them, who has made them preach to Egypt, Ethiopia and Syene, and to the furthest bounds of the world. For Syene the other translators put SABA (סבא), whence came the queen of the South, who came to hear the wisdom of Solomon (1 Kgs 10). Therefore the choir of the Apostles has become honorable in the sight of God and beloved by him; and the salvation of all the men and peoples who have been called through them to the Gospel will also be reckoned to the salvation of their own souls. Hence he adds and says: Do not fear, I am with you, I who say to you in the Gospel: Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the age (Matt 28:20). For from the East and from the West I will bring your sons, to rest in the bosom of Abraham; and from all parts of the world a people of my sons and daughters will be gathered, who either call upon my name or are called by my name, so that they are called Christians, to the glory of their founder. And what follows, Bring forth the people that is blind and has eyes, that is deaf and has ears, many think is said of the people of the nations, who through the teaching of the Apostles began to hear and to see. But let us understand this too of scattered Israel, which was called through the Apostles and believed first; to whom Paul also says: It was necessary that the word of God be preached first to you (Acts 13:46). And the Lord himself in the Gospel: Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 10:6). Then follows: All the nations are gathered together, and the tribes are assembled, that is, together with the people that believed from among the Jews, so that the calling may be twofold, of the circumcision and of the uncircumcision. And what is said, Bring forth, is a word addressed to the Son. Or, according to the Seventy, the Father speaks of the Son, that he has brought forth his blind and deaf people, and joined them to the nations, and made of them many princes of the Church. And the prophet marvels that no one among the nations could foreknow these things, nor know the counsels of God, but only his people, which had received the Law and had the prophets: For God is known in Judea; in Israel his name is great (Ps 75 [76]:1). Or else God himself is the witness and performer of his own words, and so is his child and servant whom he has chosen. There is no doubt that he means Christ, to whom he says also above: It is a great thing for you to be called my child. And all these things will take place so that the truth may be preached to the world, and that those whose mind was before brutish and senseless may know and believe and understand that besides the one God there is no other God, neither before nor after. For the founder of the times never has a beginning, since this very word, ever, belongs to time. And as he has now said, I am a witness, says the Lord God, and the child whom I have chosen, the Lord saying this same thing in the Gospel: The testimony of two men is true. I am he who bears witness of myself, and the Father who sent me (John 8:17-18), so too we must think of his divinity: that there is no God but he who speaks and his child whom he has chosen. And beautifully, besides God the Father there is no other God, because Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1), who says in the Gospel: I am in the Father, and the Father is in me (John 14:11). For as the one Lord Christ does not take from the Father his being Lord, so the one God the Father does not take from the Son his being God, he who in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God (John 1:1-2). And what follows, And besides me there is no Savior, shows that the Son saves all things in the Father. Of him the same prophet testifies: And the Lord will send them a Savior, who will save them (Isa 19). For God, who is wise and strong, cannot be without his own wisdom and power. Since, then, I foretold from the beginning that these things would come, there will be no one who can refuse my will, nor indeed make void what I shall have done. These things are said indeed to Jacob and Israel, but they refer to the apostolic choir and to all of the people of the Jews who have been willing to believe in Christ.
43:14
Thus says the Lord, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and I have pulled down all the bars, and the Chaldeans glorying in their ships. I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator, Israel, your King. LXX: Thus says the Lord God, who redeemed you, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake I will send to Babylon, and I will rouse up all the fugitives, and the Chaldeans will be bound in ships. I am the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, who have shown Israel your king. According to the Hebrew, the prophetic word is still directed to Israel: that their redeemer, the Lord and the Holy One of Israel, has spoken these things to them: For your sake, you who preach the Gospel with me, to whom I said above, Do not fear, for I am with you, who are witnesses of my will, and who announce my child to an unbelieving world as a second witness, I have sent my Son into Babylon and the confusion of this world. And I have pulled down all its bars, which in Hebrew are called BARIHIM באריחים, and which Theodotion translated strong ones. And the Chaldeans, he says (understand ἀπὸ κοινοῦ I have pulled down), who gloried in their ships: namely those who, like ships, were tossed about among the idols. Of the Chaldeans no one doubts that they signify demons. I the Lord have foretold these things that were to come, I who am your Creator and the king of Israel. But according to the Seventy the sense is far different: I the Lord, who have delivered you from dangers, and the Holy One of Israel: for your sake I will send to Babylon the king of the Medes and Persians, and I will make its inhabitants flee; and the Chaldeans who had taken you captive will be carried in bonds across the Caspian Sea to other nations. I the Lord have decreed these things that are to come, I who have shown that Israel would be the king of believers.
43:16-17ff.
Thus says the Lord, who made a way in the sea, and a path in the rushing waters; who brought forth the chariot and the horse, the army and the strong man: together they have fallen asleep, and they will not rise again; they are crushed like flax, they are quenched. Do not remember the former things, and do not look upon the things of old. Behold, I am doing new things; now they will spring forth; surely you will know them. I will make a way in the desert, and rivers in the trackless land. The beast of the field will glorify me, the dragons and the ostriches; for I have given waters in the desert, rivers in the trackless land, to give drink to my people, my chosen one. This people I have formed for myself; they will tell my praise. LXX: For thus says the Lord, who gives a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty water; who brings forth chariots and horses and a most mighty multitude. But they have fallen asleep, and they will not rise again; they are quenched like quenched flax. Do not remember the former things, and do not consider the old things. Behold, I will do new things, which will now spring forth, and you will know them; and I will make a way in the desert, and rivers in the waterless land. The beasts of the field will bless me, the sirens and the daughters of the ostriches, for I have given water in the desert, and rivers in the waterless land, to give drink to my chosen race, my people, whom I have acquired, that it may tell of my powers. The Lord, who destroyed and cast down Babylon, and pulled down its mightiest from their power, and made captives of all the Chaldeans who were sailing prosperously on the waves of this world, he himself found a way in the rushing waters of the Red Sea, so that his people, freed from Egypt, might pass over. Or, he who made a way in the Red Sea, he himself also found a path in the rushing waters of the river Jordan, so that both the going out from Egypt and the entrance into the land of promise might have a miracle. He sank into the deep the chariots and horses and the whole army of Pharaoh, who fell asleep in perpetual sleep. They were crushed and quenched like flax, in a brief space of time, in a point and a moment. For flax, not yet caught by the fire, is at once quenched because of the lightness of its substance, and dissolves into ash. Therefore I command you this: that among my signs and wonders, by which Babylon, the mightiest city, was overthrown, and by which a way was opened for my people in the Red Sea and in the Jordan, you should in no way remember the old things, since in the Gospel I am going to do far greater things, in comparison with which past things ought to be passed over in silence. For no longer will I find a way in the Red Sea, but in the desert of the whole world. Nor will one river or fountain burst forth from the rock, but many rivers, to refresh not bodies, as before, but thirsting souls; and that will be fulfilled which we read above: You will drink waters from the fountains of the Savior (cf. Isa 12:3). Then what never was done will be done: all the beasts and dragons and ostriches that dwelt in the wilderness of the nations, and were like beasts in the blood of idolatry and the savagery of their manners, will glorify me and praise me together. For dragons, which Theodotion alone, as it is written in the Hebrew, called THANNIM (תנים), the others translated Sirens: monstrous creatures which by their sweet and deadly song cast sailors headlong to be torn apart by Scylla's dogs. And this signifies that those who were formerly given over to pleasure and luxury are turned to the service of the Lord; although it is better to understand dragons, since ostriches are joined to them, so that, since he was speaking once of the beasts of the wilderness, he set down these animals, which are at home in the desert. They will praise me, he says, and will glorify me, the beasts of the field, and the dragons, and the ostriches, because I have given waters in the desert of the nations, and rivers in the dryness of the peoples, so that my people might drink, which I have chosen for myself, or my chosen race, and the people which I have acquired with my blood, that it might tell my praises and my powers.
43:22-23ff.
You have not called upon me, Jacob, nor have you labored in me, Israel. You have not offered me the ram of your burnt offering, and with your victims you have not glorified me. I have not made you serve with offering, nor have I given you labor with incense. You have not bought me sweet cane with silver, and with the fat of your victims you have not made me drunk. But you have made me serve in your sins; you have given me labor in your iniquities. LXX: Not now have I called you, Jacob, nor have I made you labor, Israel. You have not brought me the sheep of your burnt offering, nor have you magnified me with your victims; nor have I made you serve with sacrifices, nor have I given you labor with incense; nor have you bought me incense with silver, nor have I desired the fat of your sacrifices; but in your sins I have defended you, and in your iniquities. While the beasts of the field, the dragons and the ostriches, praise me, you, Jacob, in no way wished to call upon me, nor afterward to labor so as to amend your sin by repentance. And as for your thinking that you have offered me victims and sacrificed rams, know that they were not accepted by me, because they were shared by me and the idols. And he repeats that sense of which he had spoken above: To what purpose is the multitude of your victims to me, says the Lord? I am full of the burnt offering of rams, and of the fat of lambs, and the blood of bulls and goats I do not want. For I have not, he says, required anything precious from you, so as to make you labor in preparing it. I have not exacted offerings from you, nor sought frankincense, nor sweet cane, nor incense and spices of various kinds, with whose smoke you might make me drunk and sate me. But obedience, which is above sacrifice, and the sacrifice of which David says in the Psalms, A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise (Ps 50 [51]:19): these I wanted, these I sought. But you have made me serve and labor in your sins, so that I was compelled to say: I have labored in bearing; and I can no longer bear you. Hence God says the same thing also through Hosea: What shall I do to you, Ephraim? Shall I protect you, Israel (Hos 11:8)? What shall I do to you? Shall I make you like Admah, and like Zeboiim? But what the Seventy set down, but in your sins I have defended you, and in your iniquities, can be joined to what precedes thus: that it is God's labor and weariness to defend sinners.
43:25-26ff.
I am, I am he who blots out your iniquities for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. Put me in remembrance, that we may be judged together; tell, if you have anything, that you may be justified. Your first father sinned, and your interpreters have transgressed against me. And I have defiled the holy princes; I have given Jacob to slaughter, and Israel to blasphemy. LXX: I am, I am he who blots out your iniquities, and I will not remember them. But you, remember, and let us be judged. Tell your iniquities first, that you may be justified. Your fathers sinned, and your princes have acted unjustly against me, and the princes have defiled my holy things. And I have given Jacob up to destruction, and Israel to reproach. You, he says, Jacob and Israel, have made me labor in your sins, and I could scarcely carry the burdens of your iniquities; you whom I in no way call my servants or my children, but address by the bare names of Jacob and Israel, so as to expose and reprove you as sinners. But I, for my own sake, because I am merciful and patient and of many mercies, will blot out all your iniquities in the sprinkling and the blood of the new Testament; I will blot out the old bond that was written against you; and I will no longer remember your sins, which, if you are willing to believe, I am going to forgive you in baptism. Put me, then, in remembrance: if you have anything righteous to answer me, I will gladly receive it, that we may be judged together, and you may convict me of not having done for you what I ought to have done. This sense we read more fully in Micah: My people, what have I done to you, and in what have I troubled you? Answer me: for I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and freed you from the house of bondage, and sent before your face Moses and Aaron and Miriam. And in the fiftieth Psalm David says to God: That you may be justified in your words, and may prevail when you are judged (Ps 50 [51]:5). Tell, then, if you have anything, that you may be justified. And the sense is: I will not speak first against you, lest you say you have been overwhelmed by a multitude of words; but if you have anything righteous, speak for yourself, so that you may be seen to endure undeservedly the things you suffer. And that you may know that I have mercy on you not for your merit but for my own clemency, I will go back to your fathers and forebears, so that you may understand that you were begotten of sinners: Your first father sinned in the wilderness, namely the whole people of Israel. Or else the author of your race, Abraham, is convicted of having sinned when, as the Lord promised the land of promise to his seed, he answered: Whereby shall I know that I shall possess it? And your interpreters, he says, have transgressed against me (Gen 15:8): Aaron and Moses at the water of contradiction, who spoke as mediators between me and you (Exod 17). And that we may understand that this is not a forced exposition, there follows: And I have defiled the holy princes, of whom it is also sung in the psalm: Their judges have been swallowed up beside the rock (Ps 140 [141]:6). These he says he has defiled for this reason, that they did not enter the land of promise. And I have given Jacob to slaughter, and Israel to blasphemy, so that none of those who had come out of Egypt, except two, entered Judea, but their carcasses lay in the wilderness. According to the Seventy, who added on their own, Tell your iniquities first, that you may be justified, God calls them to repentance, so that they may understand their crimes and sins and obtain pardon. For it is written also in another place: The righteous man is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech (Prov 18:17). And their princes and fathers are said to have violated the holy things of the Lord, not serving the Law of God, but seeking the traditions and commandments of men; on account of whom Jacob perished, and Israel was given to reproach, cast out of his own province, an exile and a stranger throughout the whole world.
44:1f.
And now hear, Jacob my servant, and Israel, whom I have chosen. Thus says the Lord, who makes you and forms you from the womb, your helper: Do not fear, my servant Jacob, and you, Most Upright, whom I have chosen. For I will pour out waters upon the thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground; I will pour out my spirit upon your seed, and my blessing upon your offspring. And they will spring up among the grass, like willows beside flowing waters. This one will say, I am the Lord's; and that one will call in the name of Jacob; and this one will write with his hand, To the Lord; and he will be likened in the name of Israel. LXX: But now hear, Jacob my child, and Israel whom I have chosen. I am the Lord God, who made you and fashioned you from the womb; you will yet have help. Do not fear, my child Jacob, and beloved Israel whom I have chosen; yet I will give water in thirst to those who walk in the waterless land; I will put my spirit upon your seed, and my blessings upon your sons. And they will spring up like grass in the midst of water, and like the willow beside flowing waters. This one will say, I am God's; this one will cry out in the name of Jacob. And another will write on his hand, I am God's, and will cry out in the name of Israel. Where the people of the Jews is accused for its unbelief and blasphemy, it is called by the bare words, without any dignity of name: You have not called upon me, Jacob, nor have you labored in me, Israel; and again: I have given Jacob to slaughter, and Israel to blasphemy (above, Isa 43:22, 28). But where he speaks to the choir of the Apostles, which is from the Jews, the privileges of names are also added: Hear, Jacob my servant, and Israel whom I have chosen: so that servitude comes first, election second. Thus says the Lord, your maker and former, who helped you from the womb (Gen 25), so that while still in your mother's womb you seized your brother's heel; or who at the beginning of the newborn Church preserved you from the persecutors. Do not fear their cruelty, Jacob my servant, and Most Upright, whom I have chosen. He calls Israel by another name; for the Hebrew word ISURUN (ישרון) the others translated εὐθύτατον, or εὐθῆ, that is, most upright and upright; the Seventy alone most beloved, adding Israel of their own. For properly, according to the Hebrews and the faithfulness of the letters, ISRAEL (ישראל) means upright of God; whereas a man seeing God lies not in the letters but in the sound of the word. Hence also the book of Genesis is called εὐθεῖς, that is, of the righteous: Abraham, Isaac and Israel. Do not fear, then, Jacob and Israel, because I will pour out waters upon the thirsty and the dry ground, of which it has often been said: And I will pour out, or I will put my spirit upon your seed, and my blessing upon your offspring, which will be born again of water and the Holy Spirit in baptism. This the Savior also promised in the Gospel, saying: If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. And at once it is added: But this he said of the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed were to receive (John 7). He also compares those who are born again in baptism to green grass, and to the willow which springs up beside flowing waters and, against the nature of things, bears fruit, though before it was barren, or rather its seed, taken as food, makes people barren. This indeed is read in the first psalm: And he will be like a tree which is planted by the streams of waters, which will give its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall. Others understand by the grass and the willows springing up anew a twofold calling: so that the people of the nations is in the grass, and in the willows those of Israel who believed. And at the same time he describes the variety of believers: One will say, I am the Lord's, he who trusts that the works of righteousness are in him; another will call (understand: sinners to repentance) in the name of Jacob, so that they too may supplant vices and sins. Another will write with his hand, I am God's; or, as the Seventy translated, he will write on his hand, I am God's, so that he glories in being a soldier in the new service of Christ's warfare. And he will be likened in the name of Israel. For not all from Israel, but a great part from the multitude of the nations will be likened in the name of Israel, so as to receive the Law and the Prophets and all the graces of the Holy Spirit which were promised to the people of Israel.
44:6ff.
Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his redeemer, the Lord of hosts: I am the first and I am the last, and besides me there is no God. Who is like me? Let him call and declare, and set out the order for me, since I established the ancient people; let them declare to them the things to come and the things that shall be. Do not fear, nor be troubled: from that time I have made you hear, and I have declared; you are my witnesses. Is there a God besides me, and a former whom I have not known? The makers of an idol are all nothing, and their most beloved things will not profit them. They themselves are their witnesses, that they do not see nor understand, so that they may be confounded. Who has formed a god, and cast a graven image that is profitable for nothing? Behold, all its partners will be confounded; for the craftsmen are of men; they will all assemble, they will stand, and they will be afraid, and they will be confounded together. The ironsmith has worked with the file; with coals and with hammers he has formed it, and he has worked with the arm of his strength. He will hunger and faint, he will not drink water, and he will grow weary. The carpenter has stretched out the rule he has formed it with the plane; he has made it with the corner tools, and turned it with the compass; and he has made the image of a man, like a handsome man dwelling in a house. He cut down cedars, he took the holm oak and the oak that had stood among the trees of the forest. He planted a pine, which the rain nourished; and it became fuel for men; he took from them and was warmed; he kindled it and baked bread. But of the rest he has made a god, and has worshiped it; he has made a graven image, and has bowed down before it. Half of it he burned in the fire, and on half of it he ate flesh. He cooked a stew and was filled, and was warmed, and said: Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire. But the rest of it he made into a god and a graven image for himself; he bows down before it and worships it, and prays to it, saying: Deliver me, for you are my god. They have not known, nor understood; for they have forgotten, so that their eyes may not see, so that they may not understand with their heart. They do not consider in their mind, nor know, nor perceive, so as to say: Half of it I burned in the fire, and on its coals I baked bread; I cooked flesh and ate, and of the rest of it shall I make an idol? Shall I fall down before the trunk of a tree? Part of it is ash; a foolish heart has worshiped it; and he has not delivered his soul, nor will he say: Perhaps there is a lie in my right hand. After the preaching of the Apostles, the calling of the nations, the coming of the Savior, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, whom he promised he would give to all believers, when, according to the variety of their merits, one will say, I am the Lord's; another will call in the name of Jacob; another will write with his hand that he is the Lord's, and, though sprung from the unbelieving crowd of the Gentiles, will be likened in the name of Israel, so that, forsaking idols, he may be a worshiper of the one God, another περικοπὴ begins, which we have set out whole at once, so as not to divide the continuity of a single sense. And because the Seventy in this passage, except for a few words, do not differ from the Hebrew, we have been content with our own edition, and when it has been understood, the others too will be known. The discourse is against the idolaters of that time when the prophet Isaiah was announcing things to come to the peoples, and it reproves those who, despising the religion of Almighty God, bow down to wooden images and worship the works of their own hands. Let us run through it, then, point by point. Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, which is to believe in me, and his redeemer, which will receive the coming of my Son: the Lord of hosts, and of powers, and the Almighty. For this is what SABAOTH (צבאות) means in Hebrew. I am the first, and I am the last, I am the Α and the Ω; and besides me there is no God, because the child whom I have chosen is God in me. Of him I said above: Behold my child, whom I have chosen; my chosen one, whom my soul has received; he will bring forth judgment to the nations; and in his name the nations will hope. Nor does he say that he is alone, but that besides his own power and wisdom there is no outside God; and condemning the opinion of many gods, and images, he says: Who, he says, is like me? Let him call the things that are not as though they were, and set out the order of my creation, I who have balanced all things by reason, since I made man upon the earth. Nor do I want this only, but I also ask for knowledge of things to come. Hence you, Israel, whose king and redeemer I am, do not fear the images, which you learned on Mount Sinai are nothing. Or is there perhaps another Creator, whom I have not known? Or besides this is there another world, to show the power of an unknown God? And not only the things that are made, but those also who make them, will be held as nothing. And when the time of vengeance has come, the works of their hands will in no way be able to free them; blind and senseless, they confound their own craftsmen. For who could believe that a god is formed by adze, file and auger and hammer? And that images are either cast in the coals, or by rule, plane and corner tools and compass suddenly rise up into gods? Especially since the cheapness of the art is shown by the hunger and thirst of the craftsman. For a wooden statue is made, expressing the human form, and the more beautiful it is, the more august a god it is thought. It is set in a shrine and shut up in an eternal prison, the thing that grew for a long time in the forests and, according to the variety of trees, was a cedar or a holm oak or an oak or a pine. And in a wondrous manner its chips and shavings are thrown into the fire to warm the god's craftsman and to cook various stews; but the other part is formed into a god, so that, when the work is finished, its maker may worship it and invoke the help of his own work. Nor does he understand or consider, nay, he does not see with the eyes either of the flesh or of the mind, that that cannot be God of which a part has been burned in the fire, nor can the divine majesty be made by the hand of a man. And the prophetic discourse on the mockery of idols is woven more fully, but these things are easy to understand and do not call for a long-winded, nay, a superfluous exposition. On this Flaccus too writes in a Satire, deriding the images of the nations (Satires, book 1, 8): Once I was a fig-tree trunk, a useless log, when the craftsman, uncertain whether to make a stool or a Priapus, preferred that I be a god: thence I am a god, of thieves and birds the greatest terror. . . . . . . . . . . . . And whatever has been said of idols can be referred also to the chiefs of the heresies, who with a crafty heart put together the images of their doctrines and lies, and venerate what they know to have been feigned by themselves. Nor is their own error enough for them, unless they have deceived all the simple into worshiping them. They think gain to be godliness, and devour the houses of widows (1 Tim 6), and, abusing the ignorance of the common people, with the art of dialectic, as with adze and auger, file and plane, they form their god, and forge it with the hammer, and gild it with the charm of rhetorical speech: whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame (Phil 3).
44:21ff.
Remember these things, Jacob and Israel, for you are my servant; I have formed you, you are my servant, Israel; do not forget me. I have blotted out your iniquities like a cloud, and your sins like a mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. Praise, O heavens, for the Lord has done it; shout for joy, you ends of the earth; resound with praise, you mountains, you forest and every tree in it; for the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and Israel will glory. LXX: Remember these things, Jacob and Israel, for you are my child; I have formed you as my child; and you, Israel, do not forget me. For behold, I have blotted out your iniquities like a cloud, and your sins like darkness. Return to me, and I will redeem you. Rejoice, O heavens, for God has had mercy on Israel. Sound the trumpet, you foundations of the earth; cry out with gladness, you mountains, you hills and all the trees that are in them; for God has redeemed Jacob, and Israel will be glorious. Since these things are so, and you know that idols are figments of men, O Jacob, and Israel my child, do not forget your Creator, nor do yourself the injury of bowing down to the work of your own hands. And since these are to be utterly destroyed at the coming of my child whom I have chosen, therefore know with all the eagerness of your mind that, as a cloud and darkness and mist is either dissolved by the heat of the sun or thinned out by a sweeping wind, so I will cause your iniquities to be dissolved, and all the sins with which you had before offended me. Only return to me and do penance, for you are to be redeemed with precious blood. If you do this, know that heaven and earth rejoice in your salvation, and all the elements sing together; or the angels who dwell in heaven, and the other powers by which the foundations of the earth are borne; or certainly the Apostles and Prophets, of whom the Apostle also spoke: Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets (Eph 2:20). The mountains also and the forests, or the hills, which, according to the variety of their virtues, have held the first, the middle and the last places, are bidden to shout for joy and to sound the trumpet, knowing that the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and that he rejoices in the conversion of Israel; or that Israel himself, turned from error, becomes glorious.
44:24ff.
Thus says the Lord, your redeemer, and your former from the womb: I am the Lord who makes all things, who alone stretches out the heavens, who establishes the earth, and there is none with me; who makes void the signs of the diviners, and turns the soothsayers to madness; who turns the wise backward, and makes their knowledge foolish; who raises up the word of his servant, and fulfills the counsel of his messengers; who say to Jerusalem: You will be inhabited , and to the cities of Judah: You will be built, and I will raise up its deserts; who say to the deep: Be desolate, and I will dry up your rivers; who say to Cyrus: You are my shepherd, and you will fulfill all my will; who say to Jerusalem: You will be built; and to the temple: You will be founded. LXX: Thus says the Lord who redeemed you, and who forms you from the womb: I am the Lord who accomplish all things; I alone stretched out the heaven, and made firm the earth. Who else has scattered the signs of the pythons, and divinations from the heart? I who turn the prudent backward, and make their counsel foolish; and I establish the word of my child, and prove true the counsel of his angels; who say to Jerusalem: You will be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah: You will be built, and its deserts will spring up; who say to the abyss: You will be made desolate, and I will dry up your rivers; who say to Cyrus that he should be wise, and do all my wishes; who say to Jerusalem: You will be built; and I will lay the foundations of my holy house. When the idols and the iniquities of Israel have been destroyed and its sins blotted out, when the whole creation will rejoice together, and, according to the faith of the Gospel (Luke 15), the angels in heaven will rejoice over the repentance of sinners, the power of God is described: that it is in no way a great thing for him to redeem Jacob and to restore an upright heart in Israel, whom he formed from the womb. And if this should seem no small thing to anyone, let it not be difficult for him who alone stretched out the heavens; according to what is read elsewhere: Who stretches out the heaven like a skin (Ps 103 [104]:2). Not that the Son is excluded from the stretching out of the heavens, For all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made (John 1:3); but that, as we have often said, the idols are excluded by this sentence. For in the Proverbs of Solomon too it is said in the person of Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God: When he was preparing the heaven, I was with him (Prov 8:27). For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created (Ps 148; Ps 32 [33]:9); and: By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth (Ps 32 [33]:6). We press these points frequently, so that no occasion may be left to the heretics for blaspheming Christ. In the establishing of the earth too, when he was making its foundations solid, there was no one with God except him who was in him. He, then, being so great and such, when the time of the foreordained mystery has come, that all idols may be destroyed and the knowledge of God alone may be preached in the world, will destroy and overturn all the prophecies of the diviners, and the signs and portents of the pythons and soothsayers, by which they have deceived the human race; and he will show to be foolish the wisdom of the philosophers, which itself also is the greatest part of error, since by human thoughts they are in no way shown to have comprehended the wisdom of God. He will also fulfill in deed the word of his child, or servant, of whom we spoke above, and the counsel of his messengers, namely of the Apostles and all the teachers, who will announce the will of their master to the nations. He, then, who is to do such great things, whose power I have described in a brief discourse, now says also to Jerusalem, which was to be destroyed by the Babylonians, before it is destroyed, that it will again be inhabited by peoples; and to the cities of Judea, that they will be restored; he who will also raise up its solitudes, so that all may be filled with inhabitants. He, then, who says to Jerusalem and to Judea and its deserts that it will be inhabited and built and raised up, says to the deep or abyss, that is, to Babylon, Be desolate, and I will dry up your rivers, all the power of its kings. Or, because he had spoken of the deep and the abyss, rightly by metaphor he set down rivers too, of which the Psalmist also sings: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept (Ps 136 [137]:1). And he who restores Jerusalem and destroys Babylon also says to Cyrus, king of the Persians, who first destroyed Babylon and the Chaldeans: You are my shepherd, or, as the Seventy translated, that he should be wise. The cause of this difference is plain. For if we read the Hebrew word ROI with the letter RES (רעי), it is understood as my shepherd; if with DALETH (דעי), as knowing or my understanding one; and the likeness of these letters is distinguished by a small stroke, and for this reason they are often confused. It is written at the beginning of Ezra that at the edict of Cyrus, king of the Persians and Medes, the captivity of the people of Israel was loosed, and those who wished to return were sent back to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua son of Jozadak, the high priest. For the Lord inspired him to do his will and to fulfill his commands. And significantly he added, who say to Jerusalem: You will be built; and to the Temple: You will be founded. For under Cyrus it was ordered that Jerusalem and the Temple be built, but while he lived only the foundations of the Temple were laid. For the rest, under Darius, in his second year, when Haggai and Zechariah prophesied, the Temple began to be built.
45:1ff.
Thus says the Lord to my anointed, Cyrus, whose right hand I have taken hold of, to subdue nations before his face, and I will turn the backs of kings, and I will open doors before him, and the gates will not be shut. I will go before you, and I will humble the glorious ones of the earth; I will break the gates of bronze, and I will shatter the bars of iron. And I will give you hidden treasures and the secrets of hidden places, that you may know that I am the Lord, who call your name, the God of Israel. For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I have also called you by your name; I have likened you, and you have not known me. I am the Lord, and there is none besides; apart from me there is no God; I girded you, and you have not known me; that they may know, those who are from the rising of the sun and those who are from the west, that besides me there is none. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil. I am the Lord who does all these things. I know that in this passage very many, not only of the Latins but of the Greeks, err badly, thinking that it is written: Thus says the Lord to my anointed, the Lord; so that it may be understood according to what we read elsewhere: The Lord rained from the Lord (Gen 19:24); and: The Lord said to my Lord (Ps 109 [110]:1). For it says not κυρίῳ, which means Lord, but Cyrus, who in Hebrew is called CHORES (כרש), the king of the Persians, who overcame Babylon and the Chaldeans; and, joined with the Medes, he is read of above as the driver of a two-horse chariot, that is, of the camel and the ass. He was called Christ, that is, the anointed of the Lord, because this was the mark of royal power among the Hebrews; so that, as among us the diadem and the purple are given to emperors alone, so among the Hebrews those who were to reign were anointed with ointment. Hence Saul too is called the Lord's anointed (1 Sam 6). And in the Psalms we read: Do not touch my anointed ones, and do no harm to my prophets (Ps 104 [105]:15). His right hand he took hold of and held, so that no one could resist his strength. Let us read Xenophon's history of the elder Cyrus in eight books, and we shall see the prophecy of Isaiah fulfilled. For what city was not opened to him? What city did not bow beneath him the backs of its kings? What walls, before impregnable, were not overthrown by his siege? Hence God makes an apostrophe to Cyrus himself: I have given you the treasures and the hidden wealth of all the cities, so that you, who before worshiped idols, might perceive the one God through his benefits, especially since you know that your name was foretold long before you were born. Josephus too relates this in the eleventh book of the Jewish Antiquities: that Cyrus read that Isaiah had prophesied of him by his very name, and that for this reason he loved the Jews very much as God's intimates. And these things, he says, I have granted you for the sake of Jacob my servant, and Israel my chosen, and I have called you by your name, as I called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and foretold you long before, as I did Isaac and Josiah: lest you should be thought to be that Christ to whom you have been likened, and whose type and image you went before. But you have not known me, that is, you have worshiped images, not God. I girded you with strength; I made you victor over many nations, and you have not known your helper. In this place I cannot sufficiently marvel at the folly of readers, that they refer these things to Christ, through whom the world was reconciled to God. I, he says, am the Lord, and there is none besides apart from me. For besides my Word and Reason, and my power and wisdom, which is in me, there is no other God. And I have done these things so that the whole world, from the East and the West, may acknowledge that there is no other God besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. For the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, who says in the Gospel: I and the Father are one (John 10:30). And in the volume of Ezra it is set down that Cyrus wrote to all the nations that there is no God but the God of Israel alone. Or it is to be understood thus: that the release of the captives and God's clemency toward his people made God better known to all the nations. I, then, who gave you strength, and am the only God, myself make things contrary to one another, light and darkness, that is, day and night; peace and evil, that is, leisure and war; by which he signifies both that he was angry with his people, when it endured the darkness of captivity and the evils of bondage, and again that he had mercy on it, when, sent back to their homeland, they received peace and joy. For as darkness is contrary to light, so war is contrary to peace. Hence let the heresy be confounded which thinks God the founder of evils; since here evil is set not as the contrary of good, but for affliction and war, according to what is written in the Gospel: Sufficient for the day is its own evil (Matt 6:34). According to tropology we can say these things also of the churchman, to whom God has given speech and wisdom, so that by his disputation he may overturn all the sects contrary to the truth, as holy Scripture records of Stephen too (Acts 6), that no one could resist his wisdom; and so that he may subject kings, that is, the patriarchs of the several heresies, to his power, and may open and break what before seemed shut fast by the art of dialectic, and may bring into the open the secrets of the heretics, overcoming and refuting them, so that they may come to know the secrets of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2). Such a man God calls by his own name, because he is the defender of his child Jacob and of his chosen Israel. Him he takes up and likens to his own word; and he must beware lest he think that what he speaks is his own, but must refer all to the glory of the giver, lest he too deserve to hear: I girded you, and you have not known me. For when, equipped with the armor of the Apostle, he has taught all that there is no other God but one, who is the God of Jacob and Israel, Marcion will be confounded, who understands two gods, one good and the other just, one the founder of things invisible, the other of things visible; of whom the former makes light, the latter darkness, the one peace, the other evil: whereas the one and the same God has founded both according to the diversity of merits.
Book Thirteen
Many mishaps overwhelm those who sail. If the wind blows more violently, the storm is a cause of fear. If a gentler breeze ruffles the back of the element that lies beneath, they dread the ambushes of pirates. And so it comes about that souls entrusted to fragile timber either fear danger or endure it; and of these each is heavier than the other: either to fear death perpetually, or to endure what you have feared. This I see happening to me as I sail on the sea of Isaiah. For while the sails were spread on an unhindered course, and the keel glided on, furrowing the plains of the deep, with the sailors' hands at ease, a sudden whirlwind of sickness arose, and with such great masses of waves and the crash of billows dashing against one another resounding, it so terrified the fearful hearts of my friends that they were compelled to say: Master, save us, we are perishing (Matt 8:25). Therefore, Eustochium, unique example in the whole world of nobility and of virginity, let not the apple of your eye be silent; cry out in your heart: Abba, Father (Rom 8:15). And say with the Psalmist: Arise, why do you sleep, O Lord (Ps 43 [44]:23)? so that, by your prayers and Christ's mercy, I may complete the work enjoined on me on Isaiah. For already the thirteenth book of the Explanations is being forged, and it has not yet come to its end. And meanwhile, until the merciful and compassionate Lord, patient and of many mercies (Ps 85 [86] and 144 [145]), restores my former health, I have dictated this little preface in hurried speech, so that what is in hand may be copied out on sheets, and the full correction be reserved to the reader's judgment.
45:8
Drop down dew, heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the righteous one: let the earth be opened, and let it bud forth the Savior, and let righteousness spring up together: I the Lord have created him. LXX: Let the heaven rejoice from above, and let the clouds sprinkle righteousness: let the earth bud forth, and let mercy spring up, and let it bud forth righteousness together: I am the Lord who created you. The interpretation of this passage is twofold. For some think that it clings to what was said above, and that, when King Cyrus sets the captives free, heaven and earth rejoice: μετωνυμικῶς, that is to say, those who dwell in heaven and on earth. Others separate it from what precedes and want it to be the proper beginning of this chapter, and a prophecy of the Lord's coming: that command is given to the clouds, of which it is written above (cf. Isa 5:6): I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it, that is, upon the vineyard of Israel; and to which the truth of God reaches, that they should rain upon the world the righteous one, or righteousness; and that the earth should be opened and bud forth the Savior. Of it is sung in the Psalms: Truth has sprung from the earth, and righteousness has looked down from heaven (Ps 84 [85]:12); or, according to the Seventy: The earth has budded forth mercy and righteousness alike, so that sinners may obtain mercy and the righteous their rewards. And as for what follows: I the Lord have created him, or, I am the Lord who created you, he will not be scandalized at the word 'creature' who has read that he is a worm and a servant, and that he sprang from the earth.
45:9ff.
Woe to him who contradicts his maker: a potsherd of the Samian earth. Does the clay say to its potter, What are you making? and, Your work is without hands? Woe to him who says to a father, What are you begetting? and to a woman, What are you bringing to birth? Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, his fashioner: Ask me about things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands give charge to me. I made the earth, and I created man upon it: my hands stretched out the heavens, and I gave command to all their host. I have raised him up to righteousness, and I will direct all his ways. He will build my city, and he will let my captivity go, not for a price nor for gifts, says the Lord of hosts. LXX: What better have I made than the potter's clay? Will the ploughman plough the earth? Will the clay say to the potter, What are you making? because you do not work and have no hands? Woe to him who says to a father, What are you begetting? and to a mother, What are you bringing to birth? For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, who made the things to come: Ask me about my sons, and concerning the works of my hands give charge to me. I made the earth, and man upon it. I with my hand made firm the heaven: I gave command to all the stars. I raised him up with righteousness as king: all his ways are straight. He will build my city, and will turn back the captivity of my people: not with a price nor with gifts, said the Lord God Sabaoth. Those who wish to refer what is said to the person of Cyrus interpret this passage thus: When I promise great things, that for the sake of my people's return to Judea I will lay all kingdoms beneath Cyrus, woe to him who is unbelieving and does not think that the things I say will come, as if clay and a broken potsherd should cavil at its potter, why it was made, or why it was made so; and a work should speak against the hands of its craftsman; and a son should cavil at his father and mother, why he was poured out onto the earth by the law of nature. Since therefore I, the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, have fashioned Cyrus, and he was begotten at my command, it is superfluous for you to doubt about things to come; rather you ought to know that I dispose of my sons, the people of Israel, and of the work of my hands, not at your discretion but by my will: so that I, who formerly created darkness and evil for them, now grant light and peace. For I am God, who did not create the earth for emptiness, that it should be deserted and squalid, but that men should dwell in it. I stretched out, or made firm, the heavens, that they might be the dwelling place of the angels. And I distinguished them with the variety of the stars, and commanded each in what order to run, and to complete the different spans of days and months and years. I, then, who made heaven and earth, what great thing is it if I have created one king to keep my commands, and if I direct all his ways? For he will order that my city Jerusalem be built, and that the captives return to Judea. Not for a price, nor for gifts, but because of my will, says the Lord God of hosts. But one who refers the understanding so begun to Christ frames the words of his explanation thus: Woe to those who contradict God and do not think that Christ will come; as if clay and a potsherd from among potsherds should contradict its potter. Woe to him who says to the Almighty Father, Why do you beget a Son? and to the woman, holy Mary, What are you bringing to birth? Of whom the Apostle too writes (Gal 4): That Christ was made of a woman, and made under the law. These things, then, says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, who fashioned the Savior in the virginal womb, saying through Gabriel: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you (Luke 1:35): and the holy thing that will be born in you will be called the Son of God: let the potsherd question me and search out the secrets of things to come. And let it instruct me how I ought to regenerate the adopted sons who are to believe in my Son. The evangelist John too says: As many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God (John 1:12). But if I made the earth to be inhabited by men, and stretched out the heavens above, and adorned them with the variety of the stars, so that worshipers of God might dwell on the earth, what wonder is it if I have sent my Son, a righteous king, into the world, or raised him up from the underworld, all of whose ways are straight? For he committed no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth (1 Pet 2:22). He it is who is to build my city upon the rock, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail (Matt 16); and which, set on a mountain, cannot be hidden (ibid., 5); and to let go free all who were formerly bound with demonic chains, not for a price nor for gifts: for we have been saved freely, the Apostles hearing and doing: Freely you have received, freely give (Matt 10:8). Some refer these things to Zerubbabel, who led the captives out of Babylon, and built the city, and constructed the temple, while Haggai and Zechariah prophesied and said: The hands of Zerubbabel have founded this house, and his hands will complete it (Zech 4:9). But we say more rightly and more truly that neither did Cyrus build the city, which was constructed afterwards under Nehemiah, nor were all his ways made straight, he to whom it was said above: I took you and girded you, and you did not know me; and that all that is said exceeds the station of Zerubbabel, who was under the nod and power of the Medes and Persians. For Zerubbabel neither constructed the city, nor let the captivity go, nor can he be called king who, living under other kings, lacked this name. But what the Seventy mean, who at the beginning of this chapter translated: What better have I made than the potter's clay? Will he who ploughs plough the earth? I am not able to know: unless perhaps I follow the edition of Theodotion, who put in place of this: Woe to him who contends against his maker, ploughing those who plough the earth: namely, that he wounds the hearts of mortals unto penitence, and, after the manner of furrows, breaks them up and overturns them. But this too is a frivolous interpretation. Further, that God, our Creator and maker, is called a potter, the apostle Paul too says in the Epistle to the Romans: Does the thing formed say to him who formed it: Why have you made me thus? Has not the potter power over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor (Rom 9:20)? And in Jeremiah it is written at greater length, who relates, after other things: I went down into the potter's house, and behold, he was making a work on the wheel, and the vessel that he was making was spoiled in his hands. And again he made from the same clay another vessel, as it pleased in his sight. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Can I not, like this potter, make you, house of Israel, says the Lord? Behold, as clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hands, house of Israel (Jer 18:3, 4). And what is written: I gave command to all the stars, has given some an occasion to hold that the stars are rational and have soul and sense. For, they say, he would not command any but beings who understand: not remembering that it is written in Jonah: The Lord commanded the scorching wind (Jonah 4:8). And again: He commanded the morning worm (ibid., 7). And that in the Gospel the Savior rebuked the winds and the sea (Luke 8), in which it is plain that there is neither sense nor reason.
45:14ff.
Thus says the Lord: The labor of Egypt, and the merchandise of Ethiopia, and the Sabaim, men of stature, will pass over to you, and will be yours: they will walk behind you, they will go bound in manacles: and they will worship you, and make supplication to you: only in you is God, and there is no God apart from you. Truly you are a hidden God, the God of Israel, the Savior. They are confounded and have blushed, all of them: together the makers of errors have gone off into confusion. Israel is saved in the Lord with an eternal salvation: you will not be confounded, and you will not blush, for ever and ever. LXX: Thus says the Lord Sabaoth: Egypt has labored, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and of the Sabaim: lofty men will pass over to you, and they will be your servants, and they will follow you bound in manacles, and they will pass over to you, and will worship you, and will pray in you: because God is in you, and there is no God apart from you. For you are God, and we did not know it: the God of Israel, the Savior: let all his adversaries be confounded and blush, and let them walk in confusion. ÷ Be renewed unto me, islands ⁚ Israel is saved by the Lord with an eternal salvation: they will not be confounded nor blush for ever. In this passage too, those who follow the history say that Egypt, and the Ethiopians, and the nations of the Sabaim, which are beyond Ethiopia, served Cyrus, and that the furthest nations were subjected to him; and that from his wondrous victory they understood that the Lord was in him, and that there was no other God besides him who dwelt in him. But how what follows: Truly you are a hidden God, the God of Israel, the Savior, can fit the person of Cyrus, I do not understand. Unless perhaps they use the edition of Theodotion, who translated: In you is the strong one, and there is no other God besides him: therefore you are the strong, hidden God of Israel, the Savior. Whithersoever they turn, they will not be able to escape the snares of the truth. For grant that God is in Cyrus, and that there is no other God besides him who is in Cyrus: how will it be fitting to say to the person of Cyrus, Truly you are a hidden God, the God of Israel, the Savior? Therefore the God in whom God is, is more rightly and more truly understood as our Lord Jesus Christ, who says in the Gospel: I and the Father are one (John 10:30). He is called a hidden God because of the mystery of the body he assumed, and the God of Israel, Savior, which means Jesus. For he, according to the angel Gabriel, will save his people (Luke 1). They are confounded and have blushed, all together, namely the Scribes and Pharisees. And the makers of error have gone off into confusion, who spread a lie through the whole world, saying that he had been stolen away by the Apostles (Matt 28). But Israel, saved in the Lord with an eternal salvation, is understood as the choir of the Apostles, and those who believed through the Apostles. Hence it is said to them: You will not be confounded nor will you blush, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. That Egypt, and the Ethiopians, and the Sabaim, lofty and exalted men, served him, no one doubts, since one sees the world subjected to him, and perceives that, under the name of a few nations which dwell at the furthest ends of the earth, all the hinges of the heavens and all the shores of the earth are to believe in him. Hence it is beautifully said, as to men laboring in the error of idolatry, that the labor of Egypt ceases. For no nation was so given over to idolatry, and venerated such innumerable monstrosities, as Egypt, of which we read above (Isa 19:1): Behold, the Lord will ascend upon a light cloud, and will enter Egypt, and the idols of Egypt will be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt will melt in its midst. Further, what is added in the Seventy: Be renewed unto me, islands, we can expound thus: we may say that the Churches gathered from the nations are renewed in Christ, and are called islands because they endure the rage and the storms of persecutors, and, founded upon the rock, are shaken by no mass of whirlwinds. The Hebrews strive with foolish contention to assert that, up to the place where we read: Only in you is God, and there is no God apart from you, it is said either to Jerusalem or to Cyrus; but that what follows: Truly you are a hidden God, the God of Israel, the Savior, is suddenly an apostrophe made to the almighty God; though it is plain even to fools that the texture of the discourse is one, and that a sense which is joined together in the very order and reasoning of the narration cannot be divided.
45:18ff.
For thus says the Lord, who creates the heavens, God himself who forms the earth and makes it, he himself its fashioner: he did not create it in vain; that it might be inhabited he formed it: I am the Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth. I did not say to the seed of Jacob: Seek me in vain. I am the Lord who speaks righteousness, who declares right things. Gather together, and come, and draw near together, you who have been saved from among the nations: they have not known, who lift up the wood of their graven image, and pray to a god that does not save. Declare, and come, and take counsel together: who has caused this to be heard from the beginning, has foretold it from that time? Is it not I the Lord, and there is no God besides me? A righteous God and one who saves, there is none besides me. Be converted to me, and you will be saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is no other. By myself have I sworn: the word of righteousness will go forth from my mouth, and will not return: for to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear. Therefore he will say in the Lord: Mine are righteousnesses and dominion: to him they will come, and all who resist him will be confounded. In the Lord all the seed of Israel will be justified and will be praised: LXX: Thus says the Lord who made the heaven: this God who showed the earth and made it, he himself prepared it: he did not make it for emptiness, but formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, nor in a dark place of the earth. I did not say to the seed of Jacob, Seek vanity: I am the Lord who speak righteousness, I declare truth. Gather together and come, and take counsel together, you who are being saved from the nations; they have not known, who carry the wood of their graven image: they pray to gods that do not save. If they declare, let them draw near, that they may know together who has made these things heard from the beginning; then it was declared to you. Am I not the Lord God, and there is no other besides me: a righteous one and a savior, there is none besides me. Be converted to me, and you will be saved from the ends of the earth. I am God, and there is no other. By myself I swear: unless righteousness shall go forth from my mouth: my words will not be turned back, for to me every knee will bend, and every tongue will swear and will confess to God, saying: Righteousness and glory will come to him, and all who separate themselves from the Lord will be confounded: all the seed of the sons of Israel will be justified and will be glorified in God. Having called Egypt, and Ethiopia, and the Sabaim, lofty men, by which the salvation of all the barbarian nations and the conversion of the whole world to God is shown, God shows his righteousness: that he is the Lord not of the Jews only, but also of the nations. For he, the maker of heaven and earth, is equally the God of all, and he created the earth for no other reason than to be the dwelling place of men, who should worship and understand their Creator, and despise all idols. For on Mount Sinai too, from its lofty summit, he spoke these things in the hearing of the peoples: You shall have no strange gods besides me, nor shall you make yourself an idol (Exod 20:3, 4). But it is better that we believe this was said of the preaching of the Gospel: for Moses spoke in a hidden wilderness to one people only. But the sound of the Apostles went out into the whole world, and their words reached to the ends of the earth (Ps 18 [19]). I did not say, he says, to the seed of Jacob, Seek me in vain. For I promised them the kingdoms of heaven, and I spoke to them first: I came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 15:24). And therefore I spoke righteousness and declared right things, or truth, so that, leaving behind the images and ceremonies of the Law, they might follow the truth of the Gospel. But because they would not believe, and judged themselves unworthy of salvation, therefore I say to the nations: Gather together from the whole world; and come and draw near to me together, you who have been saved from among the nations. By this he shows that not all the nations will believe at once, but gradually and in parts. Finally he rebukes those who remained in their former error, saying: They have not known, who lift up the wood of their graven image, and pray to a god that does not save. And the sense is: They did not understand my words, weighed down by the burden of their idols, and hoping in those in whom there is no salvation. Hence the Apostles are commanded to proclaim the truth in season and out of season (2 Tim 4), and to enter on counsel for the salvation of the nations. And this, that is, that very many from the nations should be gathered and come and be saved, God spoke from the beginning, and the mouths of all the Prophets sang it, who spoke by the word of the Lord, besides whom there is no other. For the Son is God not apart from him, but in him. And beautifully he joins: A righteous God, not of one nation at all, but of the whole world, to which he says: Be converted to me, and you will be saved, all the ends of the earth; fulfilling what the Father promised the Son: Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession (Ps 2:8). And he swears by himself that the sentence of his mouth, and the word he has once uttered concerning the salvation of the nations, will by no means be made void; but that the promise of him who said above: Be converted to me, and you will be saved, all the ends of the earth, will be fulfilled in deed. And he swears, according to the Apostle (Heb 6), so that through two immovable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have firm consolation; but he also swears this: that, idols abandoned, every knee should bow to him, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue of mortals should swear by him (Phil 2). In this the Christian people is plainly signified. For it is the custom of the Church to bend the knee to Christ: which the Jews, displaying the pride of their mind, do not do at all. And every tongue too of all the barbarian nations confesses God, not in synagogues but in the Churches of Christ. And every tongue that confesses Christ will speak in the Lord, and will say: Mine are righteousnesses, and mine is the dominion, not the Jewish people's. To him all the nations will come, and those who formerly resisted his Gospel will be confounded; and all the seed of Israel will be justified and praised, whose preaching and most fertile sowing has borne the richest fruits throughout the whole world. Or, according to the Seventy, every tongue that swears by and confesses God will say that the righteousness and glory of the whole world comes to him, and that the Jews, who separate themselves from him, are confounded. But those who have sprung from the stock of the sons of Israel, and who have sprouted from the seed of the Apostles, and have believed in Christ, may they have righteousness and everlasting glory.
46:1-2
Bel is broken, Nebo is crushed: their idols are made over to beasts and cattle, your burdens with heavy weight even to weariness. They have wasted away and are crushed together: they could not save the one who carried them, and their soul shall go into captivity. LXX: Bel has fallen, Dagon is crushed: their graven images are made into beasts and cattle; you carry them bound together like a burden for one who labors, and faints, and hungers, and has no strength besides, who will not be able to save from war: but they themselves have been led captive. After the calling of the nations, and the election of believers from Israel, he testifies that the idols have collapsed. Bel has fallen, has fallen, or is broken: whom the Greeks call Belus, the Latins Saturn. So great was his worship among the ancients that they sacrificed to him not only human victims, captives and mortals of low birth, but even their own children. Nebo, too, is itself an idol, which means prophecy and divination, which he signifies fell silent throughout the whole world after the truth of the Gospel. Or, according to the Seventy, Dagon, which, however, is not found in the Hebrew. And it is the idol of Ascalon, of Gaza and of the other cities of the Philistines. And he passes from the particular to the general: Their idols are made over to beasts and cattle. Not that the idols of the Gentiles were exposed as prey to beasts and cattle: but that the religion of the nations consists in images of beasts and of brute animals, which above all in Egypt were consecrated to divine worship. Of which Virgil says (Aen. 8.698): Monsters of gods of every kind, and barking Anubis.
For most of their towns too have names from beasts and cattle: κυνῶν from dog, λέων from lion; θμοῦϊς, in the Egyptian tongue, from the he-goat; λύκων from wolf; to say nothing of the dreadful and horrible onion, and the noise of the puffed-up belly, which is the religion of Pelusium. These idols, he says, which cannot save those who carry them, are nothing else but burdens for the priests, weighing them down even to weariness. And when captivity comes, they are the first to be led captive, for the value of the metals of which they are made, and they cannot set free their own soul, or that of those who carry them. Not that dumb idols, which are without sensation, have a soul and some sense of pain; but that soul and members are spoken of καταχρηστικῶς in things that are without sense and members. Otherwise, too, we read in Proverbs: In the hand of the tongue are death and life. Or else this must be said: that the heaviest burden among the nations was the error of idolatry, which weighed its worshipers down to the earth, and could not save them, and made their souls captives of the devil and of demons.
46:1, 3ff.
Hear me, house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, who are carried from my womb, who are borne from my matrix. Even to old age I myself, and even to gray hairs I will carry you: I have made, and I will bear: I will carry, and I will save. To whom have you likened me, and made me equal, and compared me, and made me like? You who lavish gold from the purse, and weigh silver on the scales, hiring a goldsmith to make a god: and they fall down and worship. They carry it on their shoulders, bearing it and setting it in its place, and it will stand, and will not move from its place. But when they cry to it, it will not hear: it will not save them from tribulation. LXX: Hear me, house of Jacob, and all the remnant of Israel, who are carried from the womb, and are instructed from a little child even to old age. I am, and until you grow old I am: I sustain you: I have made, and I will carry: I will take you up, and I will save you. To whom have you likened me? See, consider, you who err and lavish gold from the purse, and weigh out silver on the scales, and hire a goldsmith: they have made the works of their hands, and bowing down they have worshiped: they carry it on their shoulders, and go. But if they set it in its place, it stays, and will not move: and whoever cries to it, it will not hear him, and will not deliver him from evils. He by no means calls him Jacob, nor Israel, which itself, we explained above, is said in reproach of the people when it is without the addition of servant, and child, and chosen: but, much more meanly, house of Jacob, and remnant of Israel, because of the nearness of flesh and blood, and as it were the dregs of the remnant of Israel. And he teaches them that they were carried by God out of Egypt like children and sucklings, as it were from a mother's womb and the matrix of one with child. Not that the ineffable and incomprehensible majesty of God has either a womb or a matrix, or feet and hands and the other members of the body; but that we may learn God's affection through our own words. Otherwise, in Psalm 109 (110) too, this same thing is sung in the person of God. For in the place where the Seventy translated, from the womb before the morning star I begot you, the Hebrew has written MEREHEM מרחם, which means from the matrix. But in the present passage it is written not only from the womb and from the matrix, that is, MEBETEN מבטן and MEREHEM מרחם, but MENNI מני, a preposition which signifies from my womb, or from my matrix. And the sense is: I who begot you from infancy, and bore you in my womb and matrix, will myself protect you even to old age, not mine but yours; so as to teach them that they are to be saved by the divine mercy. For the Creator of all spares his creature, and the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep (John 10). But he who is a hireling, whose own the sheep are not, flees when he sees the wolf. Since, then, I made and begot children, I will bear them and I myself will carry them. According to the Seventy, who said: Who are carried from the womb, and are instructed from infancy even to old age, this signifies that they meditate on the law of God day and night in vain, having no knowledge of God, but venerating images of men and beasts: so much so that they need prophetic rebuke, through which God speaks to them: To whom have you likened me, and made me equal? and the rest: that they lavished gold and silver, and, hiring a sculptor, made idols, and worshiped the works of their own hands, which are carried on shoulders, and, fixed and set firm, cannot move themselves, nor profit those by whom they are worshiped. We pass quickly over what is plain, so that by the mercy of Christ we may unlock what is closed.
46:8ff.
Remember this, and be grounded, and return, transgressors, to heart. Recall the former age, for I am God, and there is no God beyond, nor is there any like me. Declaring from the start the last things, and from the beginning things not yet done, saying: My counsel shall stand, and all my will shall be done. Calling a bird from the East, and from a far land the man of my will; and I have spoken, and I will bring it about; I have created, and I will do it. LXX: Remember these things, and groan: repent, you who err. Return in heart, and remember the former things from of old; for I am God, and there is no other besides me. I who declare beforehand the last things before they happen and are fulfilled, and I have said, all my will shall stand, and all that I have planned I will do. I who call a bird from the East, and from a far land, those concerning whom I have planned: I have spoken, and I have brought it about: I have created and I have done it. Because I myself begot you, I myself carried you, and from infancy even to old age you are saved not by your merit but by my compassion: forsake the idols you have made, and return to the worship of the one God. Repent, groan for the error that held you; nay, be grounded, lest the sudden whirlwind of idolatry overturn you again: and return to heart, that is, to your mind, you who, venerating images, dashed yourselves like madmen against wood and stones. Consider from the beginning of the world that there is no God besides me, and that no other could know things to come, except me, who announce through the Prophets what I am going to do: so that, when I have fulfilled what was foretold, I may prove my divinity by divination. For I now say that the mystery which in times past was unknown to all generations, or rather my counsel, will stand; so that, when you see it brought to pass, you may know no God but him who knew that these things would be, nay, commanded them to be done. I am he who calls a bird from the East: as the Hebrews think, Cyrus king of the Persians, or Darius prince of the Medes; and from a far land the man of my will, to fulfill all my will against Babylon and the Chaldeans. Or, as we prove to be true, the Lord Savior, of whom Balaam too prophesies: A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a man out of Israel (Num 24:17), whose name is the East (Zech 6), whom the Magi coming from the East worshiped. For he it is who speaks in the Psalms: O God, I have willed to do your will (Ps 39 [40]:9), of whom the Father spoke: and he proved his pledge by deed. In place of what we have rendered from the Hebrew, the man of my will, the Seventy put, those concerning whom I have planned. According to them, then, by the birds called from the East we can understand the ministries of the angels, which run to and fro through the whole world at the Lord's command; who are ministering spirits, and are sent for the salvation of believers. Of whom it is also sung in the psalm: You who make your angels spirits, and your ministers a burning fire (Ps 103 [104]:4).
46:12-13
Hear me, you hard of heart, who are far from righteousness. I have brought my righteousness near: it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not delay: I will give salvation in Zion, and in Israel my glory. LXX: Hear me, you who have lost heart, who are far from righteousness. I have brought near my righteousness, and the salvation that is from me I will not make to tarry. I have given salvation in Zion, and to Israel glory. Those to whom he had said above: Hear me, house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, and again: Return, transgressors, to heart, even now he calls, according to the Hebrew, hard of heart because of their unbelief, and, according to the Seventy, men who have lost heart and mind. Following this, the most learned man Stephen the martyr, worthy of his name, says in the assembly of the Jews: Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in hearts and ears, you have always resisted the Holy Spirit, as your fathers did (Acts 7:51). These, then, are far from the righteousness of God, because they did not believe in it; which God, in his clemency, made to be near, and wishes by no means to tarry or to be far off in coming to the earth. For he has given Zion his salvation, and Israel his glory. Let this be said of the prophecy of things to come, and of the coming of the Lord Savior. But according to the history, salvation is given to Zion, and glory to Israel, because God made his righteousness to be near, so that he called a bird from the East, and from a far land the man of his will, to avenge the wrongs of Israel and of overthrown Jerusalem, and, with the Medes and Persians victorious, to destroy Babylon and the Chaldeans, as the following words of the Prophet testify.
47:1ff.
Go down, sit in the dust, virgin daughter of Babylon: sit on the ground, there is no throne for the daughter of the Chaldeans, for no more shall you be called soft and tender. Take the millstone, and grind meal: lay bare your shame, uncover your shoulder, reveal your legs, pass over the rivers. Your disgrace shall be revealed, and your reproach shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and no man shall withstand me. LXX: Go down, sit upon the ground, virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground. There is no throne for the daughter of the Chaldeans, for no more at all shall you be called soft and tender. Take the millstone, grind meal. Reveal your covering, lay bare your gray hairs, uncover your shins, pass over the rivers: your disgrace shall be revealed, your reproaches shall appear. What is just I will take from you, no more at all will I hand you over to men. As in Ezekiel the adornment of Tyre, which is given over to trading, is set forth under the figure of a ship and all its equipment (Ezek 26), and the king of Egypt, because of the abundance of waters, is called a dragon, and his scales, and the rush and papyrus and little fishes are described, and the likeness of harlots and of a brothel bears witness to Jerusalem's fornication with idols: so in the present passage the servitude of Babylon is shown under the person of a captive woman who was once a queen: and she is told to come down from the pride of her kingdom and sit in the dust. And she is called a virgin and a daughter: either because all of us men are God's creation, and Babylon is not, as the heretics hold, of a damnable nature; or because of the luxury and adornment of a city once most powerful, which, when she had grown old and was near her setting, boasted that she was a little virgin and a girl. Although from what is written according to the Seventy, daughter of Babylon, some interpret it not of Babylon itself but of the city of Rome, which in the Apocalypse of John (Rev 14) and in the Epistle of Peter (1 Pet 5) is specifically called Babylon, and they maintain that all that is now said to Babylon fits its ruin, against which the bird and the righteousness of God are to be called: so that, after Zion, that is, the Church, has been saved, she may perish for ever. It is said, then, to Babylon, queen and daughter of the Chaldeans (for she was founded by the Chaldeans), that she will no more at all be called soft and tender and overflowing with delights, she who was carried in the hands of all the nations, so that she scarcely pressed the soles of her feet to the ground: and she is commanded to take the millstone and grind meal, which is a sign of harsh captivity and the utmost servitude; so that she who was once a queen afterwards serves at the work of grinding meal. But because there follows: Lay bare your shame, the millstone too is understood figuratively by the Hebrews, namely that, after the manner of a harlot, she lies open to the lust of the victors. And what is written in the book of Judges about Samson (Judg 16), that he was condemned by the Philistines to the mill, they wish to signify this: that, being the strongest of men, he was compelled, for the sake of offspring, to do this with foreign women. In the place where we have translated, lay bare your shame, for which the Seventy translated, reveal your covering, Theodotion put the Hebrew word itself, SAMTHECH (צמתך); Aquila SEMMATHECH; Symmachus τὸ σιωπηλόν σου: which we can express as your silent part, because it ought to be kept silent for modesty. This indeed we also read in the Song of Songs, where the beauty of the bride is described: at the end he adds: Apart from your silent part (Song 4): the translators being unwilling to render a word which in holy Scripture would sound shameful. And rightly he uses immodest names against Babylon (though there is nothing shameful in calling a member of the human body by its own name), she who is commanded to bare her breasts, and to uncover her legs and thighs, and to go into captivity, and to have her disgrace seen, and to lie open to everlasting reproach. And the Lord says he has done this to take vengeance on her who oppressed his people, and that he will hear no intercessor on her behalf who might try to soften the Lord's anger by coming before him. And he means the angel who presides over the Babylonian nation, who says with the other angels: We have cared for Babylon, and she is not healed. And as for what the Seventy translated, what is just I will take from you, no more at all will I hand you over to men, Babylon is understood: or certainly, that which is just, and taken away from Babylon. The Stoics argue that many things shameful in reality are, by the depraved custom of men, decent in words, such as parricide, adultery, homicide, incest, and other things like these. And again, that things decent in reality seem shameful in their names, such as begetting children, relieving the swelling of the belly by breaking wind, easing the bowels of excrement, loosing the bladder by pouring out urine: and finally, that we cannot, as from ruta we say rutula, so make a ὑποκοριστικὸν of menta. Therefore SEMMATHEC (צמתך), which Aquila put, as we have said, is the name for the private parts of a woman. Its etymology among them sounds your thirsty one; so as to show the insatiable lust of Babylon.
47:4ff.
Our Redeemer, the Lord of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel. Sit silent, and go into darkness, daughter of the Chaldeans; for no more shall you be called mistress of kingdoms. I was angry with my people, I defiled my inheritance, and I gave them into your hand: you showed them no mercies. Upon the old man you made your yoke exceedingly heavy, and you said, For ever I shall be mistress: you did not lay these things to heart, nor did you remember your latter end. LXX: He who delivered you has said, the Lord Sabaoth, his name is the Holy One of Israel. Sit pierced with grief, enter into darkness, daughter of the Chaldeans: no more at all shall you be called the strength of the kingdom: I was angry against my people, I defiled my inheritance. I gave them into your hand, but you gave them no mercy: on the old man you made the yoke exceedingly heavy, and you said, For ever I shall be mistress: you did not understand these things in your heart, nor did you remember the last things. According to the Seventy, the first verse is joined to what precedes, so that the sense is: And these things will he do who delivered you, the Lord Sabaoth, his name is the Holy One of Israel. But according to the Hebrew, the Prophet speaks in the person of the people, saying that the Lord of hosts, whose name is the Holy One of Israel, has done these things against Babylon. And again the discourse is directed to Babylon itself. Sit silent, or pierced with grief, and remember your crimes. Enter into darkness: because for confusion and disgrace you cannot bear the light: no more at all shall you be called mistress, not of one kingdom, nor even of all kingdoms. And at the same time, because a hidden question arose, why God should be angry against the Chaldeans whom he himself had sent to take Israel, he answered that, being angry against his people, he had wished to chastise them, not to destroy them; to scourge them, not to kill them. But they had given free rein to their own cruelty, and had laid on more stripes than God's vengeance demanded: and it is a great sign of Babylonian cruelty that they did not spare even old men, whose age is venerable even among enemies. And this too is a sign of pride, that, deceived by present prosperity, she did not consider the uncertainties of the future. We ought therefore always, in prosperity, to beware of what is to come, and not to oppress those handed over to us, who are being instructed for this purpose, that they may become better.
47:8ff.
And now hear these things, you delicate one, who dwell confidently, who say in your heart: I am, and there is none besides me any more: I shall not sit as a widow, and I shall not know barrenness. And these two things shall come upon you suddenly in one day, barrenness and widowhood: all things have come upon you, because of the multitude of your sorceries, and because of the hardness of your enchanters, exceedingly. And you trusted in your wickedness, and you said: There is none who sees me: your wisdom and your knowledge, these have deceived you, and you said in your heart: I am, and besides me there is no other. Evil shall come upon you, and you shall not know its rising, and calamity shall rush upon you which you shall not be able to expiate, misery shall come upon you suddenly which you shall not know. Two things will come upon Babylon together, barrenness and widowhood, so that she has neither sons, that is, peoples subject to her, nor a husband, whom we can understand as the king: which she suddenly endured while she did not expect them. For she could not suppose that the Persians, of no strength before, would, in the reign of Cyrus, overcome her and subject her to their power. What you have suffered, he says, is not only because of your pride and the abundance of all wealth and your delights, but also because of the multitude of your sorceries, and of your enchanters, in whom you trusted. And evil shall come upon you which you did not know before, and whose rising you did not know. Or, as the Seventy translated: Destruction shall come upon you, and you shall not know it: a pit, and you shall fall into it: so that you who were preparing the evil of captivity for all the nations may yourself fall into the pit that you prepared. What is plain we pass over in brief speech.
47:12ff.
Stand with your enchanters, and with the multitude of your sorceries, in which you have labored from your youth, if perhaps anything may profit you, or if you can become stronger. You have failed in the multitude of your counsels: let the augurs of the heaven stand and save you, who gazed at the stars and reckoned the months, that from them they might announce to you things to come. Behold, they have become as stubble, fire has burned them: they shall not deliver their souls from the hand of the flame: there are no coals to warm them, nor a hearth to sit by: so have they become to you, all those things in which you had labored: your traders from your youth have gone astray, each in his own way: there is none to save you. LXX: Stand now in your enchantments and in your many sorceries, which you learned from your youth, if they can profit you: and you have labored in your counsels: let the astrologers of the heaven, who gaze at the stars, stand and save you: let them announce to you what is to come upon you. Behold, they shall all be burned as brushwood in the fire: and they shall not rescue their soul from the flame; because you have coals of fire, you shall sit upon them. These shall be a help to you. You have labored in your exchange from your youth: man has gone astray in himself: but for you there shall be no salvation. That Babylon and all Chaldea pursued the arts of enchanters and augurs, and soothsayers and Gazarenes, whom we call haruspices, is proved by the reading of Daniel the Prophet, who records that the kings of Babylon did everything on their counsel. And in place of what we have translated, following Symmachus and Theodotion: Let the augurs of the heaven stand and save you, the Seventy translated more plainly, Let the astrologers of the heaven stand and save you; who are commonly called mathematicians, and think that human affairs are ruled by the course of the stars and the motion of the heavenly bodies. Hence the Magi too came from the East, saying they had seen the Lord's star, either from the knowledge of their art, or from the prophecy of Balaam, their own Prophet, who had said in Numbers: A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a man from Israel (Num 24:17). Let these, then, who reckon the months and count up the years, and, weighing the moments of the hours, promise knowledge of the future, tell you what the Lord has planned against you; and, since they are silent about what is to come, the Prophet answered: Behold, they have become as stubble, fire has devoured them; so that those who promised salvation to others did not know their own punishments: and there is no doubt that, when the city was burning, the devouring flame consumed its inhabitants. And what follows: There are no coals to warm them, nor a hearth to sit by, the Hebrews explain thus: They have no knowledge of warmth, nor an enlightening sense that could dispel their darkness and drive out the cold of error. For which the Seventy, meaning I know not what, translated: You have coals of fire, you shall sit upon them: these shall be a help to you; unless perhaps we can say this, that fire and burning are much more useful to Babylon than the magi and Gazarenes, the astrologers and enchanters, were. For the one calls them to repentance through penalties and punishments; the others lead them through error to pride. All her labor and her traders, whom we understand as the magi, achieved this: that each went astray in his own way; and, himself lost, could not offer salvation to another. Let us ask those who assert that there are different natures whether Babylon is of an evil nature or a good one. If they say of an evil one, which there is no doubt they will answer, how is she called to repentance, and told: Sit pierced with grief, enter into darkness, daughter of the Chaldeans? And then, after the enumeration of her sins and crimes: You have coals of fire, you shall sit upon them: these shall be a help to you? And what is meant by what is added according to the same Seventy: You have labored in exchange from your youth? What is this exchange? Surely from good to evil. From which it is plain that men are good by nature, and become evil by will. Finally it is added: Man has gone astray in himself, not by nature, but by the choice of the mind.
48:1ff.
Hear these things, house of Jacob, you who are called by the name of Israel, and have come forth from the waters of Judah: who swore in the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, not in truth nor in righteousness. For they are called after the holy city: and upon the Lord of Israel they are established: the Lord of hosts is his name. These things I foretold would come upon the Chaldeans and Babylonians, and what I have spoken through my Prophets must be fulfilled in deed. But you, house of Jacob, and you who are called by the name of Israel, and who have come forth from the water of Judah, and the rest that follows, hear more attentively what I am about to say. And it is to be noted that he by no means calls them Jacob, but the house of Jacob; nor Israel, since they are falsely called by this name, not having the work of the name. And from the waters, he says, of Judah you have come forth, σεμνοτερῶς calling it waters in place of seed, so as to show that they are by no means sons of the virtues of the Patriarchs, but of their flesh. And rightly he called them the waters of Judah, because that tribe alone was still then remaining in the land of Judea; and at that time the royal seed of David was being preserved. Who, he says, swore in the name of the Lord, not that you might honor the Lord; but that, having taken up his name, you might do him wrong, while you want him to be the witness of your lie, and you rest in the holy city, and lean upon the Lord of Israel; so that you may boast that you are inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem, and have the privilege of the Lord Sabaoth, while you take up the empty names of Jacob, of Israel and of the holy city, and of the almighty God.
48:3-4ff.
The former things I declared from of old, and they went forth from my mouth, and I made them heard: suddenly I worked, and they came to pass. For I knew that you are hard, and your neck is a sinew of iron, and your brow is bronze. I foretold it to you from of old: before they came, I made it known to you, lest perhaps you should say: My idols have done these things, and my graven images and my molten images have commanded them. What you have heard, see it all: but you have not declared it. I have made you hear new things from that time: and things kept in store which you do not know: they are created now, and not from of old: and before the day, and you did not hear them, lest perhaps you should say: Behold, I knew them. You have neither heard, nor known, nor from of old was your ear opened: for I know that you will deal very treacherously, and I have called you a transgressor from the womb. For my name's sake I will put my fury far off: and with my praise I will bridle you, lest you perish. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver: I have chosen you in the furnace of poverty. For my own sake, for my own sake I will do it, that I be not blasphemed: and my glory I will not give to another. LXX: The former things I declared still: and they went forth from my mouth: and it was made heard: suddenly I did them, and they came to pass, I know that you are hard: and your neck is a sinew of iron, and your brow is bronze: and I declared it to you long ago, before they came upon you. I made it heard to you: lest perhaps you should say that idols have done it for me, that graven and molten images have commanded me. You have heard all things, and you have not known: but I have made you hear new things, those which are now to be. And you did not say, They are being done now, and not long ago: and not in former days. Do not say either, I knew them: you neither know, nor understand, nor from the beginning did I open your ears. For I know that you will deal very treacherously: and you will be called wicked even from the womb. For my name's sake I will show you my fury: and I will bring my glorious things upon you, that I may not kill you. Behold, I have sold you, not for silver: but I have rescued you from the furnace of poverty: for my own sake I will do it, because my name is profaned: and my glory I will not give to another. I foretell to you that the Babylonians are to be overcome by the Medes and Persians, and I will suddenly do what I have threatened, lest, when the things foretold have come, you should think they happened either by the nod of the gods you worship or by chance. Nor do I boast of knowledge of the future, but I speak because of your unbelief, you whose heart I knew from the beginning to be unbelieving, and your neck of iron, and your brow of bronze. Behold, you have heard all the things that are to come, and yet you hide the truth in silence. Nor do I recount the past things by which my power has often been proved: how I led the people out of Egypt, drowned the Egyptians in the Red Sea, handed over the land of promise, subjugated various nations to you. But I announce the new things that I am going to do against Babylon, so that the shameless lie of your mouth may be refuted, you who claim to know what you do not know. For from the beginning you have been a transgressor of my commandments; and God called you a transgressor from the womb, when, set free from Egypt, you were, as it were, conceived in my womb, and brought up, and instructed. You longed for the ox's head of Egypt, saying: These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Not for your merit, then, but by my mercy I have put off my fury, lest you should perish utterly, and for the praise of my name I will bridle you, so that, like a beast of burden and a horse in bridles, you may follow me against your will. Behold, I have refined you, that is, I have tested you, as silver is smelted. Or, I wished to test you not in riches but in the furnace of poverty. From this it is shown that most men are tempted both by riches and by poverty, if they either badly abuse the former or by no means bear want with virtue. For my own sake, then, I will do it, lest my name be blasphemed among the nations, and they think that you were overcome not by my anger but by the help of their idols. And what he adds, my glory I will not give to another, signifies this: lest the idols be thought to have crushed the people of God. Or certainly, when he says, I will not give to another, he shows that he has already given it to another; for 'to another' is said to distinguish it from the former. Most of our writers, to touch briefly on a few things according to the Seventy Translators, hold that the coming of Christ is prophesied: that he comes suddenly, unhoped for, and shows his presence to a most hard people, whose ears God never opened, because its heart had grown fat, and it heard heavily with its ears. And that, as soon as the Lord was poured forth from the virginal womb, it was called transgressor and wicked, seeking to kill him. And as for what he joins: For my name's sake I will show you my fury, and my glorious things I will bring upon you, he draws on the sense of the Apostle, or rather the apostle Paul (Rom 1) takes his testimony from this passage, that the wrath of God is revealed to terrify those who sin, and afterwards glory is offered to those who have turned: Behold, he says, I have sold you, not for money, but I have sold you in your sins, and I have rescued you from the furnace of poverty. For which reason Solomon too (Prov 30) does not wish to have riches or poverty, but asks only for necessaries, lest either by the former his heart be lifted up into pride, or in the latter he be compelled to do what he does not wish and, pressed by want, to blaspheme God. Hence the Apostle too says: Having food and clothing, he says, let us be content with these (1 Tim 6:8).
48:12-13ff.
Hear me, Jacob, and Israel, whom I call. I myself, I am the first, and I am the last. My hand also founded the earth, and my right hand measured the heavens: I called them, and they will stand together. Gather together, all of you, and hear: who among them has declared these things? The Lord has loved him: he will do his will in Babylon, and his arm upon the Chaldeans. I, I have spoken and called him: I have brought him, and his way is made straight. Draw near to me, and hear these things: not from the beginning have I spoken in secret: from the time before it came to be, there I was. And now the Lord God has sent me, and his spirit. LXX: Hear me, Jacob and Israel, whom I call. I am the first, and I am for ever: and my hand founded the earth, and my right hand made firm the heaven. I will call them, and they will stand together: and all will be gathered, and will hear: Who has announced these things to them? Loving you, I have done your will upon Babylon: to take away the seed of the Chaldeans. I have spoken and I have called. I have brought him and have made his way prosper. Bring them to me, and hear these things: Not from the beginning have I spoken in secret: when it was being done, there I was. And now the Lord God has sent me, and his spirit. To those to whom he had already said before: Hear these things, house of Jacob, you who are called by the name of Israel, and have come forth from the waters of Judah, he now speaks: Hear me, Jacob and Israel, whom I call. For many are called, and few chosen (Matt 22). Hence he names them not chosen, because they had not yet received the Savior; but called. I am, he says, α and ω, the first and the last, who live, and was dead (Rev 22); so that you may refer life to the first, and the last to him who died. Who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and became obedient to the Father; he humbled himself even to death, even the death of the cross (Phil 2). My hand founded the earth. Hence in Proverbs too he says: God by his wisdom founded the earth, and his right hand measured (Prov 3:19), or made firm the heavens, or the heaven, as the Seventy translated. And he calls the heavens, that they may obey his command and tell forth his glory. But if the heavens obey the will of the Lord and run in their order, why does earth and ashes glory (Sir 10), and not know its own frailty? Gather together, all of you, and hear: either heavens, or the whole creation, or the whole multitude of Israel. What are the things they are bidden to hear? That the Lord has loved him: there is no doubt that he means Cyrus and Darius, who did the will of the Lord against Babylon, and exercised his arm upon the Chaldeans. And he himself spoke and called him by his name, and brought him, and his way was made straight, so that none dared to resist his might. Hence he summons them to draw near and hear, and, as the Lord foretells it, to know that the king of the Persians and Medes will come, to overthrow Babylon and destroy the Chaldeans. And to announce these things, the Prophet says that he has been sent by the Lord and by his spirit. This is according to the Hebrews and their opinion. But according to Symmachus, who translated: Who has announced these things to him? whom the Lord has loved, who does his will in Babylon: and according to the Seventy, to take away the seed of the Chaldeans, it is referred to the person of the Lord: who is truly beloved by the Father, and who did all the will of the Father, and who overthrew in Babylon, that is, in the confusion of this world, all the seed of the Chaldeans, who are interpreted as demons. He himself spoke, and heard the Son, and brought him, who says to believers: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened (Matt 11:28). And hear these things which from the beginning I have spoken in secret, that is, through the riddles and mysteries of the Prophets, which had been unknown to all past generations. When all things were being made by the Father, he himself was with him, who rejoiced with him, who even now says: I, who was always with the Father, and in the Father, and was never without the Father, even now speak (John 14): and according to the frailty of the flesh I assumed, I say that the Lord God has sent me, and his spirit: and in one short verse the mystery of the Trinity is shown to us.
48:17-18ff.
Thus says the Lord, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord your God, who teach you profitable things, who guide you in the way in which you walk. Would that you had heeded my commandments; your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the whirlpools of the sea. And your seed would have been like the sand, and the offspring of your womb like its pebbles: they would not have perished, and his name would not have been worn away from before my face. Since he has promised Israel things to come, he gives the reasons why he afflicted them before: if they avoid these, they will by no means suffer the like. If, he says, you had heeded my commandments, as the Seventy translated: or certainly, with the feeling of one who wishes, would that you had heeded my commandments: if you had done them, your peace would have been like rivers, and your righteousness like the whirlpools of the sea: signifying abundance and plenty of all things. And as for what follows: and your seed would have been like the sand, and the offspring of your womb like its pebbles: it seems indeed to hold good in the people of the Jews, who to this present day sprout sons and grandsons like little worms; but how is this to be taken as a promise, when they have neither peace nor righteousness? For either he is angry with them, or appeased. If angry, how is his seed multiplied daily? If appeased, how are they in servitude, and do not possess peace and righteousness? From this it is plain that he now speaks of the Apostolic seed, of which we also read above (cf. Isa 1): Unless the Lord Sabaoth had left us a seed, we should have been like Sodom. Since this is by no means seen fulfilled at that time, it is fulfilled in the coming of Christ: and the seed of Israel remains before his face.
48:20-22
Go forth from Babylon, flee from the Chaldeans: declare it with a voice of exultation, make this heard, carry it to the end of the earth, and say: The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob. They did not thirst in the desert when he led them out; he brought forth water from the rock for them, and he split the rock, and the waters flowed. There is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord. Those who understood the place above, where it is written: I, I have spoken, and called him: I have brought him, and his way is made straight, of Cyrus and Darius, refer these things too to his times, when the people went forth from Babylon, and fled from the Chaldeans, and was redeemed by the Lord its God. This also that is said: They did not thirst in the desert when he led them out, he brought forth water from the rock for them; and he split the rock, and the waters flowed, although they cannot show it fulfilled according to the history (for under Zerubbabel and Ezra they did not come through a desert, nor did a split rock furnish them waters, as is related to have happened to those going out of Egypt), they nevertheless maintain was fulfilled hyperbolically, in the likeness of the former happiness, when they came into Judea through the desert of the nations, and were set free from captivity. And so that we may know, they say, that it was prophesied not of Christ but of Cyrus, there is joined: There is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord: and the sense is: Perfect happiness will not be except under Christ, which is reserved for the last time. But those who, more truly and more rightly, refer these things to the Savior's coming (cf. below, Isa 61:1), of which it is said: He has sent me to announce good news to the poor, to preach release to the captives (Luke 4:18, 19), understand it to be an exhortation of those who announce the Gospel of the Lord Savior himself, that we should go forth from Babylon, that is, from the confusion of this world, and flee the Chaldeans, of whom it has often been spoken. For the Lord redeemed his servant Jacob with his most precious blood, and led him through the desert of the world, and split water from the rock. Concerning which the Apostle too says: And the rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:4). And the divine word is split, and divided into many parts, so that what we cannot receive whole we may take in parts. And lest this preaching should be thought to be spoken to all the seed of Jacob, and not only to those who were to believe through the Apostles, there is added and joined: There is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord: that is, to those who remained in their former error; who did not deserve to drink from the rock. Whose side, to speak in a new way, wounded by the lance, flowed with water and blood (John 19), consecrating for us baptism and martyrdom.
49:1ff.
Hear, islands, and give heed, peoples from afar: the Lord called me from the womb, from the belly of my mother he remembered my name. And he made my mouth like a sharp sword: in the shadow of his hand he protected me. And he made me like a chosen arrow: in his quiver he hid me; and he said to me: You are my servant, Israel, for in you I will glory. And I said: I have labored in vain, without cause and vainly I have spent my strength: therefore my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God. LXX: Hear me, islands, and give heed, nations. After a long time it shall stand, says the Lord. From the belly he called me, and from the womb of my mother he called my name. And he made my mouth like a sharp sword, and under the protection of his hand he hid me. He made me like a chosen arrow, and in his quiver he hid me. And he said to me: You are my servant, Israel: and in you I will be glorified. And I said, I have labored without cause, in vain, and I have given my strength for nothing. Therefore my judgment is with the Lord, and my labor before my God. I know that both these things and those further on that we are going to speak of belong to the knowledge or understanding of a single chapter, and that all must be taken in the person of Christ. But I did not wish, by setting everything out together, to burden the reader's mind, and to confound by its magnitude what can more easily be said in parts. Hence I have also set down both editions, so that what seems obscure in the one may be unlocked by the reading of the other. After the calling of the remnant of Israel, then, and the casting off of the people that remained in unbelief, of whom he had said: There is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord (Isa 48:22), he passes over to the Churches gathered from the nations, and speaks to them under the name of islands. These lie open to the ambushes of persecutors as to the waves of the sea, and, with shipwreck raging on every side, are beaten rather than moved. And lest anyone think that our exposition is forced, and that what is said belongs not to the nations but to the Synagogues of the Jewish people, there follows: And give heed, peoples, or nations, from afar, that is, from the furthest ends of the earth. Or, as the Seventy translated, after a long time it shall stand, that is, not at this time in which they are spoken; but they will come to pass after many times. The Lord, he says, called me from the womb, and from the belly of my mother he remembered my name. Which for the present seems obscure to the hearers, but afterwards will become known to all the nations, when Gabriel will have said to Joseph of the virgin birth: And you shall call his name Jesus: for he will save his people (Matt 1:21). He also made his mouth like a sharp sword, so that with the spirit of his mouth he may slay the wicked one. Of which sword he himself also speaks in the Gospel: I came not to send peace upon the earth, but a sword, separating the evil from the good: For I came to divide a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law (Matt 10:34, 35). And in the shadow, he says, of his hand he protected me, so that the lowliness of the flesh might be covered by the power of the divinity, as the angel announced to the Virgin: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you (Luke 1:35). He made me, he says, like a chosen arrow, in his quiver he hid me. When he says, a chosen arrow, he shows that God has very many arrows, but not chosen ones: which arrows are the Prophets and the Apostles, who run through the whole world. Of whom it is sung in another place too: Your arrows are sharp, O most mighty; peoples will fall beneath you (Ps 44 [45]:6); and again: The sharp arrows of the mighty, with desolating coals (Ps 119 [120]:4). But Christ, out of many arrows and very many sons, is the one chosen arrow, and the Only-begotten Son: whom he hid in his quiver, that is, in a human body, so that the fullness of the divinity might dwell in him bodily. And rare is the faith of believers: to whom it is also said above (Isa 45:15): You are a hidden God, and we did not know it. Receiving a wound from this arrow, the bride too speaks in the Song of Songs: I am wounded with love. And he said to me: You are my servant, Israel: for in you I will be glorified (Song 4:9). A servant, because, though he was in the form of God, he deigned to take the form of a servant (Phil 2), and Israel, because he was born of the seed of the Jews. And, what can be understood of no other of the servants, there is joined: For in you I will glory. For he himself also says in the Gospel, Father, glorify your name (John 12:28). He it is who in the psalm says to the Son: Arise, my glory, and arise, psaltery and harp (Ps 56 [57]:9), that is, the choir of all the virtues. And when the Father said to me these things that I have related, I answered him: How are you glorified in me, Father, since I have labored in vain, and could not call back to you a great part of the Jewish people? And all these things are said to show the free will of man. For it is God's to call, and ours to believe: nor, if we do not believe, is God at once powerless; but he leaves his power to our choice, so that the will of the righteous may obtain its reward. Since, then, they would not believe in you through me, my judgment is with you, that I have done all things that I ought to have done for them, saying in the Gospel: I have glorified you on the earth, having completed the work which you gave me to do (John 17:4); and again: I have manifested your name to men. And my work, or my labor and pain (for this is what πόνος signifies), is in your sight. For in the Gospel too he wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19), and in the psalm, because of the multitude of unbelievers, he says that in a certain way he suffered in vain: What profit is there in my blood, while I go down to corruption (Ps 29 [30]:10)? And according to the Hebrew, hanging on the cross, he says: Far from my salvation are the words of my lamentations (Ps 21 [22]:1).
49:5-6ff.
And now says the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be his servant, that I might bring Jacob back to him, and Israel will not be gathered: and I am glorified in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength. And he said: It is a small thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to turn back the dregs of Israel. I have given you as a light of the nations; that you may be my salvation to the end of the earth. LXX: And now thus says the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be his servant, that I might gather Jacob to him, and Israel: I shall be gathered and glorified before the Lord, and my God shall be my strength. And he said to me: It is a great thing for you to be called my child, and to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to turn back the dispersion of Israel. Behold, I have set you for a covenant of the race, for a light of the nations, that you may be salvation to the end of the earth. When I said, I have labored in vain, without cause and vainly I have spent my strength, because the Jews would not believe, and my judgment is with the Lord, and my work, which with his help I have fulfilled, is with the Lord: the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be his servant, answered me. By this he shows that he is called servant who was formed from the womb. He also says in the psalm: From the belly of my mother you are my God (Ps 21 [22]:11). What, then, does the Lord say to him? That he should bring back to him Jacob, who had wandered off, who, having forsaken his Creator, was serving idols. Hence he himself says to the disciples: Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter the cities of the Samaritans; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 10:5); and in another place: I came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 15:24). This, then, was the will of the Father: that the wicked vinedressers should receive the Son who was sent, and render the fruits of the vineyard; but they killed him, saying: Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours (Matt 21:38); and this is what he now says: And Israel will not be gathered, that is, will not return to the Lord. And I greatly wonder how the common edition has overturned, by a different interpretation, a very strong testimony against the faithlessness of the Jews, saying: I shall be gathered and glorified before the Lord: since Theodotion and Symmachus agree with our interpretation. About Aquila, however, I do not wonder, that a man most learned in the Hebrew language, and rendering word for word, has in this place either feigned ignorance or been deceived by the perverse exposition of the Pharisees, since he chose to translate, and Israel will be gathered to him, that is, to God. For the Hebrew word LO in this place is not written with LAMED and VAV (לו), which, if it were, would signify to him or to that one, but with LAMED and ALEPH (לא), which properly sounds not. Since, then, Jacob was not brought back to God, nor Israel gathered, therefore, since they did not believe, the Son says: I am glorified in the eyes of the Lord. For in me the whole world has believed: and my God has become my strength, who also comforted me in my sadness over the casting off of my people; and said to me: It is a small thing if you serve me to raise up the tribes of Jacob, which fell through their own fault; and to turn back the dregs, or remnant, of Israel. For this is what the Hebrew word NESURE (נצורי) sounds. For in their place I have given you as a light of all the nations, to illumine the whole world, and to make my salvation, through which all are saved, reach to the ends of the earth. And what is read in the Seventy, I shall be gathered, and glorified before the Lord, can be understood thus: that the Lord has been gathered together with the believers. And as for what follows: He said to me: It is a great thing for you to be called my child, let us refer 'great' to the man and to the child, who is small in comparison with God.
49:7
Thus says the Lord, the redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, to the contemptible soul, to the abhorred nation, to the servant of lords. Kings shall see, and princes shall rise up, and they shall worship for the Lord's sake, for he is faithful: and the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you. LXX: Thus says the Lord who delivered you, the God of Israel. Sanctify him who despises his own soul, who is an abomination to the nations, who is the servant of princes. Kings shall see him, and princes shall rise up, and they shall worship him for the Lord's sake: for the Holy One of Israel is faithful, and he has chosen you. In place of what we have said: to the contemptible soul, to the abhorred nation, to the servant of lords, Theodotion translated: to him who despises his soul, who is an abomination to the nation, who is the servant of princes: which plainly fits the person of Christ. For he, the good shepherd, laid down his soul for his sheep (John 10), and despised it, he who is an abomination to the nation of the Jews, who curse him three times every day in their synagogues under the name of the Nazarenes. He was the servant of princes, and so humble that he stood before Annas and Caiaphas, and was sent to Pilate and Herod to be crucified. With this interpretation Aquila agreed, and in part the Seventy, although they changed and weakened the sense in this, that for nation they translated nations, and for servant servants. Others, however, think that this is said to the nation of the Jews, which despised its own soul, and is an abomination to the whole world, and serves princes, of whom it is written: Who devour my people as they eat bread (Ps 13 [14]:4). But the interpretation concerning Christ is better. What, then, does the Father, once the redeemer and the Holy One of Israel, say to the Son? Kings shall see, and princes shall rise up, and they shall worship, when he comes in the glory of the Father with his angels, and sits on the throne of his glory, judging the living and the dead: then all will worship him for the sake of the Lord his Father, who chose him. Or it is to be understood thus: Kings, whose heart is in the hand of God, and the princes of the Church of God, will worship you: for the Lord is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you. And all these things he refers to him who despised his own soul, who is abhorred by the nation, who is the servant of princes.
49:8ff.
Thus says the Lord: In a pleasing time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you. And I have kept you, and given you as a covenant of the people, that you might raise up the land, and possess the scattered inheritances: that you might say to those who are bound: Go forth; and to those who are in darkness: Be revealed. In the ways they shall feed, and in all the plains shall be their pastures. They shall not hunger nor thirst, and the heat and the sun shall not strike them: for he who has compassion on them shall rule them, and shall give them drink at the springs of waters. And I will make all my mountains a way, and my paths shall be raised up. Behold, these shall come from afar, and behold, those from the North and the sea, and these from the land of the South. Praise, O heavens, and exult, O earth: shout praise for joy, O mountains, for the Lord has comforted his people, and will have mercy on his poor. LXX: Thus says the Lord: In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you. And I have formed you, and given you as a covenant of the nations, that you might establish the land, and possess the deserted inheritances. And that you might say to those who are in bonds, Go forth, and to those who are in darkness, Be revealed: in all the ways they shall feed, and in all the paths shall be their pastures. They shall not hunger nor thirst, nor shall the heat nor the sun strike them; but he who has mercy on them shall comfort them, and shall lead them by the springs of waters. And I will make every mountain a way, and every path a pasture for them. Behold, these shall come from afar, these from the North and the sea: and others from the land of the Persians. Rejoice, O heavens, and let the earth exult, let the mountains break forth into gladness: for God has had mercy on his people, and has comforted the lowly of his people. The Apostle Paul used this testimony in the second Epistle to the Corinthians, saying: In an acceptable time I have heard you: and in the day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the acceptable time, etc. (2 Cor 6:2). If, then, the vessel of election refers what is said to the understanding of the first coming, let us too follow the footsteps of his exposition, and, like little children, press our letters upon the lines our teacher has traced. The pleasing and acceptable time, and the day of salvation, is the passion and resurrection of the Savior, when he prayed on the cross: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me (Matt 27:46)? And he kept him, or formed him, when death had been overcome, and gave him as a covenant of the people of the Jews, that is, of those among them who were willing to believe: that he might raise up the land, which lay in the errors of idolatry, and possess the scattered, or deserted, inheritances, which did not have God as their inhabitant, and might say to those who were in bonds, Go forth, those who were held fast by the bonds of sins, since each one is bound fast with the cords of his own sins (Prov 5); and to those who were in darkness, Be revealed: those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, and could not see the light. And after they have been converted, and have beheld the clear light of Christ, they shall feed in the ways and in the paths of the holy Scriptures, and shall say: The Lord feeds me, and I shall lack nothing; in a place of pasture there he has set me: he has brought me up beside the waters of refreshment (Ps 22 [23]:2). And he who has been fed and nourished in such ways and paths shall neither hunger nor thirst, nor feel the heat of the sun: and in him what is written will be fulfilled: The sun shall not burn you by day, nor the moon by night (Ps 120 [121]:6). So that he feels neither the adversities nor the prosperities of this world. Since the Lord is merciful and compassionate, he himself will comfort them and rule them, and lead them to the springs of waters. Or, he will give them drink at the springs, of which it is written: Bless the Lord from the springs of Israel (Ps 67 [68]:27). And in another place: Draw waters from the springs of the Savior (Isa 12:3). These springs are in the Old Testament and the New. And all the stumbling-blocks that could hinder the steps of believers the Lord will turn into level ground for them, and he will bring low the high places and raise up the low, that they may have a level and open road. And who these are for whom the way is prepared, he sets out more plainly: Behold, these shall come from afar: and behold, those from the North and the sea, and these from the land of the South. Showing the four regions of the world, East and North, West and South, he put afar for the East: for the southern region, in the Hebrew is read SINIM (סינים), which the Seventy translated of the Persians. The rest expressed it as it is read in the Hebrew, sinim, which we have translated from the South: suspecting this, that Mount Sinai is situated in the southern part, according to the Prophet Habakkuk: God will come from the South, and the holy one from Mount Paran, shady and thick (Hab 3). But if by sinim, as the Seventy translated, we understand the Persians, who are situated toward the East, we shall be able to refer what is said above, Behold, these shall come from afar, to the South. And the heavens and the earth are commanded, either the powers that dwell in heaven and on earth, or angels and men, to sing together the praises of God. And those who are set on the height of the virtues are to testify to the gladness of their mind with jubilation and exultation. For the Lord has comforted his people, those of the Jews who were willing to believe. And he has had mercy on his poor and lowly ones: or on all his people, who were called to him from East and West, North and South, having neither Law nor Prophets nor spiritual riches, but, deserted, poor and lowly, lay subject to all the demons.
49:14ff.
And Zion said: The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me. Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? And if she should forget, I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on my hands: your walls are always before my eyes. Your builders have come: and those who destroyed you and scattered you shall go forth from you. Lift up your eyes round about, and see, all these are gathered together, they have come to you. As I live, says the Lord, you shall be clothed with all these as with an ornament, and you shall put them about you like a bride, for your deserts and your solitudes, and the land of your ruin, shall now be too narrow for the inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up shall be chased far away. Still they shall say in your ears, the sons of your barrenness: The place is too narrow for me, make room for me to dwell. And you shall say in your heart: Who has begotten these for me? I was barren and not bearing, carried away and captive: and who has brought these up? I was left destitute and alone: and these, where were they? LXX: But Zion said: The Lord has forsaken me, and God has forgotten me. Will a woman forget her little one, so as not to have pity on the offspring of her womb? But if a woman should forget even these, yet I will not forget you, says the Lord. Behold, upon my hands I have painted your walls: and you are always before me. And quickly you shall be built by those by whom you had been destroyed: and those who scattered you shall go forth from you. Lift up your eyes round about, and see: all these are gathered together, they have come to you. As I live, says the Lord, you shall be clothed with all these as with an ornament, and you shall put them about you like a bride's necklace: for your deserts, and the places that were scattered, and those that fell down. Now you shall be straitened because of the inhabitants: and those who had humbled you shall be far from you. For your sons, whom you lost, shall say in your ears: The place is too narrow for me: make me a place to dwell. And you shall say in your heart: Who has begotten these for me? But I was childless and a widow, and who has brought these up for me? I was left alone, and these, where were they? We have often recalled that Jerusalem and Zion are to be understood in four ways in the holy Scriptures. In one way, according to the Jews, the city over which the Lord laments in the Gospel: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the Prophets, and stone those who are sent to you (Matt 23:37). And in another place: When you see Jerusalem surrounded by an army, then know that its desolation has drawn near (Luke 21:20). Second, it is the congregation of the Saints, who, set in the peace of the Lord and on the watchtower of the virtues, are rightly called Zion, of which it is said: Its foundations are on the holy mountains: the Lord loves the gates of Zion above all the tents of Jacob (Ps 86 [87]:1). For neither were the foundations of the Jewish Zion, which we see destroyed, loved by the Lord, nor could what is loved by the Lord be destroyed. Third, the multitude of the Angels, Dominions and Powers, and all that is appointed to the ministry of God, is called Jerusalem. Of this Jerusalem the Apostle too was speaking: But the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all (Gal 4:26). And in another place: But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22). Fourth, that is called Jerusalem which the Jews, and our own Judaizers, following the Apocalypse of John, which they do not understand, think is to be set down from heaven, golden and jeweled (Rev 21), whose bounds and boundless breadth they think are described also in the last part of Ezekiel. Since these things are so, we must now consider more carefully which of the four Zions has said: The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me. And there is no doubt that it is the congregation of the Saints, which formerly was among the Jews and has been forsaken by the Lord, that recalls these things, and complains with a tearful voice that it has been deserted and left destitute of the Lord's help. To it God answered, using a likeness from nature: If it can happen that a mother forgets her infant, and is not moved by pity toward the offspring of her own womb, then I too will forget you. I will say something more: even if she should forget, overcoming the laws of nature by hardness of mind, yet I will not forget my creature, and I will always hold the souls of the Saints in my heart. For know, you who think yourself utterly forsaken, that you are engraved and painted on my hands, and that your walls remain continually before my eyes. From this we learn that Jerusalem is by no means to be sought in the region of Palestine, which is the worst of the whole province, and rough with rocky mountains, and suffers a dearth of water, so that it uses the rains of heaven, and consoles the scarcity of springs by the construction of cisterns; but in the hands of God, to whom it is said: Your builders have hastened. Or, according to the Seventy: Quickly you shall be built by those by whom you had been destroyed. For destroyed by the Jews, it was built by the Jews. Deserted because of the guilt of the Scribes and Pharisees, it was gathered together at the preaching of the Apostles of Christ, both from the Jews and from the nations. There follows: And those who destroyed you and scattered you shall go forth from you: the most wicked teachers; so that you may by no means follow the commandments and traditions of men (Matt 15), but the law of God. And she is told to lift up her eyes round about, and see the sons who had been gathered to her. Of whom the Lord too spoke: Lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are already white for harvest (John 4:35). And to make us secure: As I live, says the Lord (which, according to the Old Testament, is said by the custom of swearing), you shall be clothed with all these as with an ornament, and you shall put them about you, as a bride puts a necklace about herself. Happy is he who is of such merit and such virtue that he is called an ornament of the Church. I think, moreover, that these signify the various spiritual graces by which the bride's array is adorned. Of her too it is sung in Psalm 44 (45): The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety (Ps 44 [45]:10). For what had before been deserted, and had fallen into solitudes and ruins, will, at the coming of the Gospel of Christ, be restored, and will have so great a multitude of inhabitants that it cannot hold them. Provided only that the persecutors be chased far away, or those of whom we spoke above: Those who destroyed you and scattered you shall go forth from you. And the sons of your barrenness, whom you thought you had utterly lost, and by them to have been widowed, shall say in your ears: The place is too narrow for me in the synagogues, make room for me in the Churches, to dwell more widely, so that I may not be crushed by the blasphemies of the Jews, so that your breadth may hold the whole world together with me. But you, unable to utter with your mouth the greatness of your joy, will ponder silently in your heart, and will say: Who has begotten these for me? I was barren and a widow, deserted and captive among the people of the Jews; I had ceased to have sons; for a long time I had not given birth. After Haggai and Zechariah and Malachi I had seen no other Prophets until John the Baptist; and how is it that I, who had been alone and destitute of a husband's help, have now begun to have so many sons? And so that we may know that Zion is built from both peoples upon the rock and foundation of Christ, Paul says to believers: Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. (Eph 2:20.) From this it is plain that the one foundation of the Apostles and Prophets is our Lord Jesus Christ.
49:22-23
Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I lift up my hand to the nations, and to the peoples I will raise up my standard: and they shall bring your sons in their arms, and carry your daughters upon their shoulders. And kings shall be your foster fathers, and queens your nurses. With face bowed to the ground they shall worship you, and lick the dust of your feet: and you shall know that I am the Lord, in whom those who wait for him shall not be confounded. LXX: Thus said the Lord God: Behold, I raise my hand over the nations, and over the islands I will lift up my standard, and they shall bring your sons in their bosom, and carry your daughters on their shoulders. And kings shall be your foster fathers: and princesses your nurses: on the face of the earth they shall worship you, and lick the dust of your feet; and you shall know that I am the Lord, and those who wait for me shall not be confounded. To what the Church had said: I was barren and captive, who has begotten these for me? I was left destitute and alone, and these, where were they? the Lord answered: Do you wonder why these things have come about? You will by no means wonder when you hear that I have lifted up my hand to the nations. Of this hand the Saint too says: You have formed me, and laid your hand upon me (Ps 138 [139]:4). And the Savior himself: No one can snatch out of my Father's hand (John 10:29). And the Apostle Peter: Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in the time of visitation (1 Pet 5:6). This hand lifted up to the nations is the very one of which this same Prophet speaks here: There shall be the root of Jesse, who shall rise up to be the prince of the nations: in him the nations shall hope (Isa 11:10). And not only will he lift up his hand to the nations; but he will also raise up his standard among the peoples. There is no doubt that this is the banner of the cross, so that what is written may be fulfilled: The earth is full of his praises. And again: In all the earth his name is wonderful (Ps 8:1). Then they shall bring the sons of Zion in their arms, or in their bosom, and carry her daughters upon their shoulders. Such too was Lazarus, and all the saints who rest in the bosom of Abraham (Luke 16), and the souls of believers, to whom Paul the Apostle said: I gave you milk to drink (1 Cor 3:2). And elsewhere: My little children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ be formed in you (Gal 4:19). And in another place: As a nurse cherishes her children: so, longing for you, we desire to impart to you not only the Gospel of Christ, but also our own souls (1 Thess 2:8). Otherwise it is ridiculous, in the Jewish manner, for full-grown sons and daughters to be carried in arms and on shoulders. But the kings who are foster fathers, and the queens and princesses who are nurses, plainly point to the Apostles and to Apostolic men: such as Abraham too was, to whom it is said: You are a king from God among us (Gen 23:6); and whose heart is in the hand of God (Prov 21): who say to believers: As newborn babes, rational and without guile, desire milk (1 Pet 2:2). The princess also, that is, ἄρχουσα, which is the sound of Sarah's name, and the queens, or the queen, of whom it is sung in Psalm 44 (45): The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing, nourishes Christ's little ones daily, and leads them to perfect age: and every age, sex and rank will worship Zion for the sake of him who dwells in her. For if Christ is the head of the Church, the head is worshiped in the body. And if it is said to certain people: Exalt the Lord our God, and worship the footstool of his feet (not that the footstool is to be worshiped; but that the majesty of his feet is indicated), why should not the Church be worshiped, which embraces the whole body of Christ, so that what is written in Zephaniah may be fulfilled: They shall worship him, each from his own place: all the islands of the nations (Zeph 2:11), so that they by no means come to Jerusalem three times a year in the Jewish manner, but, worshiping the Lord in their own place, possess Jerusalem. And as for what follows: and they shall lick the dust of your feet, this signifies that kings and princes, whatever of earthly work has clung to the feet of the Church, wipe and lick it away by their word. Hence the Apostles too are commanded to shake off the dust of their feet. And it is said to Peter that he who has once been washed needs only to wash his feet. (Matt 10; John 13). Through all these things the Church learns that there is no other Lord besides him, and those who have waited for him will possess eternal glory.
49:24ff.
Shall the prey be taken from the strong? or can what has been captured by the mighty be safe? For thus says the Lord: Indeed even the captivity shall be taken from the strong: and what has been carried off by the mighty shall be saved. But those who have judged you, I will judge: and your sons I will save. And I will feed your enemies with their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with new wine: and all flesh shall know that I am the Lord who saves you, and your redeemer, the strong one of Jacob. LXX: Shall anyone take spoils from a giant? And if anyone leads a captive away unjustly, he shall be saved. Thus says the Lord: If anyone captures a giant, he shall take spoils, and he who takes from the strong shall be saved. But I will judge my judgment. And I will rescue my sons, and those who afflicted you shall eat their own flesh, and shall drink their own blood like new wine, and shall be drunk: and all flesh shall know that I am the Lord who rescued you, and the help of the strength of Jacob. Our Lord and Savior, who had spoken earlier through Isaiah, himself repeats the same sense in the Gospel: how can anyone enter the house of a strong man and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house (Mark 3)? The strong man and giant is the devil, who had subjugated all the nations to his rule, daring to say to the Savior: All these things have been delivered to me, and I will give them to you, if you will fall down and worship me (Matt 4:9). For the world lies in the evil one (1 John 5), and none of the righteous could conquer him: nor, according to Amos, take the prey from the lion's mouth (Amos 3). The question having been set, then, that no one could conquer the strong man and the giant, nor save what had been seized by him, the Lord answered that all would be accomplished by his coming: namely, that the nations formerly captured would be taken from the giant, and all his furniture and his whole household be divided among the Apostles. So is fulfilled what is written: The king of the powers of the beloved, and to the beauty of the house to divide the spoils. For he it is who, ascending on high, led captivity captive, he gave gifts among men (Ps 67 [68]:13, 19; Eph 4): that is, those who had formerly been taken captive unto death he received unto life. Hence Symmachus translated more plainly: But even the captivity of the strong one shall be taken away, and the plunder of the terrible one shall be safe. He wishes the strong and terrible one to be understood as the devil, who has been overcome by the power of the Lord. Therefore the Lord, judging those who had oppressed Zion, or judging her judgment, will set free her sons who had been captured by the giant, and will save them, and he will feed the adverse powers with their own flesh, and make them drunk as with new wine, so that they may be glutted not by the slaughter of others but by their own death. And those who are flesh, because they have lost the spirit of God, are to feed on their own flesh. This indeed the Saint also says in the Psalms: When those who afflicted me drew near to eat my flesh (Ps 26 [27]:2). For it is not the spirit, which is incorporeal, that is eaten, but the flesh, which lies open to the bites of fierce beasts. And then Zion will learn, nay, all flesh which will see the salvation of God, that her Redeemer and Savior is he who wrestled with Jacob, or who was the helper of the strength of Jacob: so that in his passion, lifted up on high, he blessed those who crucified him: Father, forgive them: for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34).
50:1
Thus says the Lord: What is this bill of divorce of your mother, with which I put her away? Or who is my creditor, to whom I sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your crimes I put away your mother. For I came, and there was no man: I called, and there was none to hear. LXX: Thus says the Lord: What kind of bill of divorce of your mother is it, with which I put her away? Or to which creditor and exactor of mine did I sell you? Behold, for your sins you were sold, and for your iniquities I put away your mother, for I came, and there was no human being: I called, and there was none to obey. After the calling of the nations, and the kings and princes, the foster fathers and nurses, and the captivity of the one formerly strong and mighty, whose prey has been distributed to the Apostles, and after the madness of the demons, who have been glutted with their own flesh and made drunk with their own blood, when all flesh has known that the Redeemer and the strong one is himself the God of Jacob, he speaks to the people of the Jews concerning Zion, who had said before: The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me. Do you think that your mother, the earthly Jerusalem, has been cast off by my harshness, and that I, of an unbending mind, gave her a bill of divorce, and do you not rather understand, what is true, that she withdrew from me by her own fault? For when I said to her: Cease to act wickedly, learn to do good, she would not hear me; but turned against me a shoulder that drew away: hence I said to her sons: Woe to them, for they have withdrawn from me. Manifest are those who have acted wickedly against me. And to her herself: Your departure will instruct you, and your wickedness will rebuke you; and you will know that it is evil for you that you have forsaken me. But perhaps you cannot show a bill of divorce, and some creditor of mine, demanding money, while I had nothing to pay, takes you in compensation for the debt? It is not so: but I will show you why I have forsaken your mother with her sons. Your crimes and sins have sold you to the demons, so that, ensnared by the pleasures of the present age, both you forsook your parent and she her husband. Hence I could no longer keep your adulterous mother, but, as she wished to go, I let her. And that each one is sold by his own sins, since, left to our own choice, we are led by our will either to good or to evil, Paul the apostle also teaches: But I am carnal, sold under sin (Rom 7:14). For he who commits sin is the servant of sin (John 8). And as the avaricious and the robbers are servants of mammon, so every sin lords it over sinners. To whom it is said: Let not sin reign in your mortal body (Rom 6:12). And so that you may know that your mother was not repudiated by me, but withdrew by her own will, after many benefits I took a human body, and spoke no more through the Prophets, but in person. I came, and there was no man, or human being. For all, abandoning the image of man and of a human being, took on the images of beasts and serpents. Hence it is said to Herod because of his malice: Go and tell that fox (Luke 13:32). And to the Pharisees: Brood of vipers (Matt 23:33). And to the lustful: They have become horses mad after females (Jer 5:8). And of the pleasure-lovers: Do not cast your pearls before swine. And to the shameless: Nor give what is holy to dogs (Matt 7:6). And in common of them all: The vision of the four-footed beasts that were in the desert (Isa 30). The Lord therefore came, and did not find a man. For man, when he was in honor, did not understand: he was compared to senseless cattle, and became like them (Ps 48 [49]:13). I called them, he says, as a rational animal, and said: Incline your ear to the words of my mouth (Ps 77 [78]), and my people did not hear my voice. I cried out, and said: If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink (John 7:37). And in another place: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened (Matt 11:28). And there was none to hear; hence I said to them in the Gospel: You have neither seen the form of God, nor heard his voice, because you do not have his word abiding in you (John 5:37, 38).
50:2
Is my hand shortened, and made very small, so that it cannot redeem? Or is there no power in me to deliver? Behold, at my rebuke I will make the sea a desert, I will turn the rivers into dry land: the fish shall rot for lack of water, they shall die of thirst. I will clothe the heavens with darkness, and make sackcloth their covering. LXX: Is my hand not able to deliver, or is it not strong enough to rescue? Behold, by my threat I will make the sea a desert, and make the rivers deserts, and their fish shall dry up, because there is no water, and they shall die of thirst. And I will clothe the heaven with darkness, and make its covering as haircloth. Against those who thought that the Lord had not been able to free his people from captivity, he sets out a reason and the fullest examples: that he who made the Red Sea passable for his people (Exod 14), dried up the streams of the Jordan, and, when the rivers in Egypt dried up, turned the fish to rottenness (Exod 7), and who for three days in Egypt made a darkness that could be felt, so that the heaven seemed covered as with sackcloth and darkness, could surely also free his people from danger. Or, because he had said above: I came, and there was no human being: I called, and there was none to hear, we can say this: that he who is the performer of such great signs, and makes heaven and earth and the seas serve his nod, could also himself have escaped the cross, as he says in the Gospel: Or do you think that I cannot ask my Father, and he would give me at once more than twelve legions of angels (Matt 26:53)? According to the anagogy, at the rebuke of the Lord the sea becomes a desert when all the bitterness of this world is dried up, and the rivers are made desolate, of which the spiritual dragon in Egypt said: The rivers are mine, and I made them (Ezek 29:9). And of which we read in another place: What have you to do with the way of the Assyrians, to drink the waters of the rivers (Jer 2:18)? The fish too, when the net has been cast into the sea, shall rot, those which have been separated from the good fish. And as for what follows: I will clothe the heaven with darkness, and its covering shall be as haircloth, either let us understand by heaven all that is above us, as the birds which are in the air are called heavenly, and the adverse powers, which run to and fro between heaven and earth, are said to be heavenly. Or certainly the heaven is clothed with darkness when it is covered with clouds. According to what is written: Who covers the heaven with clouds, and gives rain to the earth (Ps 146 [147]:8). And in threatening drought God says: I will make the heaven bronze, and the earth iron (Deut 28:23). Not that the nature of the elements is changed, but that by bronze and iron the greatness of the punishments is shown. The philosophers say that the clouds are not raised up more than ten stadia from the earth, and hide the brightness of the sun. It is not, then, the heaven that is wrapped in sackcloth, but, the light of heaven being shut off, the air that is beneath is darkened by the darkness of the cloud. We can interpret the heavens wrapped in darkness and covered with sackcloth thus: that we say all are under sin, and that the saints too need the mercy of God.
Book Fourteen
The Lord who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble, who touches the mountains and they shall smoke (Ps 103 [104]), who speaks in the song of Deuteronomy: I will kill, and I will make alive; I will strike, and I will heal (Deut 32:39), has with frequent illnesses made my earth too tremble, the earth to which it was said: Earth you are, and into the earth you shall go (Gen 3:19). And when I forget the human condition, he often admonishes me to know that I am a man, and old, and on the very point of dying. Of this it is written: Why does earth and ashes glory (Sir 10:9)? Hence he who had struck me with a sudden sickness healed me with incredible speed, so as to frighten rather than afflict, and to correct rather than scourge. Therefore, knowing to whom all that I live belongs, and that perhaps my falling asleep is put off for this reason, that I may complete the work begun on the Prophets, I give myself wholly to this study; and, set as it were on a watchtower, I contemplate, not without groaning and sorrow, the whirlwinds and shipwrecks of this world, thinking not at all of things present but of things to come, and trembling not at the fame and petty gossip of men but at the judgment of God. And you, Eustochium, virgin of Christ, who helped me with your prayers when I was sick, call down also upon me, now healed, the grace of Christ, that by the same Spirit by which the Prophets sang of things to come I may enter into their cloud and darkness, and know the word of God, which is heard not at all with the ears of the flesh but with those of the heart; and say with the Prophet: The Lord gives me a tongue of discipline, that I may know when I ought to speak. This testimony is the beginning of the fourteenth book on Isaiah, which I now wish to expound.
50:4ff.
The Lord has given me a learned tongue, that I may know how to sustain by a word him who is weary. He rouses in the morning, in the morning he rouses my ear, that I may hear him as a master. The Lord God has opened my ear: and I do not gainsay; I have not gone backward. I gave my body to those who struck, and my cheeks to those who plucked them. I did not turn away my face from those who rebuked and spat. The Lord God is my helper, therefore I am not confounded: therefore I have set my face like a very hard rock, and I know that I shall not be confounded. LXX: The Lord gives me a tongue of discipline, that I may know when I ought to speak a word. He set me in the morning, he added to me an ear for hearing; and the discipline of the Lord opens my ears. But I do not refuse, nor do I gainsay. I gave my back to the scourges, and my cheeks to blows. But I did not turn away my face from the shame of spittings. And the Lord is my helper, therefore I am not confounded: but I have set my face like a very strong rock, and I shall know that I shall not be confounded. The Jews, separating this little chapter from what goes before, want to refer it to the person of Isaiah: that he says he received from the Lord the word by which to sustain the weary and wandering people and call it back to salvation; and that, after the manner of little children, who are taught in the morning hours, he hears from the Holy Spirit what he should speak; and that he did not gainsay his command, but when the Lord asked, Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people? he answered him: Here am I, send me (Isa 6:8). And because he had said, Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom: give ear to the Law of our God, you people of Gomorrah (Isa 1:10), he suffered such hard things that he was exposed not only to insulting words but also to the pains of blows. Yet, through his awareness of the God who commanded him, he was not at all terrified; but, according to what is said to Ezekiel, Behold, I have made your face stronger than their faces, and your forehead harder than their foreheads; like adamant and flint I have made your face (Ezek 3:8, 9), he beat down all their assaults. So let those say who strive by every means to overturn the prophecies about Christ and to twist them by a crooked interpretation into a perverse understanding: as if, should these things too have been written of Isaiah, they could take away the other testimonies about Christ, which are so plain that they pour their clear light into the eyes of all. To the person of the Lord, then, with whom the previous book also ended, these things too are to be referred: that according to the dispensation of the body he assumed he was taught, and received a tongue of discipline, that he might know when he ought to speak and when to be silent. Indeed, he who was silent in his passion now speaks through the Apostles and apostolic men in the whole world. And it belongs to great knowledge to give one's fellow servants their food in due season, and to consider the persons of the hearers. Hence the Apostle Paul too speaks to those who did not accept the faith of the Prophets with testimonies from their own authors: as some of your own poets have said: For we are also his offspring (Acts 17:28), meaning Aratus. And again, from the Comic poet: Evil conversations corrupt good morals (1 Cor 15:33); and the hexameter verse of Epimenides: Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies (Titus 1:12). If these do not keep the order and measure of the meter in translation, it must be known that in Greek they run on metrical feet. And he did this because he had received a tongue of discipline, that he might know when he ought to speak a word. To him an ear was added by grace, which he did not have by nature: so that we may understand that by no means are the ears of the body to be taken here, but those of the mind, of which the Lord also spoke in the Gospel: He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Luke 8:8). This discipline and instruction opened his ears, that he might pass on the knowledge of the Father even to us; he who did not gainsay him, but became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Phil 2). So that he set his body, or his back, to the blows; and scourges cut the breast that held God, and he did not turn his cheeks away from the slaps. That he endured this from the servant of the chief of the Priests is not in doubt, so that the crowds of the Jews too mocked him, vying with one another. Struck and spat upon, he did not blush, but was led as a lamb to the sacrifice; and as a sheep before its shearer he did not open his mouth. And that the Son, according to the mystery of the body he took up, heard from the Father what he should speak, we learn more fully in the Gospel, in which he himself says: And the Father who sent me has given me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak. And again: As I hear, so I judge (John 8:28; 5:30).
50:8-9
Near is he who justifies me: who gainsays me? Let us stand together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God is my helper: who is he that will condemn me? Behold, they shall all be worn away like a garment, the moth shall eat them. LXX: He who is near justifies me: who is he that is judged with me, let him resist me together? And who is he that enters into judgment against me? Let him draw near to me. Behold, the Lord is my helper, who will afflict me? Behold, all of you shall grow old like a garment, and like a moth it shall eat you. If anyone, he says, thinks that I was justly given over to the cross and had committed some sin, let him resist me. Who is he that is judged with me, so that he may be overcome not by the power of my majesty but by reason? Now a man is judged with the Lord not by the authority of one who reigns but by comparison of virtues: as the Apostles also judge the twelve tribes of Israel, and the Ninevites and the queen of Sheba judge the people of the Jews. In this sense it is said to Jerusalem: Sodom is justified by you (Ezek 16:52). Since, then, no one can be justified in the presence of the Lord, all shall grow old like a garment (Ps 101 [102]). And what grows old is near to perishing. And like a moth, he says, it shall eat them: namely the conscience of sins, and jealousy over the nations that have been saved. Of this it is said at the end of this volume: Their worm shall not die. And in Micah, against the perverse princes: I will take away their goods like a moth that eats them up, and walks upon the rule in the day of watching (Mic 7:4 LXX). And in Proverbs: An understanding heart is a moth of the bones (Prov 14:30 LXX). For moth in the present place Symmachus translated rust, Aquila worm.
50:10-11
Who among you fears the Lord, hearing the voice of his servant? He who has walked in darkness and has no light, let him hope in the name of the Lord, and lean upon his God. LXX: Who is there among you that fears the Lord, let him hearken to the voice of his child: those who walk in darkness have no light. Trust in the name of the Lord, and lean upon God. You scourged me, you spat upon my face: yet I call my persecutors to repentance. For I do not will the death of the sinful people, but only that it turn back and live (Ezek 33). And I say: who is there among you that fears the Lord and hears the voice of the servant, or child, that is, of his Son? Of these the one belongs to the flesh he assumed, the other to his nature. Nor let us think it a small thing to fear the Lord, according to what is said in Proverbs: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10). For perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment; and he who fears is not perfect in love. But here fear is put for timidity, and εὐλαβείᾳ, of which we also read elsewhere: Blessed is he who fears all things (Prov 28:14), on account of εὐλάβειαν, that is, on account of timidity: those whom people commonly call God-fearing in the religion of God. For the Lord protects their path, and guards the way of the God-fearing. Of this fear it is written: The fear of the Lord surpasses all things. And elsewhere: There is no want for those who fear him (Sir 25:14; Ps 33 [34]:10). Indeed, it is only after many steps of virtue that one arrives at such fear of the Lord. For the divine word speaks in the person of a master and father, instructing a disciple and a son: If you call upon wisdom, and give your voice to understanding, and if you seek her like money, and search her out like treasures: then you shall understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God (Prov 2:3). This is the fear that keeps the souls of the saints whole, chaste and pure, of which it is said: The fear of the Lord is holy, enduring for ever and ever. To it the divine oracles exhort us: Fear the Lord, and give him glory (Rev 14:7). Let him, then, who so fears the Lord hear the voice of his servant, or child, who walked in darkness, and there was no light for him; who had no form nor glory, but in the likeness of sinful flesh took the form of a servant, that he might overcome sin in the flesh. Of him it is said that he should hope in the name of the Lord and lean upon his God, so that whatever belongs to human frailty he may strengthen and sustain by the divine majesty. This is according to the Hebrew. But according to the Seventy it is said of sinners, who would not obey the voice of his Son, and walk in the darkness of error, and therefore have no light. For it could not be that wisdom should enter into a perverse soul. They neither knew nor understood, and therefore they walk in darkness. For they did not do the works and commandments of the Lord, nor sow righteousness for themselves, nor gather the vintage of the vine, so as to kindle for themselves the light of knowledge. For he who desires wisdom, let him keep the commandments, and the Lord will grant it to him. Hence it is also said to God: Your precepts are light. And elsewhere: The commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes (Ps 18 [19]:9). And the ungodly are commanded to trust in the Lord, and, falling through their sins, to lean upon his help and be sustained by it.
50:11
Behold, all of you who kindle a fire, girded with flames, walk in the light of your fire, and in the flames that you have kindled: by my hand this has been done to you; you shall sleep in sorrows. LXX: Behold, all of you kindle a fire and strengthen the flame; walk in the light of your fire, and in the flame that you have kindled; because of me these things have been done to you. You shall sleep in grief. Exhortation profits nothing, nor is there hope of salvation after crimes. All have turned aside, together they have become useless (Ps 13 [14]); all kindle a fire for themselves and strengthen the flame. For they have in themselves hay, wood, stubble, thorns and thistles and darnel, which are to be handed over to the eternal burning. Hence it is also written in Proverbs: In much wood the fire thrives (Prov 25:21). But if a little fire lays hold of great material, how much will a great flame lay waste? It is said also in the Epistle that is ascribed to the Hebrews, of the earth that, bringing forth thorns and thistles, is reprobate and near to a curse, and its end is burning (Heb 6:8). Therefore those who are girded and surrounded with flames, and have strengthened the burning for themselves, are called to salvation, and it is said to them: Walk in the light of your fire, and in the flames that you have kindled, that in punishments and torments they may learn the power of God and return to salvation. And it signifies the devastation of the Jewish people, by which they were handed over to the Romans, and they bear the yoke of captivity to this day. For by the hand of Christ all these things were done, and they shall sleep in grief and sorrows, because neither through benefits nor through torments would they receive the Son of God. Hence he speaks to them: Go into the eternal fire, which God has prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41). This is what the Apostle also says: For wrath has come upon you to the end (1 Thess 2:16). From this little chapter we learn that each one kindles a fire for himself according to the quality of his sin. And just as, of people staying in the same place and, if one may say so, in the same bed, some are healthy while others burn with the heat of fevers, feeling different torments from the diversity of their humors and phlegm: so the fire that is kindled by sinners has its fuel in sins and in iniquity, of which it is written: Iniquity shall burn like a fire, and shall be devoured by burning like dry grass (Isa 9:18).
51:1ff.
Hear me, you who pursue what is just, and seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the cavern of the pit from which you were cut out. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and multiplied him. The Lord therefore will comfort Zion, and will comfort all her ruins, and will make her desert like delights, and her wilderness like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of praise. LXX: Hear, you who pursue what is just, and seek the Lord. Look to the strong rock which you hewed out, and to the hole of the pit which you dug. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you, for he was one, and I called him, and blessed him, and loved him, and multiplied him: and now I will comfort you, Zion. And I have comforted all her deserts like a paradise, and the things that are toward the west like the paradise of the Lord: they shall find exultation and gladness in her, confession and the voice of praise. While those who kindled a fire for themselves and made the flames most strong sleep in grief and everlasting sorrow, you who pursue righteousness and seek the Lord (and he means the choir of the Apostles and of those who believed through the Apostles), look to the rock, that is, to Abraham your father, from whom you were hewn, and to the cavern of the pit from which you were cut out, that is, to Sarah who bore you. And consider this: that when he was a hundred years old and one, and had a barren wife, I multiplied his sons like the stars of heaven, so that their multitude surpassed number. If, then, from one man so many thousands of peoples were born, what great thing is it for me to restore the ruins of Zion, and to change her deserts into a paradise of pleasure, and into the garden of the Lord which God planted in Eden toward the East; and that there should be found in her, in place of the various trees, joy and gladness, confession and the voice of praise? The Jews refer this to the times of Zerubbabel, because after the devastation of Babylon Zion was restored, the Temple built, and the ancient religion given back. But just as above (Isa 49:22, 23) it is said to Zion: They shall bring your sons in their arms, and carry your daughters upon their shoulders. And kings shall be your foster fathers, and queens your nurses; and: Behold, these shall come from afar, and those from the north and the sea, and these from the land of the south; when Zion shall say: The place is too narrow for me: make room for me that I may dwell: things which exclude the meanness of those times, and are not known to have been fulfilled in the earthly Jerusalem: so here too the Lord speaks to those who pursue what is just, according to what is said elsewhere: Seek peace, and pursue it (Ps 33 [34]:15); and again: Pursuing hospitality (Rom 12:13). And they seek the Lord, so that one may infer things present from things former: since far more difficult things have already been done, let them not doubt that these things which are promised will come to pass. Further, according to the Seventy it is said to the pursuers of righteousness that they should look to the most strong rock which they hewed out, and the hole of the pit which they dug, that is, to the Lord the Savior, of whom the Apostle speaks: And the rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:4). And elsewhere it is written: He set my feet upon a rock (Ps 39 [40]:3). And again: On a rock he exalted me. For they pierced his side with a lance, and from it came out blood and water; and they dug his hands and feet, as the Lord the Savior himself says: They dug my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones (Ps 21 [22]:18). We can call the hewn rock the tomb of the Savior, in which he was laid, and, rising from the dead, he begot innumerable sons. And he was called Abraham, that is, father of many nations. Just as Sarah, at first barren, is understood as the Church, which by another name is called Zion, whom the Lord has comforted, and whose deserts he has made like a paradise. For more are the children of the desolate than of her who has a husband. And what is said, And the things that are toward the West I will make into the paradise of the Lord, or into the garden of God, signifies that on those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death a sudden light has arisen. For paradise, in whose place we rendered delights, the Hebrew has EDEN (עדן), of which it is written at the beginning of Genesis. And this is to be noted, that in Zion, which is compared to the paradise of God, there ought to be nothing else but joy and gladness, confession and the voice of praise, so that what the saints will do in heaven with the Angels of God, this they may practice on earth too in the unceasing praise of the Lord.
51:4-5
Attend to me, my people, and my tribe, hear me: for a law shall go forth from me, and my judgment shall rest for a light of the peoples. Near is my righteous one, my savior has gone forth: and my arms shall judge the peoples. The islands shall wait for me, and shall wait upon my arm. LXX: Hear me, hear me, my people, and kings, attend to me: for a law shall go forth from me, and my judgment for a light of the nations. My righteousness draws near swiftly, and my salvation shall go forth like a light: and in my arm shall the nations hope. The islands shall wait for me, and in my arm they shall hope. Once in the Hebrew it is said, Attend; twice according to the Seventy, hear me, hear me: to teach us that we ought to hear both with the ears of the body and with the sense of the soul. And the multitude of the nations, which is the people of God, is called to listen carefully to what is said; of which Zechariah says: Many nations, he says, shall flee to the Lord, and shall be his people (Zech 2:11). Or, as some will have it, the remnant of believers from Israel is called the people; and the tribe, or nations, are those who believed from the multitude of the nations, as Moses says to the nations in the Song of Deuteronomy: Rejoice, you nations, with his people (Deut 32:43). For tribe, as we have translated, Theodotion translated race, Symmachus nation, the Seventy kings. For we are the tribe, and the nation, and the royal and priestly race of the Lord, such as Abraham also was, who was called a king, and the other saints, of whom it is written: Do not touch my anointed ones (Ps 104 [105]:15). What is it that they are bidden to hear? For a law, he says, shall go forth from me, and my judgment for a light of the peoples, or of the nations. Here is shown the spiritual law of the Gospel, which shall go forth from Zion, not that of Moses, which was given of old on Sinai; and my judgment shall go forth for a light of the nations, by which he established and decreed that all nations are to be saved. And lest perhaps we should think that what he promised would come after a long time, he adds: near is my righteous one, or righteousness. For Christ has been made for us by the Father wisdom and redemption (1 Cor 1), holiness and righteousness, and all the names by which virtue is called. And it is beautifully said that righteousness will go forth, so that not one nation only but the whole world may be saved. And that the Son of God, who was sent by the Father, is called Savior, or salvation, which in Hebrew is said Jesus, Simeon declares, holding the child in his arms: Now you dismiss your servant, O Lord, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light for the revelation of the nations (Luke 2:29ff.). And as for what follows, And my arms shall judge the peoples, or according to the Seventy, and in my arm shall the nations hope: it signifies either that all are judged by his power, or that all the nations will believe in Christ, who is the arm and strength of God. It is said also in another place: Your arm is with might. Let your hand be strengthened, and your right hand exalted (Ps 88 [89]:14). And again: Sing to the Lord a new song: his right hand will save for him, and his holy arm (Ps 97 [98]:1, 2). For the right hand and arm of the Lord is he himself who saved for himself those who were formerly lost, so that none should perish of those whom the Father had given him (John 17). And that the islands are said to be either the souls of the Saints, which in the persecutions of this world have been made solid by a firm faith in God, or the multitude of the Churches from the nations, we have often explained. And just as by the arm of the Lord we can understand the Savior, so by his arms which judge the peoples we can understand all the saints, in whom God will judge the world.
51:6
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath: for the heavens shall melt away like smoke, and the earth shall be worn away like a garment, and its inhabitants shall perish like these. But my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not fail. LXX: Lift up your eyes to heaven, and look upon the earth beneath, for heaven has been made firm like smoke. But the earth shall grow old like a garment, and its inhabitants shall die like these. But my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not fail. This is what the Lord says in the Gospel: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away (Matt 24:35). And David sings in the psalm: In the beginning, O Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They shall perish, but you remain; and they shall all grow old like a garment; and like a cloak you shall roll them up, and they shall be changed (Ps 101 [102]:26). From this it is shown that the perishing of the heavens signifies not destruction but a change for the better. Of these it is said: There shall be a new heaven and a new earth, which I will make to remain in my sight (Rev 21:2). For if it is written of the saints, We shall all indeed sleep, but we shall not all be changed (1 Cor 15:51), and in the titles of four psalms we read, For those who shall be changed: how much more is this to be believed of heaven and of the sun and the stars, when the moon shall receive the light of the sun, and the sun shall glow with sevenfold brightness? Hence the whole creation too groans and travails, awaiting the revelation of the sons of God, that it may be changed for the better (Rom 8). And not only the souls of men, which are immortal, but their bodies too are to be changed into a glorified substance. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality (1 Cor 15:53). And since heaven and earth grow old, it follows that the things contained within the circle of heaven, and men, who are the inhabitants of the earth, also die like these: not unto their destruction, but unto the abolishing of their old baseness and the renewal of the glory to come; when the righteous shall shine like the sun (Matt 13:43), and, the past and old things departing, all things shall have been made new. Some take perishing and growing old for abolition and death, according to what we read in the catholic Epistle: The heavens that now are, and the earth, have been reserved for fire by the same word. And again: The elements, burning, shall be dissolved (2 Pet 3:7). This is indeed also the opinion of the philosophers of the world, that all the things we see will perish by fire. Hence the Apostle too: Passes away, he says, the fashion of this world, while we look not at the things that are seen but at the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal (1 Cor 7:32). Something of the kind the apostle John also writes: The world passes away, and its desire (1 John 2:17). And in the Hebrew it is said, The heavens shall melt away like smoke; or, according to Aquila and Symmachus, they shall be ground to nothing, and be crumbled and vanish in the manner of salt; of whom the former said ἡλίσθησαν, the latter ἁλίσουσιν, which plainly draws its etymology from the crumbling and dissolving of salt. In place of this I wonder what the Seventy meant to say, heaven has been made firm like smoke: for if firmness is taken for strength, how is what is firm compared to smoke? Unless perhaps we can say this: that all the firmness and strength and might of the heavens is made equal to the emptiest wind and to smoke, which dissolves into the air, according to Ecclesiastes: Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity (Eccl 1:2). And this must be said: if heaven and earth shall perish and grow old, by what consequence should its inhabitants die and perish like these, when we know that souls are everlasting, and that bodies will rise again? From this it is plain that heaven and earth do not perish and are not reduced to nothing, but are changed for the better.
51:7-8
Hear me, you who know what is just, people: my law is in their heart. Do not fear the reproach of men, and do not be afraid of their blasphemies. For as a garment, so shall the worm eat them; and as wool, so shall the moth devour them. But my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness to generations of generations. LXX: Hear me, you who know judgment, my people, of whom my law is in their heart. Do not fear the reproach of men, and do not be overcome by their contempt. For like a garment they shall be consumed by time, and like wool they shall be eaten by the moth. But my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation to generations of generations. He who had said above, A law shall go forth from me, and my judgment for a light of the nations, now speaks to the same people, who know his judgment and have his law in their hearts, that they may do all things with judgment, and have the law which the Lord promises through Jeremiah, saying (Jer 31:31ff.): I will establish a new covenant, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers; but I will establish a covenant, putting my laws in their minds, and upon their heart I will write them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people: so that they may live by no means according to the letter but according to the spirit, restoring the natural law in their hearts, of which the Apostle also writes: For when the nations, which do not have the law, do by nature the things that are of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves; who show the work of the law written in their hearts (Rom 2:14). Of this law it is signified in the psalm: The mouth of the righteous shall meditate wisdom, and his tongue shall speak judgment. The law of his God is in his heart, and his steps shall not be supplanted (Ps 36 [37]:30, 31). And because the prophetic spirit knew that many persecutions would come upon believers, he exhorts them to fortitude, nay rather to contempt of those who are going to persecute them. Which the Lord also said in the Gospel: Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna (Matt 10:28). And in another place: Rejoice when they speak all evil against you, lying (ibid. 5:11). For as a garment is consumed by the worm, or by time, and as wool is devoured by the moth, so all the reproach of the persecutors will pass away with the persecutors. Hence the Apostles too gloried that they had been counted worthy to suffer insults for the Lord (Acts 5). And they gloried because the salvation and righteousness of the Lord, which had promised them victory and rewards, that is, the Lord and Savior, abides for ever, or in each generation, of the former people and of the later, who received his coming; of whom it is also said above: Near is my righteous one, my savior has gone forth.
51:9ff.
Arise, arise; put on strength, O arm of the Lord. Arise as in the days of old, in the generations of ages. Was it not you who struck the proud one, who wounded the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the water of the mighty deep, who made the depth of the sea a way, that the freed might pass over? And now those who have been redeemed by the Lord shall return and come into Zion praising; and everlasting gladness shall be upon their heads: they shall hold joy and gladness; sorrow and groaning shall flee. LXX: Rise up, rise up ÷ Jerusalem ⁚ and put on the strength of your arm. Rise up as in the beginning of the day, as an everlasting generation. Are you not she who cut down the breadth, who undid the dragon? Are you not she who made the sea a desert, the many waters of the deep; who made the depth of the sea a way of passage for those who had been freed and redeemed? For by the Lord they shall be led back, and shall come into Zion with gladness and everlasting exultation. For on their head praise and gladness shall take hold of them. Sorrow and grief and groaning shall flee. The name Jerusalem, which was added here by the Seventy, is neither found in the Hebrew nor did any of the three Translators put it; hence it is to be marked beforehand with an obelus, and so the following little chapter is to be joined with the sense of the preceding. The Lord had exhorted those who believe in him, saying: Do not fear the reproach of men, and do not be afraid of their blasphemies. And he had promised them, as their help, his salvation and everlasting righteousness, which is none other than Christ, the arm of the Lord, of whom he had said above: And in my arm shall the nations hope. Hence the people speak to the arm of the Lord, and pray for his coming, and implore the promised help, saying: Arise, arise: put on strength, O arm of the Lord. Arise as in the days of old, and exert all your strength, so that you who through many ages delivered your Saints from dangers may protect us too by your strength. For you are he who struck the proud one, who wounded the dragon, namely Pharaoh king of Egypt, who in Ezekiel too is called the great dragon (Ezek 29). You dried up the Red Sea, so that through the most mighty waters and the depths of the sea your people might find a way and escape the pursuing Egyptians. You, then, who did these things, now too lead back into Zion those redeemed and freed by your blood, into the heavenly Jerusalem, or into the Church which you have prepared for yourself by your blood: and when they are in it, they shall rejoice with everlasting gladness, and shall say: Lord, as with the shield of your good will you have crowned us (Ps 5:13). For they shall have joy and gladness, sorrow and groaning fleeing away. This is according to the Hebrew. But according to the Seventy, Jerusalem, that is, the sinful soul, is called to put on the strength of her arm, and to take up her former works, as she had been before she fell, when she dwelt in the day and in the light. For you are she, he says, who overcame the broad and spacious way that leads to death, and broke up the dragon, the crooked serpent, of which we also read in the Psalms: You crushed the heads of the dragons in the waters (Ps 73 [74]:13). Remember your former strength, that you trod down the sea of this world and made it a desert, and found a way in the midst of the waves. Hence the Apostle Peter too passed over the sea of this world to the Lord, and he who was walking by faith began to sink through unbelief, except that he was held up by the right hand of the Lord. As, then, the former victory was granted with the Lord's help, so also to those who return after repentance and hear, Shall he who falls not rise? says the Lord (Jer 8:4), and, Turn to me, you sons that turn, and I will heal your bruises (ibid. 3), he himself will stretch out his hand, and lead them back into Zion, the watchtower and summit of virtues, with joy and everlasting gladness, and will set praise and gladness upon their head. For the eyes of the wise man are in his head; and they shall have this crown and be protected by this diadem, so that they always rejoice and praise the Lord, because joys have taken the place of sorrow, grief and groaning.
51:12-13
I, I myself will comfort you. Who are you, that you should have feared a mortal man, and the son of man, who shall wither like grass? And you have forgotten God your maker, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth; and you have been in dread continually all the day at the face of the fury of him who afflicted you and had made ready to destroy. Where now is the fury of the afflicter? He shall come quickly, walking, to open, and he will not kill unto utter destruction, nor shall his bread fail. But I am the Lord your God, who trouble the sea, and its waves swell: the Lord of hosts is my name. I have put my words in your mouth, and in the shadow of my hand I have protected you, that you may plant the heavens and found the earth, and say to Zion: You are my people. LXX: I am, I am he who comforts you. Know who you were, and that you feared a mortal man, and the son of man, who have withered like grass; and you have forgotten God your maker, who made heaven and founded the earth; and you feared always, all the days, the face of the fury of him who afflicted you, as he planned to take you away; and now where is the fury of him who afflicts you? For when you have been saved, he shall not stand nor remain ※ and he will not kill unto corruption, and his bread shall not fail ⁚ for I am your God who trouble the sea and make its waves resound. The Lord Sabaoth is my name. I will put my words in your mouth, and in the shadow of my hand I will protect you: by which I set up heaven and founded the earth; and Zion shall say, You are my people. The people of believers had prayed to the arm of the Lord, who himself is the power of God and the wisdom of God, to arise and give them help, so that, with him fighting for the saints, they might possess joy and gladness, sorrow and groaning being put to flight. So either the arm of the Lord or the Lord himself answered: I am, I am; and not at all through the Prophets, but I myself will comfort you: the God of mercies and the Father of all consolation. And I wonder how, when I said above, Do not fear the reproach of men, and do not be afraid of their blasphemies, you feared the rage of the persecutors, and did not know that they are mortal, who like grass suddenly wither and perish. And surely at the time when you feared them, you forgot the Lord your maker. For if the memory of me had always dwelt in your heart, you would never have feared men, who are to be dissolved into ashes. And whom did you forget? God, who hung the heavens by incredible power, and founded the earth as a stable mass. And you feared your adversaries not for a short while, which could in some measure have been granted you, but continually and all the day, so that, though you had the light of faith, the darkness of dread possessed you, and dread of him who thought you would perish. Where then now is the pride of the persecutors? Where is the worldly power with which they raged against you with rabid mouth? My son will come quickly, walking and trampling your adversaries, to open to you the way of victory; or to unbar the underworld; who will not kill unto utter destruction, but wills to save those who turn. Then too his bread, which, as the Gospel proves, means doctrine, shall never fail, but shall always lie open to those who wish to eat. And at the same time he makes an apostrophe to the Son, whom he promises will come quickly, and whose bread he says is everlasting: that he himself, according to the dispensation of the flesh he assumed, is his Lord God, who makes the sea troubled and its waves swell, so that the pride of the persecutors is puffed up against his servants, and then, with the Lord's help, grows calm again. And he says that he has put his words in his mouth. For whatever the Son speaks are the words of the Father; and that he protected him in the shadow of his hand; and that he was protected for this reason, that he might plant new heavens and found a new earth, and say to Zion, that is, to the Church: You are my people. Therefore Zion is nothing other than the people of God. Symmachus, in the place where we said, He shall come quickly, walking, to open, and he will not kill unto utter destruction, translated thus: Quickly the underworld shall be opened, and he shall not die unto corruption, Christ being understood, who speaks in the fifteenth psalm: You will not leave my soul in the underworld, nor will you give your holy one to see corruption. In that place too where we, according to the Hebrew and Aquila, rendered, I have put my words in your mouth, and in the shadow of my hand I have protected you, that you may plant the heavens, and found the earth, and say to Zion: you are my people, he translated thus: I will put my words in your mouth, and in the shadow of my hand I will protect you, by which I planted heaven and founded the earth, and that I may say to Zion: you are my people. According to the Seventy it is said to every believing soul that, though created in the image and likeness of God, she did not know her own dignity, but feared man and the son of man, who can kill only the body, and did not know that she is immortal, nor say with the Prophet: The Lord is my light and my savior, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life, of whom shall I be afraid (Ps 26 [27]:1, 2)? And again: The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man may do to me. The Lord is my helper, and I shall look down upon my enemies (Ps 117 [118]:6, 7). And what man is, is shown by another verse: In the Lord I will hope: I will not fear what flesh may do to me (Ps 55 [56]:5). Hence it is now said too: You feared a mortal man, and the son of man, who have withered like grass. For all flesh is grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass (Isa 40); and, terrified by the power of the judge, you forgot that he himself was your protector, who made heaven and earth and all the elements we see; or those heavens that bear the image of the heavenly one, and that earth which multiplies the Lord's seed. And what is said above, And he will not kill unto corruption, and his bread shall not fail, was added from Theodotion's edition out of the Hebrew. He troubles the sea and makes its waves resound, he to whom it is also sung in the Psalms: You rule the strength of the sea, and the tossing of its waves you calm (Ps 88 [89]:10). In Jeremiah too it is written: Will you not fear me, says the Lord, and will you not tremble before my face, who set the sand as a boundary for the sea, an everlasting decree which it shall not pass (Jer 5:22)? The seas were troubled when the Lord's dragnet drew out a multitude of fish (Matt 13). And the Lord put his words in the mouth of the believer, and protected him in the shadow of his hand. He also says in the Gospel: When they hand you over, do not think how or what you are to speak; for what you are to speak will be given you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the spirit of your Father who speaks in you (Matt 10:19, 20). And in another place he says to the righteous man: Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it (Ps 80 [81]:12). And again: Open your mouth to the word of God: For the Lord will give the word to those who preach the good news with great power. Hence God speaks to the inner man of Jeremiah, after he touched his mouth: Behold, I have put my words in your mouth (Jer 1:9). He could sing with the Psalmist: He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn to our God (Ps 39 [40]:4). And who has wrought all these things but the Lord and Savior, who made heaven and earth, and says to Zion, You are my people? Which properly suits the Church gathered from the nations. And in Hosea he promises to believers, saying: I will call not my people, my people; and he shall say to me: You are my God (Hos 2:24).
51:17ff.
Lift yourself up, lift yourself up, arise, Jerusalem, who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath: you have drunk to the bottom of the cup of stupor, and have drained it to the dregs. There is none to sustain her, of all the sons whom she has borne; and there is none to take her by the hand, of all the sons whom she has brought up. Two things there are that have befallen you; who shall be grieved over you? devastation and destruction, and famine, and the sword: who shall comfort you? LXX: Rise up, rise up, lift yourself up, Jerusalem, who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury. For the cup of ruin, the κόνδυ of fury, you have drunk off and emptied: and there was none to comfort you of all your sons whom you bore; and there was none to take you by the hand, nor of all your sons whom you raised up. These two things are against you: who shall be grieved with you? ruin and destruction, famine and the sword: who shall comfort you? That Jerusalem and Zion are δυώνυμον I have often taught: of which Zion, which means watchtower, because it is set upon a mountain, is called the citadel; while the rest of the city is called Jerusalem, which was formerly called Jebus and Salem. Her the Prophet now exhorts to arise, she who had earlier fallen by denial, saying in the passion of the Lord: Crucify, crucify such a one: we have no king but Caesar (John 19:15); and to do penance, and to feel through the evils of captivity why she offended her Creator. Physicians are accustomed to give to a nauseated stomach a most bitter antidote, which took its name from its taste, so that it may vomit up the harmful humors and be able to pass on into the bowel the food cooked and digested, which the great quantity of phlegm did not allow to be digested. So Jerusalem too, who drank from the cup of the Lord's fury, and from his κόνδυ, which Symmachus translated bowl, and which, according to the book of Genesis, Joseph ordered to be hidden in the sack of his brother Benjamin (Gen 44), is bidden to arise from her drunkenness, because she drank it, and emptied it, and drained it to the dregs: which the three expressed by a single word, Ἐξεστράγγισας. This is the cup of which we read in the Psalms: A cup in the hand of the Lord, full of pure wine mixed. And he has poured from this into that; yet its dregs are not emptied out: all the sinners of the earth shall drink (Ps 74 [75]:9, 10). Of it God also speaks to Jeremiah: Take the cup of pure wine from my hand, and you shall make all the nations drink of it, to whom I shall send you. And they shall drink and vomit, and go mad before the face of the sword which I shall send among them (Jer 25:15, 16). And when he says that he gave it to drink to the other nations and to Jerusalem and the cities of Judea, he adds: Thus says the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel: Drink and be drunk, and vomit, and fall before the face of the sword which I shall send among you (Jer 25:27). And it is to be noted that this cup of the Lord's fury is his sword, which is sent into the midst of sinners. Here a question arises: how, after the drinking, the drunkenness and vomiting and the fall, it is said in Jeremiah that Jerusalem cannot arise, and now he speaks to her through Isaiah: Lift yourself up, lift yourself up, arise, Jerusalem. It is resolved thus: as long as someone drinks the cup, and is drunk, and raves, and vomits, and falls, he cannot arise; for he has not yet drained the cup of the Lord, nor come to the dregs, so as to have drunk it to the bottom. But now he speaks to Jerusalem in the past tense: who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury, and not, who are drinking. And at the same time we must consider that from then on there was no prophet, no Apostle in Judea to comfort her, and take her by the hand, and lift her up as she lay. From this it is plain that these things are said of the time after the last captivity: otherwise, history relates that in Babylon and after Babylon she had Ezekiel and the other Prophets. And as for what he says, Two things there are that have befallen you, or these two things are against you: who shall be grieved over you?, and in place of two he names four, devastation and destruction, famine and the sword: like this is what is sung in the Psalter: Once God has spoken, these two things I have heard: that power belongs to God, and to you, O Lord, mercy: for you will render to each according to his works (Ps 61 [62]:12, 13). For there too God speaks once, that he is almighty, and the Prophet hears two things, that his omnipotence prevails on both sides, so that he both grants mercy to the penitent and renders to those who persist in sin the punishments they deserve. In the same way in this other place two things befell Jerusalem, each of which has two parts. For destruction follows ruin, or devastation; and death follows famine and the sword. We can understand these things according to the anagogy also of the sinful soul, which, not wishing to drink the cup of the Lord's fury, says in the psalm: O Lord, do not rebuke me in your fury, nor chastise me in your wrath (Ps 6:1). But if she has drunk it, it is good for her to feel her punishments, and to hear the Lord saying: When the wrath of my fury has passed, I will heal again. And elsewhere: Shall he who falls not rise again, says the Lord (Jer 8:4)?
51:20
Your sons have been cast out, they have slept at the head of all the ways, like an ensnared oryx: full of the indignation of the Lord, of the rebuke of your God. LXX: Your sons, in want and sleeping at the head of all the ways, like a half-cooked beet, full of the fury of the Lord, and failing from the Lord God. For half-cooked beet the other translators rendered an oryx caught and ensnared, which in Hebrew is called THO (תוא), a kind of beast born in the desert, which is placed among the clean animals in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. For this the Seventy supposed the Syriac word thoreth, which means beet. From the name let us pass to the sense. Your sons, like an oryx caught in the snares of the hunters, have slept at the crossroads and in the streets, and, laying their naked limbs upon the naked ground, have shown by their own miseries the indignation of the Lord and the rebuke of their God. Further, according to the Seventy: those who would not have spiritual riches in every word, and knowledge, and good works, but were poor who do not endure threatening, shall by no means dwell in houses that are built of virtues, but at the beginnings of the ways and at their outlets, touching all things and leaving all things. They are rightly said to sleep that sleep of which it is written: They have slept their sleep, and found nothing (Ps 75 [76]:6); with which sleep the king of Assyria lulled them. And they are compared to a half-cooked beet, which is a kind of vegetable most cheap and most fragile. Of such vegetables I think it is said in the Psalms: Do not be jealous of evildoers, nor envy those who work iniquity. For like grass they shall swiftly wither, and like green herbs they shall quickly fall (Ps 36 [37]:1, 2). For it is the food of the sick. He who is once and for all unbelieving is called a raw beet. But he who, content with simple faith, does works of righteousness without reasoning and the truth of doctrines, can be called a cooked beet. Further, he who wavers in the middle between vices and virtues, and approaches the service of God with a double heart, is most rightly called a half-cooked beet; to him too God speaks in the Apocalypse of John: Would that you were either hot or cold: but now, because you are lukewarm, I will vomit you out (Rev 3:15, 16). These, lukewarm and sleeping, are full of the fury of the Lord, and dissolved, or failing, through the Lord God: not that the Lord, who did not make death and does not delight in the destruction of the living, is the cause of their dissolution; but in that those who have sinned under the Law are judged through the Law, which works the wrath of God for those who are its transgressors.
51:21ff.
Therefore hear this, poor little one, and drunk, but not with wine. Thus says your ruler, the Lord, and your God, who fought for his people: Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of stupor, the bottom of the cup of my indignation: you shall not drink it again any more. And I will put it in the hand of those who humbled you, and said to your soul: Bow down, that we may pass over; and you made your body like the ground, and like a road for those passing over. LXX: Therefore hear, you who are humbled and drunk, but not with wine. Thus says the Lord God who judges his people: Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of ruin, the κόνδυ of my fury: and you shall not drink it again any more: and I will give it into the hands of those who unjustly oppressed you and humbled you; who said to your soul, Bend down that we may pass over; and you made your middle parts level with the ground for those passing outside. O Jerusalem, to whom I said, Lift yourself up, lift yourself up, arise, and do penance, because you have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury and drained it to the dregs; and your sons, who are scattered through the whole world, and led away captive, have lain in the streets and at the heads of the ways: know that you are poor and humbled, and drunk, not with wine, but with the fury of the Lord. Therefore, if you do penance, and, lifted up, arise, you will know that the cup of stupor and of ruin, or according to Symmachus and Theodotion, of tearing and of commotion, is to be taken from your hand; and that you will no more drink the condy, for which in this place too Symmachus translated bowl; but that it is to be handed over to your adversaries, who said to your soul, Bow down, that we may pass over: and when they said it, you bent down of your own will. And you made your body like the ground, or your back; or according to the Seventy, your middle parts and your necks for those passing outside. Let this be said according to the history: that Jerusalem, if she is willing to lift herself up and arise, shall by no means drink the cup of the Lord's fury, nor suffer any more what she endured before. But to come, according to the Seventy, to the spiritual understanding: it is said to the soul humbled by vices and drunk with passions, that she may know that she has the Lord as her judge, and that she will render account for all things. And if she has been turned to better things, the cup of ruin is to be taken from her hands, and the bowl of the Lord's fury, which held punishments, of which Ezekiel also says to Jerusalem: You shall drink the cup of your sister Samaria, deep and wide, that you may be drunk (Ezek 23:32), is to be handed over into the hands of those who had humbled her. There is no doubt that he signifies the adverse powers, which said to her soul: Bow down, that we may pass over. Here it is likewise to be noted that they did not bend her down, nor use force so that she who was formerly upright should be bowed to the ground, but left it to her own choice. And she of her own will laid down her neck, or her back, or her whole body, not inside but outside, for those who trampled her. Something of the kind we also read in the Gospel (Luke 13): that for eighteen years Satan had bent a woman down, whom the Lord raised up to her former stature, so that she could say: I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, whence my help shall come (Ps 120 [121]:1); and: To you I have lifted up my eyes, who dwell in heaven (Ps 122 [123]:1).
52:1
Arise, arise, put on your strength, Zion: put on the garments of your glory, Jerusalem, city of the Holy One: for the uncircumcised and the unclean shall no more pass through you. LXX: Rise up, rise up, ÷ Zion: ⁚ put on your strength, Zion, and put on your glory, Jerusalem, holy city. No more shall the uncircumcised and the unclean pass through you. Here again the name Zion, as above, was added by the Seventy, and therefore it has been transfixed with the spit. To her, then, to whom he had said above (Isa 51:17), Lift yourself up, lift yourself up, arise, Jerusalem, he now says: Arise, arise, put on your strength, Zion. And who Zion is, the following verse shows: Put on the garments of your glory, Jerusalem. We have said this to prove that Jerusalem and Zion are one city. And she is commanded to put off her garments of mourning and to put on those which she had before she drank from the hand of the Lord the cup of fury. And she is called the city of the sanctuary, for this is what CODES (קדש) signifies, on account of the temple which was built in her; or of the Holy One, on account of the knowledge of God; or holy, because she alone in the whole world had received the law. Hence too, after the resurrection of the Savior, the bodies of the dead appeared in the holy city, which surely, on account of its blasphemy and the hands laid on the Lord, could not be holy (Matt 27). And what is promised, that if she rises after her ruin and puts on her strength and glory, the uncircumcised and unclean shall no more pass through her, signifies what the Apostle Paul also says: What participation has righteousness with iniquity? What fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial? What part has the believer with the unbeliever? What accord has the temple of God with idols (2 Cor 6:14, 15)? All these things too, as we began to explain, are referred to the state of the soul. If through penance she has recovered her former strength, let her be called the dwelling of the Holy One, and become a Temple of God, and let no uncircumcised and unclean λογισμὸς pass through her. Of these it has been said: From my hidden sins cleanse me, O Lord, and from those of others spare your servant. If they have not had dominion over me, then I shall be spotless, and shall be cleansed from the greatest offense (Ps 18 [19]:13, 14). But all the things that are promised to Zion and Jerusalem are not said, as the Jews dream, of her stones and ashes and embers, that she may be restored to her former state; but of the people of Jerusalem, which killed the Prophets and stoned those who were sent to it (Matt 23), and at the last laid hands even on the Son of God. That people, falling in the passion of Christ, was raised up in his resurrection, when many thousands of the Jews believed and the remnant was saved. The same we can say of the Church also, which is the vision of peace and the watchtower: if she has fallen into heresy, she is commanded to go out and take up the ornaments of her former faith. And if she has been raised up, the rewards of holiness and continence are promised to her, so that the uncircumcised and the unclean shall by no means pass through her. This can be referred not to the cutting of the flesh and the foreskin, but to the uncleanness or cleanness of works, so that we call uncircumcised and unclean those who serve the pleasure and lust of the body. Indeed, Jeremiah speaks to those circumcised in the flesh, not in the spirit: All the nations are uncircumcised in the flesh; but the sons of Israel are uncircumcised in their hearts (Jer 9:26). And the blessed Apostle, disputing of virginity and continence and marriage, threw in, in the midst: Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on a foreskin. Was he called in foreskin? Let him not be circumcised (1 Cor 7:18). This seems to me to say in other words: Has he been called without a wife, and believed? let him not take a wife. Or on the contrary: having a wife, has he believed in Christ? let him by no means make a divorce. And he keeps this sense not only in circumcision and foreskin, but in freedom and slavery, so as to call virgins and the continent free, and slaves those who render the debt to a wife. For it is not in our power to draw on a foreskin after circumcision, as those in the book of Maccabees are said to have made foreskins for themselves: which is said of the sons being born, and not of the fathers. Or he who has been called free is rather the slave of Christ (ibid. 7:22), since in the baptism of Christ there is no difference of Jew, pagan, Greek and Barbarian, man and woman, free and slave.
52:2-3
Shake yourself from the dust: arise, sit down, Jerusalem: loose the bonds of your neck, captive daughter of Zion. For thus says the Lord: You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without silver. LXX: Shake off the dust, and rise up, Jerusalem. Loose the bond of your neck, captive daughter of Zion. For thus says the Lord: You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money. That the Prophet's word is by no means addressed to Jerusalem, that is, to the ruins of her stones, and her ashes and embers, but to the people that dwells in her, and that it is called daughter on account of the effeminacy of its spirit, the following verse shows, in which he says: Loose the bonds of your neck, captive daughter of Zion. For truly captive is the people of the Jews, which to this day bears the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, and is bound fast by the cords of its sins and blasphemies; which was sold for nothing, and did nothing worthy for which it could be redeemed. To it also it is said above: Behold, for your sins you were sold, and for your iniquities I put away your mother. And he gives the reasons why they were sold, why they were cast off: Because, he says, I came, and there was no man; I called, and there was none to hear. From this it is plain that they were handed over to error and to demons because they had not heard him crying: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened (Matt 11:28). But those who are willing to believe shall be redeemed, by no means with silver and money, but with the precious blood of Christ, so that they hear through the Apostles: Grace to you and peace (Rom 1:7). For not because of merits, but because of grace and faith in Christ, we have been reconciled to God. It is said also to the soul which, polluted by the filth of vices, had lost the whiteness of her former way of life, that she should shake off, with the Apostles, the dust that has clung to her feet (Matt 10). For it could not be that she who, prostrate, had laid down her neck for those passing outside, and had joined her middle parts to the earth, and had said, My soul is humbled in the dust, my belly cleaves to the earth (Ps 43 [44]:25), should not have taken on the image of the earthly. From this the Apostle calls us back, saying: As we have borne the image of the earthly, so let us bear also the image of the heavenly (1 Cor 15:49). Hence those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom 8). Not that the nature of the flesh is condemned, whose maker is God, and in which very many have pleased God and reign with Christ; but that the works of the flesh are rejected, of which the same Apostle speaks: But I am carnal, sold under sin (Rom 7:14). Indeed, to men of this kind he says: But where there is jealousy and rivalry among you, are you not carnal, and do you not walk according to man (1 Cor 3:3)? And on the contrary to the saints: But you are not in the flesh, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. The dust, then, is shaken off, of which it is written, Shall the dust confess to you, or declare your truth (Ps 29 [30]:10), so that the bonds of our neck may be loosed, and we may by no means hear, your neck is an iron sinew, but may deserve to hear with the bride: How beautiful are your cheeks, like the turtledove's: your neck like necklaces (Song 1:9). And again: I have put bracelets on your hands, and a necklace on your neck; so that, freed from the heavy burden and receiving back our former ornaments, we may cease to be captives: redeemed by him who came to proclaim release to the captives, and of whom it is written (above, Isa 45:13): He shall build my city, and bring back the captivity of my people, not for a price nor for gifts. With this sense the Apostle Peter also agrees: Knowing that you were redeemed from your vain way of life handed down from your fathers, not with corruptible things, silver and gold, but with the blood of the spotless lamb (1 Pet 1:18).
52:4ff.
For thus says the Lord God: My people went down into Egypt at the beginning, to sojourn there; and Assyria oppressed him without any cause. And now what have I here, says the Lord? For my people has been taken away for nothing: its rulers act unjustly, says the Lord, and continually all the day my name is blasphemed. Therefore my people shall know my name in that day: for I myself who spoke, behold, I am here. LXX: For thus says the Lord: My people went down into Egypt formerly, to sojourn there; and they were violently led away to the Assyrians; and now what shall be here, says the Lord? Because my people has been taken away for nothing, wonder, and howl. Thus says the Lord: Because of you my name is always blasphemed among the nations. Therefore my people shall know my name in that day: for I myself who spoke am here. He rebukes the people of the Jews and foretells what is to come: that the people which of its own will went down in Jacob to the Egyptians, and in a time of need and famine sojourned in the land of Goshen (Gen 47), afterwards suffered oppression from the Assyrians, whom it had harmed in nothing, and was carried away in captivity into Babylon (2 Kgs 17:23). Hence he adds: And now what have I here, says the Lord? And the sense is: I have nothing left for which I should remain in this region, from which my people has been taken away for nothing, and sold for its sins, and caught like an oryx in a net, either by the forces of the Romans or by the snares of the devil, in which it is held bound to this day. And that they should suffer these things, their rulers and teachers acted unjustly; who, according to Symmachus and Theodotion, shall howl, according to Aquila, shall weep, when they have been handed over to torments. For they are the ones who stirred up the people against the Savior, so that they cried with one voice: Crucify, crucify such a one (John 19:15). Of them he had already said before: The Lord himself will come with the elders of the people and with its princes. But why have you burned my vineyard, and the plunder of the poor is in your houses (Isa 3:14)? Wherefore according to the Seventy he says to them: Because of you my name is always blasphemed among the nations. And it must be known that among the nations is not found in the Hebrew, but simply, my name is continually blasphemed, so that "in your synagogues" is understood: who day and night blaspheme the Savior, and, under the name of Nazarenes, as I have often said, heap curses on the Christians three times a day. While they, then, blaspheme and curse the Lord, his people, of whom much has already been said, that is, the Christian people, shall know the name of him who is to come in the name of the Father. And it shall know it because he himself who formerly spoke through the Prophets will instruct the peoples in person. According to the Seventy, God says to Israel that it went down into Egypt of its own will, as Moses says in Deuteronomy: With seventy souls your fathers went down into Egypt (Deut 10:22); and they were led away captive violently by the Assyrians. Hence it is said to them: And now what are you here? What are you doing in the land of Judea, you who after the murder of the Prophets laid hands on the Son of God? Or else God speaks to the angelic powers and the Angels who presided over the Temple: What are you doing here, why do you not leave the blaspheming people? As Josephus also relates (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 6, ch. 12): when the gates of the Temple were suddenly opened and unbarred of their own accord, gates which many men could scarcely shut, a voice came forth from the inner sanctuary of the Temple, of those saying: Let us pass over from these seats. Here we must consider the exactness of the words: that they did not say, Let us depart, but, Let us pass over, namely to the people of the nations. Hence too the veil of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom, so that all the ceremonies of the Jews were laid open, and at that time was fulfilled what is said in this same Prophet: Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among many nations, even far off (Isa 2:3, 4). For their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world (Ps 18 [19]). And in every place incense is offered to God, and a pure sacrifice (Mal 1), since the prophetic word was fulfilled: All the ends of the earth shall remember and return to the Lord: and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight; for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he shall rule over the nations (Ps 21 [22]:28ff.). Hence it is said to the princes of the Jews: Wonder, and howl, since you are the cause of the people's ruin. Further, according to the anagogy we can say this: that the people of God goes down of its own will into the Egypt of this world when it is a lover of pleasures rather than of God, and does not hear that prophetic word: Woe to those who go down into Egypt for help (Isa 31:1). When it has been beguiled by vices, and has dwelt in a place of waters and rivers, which does not have the dryness of chastity, then it shall be handed over violently to the Assyrians, so that they may rule over it, who afterwards may accuse and convict it in its sin. For they are both enemies and avengers, of whom he speaks to Israel: And now what have you to do with the way of Egypt, to drink the water of Gihon; and what have you to do with the way of the Assyrians, to drink the water of the rivers (Jer 2:18)? He, then, who has gone down into Egypt, and has slipped from the height of Jerusalem to lower places, and going to Jericho, another Egypt, has received many wounds from robbers, to him it is said: And now what have you here? Why do you pretend to be in the land and in the Church of God, you who with eagerness and all desire went down into Egypt, and are possessed by the Assyrians, and have been taken captive; and you ought rather to howl and mourn, because on account of your vices and sins the name of God is blasphemed among the nations? To such it is said in Ezekiel: You have defiled my name among the nations (Ezek 36:20). And as the Lord says to his disciples in the Gospel, Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:16), so on the contrary, when we have done evil works, the name of God is blasphemed among the nations because of us. Therefore he who has the knowledge of the name of God, and is not ignorant that he was created in his image and likeness, will dwell in light. And he will be in the day which Abraham rejoiced to have seen (John 8), of which holy David also speaks: This is the day which the Lord has made, let us exult and rejoice in it (Ps 117 [118]:24). For those who have lit for themselves the light of knowledge, and have the everlasting light which has been promised to believers, The Lord shall be to you an everlasting light (Isa 60:20), walk honestly in the day, and are sons of light and of the day; and they know him who says to Moses, Go, say to the sons of Israel: He who is has sent me (Exod 3:14); and him whom they had known before in the saints they will know to be present to themselves too.
52:7-8
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who announces and proclaims peace, and announces good, who proclaims salvation, and says to Zion: There shall reign your God. The voice of your watchmen: they have lifted up their voice; together they shall praise, for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord has turned Zion back. LXX: As an hour upon the mountains, so are the feet of him who brings good news of the hearing of peace, who brings good news of good things: for I will make my salvation heard, saying: Zion, your God shall reign. The voice of those who guard you has been lifted up, and with the voice together they shall rejoice, for eyes shall see to eyes, when the Lord has had mercy on Zion. Consequently, of him who had said above, I myself who spoke, behold, I am here, the Prophet now testifies that he himself preached the Gospel upon the mountains, that is, upon the Apostles, of whom it is written: Draw near to the everlasting mountains (Mic 2:9 LXX); and whose doctrine is the illumination of God. Hence it is said to him in the Psalms: You give light wonderfully from the everlasting mountains (Ps 75 [76]:5). He announced and proclaimed peace to those who were far off, that is, to the nations, and to those who were near, that is, to the Jews, reconciling the world to God; of him it is sung in the psalm under the name of Solomon: In his days righteousness shall arise, and abundance of peace, until the moon be taken away (Ps 71 [72]:7). And in this same Prophet, of the child who is born and of the son who is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder, and who shall be called the Angel of great counsel, it is said after the rest (above, Isa 9:7): And of his peace there shall be no end. For he is our peace, who has pacified all things through the blood of his cross, in heaven and on earth; who said to the Apostles: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you (John 14:27). And he announced good things to us, not those which the Philosophers call indifferent, but those which are truly good, which the Father gives to those who ask him, that is, all the graces of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, another Evangelist writes in the same place: How much more will your Father who is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13)? These are the good things which the Lord promises to believers: Hear me, and you shall eat good things, and your soul shall delight in good things; and he announced to all not only good things but salvation, which he himself gave, who says to Zion, that is, to the Church: There shall reign your God. Hence the Apostle too says to the Saints: Let not sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires (Rom 6:12). And writing of sinners: Death, he says, reigned from Adam to Moses (Rom 5:14). And what follows, The voice of your watchmen, or of your guards, signifies the Apostles, of whom God speaks to the Church in another place too (below, Isa 62:6): Upon your walls I have set guards, who shall never be silent, remembering the Lord, who will lift up their voice, discoursing of lofty things. Hence it is said to them (above, Isa 40:9): Go up upon a high mountain, you who bring good news to Zion. Lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem. These will praise God with one voice, and see with eyes to eyes; which the Apostle says in other words, Face to face (1 Cor 13); when the Saint sings, My eyes are ever toward the Lord (Ps 24 [25]:15), and, To you I have lifted up my eyes, who dwell in heaven (Ps 122 [123]:1). And the Lord will answer him: For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears toward their prayer (Ps 33 [34]:16). What the Seventy translated, as ὥρα, that is, an hour upon the mountains: so the feet of him who brings good news of the hearing of peace, and the rest, Paul, following the sense of the Hebrew Truth, sets down in the Epistle to the Romans: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things, who bring good news of peace (Rom 10:15): wishing the Apostles to be understood, whose feet the Lord washed (John 13), that they might be clean and beautiful for preaching, and might run through the whole world, and in a short time fill the world with the doctrine of Christ. Now ὥρα, that is, hour, according to the Seventy and the ambiguity of the Greek word, signifies either time or beauty. If time, this will fit it: In an opportune time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have been your helper (Isa 49:8). Hence the Apostle adds: Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation (2 Cor 6:2). For at the opportune time he shed his blood for all, when all had turned aside, together they had become useless; there was none who did good, there was not even one (Ps 13 [14]): that he might taste death for all, because all had sinned and were in need of the glory of God (Rom 3). But if we refer beauty to what is said in the psalm, Beautiful in form above the sons of men (Ps 44 [45]:3) (for what is more beautiful than that the form of a servant should become the form of God, and sit and reign with Christ in the heavenly places?), ὤρα can, according to the breadth of the Greek language, also be called care and solicitude, according to what the Saint says: You will multiply me in my soul, in your strength (Ps 137 [138]:4). For you will multiply me, in the Greek it says πολυωρήσεις με, that is, you will hold me worthy of much care and solicitude. And elsewhere: According to your height ἐπολυώρησας the sons of men (Ps 11 [12]:9): which in other words is said in Greek, πολλῆς ὤρας, τοῦτ' ἔστι, φροντίδος ἠξίωσας. But these things are superfluous; and the feet of Christ or of the Apostles are rather to be taken as beautiful, as all except the Seventy translated alike, Paul approving their interpretation.
52:9-10
Rejoice and praise together, deserts of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people: he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has prepared his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations: and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. LXX: Let the deserts of Jerusalem break forth into gladness together, for the Lord has had mercy on her, and has rescued Jerusalem. The Lord will reveal his holy arm in the sight of all the nations. And all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. When the people of the Jews had been led into captivity and the city burned, there was in Jerusalem either a rare inhabitant or none. But after he who formerly spoke in the Prophets, and was in the beginning with God, God the Word, dwelt among us and was made flesh, the deserts of Jerusalem were restored; and he came of whom it is written: He shall build my city, and bring back the captivity of my people: so that she is by no means lamented by Jeremiah, How does the city sit alone that was full of peoples: she has become like a widow, she who was multiplied among the nations (Lam 1:1), but hears David singing: When the Lord turned back the captivity of Zion, we became like those comforted (Ps 125 [126]:1, 4). And a little after: We became glad. And so that we may know that these things are by no means said of the people of the Jews, but of all who were to believe in the Lord through the apostles, he sets it down and says: he who comforted her, or had mercy on her, and who rescued or redeemed her, he himself prepared or revealed his holy arm in the sight of all the nations: and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. From this it is plain that, once the spiritual Jerusalem, that is, the Church, which had been abandoned by the Jews, was built up through the Apostles, the arm of the Lord is revealed to all the nations, and all the ends of the earth see his salvation. This is understood in two ways. For either the Father reveals his arm to all the nations, or the Son reveals his strength, of which it is written: For power went out from him and healed all (Luke 6:19). And again: I perceived that power went out from me, which healed the woman with the issue of blood (Mark 5:30). And that the Son of God is called the right hand and arm of the Father, there are many testimonies, of which we shall mention a few: Will save for him his right hand, and his holy arm (Ps 97 [98]:2). And elsewhere: In my arm shall the nations hope (Isa 51:5). Of him Jacob says: He shall be the expectation of the nations (Gen 49:10). And Psalm 88 (89): Your arm is with might. With this arm the Lord led the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt. Of this he spoke to the prince of the Apostles: Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven (Matt 16:17). And the Apostle Paul of himself (Gal 1:15): When, he says, it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, to reveal his Son in me. And that he joined all the ends of the earth to all the nations who are to see the salvation of God shows what is also said in another place: Turn to me from the ends of the earth, and you shall be saved (Isa 45:22); and through Jeremiah: To you the nations shall come from the ends of the earth (Jer 16:19); and again: All the families of the nations shall remember and turn to the Lord; for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he shall rule over the nations (Ps 21 [22]:28ff.): so that not only the variety of the individual nations but all the hinges of the world too are foretold as about to believe in Christ; according to what he himself says: But when this Gospel has been preached in the whole world, then shall the end come (Matt 24:14). Others will have the heights and extremities of the earth to be understood as those who, standing not in the middle of the earth but at its extremities, like the rims of wheels, forsake lowly things and hasten to the heights.
52:11, 13
Depart, depart, go out from there, do not touch what is polluted: go out from the midst of her, be cleansed, you who carry the vessels of the Lord. For you shall not go out in tumult, nor shall you hasten in flight. For the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will gather you. LXX: Depart, depart, go forth from there, and do not touch what is unclean: go out from the midst of her: be separated, you who carry the vessels of the Lord, for you shall not go out with tumult, nor go with flight: but the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel who gathers you. This too the Jews try to expound thus: Go out from Babylon, and abandon their idols. Go out from the midst of her, and bring back into the temple the vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had carried off when Jerusalem was taken (2 Kgs 15), now that Cyrus releases the captives under Zerubbabel and Ezra (Ezra 1); and do not go out of Babylon as you fled out of Egypt before, with tumult and fear, but with peace and with the goodwill of the king of the Persians and Medes, in whom the will of the Lord appeared, who protected and gathered you. Others interpret what we have said of Babylon as said of the Roman kingdom: that all these things are to be fulfilled at the coming of Christ, who is to set them free. But we, having heard above, How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who announces and proclaims peace, and, The Lord will reveal his arm in the sight of all the nations, and, all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God, understand this by no means of the Jews, but of the choir of the Apostles and of all the Saints. They are commanded to depart from Jerusalem and to preach the Gospel in the whole world, as the Lord the Savior says: Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19): so that they may by no means stay with the blaspheming Jews, for whose slaughter the Roman army was being made ready, but may leave the polluted, and that those who carry the vessels of the Lord may be separated from them and be cleansed. For they are the Temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3), and the vessels of gold and silver of a great house. Such was the Apostle Paul, who is called a vessel of election (Acts 9); for he had prepared himself to be a precious vessel, fit for the ministry of God. Or surely this must be said: that the vessels of the Lord are the spiritual armor of God, of which the Apostle Paul also spoke: Put on the armor of God (Eph 6:11); and he lists it piece by piece: the breastplate of righteousness, and the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which means the word of God. To these he adds the belt of truth, and the feet shod in the preparation of the Gospel of peace. And in another place: Laying aside, then, the works of darkness, let us put on the arms of light (Rom 13:12). There follows: You shall not go out in tumult, nor shall you hasten in flight. For they departed from Jerusalem not as the vanquished but as victors: so that they who, preaching the Gospel of God daily in the Temple, had brought many thousands of the Jews under the faith of Christ, might subdue the world too to his Gospel. For they had the Lord going before them, to gather them, the God of Israel, that is, to make one flock out of the whole world, so that what the Lord says to the Father in the Gospel might be fulfilled (John 17:21): Grant that, as I and you are one, so these too may be one in us: so that, with the same mind and the same judgment, forsaking the vices that fight one another and are contrary, they might lay hold of the one and only virtue. For vices and passions do not follow one another, as is said of the virtues, in which there are neither ὑπερβολαὶ nor ἐλλείψεις, that is, neither more nor less, but all things are tempered. In the vices, by contrast, all things are contrary: as panic to boldness, superstition to impiety, luxury to thrift.
Behold, my servant shall understand; he shall be exalted, and lifted up, and shall be very high. As many were astonished over you, so shall his appearance be without glory among men, and his form among the sons of men. He shall sprinkle many nations: over him kings shall shut their mouth: for those to whom it had not been told of him have seen; and those who had not heard have beheld. LXX: Behold, my child shall understand, and shall be exalted, and shall be greatly glorified. As many shall be astonished over you, so shall your appearance be in glory from men, and your glory from the sons of men: so shall many nations marvel over him, and kings shall shut their mouth, for those to whom it has not been announced of him shall see, and those who have not heard shall understand. So that no ambiguity may be left to readers as to who it is that said, I who spoke, behold, I am here, and what the holy arm of the Lord is, which has been revealed to all the nations, God the almighty Father teaches plainly: Behold, my servant shall understand, or my child, of the difference between which we have spoken above. And he shall understand not as the Word of God and wisdom, but as servant and child. He, though he was in the form of God, deigned to take the form of a servant, becoming obedient to the Father unto death, even the death of the cross (Phil 2). Wherefore he exalted him, and gave him the name which is above every name. He speaks in the psalm: I will bless the Lord, who has given me understanding (Ps 15 [16]:7); and of him David sings: Who made the heavens in understanding (Ps 135 [136]:5). For he himself is wisdom and understanding, he who as a child advanced in age and wisdom; of whom Peter too speaks: The God of our fathers has glorified his Son Jesus, whom you indeed handed over, and denied before the face of Pilate, when he wished to release him. But you denied the holy and righteous one (Acts 3:13, 14); of whom too we showed that it was written above: I am witness, says the Lord, and the child whom I have chosen: over him very many shall be astonished (Isa 43:10), when they have seen his signs. And hence the wonder will be greater, that his appearance will be without glory among men: not that it signifies ugliness of form, but that he came in humility and poverty. He, though he was rich, became poor for us; and he said to believers: Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart (Matt 11:29); of whom Clement too, the apostolic man, who governed the Roman Church after Peter, writes to the Corinthians: The scepter of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, did not come in the boasting of pride, though he could do all things, but in humility. So much so that, when struck by the servant of the priest, he answered: If I have spoken evil, convict me of the sin; but if well, why do you strike me (John 18)? though he had twelve thousand Angels who would obey his nod. He shall sprinkle many nations, cleansing them with his blood and consecrating them in baptism to the service of God. Over him kings shall shut their mouth, and the princes of the world, all of whose wisdom has been overthrown by the preaching of the cross; and those who had not had the Law and the Prophets, and to whom nothing had been announced of him, they themselves shall see and understand. Of them the Savior also speaks: Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed (John 20:29). In comparison with them the hardness of the Jews is reproved, who, seeing and hearing, fulfilled in themselves the prophecy of Isaiah, who says: Hearing you shall hear, and shall not understand: and seeing you shall look, and shall not see. For the heart of this people has been made fat, and with their ears they have heard heavily (Isa 6:9, 10).
53:1ff.
Who has believed our report? and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? And he shall go up like a sapling before him, and like a root out of a thirsty land: there is no form in him, nor comeliness: and we saw him, and there was no appearance, and we desired him. Despised and the lowest of men, a man of sorrows, and knowing infirmity; and his face was as it were hidden, and despised: whence we did not esteem him. Truly he bore our sicknesses, and our sorrows he carried: and we thought him as it were a leper, and struck by God, and humbled. LXX: Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced as a little child before him, as a root in a thirsty land. There is no form in him nor glory, and we saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness: but his form was without honor, and failing beyond the sons of men. A man in a stroke, and knowing how to bear infirmity, for his face is turned away, despised and not esteemed. He carries our sins, and suffers pain for us, and we esteemed him to be in pain, and in stroke, and in affliction. After the words of the Father, by which he had announced to the world that his Son would come, and before the scandal of the cross, of which he was going to say, His appearance shall be without glory, and his form beyond the sons of men, he had put first the glory of the resurrection, He shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high, so that the glory of the resurrection might go before the humility of the cross: now the choir of the Prophets answers that it has fulfilled its office and, as far as lay in it, has announced to all his arm and power. And in saying, Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?, it signifies how rare believers from among the Jews are. And as for what follows, He shall go up like a sapling before him, for which the Seventy translated, We announced as a little child before him: for sapling Symmachus translated branch, to show the man assumed, who came forth from the virginal womb. Of him he adds: Like a root out of a thirsty land. For thirsty Aquila translated pathless, to show the privilege of virginity: that he was created without any human seed from an earth previously untrodden. This is he of whom we read above too: A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall go up from his root (Isa 11:1), so as to signify his birth and his going up in the world. But if he had no form nor glory, but his form was ignoble and failing beyond the sons of men, or, as it stands in the Hebrew, despised and the lowest of men, how is it said in the Psalms: Gird your sword upon your thigh, O most mighty, in your beauty and comeliness (Ps 44 [45]:4)? This is easily resolved. He was despised and ignoble when he hung on the cross and, made a curse for us, bore our sins, and said to the Father: God, my God, why have you forsaken me (Matt 27:46)? But he was glorious and comely in appearance when at his passion the earth trembled, the rocks were split, and, as the sun fled, the elements feared an eternal night. Of him the bride too says in the Song of Songs: My kinsman is white and ruddy, chosen out of thousands (Song 5:10). White in the fullness and purity of his virtues, ruddy in his passion, of which we shall read later: Who is this who comes up from Edom, tawny are his garments from Bozrah; chosen out of thousands in the resurrection, so that he who was the firstborn of all creation might become the firstborn from the dead. And what he adds, A man in pain, and knowing how to bear infirmity, or a man of sorrows, and knowing infirmity, shows the true body of a man and a true soul, he who, knowing how to bear infirmities, overcame them all by his divinity. And his face was hidden and despised, so that the divine power was concealed by the human body; of whom it was said above: You are a hidden God, and we did not know. He truly bore our sicknesses and sins, and suffers pain for us, not in seeming, that is, τὸ δοκεῖν, as an old and a new heresy suppose; but he was truly crucified. He truly suffered pain, saying in the Gospel: My soul is sorrowful even unto death (Matt 26:38). And: Now my soul is troubled (John 12:27). And we thought him unclean, or in pain, as the Seventy translated; for which Aquila and Symmachus put leprous, Theodotion scourged. This, in other words, by Hebrew idiom is understood as leprosy, according to what is written in the psalm: And the scourge shall not come near your tent (Ps 90 [91]:10). And the sense is: We thought him struck by God for his own sins, he who was humbled for our sake and crucified with robbers. Where Symmachus translated Ἐν ἁφῇ ὄντα, that is, in leprosy, Aquila put ἁφημένον, that is, leprous; which many, not understanding, take to mean abandoned, and others read καθήμενον, that is, sitting. At the beginning of the chapter, in which according to the Seventy it is said, Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed (Rom 10), a testimony which the apostle Paul also uses to the Romans, expounding it of the Lord's passion, Lord is not found in the Hebrew, but was added to make clear the person to whom it is said.
53:5, 7
But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our crimes. The discipline of our peace was upon him, and by his bruise we have been healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, each one in his own way has turned aside: and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was offered because he himself willed it, and he did not open his mouth. LXX: But he was wounded for our sins, and was weakened for our iniquities. The discipline of our peace was upon him: by his bruise we have been healed. All like sheep have gone astray, man has gone astray in his own way. And the Lord handed him over for our iniquities, and he, because of affliction, did not open his mouth. We, he says, thought him a man of sorrows, or, according to the Seventy, to be in pain, and struck by God, and bearing his own sins. But he was wounded for our iniquities, saying in the psalm: They dug my hands and feet (Ps 21 [22]:18), so that by his wound he might heal our wounds; and he was bruised, or weakened for our crimes, so that, made a curse for us, he might free us from the curse. For cursed is every man who hangs on a tree (Deut 21; Gal 3). Hence the discipline of our peace is upon him. For what we ought to have endured for our crimes, he suffered for us, pacifying through the blood of his cross both the things that are on earth and the things that are in heaven. For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition, dissolving the enmity in his flesh, and by his bruise we have been healed (Eph 2). From this it is plain that, just as his scourged and torn body bore the marks of injury in weals and bruises, so his soul too truly suffered pain for us, lest it be believed that in Christ there was truth in part and falsehood in part (Rom 3). All, he says, like sheep have gone astray, and we have needed the mercy of God, saying in the psalm: I have gone astray like a lost sheep (Ps 118 [119]:176); the sheep which in the parable of the Gospel was carried back on the shoulders of the good and careful Shepherd (Matt 18). And who these sheep are, the following verse shows: Man has gone astray in his own way; or each one has turned aside in his own way, to follow his own error, and, forsaking the right way, to hold differing opinions about the Crucified. The Lord, however, has laid on him the iniquity of us all, or handed him over for our sins, so that what we could not bear through the weakness of our strength, he might carry for us, he who was offered because he himself willed it. For he endured the cross not by necessity but by will, saying in the Gospel: The cup which the Father has given me, shall I not drink it (John 18:11)? And to Peter, who was scandalized at the name of the cross, because he did not know the mystery and trembled with human fear: Get behind me, Satan, you are a scandal to me, for you do not savor the things that are of God, but those that are of men (Matt 16:23). Otherwise, if he had not been offered by his own will, he who could point out and foretell the traitor, and said to the Apostles, All of you will be scandalized in me this night, could have avoided those who had been sent against him; but he went to meet them fearlessly, and offered himself of his own accord, saying: Whom do you seek (John 18:4, 6)? And at once they fell backward; for they could not bear the voice of God present before them. And beautifully he added: And he did not open his mouth. When Pilate said, Do you not speak to me?, he would not answer. Or according to the Seventy: Afflicted, he did not open his mouth. Or according to Symmachus and Theodotion, hearing, he did not open his mouth.
53:7ff.
As a sheep he shall be led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer he shall be dumb, and he shall not open his mouth. From distress and from judgment he was taken away. Who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off from the land of the living: for the crime of my people he struck them. And he shall give the ungodly for burial, and the rich man for his death: because he did no iniquity, nor was there deceit in his mouth. And the Lord willed to bruise him in infirmity. LXX: As a sheep he was led to the sacrifice, and as a lamb dumb before its shearer, so he did not open his mouth. In humiliation his judgment was taken away. Who shall declare his generation, for his life is taken from the earth? By the iniquities of my people he was led to death; and I will give the worst men for his burial, and the rich for his death. For he did no iniquity, nor was there deceit in his mouth: and the Lord wills to cleanse him from the stroke. This testimony, when in the Acts of the Apostles the Eunuch of queen Candace was riding in his chariot (Acts 8ff.) and, reading it, did not understand it, he understood when Philip interpreted it of the passion and name of the Savior; and at once, baptized in the blood of the lamb of whom he was reading, he deserved to be called a man, and was sent as an Apostle to the nation of the Ethiopians. He, then, who was offered to Pilate because he himself willed it, and did not answer, so that, condemned, he might mount the gibbet for us, was himself led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer he was dumb. For Christ our passover has been sacrificed (1 Cor 5), whom John the Baptist pointed out, saying: Behold the lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). He too is often mentioned in the Apocalypse of John the Evangelist as the lamb that was slain (Rev 5). He speaks of himself in Jeremiah (Jer 11): But I was like an innocent lamb, led to the sacrifice, and I did not know. For though he knew no sin, he was made sin for us (2 Cor 5). And as a lamb, when it is led to the sacrifice, does not resist, so he suffered by his will, that he might destroy him who had the dominion of death (Heb 2), humbling himself unto death, even the death of the cross (Phil 2). This is the lamb in whose figure a lamb was sacrificed, whose blood, smeared on the doorposts, put to flight the destroyer of Egypt (Exod 12); who not only redeemed us with his blood, but also covered us with his wool, so that he might warm with his garment us who were freezing with unbelief, and that we might hear the Apostle saying to us: As many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ (Gal 3:27). And in another place: Put on Christ Jesus (Rom 13:14). And as for what follows, From distress and from judgment he was taken away, or as the Seventy translated, in humiliation his judgment was taken away: it signifies either that from tribulation and judgment he ascended victorious to the Father; or that he, the judge of all, did not find the truth of judgment, but without any fault was condemned by the sedition of the Jews and the voice of Pilate. Hence the Prophet marvels that the God of all handed himself over to suffering. Of which Paul speaks: For if they had believed, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor 2:8). There follows: Who shall declare his generation? This is understood in two ways: for either it is to be taken of his divinity, that it is impossible to know the mysteries of the divine birth, of which he himself speaks in Proverbs, Before all the hills he begot me (Prov 8:25), according to what we read elsewhere, Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor (Rom 11:34)? that is, no one; or of the Virgin's giving birth, that it can be explained only with difficulty. Indeed, when it was said to Mary by the Angel, You shall conceive and bear a son, she answered: How shall this be to me, since I do not know a man? To whom the Angel in turn: The Holy Spirit, he says, shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you (Luke 1:31, 34, 35); so that the mysteries of this birth are told only by the Angel or by the Evangelist. Its narrator is most rare, according to that saying: Who is wise, and he will understand these things? understanding, and he will know them (Hos 14:10)? But if a prudent reader answers in silent thought: And how is it written, No one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him? and he who knows the Father and the Son can surely also declare the mystery of the generation: let him hear that it is one thing to know and another to utter, because often what we conceive in the mind we cannot unfold in speech. Therefore the saints too can know the mystery of the divine birth in the body by faith rather than tell it. Otherwise the Apostle too, caught up into the third heaven and into paradise, heard words which a human tongue can by no means utter (2 Cor 12). But the Spirit too intercedes for us with unutterable groanings. Of him, then, whose generation either no one or hardly anyone can declare, the life was taken away from the earth, so that he might live not on earth but in heaven. Or he was cut off from the land of the living, so that there might be fulfilled of him what is written in the Apocalypse of John: I am the first and the last: I who was living, and was dead: and behold, I live for ever (Rev 1:18); so that after the life he lived on earth, dead to the earth, he might live in heaven for ever. And what is joined to this, For the crime of my people he struck them, or, according to the Seventy, by the iniquities of my people he was led to death, has a double sense. For either by his death he struck the persecutors and the criminals of his people; or because of the greatness of the sins of the people which he always held as his own peculiar people, he was led to death, so that by his death he might call them back to life. He gave the ungodly for his burial, and the rich man for his death; or the worst men for his burial, and the rich for his death: signifying both peoples, so that in the evil and the worst, who before had no knowledge of God (Rom 9), the multitude of the nations is shown; in the rich, to whom belonged the Testament and the Lawgiving and the Prophets, the Jewish people is pointed out. Therefore the Lord suffered and was buried for this reason, that he might gather to himself a Church from both peoples. Or this must be said: that the Scribes and Pharisees, and Sadducees, the priests and high priests, who formerly reigned among the people and abounded in excessive wealth, God handed over to the Romans after the Lord's passion, and subjected to everlasting servitude. He for whose burial and death the ungodly and the rich were handed over did no iniquity, nor was deceit found in his mouth. This can be understood of no man at all, that he sinned neither in deed nor in word, as Scripture says, No one is clean from filth, not even if his life has been of a single day, and, all like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned aside in his own way (Job 25), except of him who bore our sins, and suffers pain for us, and was wounded for our iniquities, and afflicted for our crimes, by whose bruise we have been healed. Expounding this testimony about him, Peter the prince of the Apostles also says: For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps; who did no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth; who when he was cursed did not curse, and when he suffered did not threaten (1 Pet 2:21ff.). And the Lord willed to cleanse him from the stroke which he had received when pierced by the soldier's lance. Or to bruise him in infirmity and wound; of which he himself also said: For they persecuted him whom you struck (Ps 68 [69]:27). And through Zechariah God says: I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered (Zech 13:7). Therefore his suffering was not of necessity, but of the will of the Father and of his own, he who said to him: O God, to do your will, I have willed it (Ps 39 [40]:9). Of which we also read above: He was offered because he himself willed it.
53:10-11
If he lays down his soul for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be directed in his hand. Because there has labored his soul, he shall see, and be satisfied: by his knowledge he himself, the righteous one, shall justify my servants who are many, and he himself shall bear their iniquities. LXX: If you give an offering for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived seed: and the Lord wills to take away his soul from pain, to show him light, and to form understanding; to justify the righteous one who serves many well: and he himself shall bear their sins. According to the Hebrew this is the sense: If he whom the Lord willed to bruise, or to cleanse, lays down his soul for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, which he sowed in good ground. Of which it is written in the Gospel: The sower went out to sow; and again: The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field (Matt 13:3). And the will of the Lord shall be directed in his hand, so that whatever the Father willed may be fulfilled by his powers, as he says to the Father: I have kept in your name those whom you gave me. I have guarded them, and none of them has perished except the son of perdition (John 17:12). And he shall see an everlasting seed, and the will of the Father shall be directed in his hand, because his soul labored for a long time, finding no rest among the Jews, and saying in the Gospel: Foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head (Matt 8:20). And in this same Prophet: I have labored, bearing it (Isa 1:14). Because, then, he labored, he shall see the Churches rise up in the whole world, and shall be satisfied with their faith. Indeed, when, hungry and thirsty, he had sat down by the well of Jacob (John 4) at midday under the scorching sun, he would not use the food that had been bought, because he was already satisfied with the faith of the Samaritan woman and of the city of Shechem coming out to him. In this sense he said among the eight beatitudes: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt 5:6). By his knowledge, that is, by his doctrine, he himself, the righteous one, who did no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth, and the servant of the Father, who had taken the form of a servant and had served the will of the Lord, shall justify many who believe from the whole world. And he himself shall bear their iniquities, which they could not bear, and by whose weight they were crushed. According to the Seventy this is said: O you for whose sins the Son of God was led to death, you who, the worst men and rich in evil, were given for his burial and death: if you are willing to do penance, and to offer for your sins a sacrifice pleasing to God, a contrite spirit, your soul shall see a seed of long time, the Lord the Savior himself. Of whom it is sung in Psalm 88 (89): His seed endures for ever, and his throne like the sun in my sight. And again: I will establish his seed for ever and ever, and his throne like the days of heaven. Which in other words Gabriel says to the Virgin: Behold, you shall conceive in your womb and bear a son, who shall be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord shall give him the throne of David his father, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end (Luke 1:31, 32). For the Lord wills to take away from pain the soul of him who had said, My soul is sorrowful even unto death (Matt 26:38), so that the shame of the cross may be tempered by the glory of the resurrection. And to show him light, so that he may see all enlightened through him. And to form with understanding, him being understood, upon whom the spirit of wisdom and understanding shall have come down. And to justify the righteous one, who has served many well; for he came not to be served but to serve (Matt 20), washing away in Peter's feet (John 13) the sins of all the Apostles. He appeared in the flesh, was justified in the spirit. Of him Judas the traitor too confesses: I have sinned, betraying righteous blood (Matt 27:4). And Pilate's wife: Have nothing to do with that righteous man: for I have suffered many things today in dreams because of him. And it is to be noted that he was not justified so that from being unrighteous he might become righteous; but the righteous one is justified, not so that he might begin to be what he was not, but so that what he was might appear to all. This righteous one suffered for the unrighteous, that he might offer us all to God. Of him it is said to the Jews: And you denied the holy and righteous one, and asked that a murderer be granted to you (Acts 3:14). And their sins, he says, he himself bore, as a physician bears the sicknesses of the sick; of him the healthy have no need, but those who are ill (Luke 5).
53:12
Therefore I will allot him very many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong: because he handed over his soul to death, and was reckoned with the wicked: and he bore the sins of many, and prayed for the transgressors. LXX: Therefore he shall possess many, and shall divide the spoils of the strong: because his soul was defiled in death, and he was reckoned with the unrighteous, and he took up the sins of many, and for their iniquities he was handed over. He gives the reasons why after his passion Christ obtains many rewards. Because, he says, he suffered, and did all the things which the preceding discourse described, and himself bore the iniquities of many: therefore I will allot him very many, so that, in place of Jacob, the portion of the Lord, and Israel, the line of his inheritance, they may believe in him, coming from the East and the West, and recline in the kingdom of God with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Matt 8): when that is fulfilled which is written: Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession (Ps 2:8). Of which we also read in this same Prophet: There shall be the root of Jesse, and he who shall rise to rule the nations, in him the nations shall hope (Isa 11:10). These very many were once held by the strong; and under the figure of the ass and the colt they had many masters, to whom the Apostles said: The Lord has need of them (Matt 21:3). These were strong before Christ took up a human body and, having overcome the strong man, plundered his house. So he handed over and divided the prey of the strong to his Apostles, so that Peter, James and John became the princes of the circumcised people, and Paul and Barnabas were sent to the nations, separated in place, not in mind, and stood under one Lord in different battle lines, so that by the victory of both columns they might raise a triumph to the Savior. Hence those who say that the dispensational contention between Peter and Paul (Acts 15) was truly a quarrel and a struggle, so as to satisfy the blaspheming Porphyry, and who assert that the ceremonies of the old Law are to be kept in the Church of Christ by those of the stock of believing Israel, ought also to expect a golden Jerusalem in the thousand years, so as to sacrifice victims and be circumcised, so as to sit on the sabbath, sleep, be filled, get drunk, and rise up to play: a play which offends God. We have said this on account of what is now prophesied: And he shall divide the spoils of the strong (Isa 53:12). According to what is written in another place: When the heavenly one divided kings in it. And again: The king of the hosts of the beloved, and the beauty of the house, to divide the spoils (Ps 67 [68]:13). Indeed, of the apostle Paul, who was of the tribe of Benjamin, it is said according to the Hebrew: Benjamin a ravening wolf: in the morning he shall eat, and at evening he shall divide the spoils (Gen 49:27). Of these too we have already spoken before: They shall rejoice in your sight, as those who rejoice at harvest, and as those who divide the spoils (Isa 9:3), dividing among themselves the Churches of Christ in the whole world. Therefore he shall receive very many nations, he who came to proclaim release to the captives, and led captive the captivity formerly held by the devil and the demons, and gave it as a gift to men and to believers, because he handed over his soul to death and was reckoned with the wicked, or unrighteous (1 Cor 9). For if his Apostle became to those who were without law as one without law, though he was not without law but was under the law of Christ, why should not Christ too have been reckoned with the unrighteous, that he might redeem the unrighteous from sin and become all things to all, that he might save all? For he bore our sins in his body (1 Pet 2), fastening them to the wood of the cross, that he might blot out the handwriting which we had made to the devil and his angels, written by the hands of the soul, that is, by its works. Of these the apostle Paul speaks: And you, when you were dead in sins and in the desires of the flesh, he made alive with Christ, forgiving us all sins. And blotting out the handwriting that was against us, which was contrary to us, he took it out of the way, fastening it to the cross: despoiling the principalities, he put the powers to shame, triumphing over them confidently (Eph 1:2; Col 2:14, 15). And the unrighteous with whom he was reckoned, the Evangelist Mark understands as the robbers, writing: And they crucified with him two robbers, one on the right, and the other on the left. And the Scripture was fulfilled which says: And he was reckoned with the unrighteous (Mark 15:27). This can also be understood more deeply, as the Lord says of himself: I am reckoned with those who go down into the pit: I have become like a man without help, free among the dead (Ps 87 [88]:4). For he was truly reckoned among sinners and the unrighteous, so that he might go down to the underworld, which in many places of the Scriptures is called the pit, and set free those bound in prison. He was handed over for our sins, and rose again for our justification (Rom 4). And he was of such clemency that he prayed on the cross for the transgressors, nay rather for his persecutors, and said: Father, forgive them: for they do not know what they do (Luke 23:34).
Book Fifteen
I know that I have often said, Eustochium, that the Apostles and Evangelists, wherever they set down testimonies from the Old Instrument, were accustomed, if there is no difference between the Hebrew and the Septuagint, to use either their own words or those of the Seventy Translators; but if the sense is one thing in the Hebrew and another in the old edition, they follow the Hebrew rather than the Seventy Translators. In short, just as we have shown that they set down many things from the Hebrew which are not found in the Seventy, so let our rivals show some testimonies taken from the Seventy which are not in the books of the Hebrews, and the dispute is finished. We have said this because the present passage, though it is one in sense, differs in words. With its explanation the fifteenth book on Isaiah begins.
54:1
Praise, O barren one, who do not bear; sing out praise and neigh, you who were not in labor: for more are the sons of the deserted one than of her who had a husband, says the Lord. LXX: Rejoice, O barren one, who do not bear: break forth and cry out, you who are not in labor: for more are the sons of the deserted one than of her who has a husband. For the Lord has said. Symmachus translated this passage thus: Rejoice, O barren one, who have not borne. Be glad in exultation, and neigh, you who have not been in labor: For more are the sons of the scattered one than of her who was under a husband. From him Theodotion and Aquila do not differ, apart from a few words. After the nativity of the Savior, and the course of His life and mighty works, the passion of the cross, and the glory of the resurrection, when, laying down His soul, He saw a long-lived seed, and in His knowledge He, the righteous one, justified very many, and divided the spoils of the strong, and prayed for the transgressors, giving room for repentance, the Prophet passes to the calling of the nations, and describes in full discourse those who were to believe in Him. This passage the apostle Paul too refers, under the name of Sarah and Isaac, to the Church (Gal 4:27ff.): that the former people, from Mount Sinai and Hagar, is in bondage with her children, but the later one is free, of whom Isaiah says: Rejoice, O barren one, who do not bear: break forth and cry out, you who are not in labor: for more are the sons of the deserted one than of her who has a husband; and immediately: But we, he says, brethren, are sons of the promise according to Isaac. But as then he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was according to the spirit, so it is now also. But what does the Scripture say? Cast out the bondwoman and her son. For the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. But we, brethren, are not sons of the bondwoman, but of the free: with which freedom Christ has endowed us (Gal 4:27ff.). If, then, the vessel of election, taking from Isaiah the testimony which we now have in hand, referred it to the sons of the promise, and to the Church gathered from the nations, or from both peoples, which had been deserted and abandoned among the Jews, which had not had God as her husband, nor had received the Law or the Prophets, we are compelled by that very reasoning to follow the footsteps of our predecessor, and to call her the deserted one of whom we read above (cf. Isa 35): Rejoice, O deserted one, and the rest like these. Of her too it is written in Jeremiah, in the person of God: She who bore seven has been made empty, and her soul has fainted. Her sun has set while it was yet midday (Jer 15:9). And in the volume of Samuel: The barren has borne seven, and she who had many sons has been weakened (1 Sam 2:5). And in the Psalms: Who makes the barren woman dwell in a house, a joyful mother of sons (Ps 112 [113]:9). Now the synagogue is said to have borne seven sons because of the mystery of the week and of the sabbath, to which the former people had been bound. Or else, for seven, many are to be understood, according to an ambiguity of the Hebrew speech, by which both sabbath and many are signified; of this more has been said in the book of Hebrew Questions which we wrote on Genesis. She, then, as long as she had God, the divine word, for her husband and was joined to the Law, bore very many sons to God; but when she received the bill of divorce, and would not answer her husband when he called, she heard: You are your mother's daughter, who have forsaken your husband (Ezek 16:45). And again: You have not called me as Lord, nor as father and guide of your virginity (Jer 3:4): therefore she is lamented in this same Prophet: How has the faithful city become a harlot, Zion, full of judgment: in which righteousness slept in her, but now robbers (Isa 1:21). But this too is to be noted, that when he says: More are the sons of the deserted one than of her who has a husband, the synagogue is not wholly excluded from childbearing, but the multitude of the nations is preferred to her. For she too, in the Apostles and through the Apostles, first bore a people from the Jews. Hence the two chief of the Apostles divided between them the hosts of those who believed in Christ, of the Circumcision and of the Gentiles, so that from both peoples they might build up Jerusalem, formerly deserted and poor. And that the Hebrew has put neighing for gladness signifies the greatness of joy, in the likeness of a horse neighing for victory; of which more is written in Job (Job 39). This passage and the rest that follow the Jews and our own judaizers refer to Jerusalem, which they say is to be restored in a kingdom of a thousand years, and they say she is the same who formerly had a husband and afterward ceased to have one, and that after the divorce she will have many more sons than she had before under a husband. Yet the comparison is plainly set out of two women: of her who had a husband and was put away, and of her who was always deserted and without a husband. Nor is it to be wondered at in the Jews, whose eyes and ears are closed, if they do not see the open truth. Of the Christians I do not know what to say, who, though the Apostle says, which things are allegorical, and refers Sarah and Hagar to the two Testaments, the old and the new, give their hands to the Jews out of desire for earthly pleasures in the thousand years.
54:2-3
Enlarge the place of your tent, and stretch out the skins of your tabernacles: do not spare: make your cords long, and make your stakes firm. For you shall penetrate to the right and to the left, and your seed shall inherit the nations, and shall inhabit the deserted cities. LXX: Enlarge the place of your tabernacle, and fix the skins of your curtains, do not spare. Lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes; yet more to the right, and to the left spread out, and your seed shall possess the nations, and you shall make the deserted cities to be inhabited. To her to whom he had said: Praise, O barren one, who do not bear; break the bonds, by which you were formerly held bound, and cry out in confession of the Lord, you who had no children, it is now commanded, in the likeness of the tabernacle of Moses which he once had (Exod 36) in the desert, that she enlarge her tent and stretch out the skins; and make her cords longer, and drive deep and strengthen the stakes by which every tent is shaped, lest it be scattered by the blasts of the winds. And let her penetrate to the right and to the left, and by no means imitate the narrowness of the Jewish tabernacle, which enclosed a hundred cubits of length and fifty of breadth, nor be shut in by the smallness of the Temple, which had sixty cubits in length and twenty in breadth; but let her not cease to take up room to the right and to the left (Exod 27). And lest we think this is said, according to the frivolous contention of the Hebrews, of Zion, which is to be restored by the Lord to its ancient state, he sets out more plainly what lay hidden: And your seed shall inherit the nations. Of this we read in the Gospel also: He who sows went out to sow (Matt 13:3); and again: Did you not sow good seed in your field (ibid., 27)? This seed will also make the deserted cities to be inhabited, so that Churches of the nations rise up throughout the whole world. Or certainly the seed is to be called that of the Apostles and the remnant of the Jewish people, of which it is said in this same Prophet: Unless the Lord Sabaoth had left us seed, we should have been as Sodom, and should have been like Gomorrah (Isa 1:9). And the Apostle: A remnant, he says, has been saved (Rom 11:5). This concerns the greatness of the Churches, which, in place of the one land of Judea, and that a very narrow one, will spread their bounds through the whole world. Let us come to the spiritual understanding. He who is in a tabernacle does not possess a firm and perpetual dwelling; but he always changes places, and hastens on to what lies beyond, saying in the psalm: I will pass over into the place of the wonderful tabernacle (Ps 41 [42]:5), forgetting the things that are past and stretching himself forward to what is to come, until he attains the prize of the heavenly calling. Of this tabernacle we read in another place also: How beloved are your tabernacles, O Lord of powers! my soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord (Ps 83 [84]:1). And afterward he adds: Blessed are they who dwell in your house; for ages of ages they shall praise you (ibid., 6). For the end of the tabernacles is the possession of an eternal house, which does not change its foundations, nor is moved from one place into another. For those who are planted in the house of the Lord have first flowered in His courts, so that they may come from flowers to fruit, and may be able to say: But I am like a fruitful olive tree in the house of God (Ps 51 [52]:10). In short, the holy man, hastening to pass beyond the tabernacles and longing to see the house of God, says that he has one wish, never to go out of the house of God: One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life (Ps 26 [27]:4). The tabernacle, then, must be enlarged, and the curtains and skins stretched out, and the cords of manifold and varied discourses drawn out further, and the stakes made firm by reason on the right and on the left, so that the seed of the word, that is, of the doctrine of God, may be able to possess the nations, and to make habitable the cities which he received who had doubled the mina. Now the right and the left in the holy Scriptures are taken in a good sense when we understand them both according to the spirit and according to the letter, through the arms of righteousness on the right and on the left (2 Cor 6), so that the humbler understanding may hold to the ordering of life and the examples of our forebears, and the spiritual and sublime one may carry us over from present things to things to come. This is what the Lord also said to the Pharisees when they questioned Him: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's (Matt 22:21): that we should both be subject to the powers of this world, which not unjustly bear the sword for vengeance on those who have done evil, and this is understood as the left; and that we should render to God the things that are God's, so as to fear no one else but Him who has power over both soul and body, and this is taken as the right (Matt 10). Finally, it is said of the wisdom of God, to which nothing precious can be compared, that in her right hand she has length of life and very many years, but in her left riches and glory; so that those riches are to be understood which consist in knowledge in the present and in good works, and the glory which he receives through whose works God is glorified among the nations; while length of life and very many years signify eternal life, which, disregarding present things, hastens toward what is to come.
54:4-5
Do not fear, for you shall not be confounded, nor shall you blush: for you shall not be ashamed, because you shall forget the confusion of your youth, and shall no more remember the reproach of your widowhood. For He who made you shall rule over you, the Lord of hosts is His name: and your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, shall be called the God of all the earth. LXX: Do not fear, because you have been confounded: nor be confounded, because you have been reproached: for you shall forget the eternal confusion, and of the reproach of your widowhood you shall not be mindful: for the Lord who made you, the Lord Sabaoth is His name: and He who delivered you, the God of Israel, shall be called of all the earth. A question arises: if it is said to the Church gathered from the nations: Rejoice, O barren one, who do not bear; and: More are the sons of the deserted one than of her who has a husband, meaning that she who afterward bore more sons had not had a husband, and that she who formerly had a husband was turned to barrenness, how is it now said to her who had no husband: You shall no more remember your widowhood, and you shall forget the confusion of your youth? From this the Jews wish it to be understood that all that is said is said to Jerusalem, which, deserted by God, is to be restored by Him again. They will easily be repelled when they are reminded that it is said in the person of the Lord in Zechariah: And I took to myself two rods: the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Cord: and I fed the flock (Zech 11:7). Of this we have spoken more fully in its place, and now it will be spoken of in part. The two rods are the two peoples, of the nations and of the Jews; of these the first to be called was the throng of the Gentiles, which received the natural law fixed in their hearts, about which Paul, writing to the Romans, argues most forcefully (Rom 1); and nothing is more beautiful than this rod, that every creature should be called equally to the worship of its Creator. But the second, that is, the rod of the people of the Jews, was called Cord: which, after the offense of the nations, is called the portion of the Lord, and Israel the cord of His inheritance (Deut 32). Finally, after Israel was called in Abraham, the Lord says: I took my rod which was called Beauty, and I cut it off, to make void my covenant which I struck with all the nations (Zech 11:10). Therefore at the coming of Christ it is said to the rod that had been cut off: Do not fear, nor blush, nor flood your face with shame. For you shall by no means be confounded any longer, as you had been confounded before, nor shall you be mindful of the confusion of your youth, and you shall not remember your widowhood, through which you were abandoned by God: for your maker Himself shall rule over you, whose name is the Almighty, who reigns not in the one nation of Judea but in the whole world. Finally, there follows: He who had made you has Himself redeemed you with His blood, and He shall be called the God of all the earth: that is to say, of all who dwell on the earth. From this it is plainly evident that this is by no means said to Jerusalem, which never ruled over the whole world, but to the Church of Christ, whose inheritance is the possession of the world.
54:6-7
For the Lord has called you as a woman forsaken and mourning in spirit: and as a wife cast off from her youth, says your God. For a moment, for a little while, I forsook you: and with great mercies I will gather you. In a moment of indignation I hid my face from you for a little while: and with everlasting mercy I have had pity on you, says your redeemer, the Lord. LXX: Not as a woman forsaken and faint-hearted has the Lord called you, nor as a woman who is hated from her youth, says your God. For a little time I left you: and with great mercy I will have pity on you. In a little wrath I turned away my face from you: and with everlasting mercy I will have pity on you: says the Lord who delivered you. Here the friends of the Jews debase the forsaken woman and the wife cast off from her youth, whom the Lord forsook for a moment and for a little while, saying that she is Jerusalem; and that He, hiding His face for a little while, took her up again in everlasting mercies and changed her past grief into joy. This is according to the Hebrew. But according to the Seventy he says that He did not call her as a forsaken woman and faint-hearted, nor as a wife who had been held in hatred from her youth; but that He left her for a little while and turned away His face for this reason, that He might have pity on her forever. If, then, the Jews and our judaizers say that Israel was forsaken for a little while, so that at the coming of Christ God might have pity on it, and interpret 'a little' by comparison with the whole of eternity, why do they not grant us too to call that a little time during which the nations were forsaken, so that they, cast off in the middle period, who in their youth had been God's, might afterward in their old age obtain eternal mercy? Especially since, in the time of Israel's calling, the throng of the Gentiles was never shut out, but a door of return always lay open to them through the proselytes; so that, as we seem to have been shut out for a little while by their calling, so by their perpetual exclusion a return to God is granted to us. But we have spoken of a perpetual exclusion if they do not repent. Otherwise the apostle Paul says: God has shut up all things under sin, that He may have mercy on all (Gal 3:22). What we have interpreted of the Church gathered from both peoples, and the Jews take of Jerusalem, those who follow tropology alone, and in the most difficult places flee the questions that arise by an excursion of free disputation, refer to the sinful soul, which has been cast off by God, not out of hatred but by dispensation, so that, pressed by the weight of evils, she may return to her former husband, and, having lost her substance, may not despair of the father's clemency (Luke 15). Is it not great mercy to run to meet the returning son, to hold out the ring and the robe and a kiss, and, after the likeness of another parable, to say to the envious brother: Friend, if I am good, why is your eye evil (Matt 20:15)?
54:9-10
As in the days of Noah, so is this to me, to whom I swore that I would no more bring the waters of Noah upon the earth: so I have sworn not to be angry with you and not to rebuke you. For the mountains shall be moved, and the hills shall tremble: but my mercy shall not depart from you, and the covenant of my peace shall not be moved, says the Lord who has compassion on you. LXX: From the water which was under Noah this is to me: as I swore to him at that time that I would by no means any more be angry with the earth over you, nor in threatening you remove the mountains: nor shall your hills be removed. So neither shall my mercy fail, nor shall the covenant of my peace be taken away, says the Lord who is merciful to you. So that the congregation of the saints may believe the mercy of the Lord to be everlasting, and that we were forsaken for a moment and briefly for this reason, that they might be joined in friendship with God by an eternal covenant, he sets forth the examples of the forebears, saying: As, when the whole world was sinning, after all the earth had corrupted the way of the Lord, the flood was brought in, and together with all the authors of sins all sins were blotted out, and in one man, Noah, the human race was preserved; to whom I swore that a flood would by no means be brought on the lands, and my pledge has been kept until now and will never be made void (Gen 8 and 9): so I swear to my Church, which I have redeemed for myself with my blood, that I will by no means be angry with those on whom I have had pity, nor will my clemency be changed by any harshness of rebuke. For the mountains and hills will more easily be moved than my sentence will be changed. In accordance with which He also says in the Gospel: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away (Matt 24:35). And this, he says, is my mercy: that the covenant of peace, by which the world has been reconciled to me, is kept not by the merit of those to whom it was given, but by my clemency. According to the Seventy the sense is confused, and everything is so disordered that what is being said can hardly be understood: not that I do not know what a most prudent man has said on this passage, but that it does not satisfy my mind. For he posits a tropological flood, which he interprets of the baptism of the Savior, gathering very many examples, such as this: The Lord makes the flood to be inhabited (Ps 28 [29]:10). And again: The Lord is sweet to those who wait for Him in the day of tribulation: and knowing those who fear Him, in the flood of the journey He makes an end (Nah 1:7, LXX): namely, that He blotted out all sins in baptism, saying in another place: I am, I am He who blots out your iniquities (Isa 43:25). For all had turned aside, together they had become unprofitable (Ps 13 [14]:3). There was none who did mercy or truth, nor was there knowledge of God upon the earth. Cursing and lying and murder and adultery and theft had seized everything, and they had mingled blood with blood. Whence He speaks through the Prophet: Woe is me! for the devout man has perished from the earth. There is none who does right among men; all are judged in my blood. Each afflicts his neighbor with affliction, and they prepare their hands for evil (Mic 7:2, LXX); and the rest like these. Among them is this: No one is clean from filth, not even if his life upon the earth be of one day (Job 14:4). Hence he holds that the Lord made the flood, who according to the apostle Peter was put to death in the flesh and made alive in the spirit (1 Pet 3), and preached to the spirits set in prison, when the patience of God waited in the days of Noah, bringing the flood upon the ungodly; after whose pattern water cleanses us, not washing away the filth of the flesh, but as the questioning of a good conscience toward God. And the mountains and hills which are not moved, and in a flood of this kind had been shaken, he wants to be understood as the saints, once the everlasting covenant has been received, who in the former flood had been moved and had left their firmness. He says that the mountains are also the demons and the adverse powers, who saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and, wounded by the dart of love, took for themselves wives of all whom they chose, and lost their former strength; and they will by no means be in this flood (Gen 6). This is what he may have said; its explanation I leave to the reader's judgment.
54:11-12
Poor little one, torn by the tempest, without consolation. Behold, I will lay your stones in order: and I will found you on sapphires: and I will make your battlements of jasper, and your gates of carved stones, and all your borders of desirable stones: All your sons taught by the Lord, and a multitude of peace for your sons, and in righteousness you shall be founded. LXX: Lowly and unstable, without consolation. Behold, I prepare for you the carbuncle as your stone, and sapphire as your foundations: and I will make your battlements jasper, and your gates stones of crystal, and your walls choice stones: and all your sons disciples of God, and great peace shall be for your sons, and in righteousness you shall be built. Where we have said: I will lay your stones in order, in the Hebrew is written BAPHPHUCH (בפך), which all except the Seventy have translated alike: I will lay your stones in stibium, in the likeness of an adorned woman who paints her eyes with stibium, so as to signify the beauty of the city. And where we, following the Seventy, have said jasper, the Hebrew has written CHODCHOD (כדכד), which Symmachus alone translated χαλκηδόνιον. For crystal also, in whose place ECDA (אקדה) is read among the Hebrews, Symmachus and Theodotion put of carving, that is, γλυφῆς, and Aquila τρυπανισμοῦ: a word that conveys the sense of bored and engraved gems. We have spoken of the difference of translation; let us come to the sense. He is still speaking to the Church, formerly lowly and poor, which had neither the Law nor the Prophets nor the word of God; torn by the tempest or unstable, which had endured many whirlwinds of the world and wavered among the various errors of idols; which had no comforter, and in vain spent all her substance on physicians: that He Himself will come, He Himself will descend, and build on earth the heavenly Jerusalem, which in the Apocalypse of John is called the bride and wife of the Lamb, having light like a precious stone, like jasper and crystal, and a great wall, and twelve gates inscribed with the names of the tribes of Israel, of which three were on the East, and three on the North, and three on the South, and three on the West (Rev 21); and the wall rested on twelve foundations, its whole building of jasper stone, and the several foundations of the walls had each its own stone: the first jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth sardius, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. Reading this, we cry out and say: O the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how inscrutable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor (Rom 11:33, 34)? And again: Who is wise, and he will understand these things; understanding, and he will know them (Hos 14:10)? Let them answer, the lovers of the letter alone, which kills, who in the thousand years make ready exquisite foods for gluttony and luxury, whose God is the belly and whose glory is in their shame (Phil 3); who after the second coming of the Savior in glory hope for marriages, and little children of a hundred years, and the outrage of circumcision, and the blood of victims, and a perpetual sabbath; who say with Israel, in a perverse way: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall reign: let them answer what this heavenly Jerusalem is to which it is now said: Behold, I will lay your stones in order; or according to the Seventy: Behold, I prepare for you the carbuncle, your stone: so that the whole city is full of carbuncles, and has sapphire foundations, and battlements of jasper or chalcedony, and gates of crystal or carved in relief, and a wall of precious stones round about; and all her sons have no men as teachers, but God, and are called disciples of God; and there is in her perpetual peace and the building up of righteousness. From this it is clear that under the occasion of righteousness, which is the name of a virtue, we ought to seek the other virtues too for the building up of the Church, and not follow Jewish ravings. For let them explain what it is that is said of wisdom in Proverbs: She is more precious than all the most precious stones (Prov 3:15). For if Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1), it is foolish for Christ to be compared to senseless stones. And again we read of the judgments of God: The judgments of the Lord are right, justified in themselves, desirable above gold and very precious stone (Ps 18 [19]:10, 11). From this it is plain that the stone compared with the other stones is the one of which it is said above in this same Prophet, in the person of God: Behold, I will lay in the foundations of Zion a corner stone, a chosen stone, precious: and he who believes in it shall not be confounded (Isa 28:16). This stone the builders rejected (Ps 117 [118]), namely the Scribes and Pharisees and the chief men of the Jews, and it has become the head of the corner (Matt 21). Of it the Apostle Peter also says in his discourse: To us therefore who believe in the corner stone, precious and chosen, there is honor; but to unbelievers it is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense (1 Pet 2:7, 8). And he too speaks to the chief priests in the Acts of the Apostles: This is the chosen stone, precious, which you despised and rejected (Acts 4:11); which has become the head of the corner, and holds together the two peoples, of the nations and of Israel; which built the city whose builder and maker is God: of which the Apostle also writes to the Corinthians: You are God's building. And: As a wise architect I have laid the foundation, and another builds upon it. But let each one see how he builds. For no one can lay another foundation than that which has been laid, Jesus Christ (1 Cor 3:9, 10). And if anyone builds on this foundation gold and precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, each one's work will be made manifest. Of this foundation he speaks in another Epistle also: Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the corner stone (Eph 2:20); and again: In whom you are all being built as living stones into a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices (1 Pet 2:5). Of these stones it is said mystically: Holy stones are rolled upon the earth (Zech 9:16), with which Christ builds the Church upon the rock, saying in the Gospel: Upon this rock I will build my Church (Matt 16:18). He who has deserved to enter this city says joyfully to the Lord: As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of powers, in the city of our God: God has founded it forever (Ps 47 [48]:9). Concerning the founder of this city it is said in another place also: He shall build my city, and shall bring back the captivity of my people (Isa 45:13). As for the nature of the twelve stones and gems, this is not the time to speak, since very many both of the Greeks and of the Latins have written of it. Of these I will name only two: the bishop Epiphanius, a man of holy and venerable memory, who has left us a notable volume of his genius and learning, which he entitled περὶ λίθων; and Pliny the Second, at once orator and philosopher among the Latins, who in his most beautiful work of natural history filled the thirty-seventh book, which is also the last, with a treatment of stones and gems. These twelve stones are written in order in Exodus and in Ezekiel, that is, ἐν τῷ λογείῳ of the high priest, and in the crown and diadem of the prince of Tyre. Let us speak first of Exodus: four rows of stones were woven in (Exod 28). The first row had the sardius, topaz, emerald; the second row, carbuncle, sapphire, jasper; the third row, ligure, agate, amethyst; the fourth row, chrysolite, beryl, onyx, set in gold; and they were inscribed with the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. In which it is to be noted that the second row of stones is also set down in the present Scripture: carbuncle, sapphire and jasper. For we do not yet hold what is perfect, nor have we come to the first things, because now we see through a mirror in an enigma. Further, in Ezekiel we find it written thus: You are the seal of likeness and the crown of beauty; you were in the delights of the paradise of God. You were clothed with every first stone: sardius, topaz and emerald, carbuncle and sapphire and jasper, silver also, and gold and ligure, and agate and amethyst, and chrysolite and beryl and onyx; and with gold you filled your treasuries and your storehouses within you. From the day you were created, I set you with the Cherubim on my holy mountain; you were in the midst of the fiery stones, spotless in your days, from the time you were created until your iniquities were found in you (Ezek 28:12ff.). For who is so foolish and of so senseless a mind as to think that the prince of Tyre, whoever he believes him to be, set in the paradise of God, and created among the Cherubim, and dwelling among the fiery stones (which we understand without doubt as the Angels and heavenly Powers), was one adorned with earthly stones and having the likeness and the seal? Of the nature of all the stones, then, and of each one in part, this is not the time to speak; for not everything is always to be said. Now let us discourse only of the carbuncle, the sapphire and the jasper. The carbuncle which is prepared, or laid in order, seems to me the fiery word of doctrine, which, putting to flight the error of darkness, illuminates the hearts of believers. This is the one which one of the Seraphim took, grasped with tongs, to purify the lips of Isaiah (Isa 6); which is born, according to the faith of Genesis, in the land of Havilah, where there is the best gold (Gen 2), and the carbuncle stone and the leek-green. Further, the sapphire, which is placed in the foundations, has the likeness of heaven and of the air above us: and it is such that it can say that line of Aristophanes with Socrates: Ἀεροβατῶ καὶ περιφρονῶ τὸν ἥλιον; which we can turn into the Latin tongue: I tread the air and look down upon the sun (See Suidas under περιφρονεῖν). Or with the apostle Paul: But our conversation is in heaven (Phil 3:20). The Scripture of Ezekiel also records that the place where the throne of God is has the likeness of sapphire, and that the glory of the Lord consists in this color, which bears the image of what is above the heavens. And the battlements of the Lord's city, that is, the ramparts of the walls, are strengthened with jasper: those who can destroy and refute every height that lifts itself up against the knowledge of God, and subject falsehood to truth (Ezek 1; 1 Cor 15). He, then, who is most strong in disputing and strengthened by the testimonies of the holy Scriptures, he is a battlement of the Church. There are many kinds of jasper: one has the likeness of emerald, which is found at the springs of the river Thermodon, and is called Grammatias, by which they assert that all phantoms are put to flight. Another is greener than the sea, and tinged as if with flowers; they report that this is born on Mount Ida in Phrygia and in its deepest caves. Another, again, is found among the Iberians and the Hyrcanians and by the Caspian Sea, and especially by the lake Neusis. There is also another jasper like snow and the foam of the sea waves, and mildly reddish as though with blood mixed in. We have said this so that we may recognize all the spiritual graces in the battlements of the Church; he who has them puts vain fears to flight, and can say with the bride: My kinsman is white and ruddy (Song 5:10). And the gates of this city are of crystal stone, which is carved in various ways; than this stone nothing is purer. In short, in the most violent frosts of the Alps, and in caves inaccessible to the sun, waters are said to congeal into crystal: to the touch it is stone, to the sight water. By this it is shown that those who are at the doors of the Church ought to be stained by no filth, but to be of the purest faith, and to say with the prophet: From your commandments I have understanding (Ps 118 [119]:104), and to hear this: Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8). And the walls of the city, or the borders and περίβολος, are built of choice stones, by which we can understand the remaining stones, and that all her sons are taught, or are disciples of God: a testimony the Lord uses in the Gospel of John, saying: No one can come to me unless my Father who sent me draws him, and everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me (John 6:44, 45). And shortly after: It is written in the prophets: They shall all be taught by God. He also speaks through Jeremiah: Putting my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their heart; and they shall no more teach each his neighbor and his brother, saying: Know the Lord. For all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins I will not remember (Jer 31:33, 34). And the teaching of the disciples of God has a multitude of peace, which was left to them by the Lord; and the building of the most beautiful city is completed in righteousness, so that He is the God not of one nation but of the whole world, calling to His faith slaves and free, Greeks and Barbarians, rich and poor, noble and lowly, men and women, little children and old men, and all things in the world which seem to be contrary (John 14). We have gone beyond the measure of brevity, which is useful in all that has to be said, since we seek the city of God not, with the Hebrews and our Half-Jews, on earth, but in the heavens: the city which, set on Christ the mountain, cannot be hidden.
54:14
Withdraw far from calumny, for you shall not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come near you. LXX: Withdraw from the unjust man, and you shall not fear, and trembling shall not come near you. A most beautiful order. He had consoled the poor and lowly one, promising her spiritual graces. Now he teaches what she ought to do if she does not wish to dread the assaults of her adversaries. And the sense is: You do not wish to fear your enemies? Do what I say: Withdraw far from calumny, or from iniquity, for all iniquity and plunder is born of calumny; and you shall not fear, and trembling and terror shall not come near you, so that you fear not men but God, saying with Moses: I am trembling and fearful (Deut 9:19); and with one of Job's friends: Horror and trembling came upon me, and shook my bones greatly (Job 4:14); and with the prophet: At the voice of my prayer trembling entered into my bones (Hab 3:16); and: Upon whom does the Lord rest, but upon the humble and quiet, and him who trembles at His words (Isa 66:2)? But the trembling of the ungodly is another, which is born of the fear of punishment; of it is written: Trembling seized the ungodly (Ps 47 [48]:7).
54:15
Behold, the sojourner shall come who was not with me; he who was once a stranger to you shall be joined to you. LXX: Behold, proselytes shall come to you through me, and they shall be your settlers, and shall flee to you for refuge. These things too the Jews think are said to Jerusalem: that many of the nations will be proselytes and will take up the law of Moses and its ceremonies. We, according to the interpretation we have begun, refer this to the Church, which has been gathered through the apostles from both peoples, which has neither spot nor wrinkle, which is free, and the mother of all believers (Eph 5; Gal 4). To gather these proselytes and strangers the Lord sent His disciples, saying: Teach all nations (Matt 28:19), so that they might flee to the Gospel and take up the new Law, and that those who were once dwellers in idolatry might become settlers of the Church. Of them it is said in the psalms: The Lord makes the blind wise. Or, as is read in the Latin codices: The Lord gives light to the blind, the Lord loves strangers (Ps 145 [146]:8, 9): so that after the blind have received the light of truth, and the foolish have learned wisdom, then, passing over to the Church, they may be loved by the Lord, and hear through the prophet: I will call not my people, my people (Hos 2:24); and when this people enters the Temple of God, jealousy seizes the unlearned people.
54:16-17
Behold, I have created the smith who blows the coals in the fire, and brings forth a vessel for his work: and I have created the slayer to destroy. Every vessel that is fashioned against you shall not prosper: and every tongue that resists you in judgment you shall judge. This is the inheritance of the servants of the Lord: and their righteousness is with me, says the Lord. LXX: Behold, I have created you, not as a coppersmith blowing the coals in the fire and bringing forth a vessel for work. But I have created you not for perdition, to destroy: every vessel that is made against you shall not prosper: and every voice shall rise against you in judgment: you shall overcome them all ÷ and they shall be liable to you in it ⁚ There is an inheritance for those who serve the Lord, and you shall be righteous to me, says the Lord. Let us speak first according to the Hebrew: If you wish not to fear, and that dread be far from you, do what the preceding discourse has related; for I am He through whom you are to have proselytes. I am He who created the smith who blows the coals in the fire, that is, the devil, the craftsman of all evils, not by necessity of nature but by the choice of his mind; who has kindled fires and will bring forth vessels against you, such as were Simon and Elymas the magicians, who resisted the apostles Peter and Paul (Acts 13). I have created the slayer of those who are going to be unbelievers: not that I am the cause of their perdition, but that the adversary is created for battle, so as to be perdition to the vanquished and a cause of rewards to the victors. And all who have been fashioned against you by the blowing smith shall not prosper, but shall feel both present punishments and those to come. And what before seemed hidden is said more plainly in what follows: And every tongue that resists you in judgment you shall judge, destroying the wisdom of the wise and rejecting the prudence of the prudent. And all the leaders of the heretics, and the teachers of the Jews, and the philosophers of the world, whom that smith had forged, you will condemn by your judgment; as the Queen of Sheba also condemned the unbelievers, and the Ninevites; and on the contrary Sodom will be justified by comparison with a worse Jerusalem (Matt 12). After this he adds what the rewards to come are, lest they think the contest is in vain and ends with the present death. This is the inheritance of the servants of the Lord, that is, the kingdom of heaven, and life everlasting, and the repayment of labors, the things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Cor 2). And if for those who love Him, then also for those who serve Him, who have no other Lord but God. And this is the righteousness of those who are with God, says the Lord: that present tribulation should be compensated by future joy. Further, according to the Seventy this seems to me the sense: I, your Creator, have not made you as the devil, that worst of smiths, forges vessels of iniquity with an unclean spirit and brings them forth to perdition; and he ought to know that vessels of this kind do not have a prosperous course, but are broken in mid-career. What the vessels are he shows in the following words: And every voice that shall rise against you in judgment, you shall overcome them all. The vessels of iniquity have a voice, and this voice rises against the Church when the heretics set their mouth on high and their tongue passes through the earth. And what follows, And they shall be liable to you in it, we have marked beforehand with an obelus, because it seems to have been added not so much by the Seventy as by bad copyists. And when the Church has overcome every voice that rises against her, then those who serve and obey the Lord will have an inheritance, an eternal possession; of which it is said in Jeremiah in other words: There is a reward for your works (Jer 31:16). And the dwellers of the Church will be righteous to the Lord. For everyone who does righteousness is born of God; and to them the Lord says: Be holy, for I am holy (Lev 20:26).
55:1
All you who thirst, come to the waters, and you who have no money, hasten, buy and eat: come, buy without silver and without any exchange wine and milk. Why do you weigh out silver not for bread, and your labor not for fullness? LXX: You who thirst, go to the water, and as many as have no money, go, buy, and eat, and walk, and buy without money and without price wine and fat. Why do you buy with money, and your labor not for fullness? The Hebrew word OI (הוי), of which I had said above, in the prophecy against Ariel (cf. Isa 29), that it was ambiguous, and signified either the interjection of one calling or woe, set here at the beginning of the passage, is read not with the feeling of one lamenting but of one calling. Since, then, he had said that every vessel fashioned against the Church is to be broken, and that every voice and tongue that had armed itself against the knowledge of God is to be overcome, he summons the believers to the river of God, which is filled with waters, and whose stream gladdens the city of God, that they may drink waters from the fountains of the Savior, who says to the Samaritan woman: If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give me to drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you water. The water that I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water springing up into life eternal (John 4:10, 14). Of these waters He cried out in the Temple: If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who drinks of the water that I shall give him, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water (John 7:37, 38), signifying the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed were to receive, and of whom the Prophet sounded forth in mystical speech: My soul has thirsted for the living God (Ps 41 [42]:2); and again: With you is the fountain of life (Ps 35 [36]:10). He Himself spoke of Himself: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns, which cannot hold waters (Jer 2:13). These waters the clouds sprinkle, to which the truth of God reaches, as it is written: And the clouds sprinkle righteousness (Isa 45:8, LXX). And the thirsty are commanded by no means to drink the muddy waters of Sihor and the swelling floods of the Assyrians, but to go to the waters of Siloam, which go with silence; and not to fear poverty of speech if perhaps they have no silver (Isa 45; Jer 2), but to hear the Apostle saying: By grace you have been saved (Eph 2:8); and the Lord saying to the disciples: Freely you have received, freely give (Matt 10:8). And in a wonderful manner they buy waters without money; and they do not drink them, but eat them. For He is both water and the bread which came down from heaven (John 6). Therefore what is read in some copies, Buy and drink, was changed by unskilled copyists, who thought it more consistent if the waters were drunk rather than eaten. But there is also a most wicked money, or silver, which the Scripture rejects, saying: Money that is given with deceit shall be reckoned as a potsherd (Prov 26:23, LXX); and in another place: Your silver is reprobate (Jer 6:30). And there is a silver which is compared to the utterances of God: The utterances of the Lord are pure utterances: silver tried in the fire of earth, purified sevenfold (Ps 11 [12]:7). Spurning, then, that silver and those moneys with which we cannot buy the waters of the Lord, let us go to Him who, holding the cup of the Sacrament, said to the disciples: Take and drink; this is my blood, which shall be shed for you for the remission of sins (Matt 26:27, 28). This wine Wisdom too mixed in her bowl, summoning to drink all the foolish of the world and those who do not have the wisdom of the world; and so that we may buy not only wine but also milk, which signifies the innocence of little children: a custom and type which is kept to this day in the Churches of the West, that wine and milk are given to those reborn in Christ. Of this milk Paul also said: I gave you milk to drink, not solid food (1 Cor 3:2). And Peter: As newborn little children, desire the rational milk (1 Pet 2:2). Hence Moses too, understanding the wine and the milk of the passion of Christ, testifies in mystical speech: His eyes are lovely with wine, and his teeth white with milk (Gen 49:12). For milk in the present passage the Seventy translated fat; of which holy David says in the psalm: Let my soul be filled as with fat and fatness (Ps 62 [63]:6); and in another place: He fed them with the fat of wheat, and with honey from the rock He satisfied them (Ps 80 [81]:17). These fats denote nothing other than the mystical flesh, to which the Lord exhorted the disciples, saying: Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life in you (John 6:54). Hence also He was betrayed in Gethsemane, which means valley of fat, or most fertile. And at the same time he rebukes those who follow worldly wisdom and the perverse and feigned doctrines of the heretics, and the traditions of the Pharisees, and all knowledge falsely so called which is lifted up against God, and who at great prices and with unceasing labor weigh out silver for a discipline in which there is no bread, and sweat for foods in which there is no fullness. From this it is shown that the wisdom to be pursued is the one which lies not in the leaves and flower of words but in the marrow and fruits of meanings; which does not fly past the ear but refreshes the mind. To learn it we do not cross the seas, nor do we need great expense, but the word is near, in our mouth and in our heart.
55:2-3
Hear, you who hear me, and eat what is good, and your soul shall delight in fatness. Incline your ear, and come to me: hear, and your soul shall live. And I will strike with you an everlasting covenant: the faithful mercies of David. LXX: Hear me, and eat good things, and your soul shall delight in good things. Attend with your ears, and follow my ways: and hear me, and your soul shall live in good things. And I will establish for you an eternal testament, the faithful holy things of David. Lest anyone think that the hearing to which the divine word exhorts those who are to hear is of the flesh and not of the mind, it promises them good things not of the flesh but of the soul. For if, he says, you hear me, you shall eat the good things of the land (Isa 1:19). Or the good: He who says, I am the good shepherd (John 10:11). And your soul shall delight in good things and in fatness. Therefore the good things promised to the soul are not riches, and health of body, and the dignities of the world, which even the philosophers call indifferent, that is, neither good nor evil, and which vary according to the quality of those who use them; but those are to be believed good to which God exhorts us: Turn aside from evil, and do good (Ps 36 [37]:27). But if honesty and the virtues are called the good things of the soul, then evils too are to be taken to be not poverty, and infirmity of body, and low birth, but all the vices, which are truly evil. In short, Abraham did not have good things because he was rich, but because he used his riches well (Gen 13). And Lazarus, who afterward rested in his bosom, did not endure evils because he suffered the torments of diseases together with want; rather, through what were thought evils in the world, he obtained true goods. Hence too that rich man clad in purple received his good things in his lifetime, which were good to him who thought them good (Luke 16); and of Lazarus it is not said, conversely: He received his evil things in his lifetime; but: he received evil things in his lifetime, which seemed evil not to him who suffered them but to others. An example of both is given us by blessed Job, who was overcome neither by the goods nor by the evils of the world, but bore all things with equal firmness of mind (Job 2). Wherefore Solomon prays to God: Give me neither riches nor poverty. But appoint for me what is necessary and sufficient for my living, lest, being full, I become a liar and say: Who sees me? or, being in want, I steal and forswear the name of the Lord (Prov 30:8, 9). And if he prays for this, to have neither riches nor poverty but only the necessaries of living, of which the Apostle also says: Having food and clothing, with these we are content (1 Tim 6), it is clear that riches and want, health and sickness, pleasure and torments, are neither good nor evil, but become good and evil according to the difference of those who bear them. Therefore it is not, as the χιλιαστὰς would have it, abundance of wealth, and dainty foods, and fatness of body, pheasants and stuffed turtledoves, mead, unmixed wine, the beauty of wives, swarms of children, that the Lord promises to the soul, but those delights to which He summons us mystically, saying: Delight, or take your delight in the Lord, and He will give you the petitions of your heart (Ps 36 [37]:4); and elsewhere: I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Ps 26 [27]:13); and in another psalm: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me His holy name; who fills your desire with good things (Ps 102 [103]:1 and 5). Finally he adds: Hear me, and your soul shall live (Isa 55:3). The promise of all good things is life everlasting. If you are willing to hear, and your soul lives forever, I will strike with you an everlasting covenant, the faithful mercies of David. Of these the same Psalmist sang: The mercies of the Lord I will sing forever. From generation to generation I will proclaim your truth (Ps 88 [89]:1, 2). And so that we may know what these mercies are, he shows in the following words: Once I have sworn by my holy one: if I lie to David, his seed shall remain forever, and his throne as the sun in my sight, and as the full moon forever, and a faithful witness in heaven. He is called faithful for this reason, that He has fulfilled His promises. For these the Seventy translated the faithful holy things of David (Acts 13:34), which can be taken as firm and strong; as is this: All His commandments are faithful, confirmed for ever and ever (Ps 110 [111]:8). And in another place: God is faithful, and there is no iniquity in Him (Deut 32:4). And the apostle Paul: If we deny Him, he says, He remains faithful: He cannot deny Himself (2 Tim 2:13). And in another place, writing to Timothy: A faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance (1 Tim 1:15). And this covenant which the Lord promises will not be brief and for one time, as was that of the people of the Jews, but will remain forever, so that the true David may come, and in the Gospel may be fulfilled what was promised in the person of God: I have found David my servant; with holy mercy I have anointed him (Ps 88 [89]:21); whose hand He set in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers. Him, according to Ezekiel, when David had already been asleep for many ages, He calls His servant and shepherd, saying: I will raise up for you one shepherd, my servant David (Ezek 34:23).
55:4-5
Behold, I have given him as a witness to the peoples, a leader and teacher to the nations. Behold, you shall call a nation which you did not know: and nations which have not known you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God and the Holy One of Israel, because He has glorified you. LXX: Behold, I have given him as a testimony among the nations, a prince and commander to the nations: nations which did not know you shall call upon you: and peoples who were ignorant of you shall flee to you for refuge: because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, who has glorified you. He had summoned the people of the Jews to believe, to incline their ear and receive the everlasting covenant which the Lord had promised to David, and to Abraham and his seed, saying: In your seed the nations shall be blessed (Gen 22:18). The apostle Paul, explaining this: He did not say, he says, in seeds, but, in seed, which is Christ (Gal 3:16). And because He knew that, while they did not believe, the peoples of the nations would believe, He passes over to the nations, and says that He has sent His Son as a witness or testimony of all the nations, to announce His precepts and commandments to the peoples; who says of Himself: This Gospel must be preached in the whole world, for a testimony to all the nations (Matt 24:14). Finally, He refutes the proud Pilate with this word: For this I was born, to bear witness to the truth (John 18:37). Of Him the apostle Paul writes to Timothy: One mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a redemption for all, a testimony in its proper times: in which I have been appointed a herald and an Apostle (1 Tim 2:5). All that is said, then, is to be referred to Him who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer did not open His mouth. Of Him it is said above: We saw Him, and He had neither form nor comeliness (Isa 53:2); and: He Himself bore our sins, and suffers for us. To Him have fled, or run, those who before did not know Him, saying: Our God is refuge and strength (Ps 45 [46]:1); and again: Lord, you have become our refuge from generation to generation (Ps 89 [90]:1). Of their faith we read above also: Those to whom it was not preached concerning Him shall see: and those who had not heard shall understand. He is the witness of all that the Father promised and bestowed on the world, whose mystery Paul gathers up in a brief word to the Ephesians: The God, he says, of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory (Eph 1:17); of whom it is written now as well: Because of the Lord your God, and the Holy One of Israel, who has glorified you, and that with the glory which He had before the world was made. Of it the Prophet also testifies: The glory of God shall appear (Heb 1), He who is the brightness of glory and the form of His substance, when every tongue shall confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of the Father (Phil 2). He answered the Son, when He asked for the glory which He had had before: I have both glorified it, and will glorify it. Of which the apostle John also says: We saw, he says, His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 12:28; 1:14). Therefore, when he speaks of Him who in the beginning was with God, God the Word, He is called the Father of glory; but when of Him who says in the Gospel, Why do you persecute me, a man who speaks the truth to you (John 8:40)? He is called the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not that there is one and another (which is the very bad error of many), but because one and the same Son of God speaks now with the feelings of the glory of His divinity, now with those of our nature, which He deigned to take up.
55:6-7
Seek the Lord while He can be found: call upon Him while He is near. Let the ungodly man forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God: for He is abundant in forgiving. LXX: Seek the Lord: and when you have found Him, call upon Him. And after He has drawn near to you, let the ungodly man forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts and return to the Lord: and he shall obtain mercy: for He will abundantly forgive your sins. Since, then, as we have already said before, you would not receive the everlasting covenant and the faithful mercies of David, which, when you were unwilling to take them up, the throng of the Gentiles took up, I the Prophet warn you, my own people, and solemnly charge you: while there is time, do penance. Turn to Him who now speaks to you through the Prophets, who afterward will speak in person. Seek Him while He can be found, while you are in the body, while room for repentance is given; and seek Him not by place but by faith. How God is to be sought is said more fully in another place: Think of the Lord in goodness, and seek Him in simplicity of heart: for He is found by those who do not tempt Him, and appears to those who are not unbelieving toward Him (Wis 1:1, 2). Hence we too, knowing the word spoken of sinners, Those who withdraw far from you shall perish, let us say to the Lord: Whither shall I go from your spirit, and whither shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there: if I descend into hell, you are present (Ps 138 [139]:7, 8). And let us call upon Him while He is near, lest through our vices and sins He withdraw far away. For He draws near to those who draw near to Him, and joyfully runs to meet the son returning after a long time. Wherefore the holy man sings in the psalm: But for me it is good to cleave to God (Ps 72 [73]:28). And Moses alone drew near to the Lord (Exod 20). And through Jeremiah God says: I am a God who draws near, and not from afar (Jer 23:23): drawing near to those who draw near to me by faith, and withdrawing far from those who depart far from me by unbelief. Because of this it is said to believers: Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. And lest we should think this could suffice, he at once adds: Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (Jas 4:8). Of him it had been said above: Your adversary the devil, like a lion, going about, seeks whom he may devour. Resist him, strong in faith (1 Pet 5:8, 9). Nor is it enough to seek the Lord, and to find Him while it is the time of repentance, and to call upon Him while He is near, unless the ungodly man forsakes his former ways and the old thoughts by which he had turned aside from the Lord. For then we shall return to the Lord, who will have mercy on us, and to the most clement father, who is abundant in mercies and ready to forgive, when we have forsaken our former thoughts and ways, so that afterward we may deserve to hear: Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered (Ps 31 [32]:1).
55:8-9
For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts. LXX: For my thoughts are not as your thoughts: nor are your ways as my ways, says the Lord. But as far as heaven is distant from the earth, so far is my way distant from your ways, and your thoughts from my thought. Do not think, he says, that what I promise is difficult, and let it not seem incredible to you that the ungodly and the unrighteous can be saved, whether the people of the Jews or all those among the nations who did not know God: consider this, that there is a great difference between my counsels and yours, and as great a diversity of will as of nature (Prov 19). For many are the thoughts in the heart of a man, but the counsel of the Lord abides forever. You, as men, often repenting of a promise, have overturned your old will with a new will. For the Lord scatters the counsels of the nations, and rejects the thoughts of the peoples, and makes void the wills of princes (Ps 32 [33]); but the thoughts of His heart are from generation to generation, and whatever He has decreed cannot be changed. Do you wish to know the difference between my counsel and yours? As far as heaven is distant in place from the earth, and the dwelling of the Angels is one thing and that of men another, so far are my thoughts separated from your counsels. For of my thoughts it is said: His judgments are inscrutable, and His ways past finding out (Rom 11:33). But of yours: They devised a counsel which they could not establish (Ps 20 [21]:12). And in another place: Whatever counsel you have entered upon shall be scattered, and whatever you have spoken shall not remain among you (Isa 8:10). Things that are clear need no interpretation; therefore they are touched on briefly rather than discussed.
55:10-11
And as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and will not return thither again; but they soak the earth, and water it, and make it spring up, and give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall my word be which goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall do whatever I willed, and shall prosper in the things for which I sent it. LXX: As if the rain or the snow should come down from heaven, and not return until it soaks the earth, and it bring forth and spring up, and give seed to the sower and bread for eating: so shall my word be which has gone forth from my mouth: it shall not return until it accomplishes what I willed, and I will make its ways and my precepts prosperous. What is said hangs on what went before, and briefly the sense is this: let the people of the nations not be incredulous that after such great crimes the ungodly man is suddenly saved. For my thoughts are not as the thoughts of men, and as far as heaven is distant from the earth, so far are my thoughts separated from the thoughts of men. For I am most clement and abundant in forgiving. Do you wish to receive another likeness also? As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and will not return thither again, but soak the earth, and water it, and make various seeds sprout, so that from full harvests bread is produced for the use of men: so the word of my promise, which I have once pledged and which has gone forth from my mouth, will not be void, but all will be fulfilled in deed. According to the anagogy the understanding is twofold: the word of the Lord is either He of whom it is written: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1), who will not return to Him empty unless He has done the Father's will, and fulfilled all the things for which He had been embodied, and reconciled the world to God. He is said to proceed from the mouth, and from the womb and belly: not that God has these members, but that we may learn the nature of the Lord through our own words. Or certainly this is to be said, that the word of the Gospel's teaching is called rain, and the showers which the spiritual clouds pour upon the good earth, the clouds to which the truth of God reaches. This rain and these showers Moses promises in the Song of Deuteronomy (Deut 32:1, 2): Let the earth hear the words of my mouth: let my speech be awaited as the rain, and let my words come down as the dew; so that those who have sown in tears may reap in joy (Ps 125 [126]). And let those who have sown in righteousness and in the spirit reap the fruit of life everlasting, and receive the bread of the Gospel's teaching, of which it is written in Proverbs and in Ecclesiastes: Open your eyes, and be filled with bread (Prov 20:13); and again: Cast your bread upon the water, for in the multitude of your days you will find it (Eccl 11:1). For it is not to be believed that those who eat are commanded that, to eat this bread by which bodies are nourished, they must open their eyes and so be filled with the bread which in Habakkuk the poor man eats in secret (Hab 3). Rather, he exhorts us to the bread of the teaching of God, which we cannot eat unless we have opened the eyes of our heart. Of this Paul too often writes to those who are nourished by the words of faith and truth (2 Cor 9). And the teacher is commanded to cast the bread of his teaching upon every water, and to pour spiritual grace upon all, and to know that if he does what has been commanded, he will receive rewards in the last time. And it would seem unjust enough that, while he who gives alms makes for himself friends of the mammon of iniquity, who may receive him into the eternal tabernacles (Luke 16), he who bestows spiritual foods, and gives his fellow servants their rations in due season, should not find them after many ages, which Ecclesiastes calls the multitude of days (Eccl 11).
55:12-13
For you shall go out in gladness, and be led forth in peace. The mountains and the hills shall sing praise before you, and all the trees of the country shall clap their hands. Instead of the saliunca the fir shall come up, and instead of the nettle the myrtle shall grow. And the Lord shall be named for an everlasting sign, which shall not be taken away. LXX: In gladness you shall go out, and in joy you shall be led forth. The mountains and the hills shall leap, awaiting you with joy, and all the trees of the field shall applaud with their branches. And instead of the στοιβὴ (that is, the most worthless stalks) the cypress shall come up: and instead of the conyza the myrtle shall come up. And the Lord shall be for a name and for an everlasting sign, and it shall not fail. My word, he says, shall not return empty, but after it has fulfilled all that I willed, and done my will on earth, then it will come to me; and that will be fulfilled which is written: The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet (Ps 109 [110]:1, 2). For you shall go out in gladness from the blood of idolatry, and you shall be led forth in peace, so that you may hear from the Apostle: Grace to you and peace (Rom 1:7). Or, you shall be led forth in joy, so that after the shadow of the Law you may learn the truth of the Gospel. For the mountains and hills, by which we can understand the Angels and the souls of the Saints, which are called mountains and hills according to the variety of their virtues, will rejoice over those who repent, and will show the gladness of their mind by leaping. This the Lord also says in the Gospel: The Angels in heaven will rejoice over one sinner who does penance (Luke 15:7). All the trees of the field also shall clap with the hand, or with their branches: those which are planted beside the running waters, which shall give their fruit in its season, and their leaf shall not fall off (Ps 1). One such tree spoke in the psalm: But I am like a fruitful olive tree in the house of the Lord (Ps 51 [52]:10). Let us ask those who follow the simple history alone and eat the flesh of the lamb boiled whether trees clap with their branches and applaud with the hand, and in what sense that which is said of the rivers is to be taken: The rivers shall clap with the hand (Ps 97 [98]:8). And not only shall the mountains and hills leap and sing, and all the trees of the field which the Lord has blessed clap with their branches and applaud with their hands, but the στοιβή too and the κονύζη, or the saliunca and the nettle, shall be turned into the fir and the myrtle and the cypress. Στοιβή, according to Symmachus and the Seventy, is written in the Hebrew NESUS (נעצוץ), which Aquila and Theodotion interpreted as κονύζην. Now κονύζη is a most worthless and bitter herb, of a very foul smell. And where the Seventy translated κονύζη, the word which in the Hebrew is SARPHOD (סרפד), Symmachus rendered nettle. However the proper sense of the names stands, this is to be said: that evil things are turned into good, and virtues spring up in place of vices, that is, righteousness in place of iniquity, fortitude in place of rashness, temperance in place of luxury, prudence in place of folly. Let us give examples of our forebears: Matthew and Zacchaeus and the publicans were saliunca, and στοιβή, and useless stalks, and κονύζη of bitter taste and most loathsome smell, saying: My scars have rotted and are corrupted, because of my folly (Ps 37 [38]:6). These, suddenly changed into Apostles, became cypress and fir and myrtle, of the best fragrance and needful for various works. Paul too, the persecutor of the Church, when he heard from the Lord, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard to kick against the goad (Acts 9:4, 5), was a nettle, having the stings of persecution. But when he preached the Gospel in the whole world and could say, We are the good odor of Christ (2 Cor 2:15), he is rightly called a cypress and a myrtle. Harlots and publicans go before the Pharisees into the kingdom of God, and the thief passes from the cross into paradise (Matt 21). Therefore what is said in the Gospel, A good tree cannot bear evil fruits (Luke 6:43; Matt 7:18), by no means refers to a property of nature, as the heretics would have it, but to the choice of the mind. Finally it is added: Either make the tree good, and its fruits good. From this it is clear that each one by his own will makes his soul a good or an evil tree, whose fruits vary. There follows: And the Lord shall be for a name and for an everlasting sign, which shall not fail. To those who have been changed from evil into good the Lord will be for a name and for an eternal sign, so that from His name they are called Christians, and are branded with the brand of His cross. Of this sign Simeon spoke, holding the little child in his arms: This one shall be for the fall and for the rising again of many, and for a sign which shall be spoken against (Luke 2:34); and of it was said above: The Lord shall give you a sign (Isa 7:14); and the holy man sings in the psalm: Make with me, O Lord, a sign for good (Ps 85 [86]:17). And He Himself who is the sign says: When you see, He says, the sign of the Son of Man: a sign which shall not fail, nor be changed by any end, but shall pass from the present way of life into the future.
56:1
Thus says the Lord: Keep judgment, and do righteousness: for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed. For righteousness the Seventy translated mercy; the rest alike. The prophecy about the nations being ended, which at the coming of the word of God are to be changed from saliunca and nettle into cypress and myrtle, Isaiah speaks to the hearers of that time, that they should do all things that are right and prepare themselves for the coming of the Savior, because He Himself is the righteousness and mercy of God. For if the thoughts of the Saints are judgments, and we ought to have senses trained for discerning good and evil, why should we not at all times keep judgment, so as not to despise the person of the poor man in judgment, nor be frightened by the power of the rich, but judge the great as we judge the small, knowing, according to Moses, that judgment belongs to the Lord, who judges those who judge (Deut 1)? In accordance with which we also read in the psalm: God has stood in the synagogue of gods: and in the midst He judges the gods (Ps 81 [82]:1). To what is now said, Keep judgment, and do righteousness, this is like: Blessed are they who keep judgment and do righteousness at all times (Ps 105 [106]:3), so that they may pursue justly what is just. And yet under the name of righteousness the whole field seems to me to be signified: that he who has done one righteousness is said to have fulfilled all the virtues, which follow one another and cling to each other, so that he who has one has all, and he who lacks one lacks all. Something of the kind the fourteenth psalm also sounds: He who walks without blemish and works righteousness (Ps 14 [15]:2). And elsewhere it is written: Learn righteousness, you who dwell upon the earth (Isa 26:9). And that the Savior, who has been made for us righteousness and holiness and redemption, is Himself the mercy of God (1 Cor 1), the words of the saints testify: And God sent His mercy and His truth (Ps 56 [57]:4).
56:2
Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who lays hold of it: keeping the sabbath, so as not to profane it: keeping his hands, so as not to do any evil. LXX: Blessed is the man who shall do these things, and the man who holds them fast, and keeps the sabbaths, so as not to profane them, and guards his hands, so as not to do iniquity. He who can say with the apostle Paul: When I was a little child, I spoke as a little child; I understood as a little child, I thought as a little child; when I became a man, I destroyed the things that belong to a little child (1 Cor 13:11): he obtains the present blessedness, forgetting the things that are past and stretching himself forward to what is to come, until he attains to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to the perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ; so that that psalm can be fitted to him: Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly (Ps 1:1). This man, then, and son of the inner man, of whom it is said more than once in Leviticus, Man, man (Lev 17:8), is blessed in this, that he first does, and then lays hold of, these things: namely judgment and righteousness and the salvation of the Lord, which is near and is to be revealed to all the nations; so that he not only does what is commanded but holds it with a tight hand; and keeps the sabbath, so as not to profane it. And what the sabbath is which he has commanded to be kept the following verse shows: Keeping his hands, so as not to do any evil. For it profits nothing to sit still on the sabbath, or to sleep, and to gape after feasts; rather, it profits if one, doing good, rests from evil, and keeps a continual sabbath, that is, a rest, from iniquity, and does only those things that pertain to the salvation of the soul, and does not set his hand to any servile work. For he who commits sin is the slave of sin (John 8). But we have been called into freedom, with which freedom Christ has endowed us (Gal 4), so that we may by no means work for the food that perishes; but, cleaving to the Lord, let us say with the Prophet: But for me it is good to cleave to God (Ps 72 [73]:28). Let us become one spirit with Him, and let us fulfill the dedicated sabbaths, lest we be of the six days in which the world was made, to which the Apostles did not belong, to whom the Lord said: If you were of this world, the world would love what is its own. But now you are not of this world, because I have chosen you, and therefore the world hates you (John 15:19).
56:3
And let not the son of the stranger who cleaves to the Lord say: The Lord will divide me from His people with a separation: and let not the eunuch say: Behold, I am a dry tree. LXX: Let not the foreigner who has been joined to the Lord say: Do you think the Lord will separate me from His people? and let not the eunuch say: For I am a dry tree. Those who understand this passage in a lowly way refer what is said to proselytes from the nations and to eunuchs in the literal sense: that both strangers, if they have taken up the law of the Lord and are circumcised, and eunuchs, such as was that eunuch of Queen Candace (Acts 8), who could not be idle even on a journey, and, while he sought an interpreter of his reading, found Christ whom he was seeking, are not strangers to the salvation of God. And this, they say, is said against the Jews, who boast of the nobility of their race, and say that they are sons of Abraham, and think those blessed who have seed in Zion and kinsfolk in Jerusalem (John 8). But we understand that the same people whom we interpreted above (above, on Isa 55) through the saliunca and the nettle and the κονύζην and the στοιβήν as turned into the fir and the cypress and the myrtle are now summoned to the faith of the Gospel: that they ought not to despair if they cleave to the Lord, nor think themselves separated from the people of God. For all who have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ (Gal 3:27). There is neither Jew nor Gentile, Circumcision nor Uncircumcision; to whom it is commanded in the Song of Deuteronomy: Rejoice, you nations, with His people, that is, of God, who had as His former people the Jews (Deut 32:43). These, coming from the East and the West, will rest in the bosom of Abraham. This is what John the Baptist also said: And do not say, We have Abraham as our father. For I say to you: God is able from these stones to raise up sons to Abraham (Matt 3:9). And as among the proselytes there is no difference, but both men and women are called equally to salvation, so too among the eunuchs who have castrated themselves for the kingdom of heaven both sexes are included: those who have put to death their members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, until all attain to the perfect man and say with the Apostle: We know no one according to the flesh. And if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him no longer (2 Cor 5:16). Therefore by eunuchs are by no means to be understood those whom the fiery poet describes, saying (Lucan, Book 10): And the unhappy youth too, maimed by the steel, and cut away from manhood........ But those of whom the Lord speaks in the Gospel: Who have castrated themselves for the kingdom of heaven (Matt 19:12); such were the Apostles too, to whom, when they wondered and said because of the difficulty of the thing, Who then can be saved?, the Savior answered: He who can take it, let him take it. Hence the Apostle too testifies that concerning eunuchs of this kind, that is, concerning virgins, he has no commandment of the Lord, but gives counsel as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord, wishing all to be as himself: For the time, he says, is short: it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none (1 Cor 7:29). For he who has been called free from the bondage and duty of marriage is truly the slave of Christ.
56:4-5
For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs: If they keep my sabbaths, and choose the things I have willed, and hold fast my covenant, I will give them in my house and within my walls a place, and a name better than sons and daughters: an everlasting name I will give them, which shall not perish. LXX: Thus says the Lord to the eunuchs: Those who keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that I will, and hold fast my testament, I will give them in my house and within my wall a renowned place, better than sons and daughters: an everlasting name I will give them, and it shall not fail. He had set forth two, proselytes and eunuchs. He speaks first of the eunuchs, and gives them precepts for living, and promises them the rewards to come; and after them he comes to the proselytes, promising them also like things. He speaks, then, to the eunuchs, who in despair said, Behold, I am a withered tree (Exod 23), that they should not think themselves subject to the curse spoken to the barren: Cursed is the barren one who does not raise up seed in Israel (Deut 7). If, he says, they keep my sabbaths, and choose out of my precepts those things which I have willed, and not those which I have conceded because of the weakness of the hearers, and hold fast my covenant or testament with all fidelity, I will give them in my house, and in my Temple, and within the walls of my most strongly fortified city, a place, and a name better than sons and daughters, which shall be blotted out by no forgetfulness. Who the eunuchs are we have said above: those who are anxious for the things that are God's; to whom the Wisdom also speaks which is inscribed with the title of Solomon: Blessed is the barren woman who is undefiled, who has not known the bed in transgression; she shall have fruit in the visitation of souls. And the eunuch who has not wrought iniquity with his hand, nor devised evil things against the Lord: for the chosen grace of his faith shall be given him, and a most delightful portion in the temple of the Lord (Wis 3:13, 14). This barren woman is fruitful in virginity; this eunuch does violence to the kingdom of heaven and takes it by force. He is a keeper of the sabbaths, so as never to do the works of marriage (1 Cor 7). He has chosen what the Lord willed, so as to offer more than is commanded: so as to consider not the indulgence of His Apostle but his will. He holds fast the everlasting covenant of the Lord, so as not to be free for prayer for a time and then return again to the same thing, but he knows that he will receive in the house of the Lord, which is His Church, the best place. For there are many mansions with the Father (John 14). And he who has been a eunuch and has done all the things that are written will have the best place within His walls, namely, so as to become a tower of the Lord and to stand in the priestly rank, and instead of sons of the flesh to have many spiritual sons. That such a eunuch was the Evangelist John, whom Jesus loved most, the histories of the Church relate: he who reclined on the breast of Jesus (John 13); who, while Peter walked more slowly, ran to the Lord borne up on the wings of virginity (John 20); who, plunging himself into the secrets of the divine nativity, dared to say what all the ages had not known: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: He was in the beginning with God (John 1:2). Away, then, with all the cavilling of the Jews, and let it cease to make itself ridiculous at the opening of the kingdom of heaven to half-men, since chastity lies not in the weakness of the body but in the will of the mind.
56:6-7
And the sons of the stranger who cleave to the Lord, to worship Him and to love His name, so as to be His servants: everyone who keeps the sabbath so as not to profane it, and holds fast my covenant, I will bring them to my holy mountain, and I will make them joyful in my house of prayer. LXX: And to the foreigners who have been added to the Lord to serve Him, and to love His name, so as to be His servants ÷ and handmaids ⁚ and all who keep my sabbaths so as not to violate them, and hold fast my testament, I will bring them into my holy mountain, and I will make them joyful in my house of prayer. After the eunuchs he passes to the foreigners whom he had named before, and to them also he promises rewards: that if they serve Him, and pass from servitude to the love of His name, they shall be His servants; such as was the Apostle Paul too, who writes at the beginning of his Epistles: Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ (Rom 1:1); and Moses, the servant of God (Heb 3). And that and handmaids has been added in the Seventy we have marked beforehand with an obelus. For it cannot be that in spiritual gifts there should be any difference of sex, since in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female, but in Him we are all one (John 17). Of the sabbath and the everlasting covenant we have spoken above. Whoever, then, does these things, God will bring him to His holy mountain and fill him with gladness in His house of prayer. The holy mountain is either the doctrines of truth and the confession of the Trinity, or the Lord Himself, to whom in the last time (according to this same Isaiah and the prophet Micah) very many nations shall flow together (Isa 2; Mic 4). And the house of prayer is the Church, which is spread throughout the whole world, and not the Temple of the Jews, which was confined within the very narrow bounds of the land of Judea.
56:8-9
Their holocausts and their victims shall please me upon my altar: for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples, says the Lord God, who gathers the scattered of Israel: I will yet gather to him his gathered ones. All you beasts of the field, come to devour, all you beasts of the forest. LXX: Their holocausts and victims shall be acceptable upon my altar. For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, says the Lord, who gathers the scattered of Israel: for I will gather to him a congregation. All you wild beasts, come, eat, all you beasts of the forest. The difference between sacrifices and holocausts we learn more fully in Leviticus. Holocausts are those which are burned whole upon the altar; victims and sacrifices are those of which part is offered to the altar and part is given to the priests. It is not to be believed, then, that the sacrifices of the foreigners and the eunuchs are required according to the Jewish rite. But we ought to know this: that the eunuchs offer holocausts, since they consecrate themselves wholly to God; and the foreigners victims, since they are free for prayer for a time; of which God says: The sacrifice of praise has glorified me; and in another place: Offer to God the sacrifice of praise (Ps 49 [50]:14). Of these victims and holocausts the Lord speaks through Hosea: I desire mercy and not sacrifice: the knowledge of God more than holocausts, which are offered upon the altar of the Lord (Hos 6:6); the altar which John in the Apocalypse testifies that he saw in heaven, under which were the souls of the martyrs (Rev 6); from which one of the Seraphim, grasping a coal with tongs, brought it to purify the lips of Isaiah (Isa 6:6). This is the altar, and this the tabernacle, to whose likeness all the things made in Exodus are referred, by which spiritual victims have been offered to God (Exod 38). Otherwise, concerning bodily sacrifices and holocausts, the same God testifies above: To what purpose do I want the multitude of your victims? says the Lord. I am full of the holocaust of rams, and of the fat of lambs, and the blood of bulls and goats I do not want. For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Not for the one nation of Judea, nor in the one place of Jerusalem and its city, but in the whole world; by no means of bulls and goats and rams, but of prayer. This testimony the Lord made use of when He spoke against those who, under the name of the Holy Spirit, sold the gifts of doves in the Temple, and sat in the chairs of pestilence, and had the tables of the money-changers (Matt 21 and John 2), doing all things for the sake of shameful gain, not knowing what is written: Freely you have received, freely give (Matt 10:8). These things the Lord promised would be, He who gathers the scattered of Israel; to whom the Apostle Peter also writes an Epistle; of whom the Evangelist says: This he did not say of himself, but, being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but that He might gather into one the sons of God who were scattered (John 11:51, 52); and that might be fulfilled which was said: The congregation of the peoples shall surround you: for its sake return on high (Ps 7:8). And when the remnant of Israel had been gathered through the Apostles, and those who before had been scattered had been brought into one flock, all the beasts are summoned to come and devour Israel, namely those who would not believe, of whom the Apostle says: For the end shall come upon them (Phil 3). And the Lord in the Gospel: But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by an army, then know that its consummation has come (Luke 21:20). Or this is to be said: that they were handed over to be devoured by the beasts which the Prophet abhors, saying: Do not deliver to the beasts the souls that confess to you (Ps 73 [74]:19). Of these beasts, tropologically, which devoured a certain portion of the Lord, we have read above also (cf. Isa 9): Syria from the rising of the sun, and the Greeks from the West, who devour Israel with their whole mouth. And in Jeremiah: Israel is a wandering sheep, the lions have driven it out: first the king of Assyria devoured it, and last the king of Babylon shall break its bones (Jer 50:17). This too can be said: that together with the people of Israel the nations, formerly ravening, are summoned to faith, so that, leaving the forests which slew very many of Absalom's army, they may come to the Church, and eat the heavenly bread, and be filled with the flesh of the Lamb.
56:10, 12
His watchmen are all blind, they have all not known: dumb dogs, not able to bark, seeing vain things, sleeping, and loving dreams. And the most shameless dogs have not known fullness: the shepherds themselves have not known understanding: all have turned aside into their own way, each to his own avarice, from the highest to the last. Come, let us take wine, and be filled with drunkenness, and it shall be as today, so also tomorrow, and much more. LXX: See how they have all been blinded: they have all not known, dumb dogs, they will not be able to bark: dreaming of a bed, loving slumbers. And dogs shameless of soul have not known fullness. And they are evil, not knowing understanding: they have all followed their own ways. Each one alike from its summit. Come and let us take wine, and be drunk, and let tomorrow be such a day, great, exceedingly more ⁚. So that all the beasts of the forest may come and devour those who have been gathered, he says, or so that the throngs of the nations may succeed into the place of the Jews, their watchmen are the cause, namely the Scribes and the Pharisees: because they were all blind and did not know the Lord the Savior, nor would they see the present light. To them the Lord said: Fools and blind, which is greater, the gold, or the altar that sanctifies the gold (Matt 23:17)? and again: Blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel (ibid., 24); and: The blind leading the blind, both fall into the pit (Matt 15:14). And that teachers are called watchmen we have read above also. For in the place where, according to the Seventy, it is said: The voice of your guardians has been lifted up (Isa 52:8), in the Hebrew is written: The voice of your watchmen. Of these was Ezekiel, to whom God says: Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel (Ezek 3:17). But those watchmen were not blind; indeed, they were called seers. But these of whom the Prophet now speaks are called not only blind watchmen but also dumb dogs, not able to bark. For those who ought to have guarded the Lord's flock, and driven off the wolves, and barked for the Lord, love dreams and delight in demonic visions. And the sense is: they cannot speak the truth, but all lies. Nor were they content with this end, they who slept in guarding the Lord's flock, and could not bark, and loved their couch, by which the pleasure of the body is indicated; but among their own, shameless of soul, they have not known fullness, they who are never sated with their error; who devour the people of the Lord as a meal of bread, and the houses of widows, and serve gluttony and lust. For they cannot say: The commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes (Ps 18 [19]:9), nor know what is written: A man's wisdom enlightens his face (Prov 17:24). And they are dumb dogs against the enemies, of whom it is written: Do not give what is holy to the dogs (Matt 7:6). And sleeping dogs, who do not know the precept: Do not give sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids (Ps 131 [132]); and again: Watch, for you do not know at what hour your Lord will come (Matt 24:42). And therefore, giving place to the devil, they are most shameless dogs, which are never sated. For they vomit what they have eaten, and return to their vomit (Prov 26). Of them the Apostle Peter also speaks: There has happened to them that true proverb: The dog returned to his vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire (2 Pet 2:22). That these watchmen and dogs are the same as the shepherds the following words show: The shepherds themselves have not known understanding. For the Hebrew word ROIM (רעים), which is written with four letters, res and ain and jod and mem, if it is read roim, means shepherds; if raim, the worst. We have said this to show the causes of the varying interpretation. For all have sought their own things, and not the things that are God's, nor have they walked in the way of the Lord (Phil 2), of which it is written: Seek which is the good way, and walk in it (Jer 6:16). But according to what is read in the volume of Judges: There was no king in Israel; each one did what seemed right to himself (Judg 17:6), and followed his own errors. And what follows: Each to his own avarice, from the highest to the last: come, let us take wine, and be filled with drunkenness, and it shall be as today, so also tomorrow, and much more, is not found in the Seventy Translators, but has been added from the Hebrew and is marked beforehand with shining stars. In short, none of the Church's interpreters has expounded these little verses, but they leap over them and pass them by, as if a pit lay open in the middle of the road. And what he says is this: since, turning aside from the way of the Lord, they have followed their own paths, therefore they burn with avarice from the highest to the last, from the princes to the common people, so that, after they have begun to beat their fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken, they say: Come, let us take wine, and be filled with drunkenness. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die. And it shall be as today, so also tomorrow, and much more (1 Cor 15:32). This is what he said above: They have not known fullness: they are not sated with past pleasure, but prepare future delights, much greater than those they had enjoyed before. If this is said of the princes of the Jews, because of whom the people of the Lord was devoured by the beasts, let us avoid the examples of the worse; let us not be drunk with wine, in which is luxury, nor be overwhelmed by pleasures; let us not be dumb in speaking and ravening dogs against our adversaries; but let us follow the ways of God rather than our own, and hear the Scripture warning us: Think of the Lord in goodness (Wis 1:1). And again: Understanding is best for those who practice it. And if we have been dogs, let us not despair of salvation, hearing the words of the Canaanite woman saying to the Lord: Yes, Lord, for the little dogs also eat of the crumbs that fall from their masters' table (Matt 15:27). For this reason she obtained mercy, and heard from the Lord: O woman, great is your faith: be it done to you as you will. For she could say with the Prophet: I have run the way of your commandments (Ps 118 [119]:32). And again: Lead me in the right way.
57:1-2
The righteous man has perished, and there is none who reflects on it in his heart: and men of mercy are gathered, for there is none who understands: for the righteous man has been gathered away from the face of malice. Let peace come: let him rest in his bed, who walks in his uprightness. LXX: See how the righteous man has perished, and no one takes it to heart: and righteous men are taken away, and no one considers. For the righteous man has been taken away from the face of iniquity: his burial shall be in peace: it has been taken away from the midst. Because of the blind watchmen and the dumb dogs, who are themselves the shepherds, not knowing understanding, who are not sated with present pleasures but are always preparing themselves for future ones, the righteous man has perished, of whom Pilate's wife says: Have nothing to do with that righteous man (Matt 27:19). And Pilate, having washed his hands: I am innocent, he says, of the blood of this righteous man. Herein it is to be considered that the word of perdition, about which the heretics often raise a cavil, that it signifies destruction and abolition forever, is applied to Christ, whose perdition certainly shows the greatness of the persecution, and not an end of substance. And there is no one, he says, who reflects on it in his heart, or lays it up. For it could not be that the blind and dumb, seeing vain things and loving dreams, and ignorant of understanding and wisdom, should think of the things that are God's. And what follows, And men of mercy, or righteous men, are gathered and taken away, signifies the Apostles, who are slain by the ungodly and gathered by the Lord. And he gives the reasons why the righteous man was slain and taken away, saying: For the righteous man has been gathered away from the face of malice, so that he might not see the evils of the world; or, because of the malice of men, whose sins He Himself bore, He ascended as victor to the Father. And as for what is said according to the Hebrew, Let peace come, let him rest in his bed: let him walk in his uprightness, the sense indeed is clear, but the sequence of the words, which stands in the idiom of its own language, seems disordered in ours. And what he says is this: Let the peace of the Righteous One come, which, ascending to the Father, He left to the Apostles, saying: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you (John 14:27). And when the peace of Christ, which surpasses all understanding, has come, His Apostles will rest in their beds, and their death will rest. By this he shows that the martyrs do not perish but conquer, and rest in an eternal seat. But He Himself whose peace it is, and whose Apostles rest in their beds, walks in His uprightness, ascending as victor to the Father by a straight road. Further, what is read in the Seventy, The righteous man has been taken away from the face of malice, his burial shall be in peace, it has been taken away from the midst, is all referred to Christ, without mingling in the person of the Apostles: His burial is in peace, and has been taken away from the midst. For His flesh did not see corruption, nor did He remain in the sepulcher, He who is free among the dead, as the Angel says to the women: Jesus whom you seek is not here: Come and see the place where the Lord was laid (Matt 28:5, 6). The Jews think that both this and the rest that follow are to be understood either generally of all the righteous, whose blood Manasseh shed, and filled Jerusalem from gate to gate; or else that Isaiah prophesies of his own death, because he was to be sawn by Manasseh with a wooden saw, which is a most certain tradition among them. Hence most of our own writers also refer what is set down in the Epistle to the Hebrews concerning the passion of the Saints, They were sawn asunder (Heb 11:37), to the passion of Isaiah.
Book Sixteen
It is an excellent saying of a most eloquent orator: The arts would be happy if only the artists judged them. And lest I seem to take my example only from profane writers, this is surely what the Prophet shows in other words: Blessed is he who speaks into the ears of those who listen (Sir 25:12). You, my daughter Eustochium, have made me a sharer in that happiness. For when you read the little preface of the previous book, in which I asserted that the Apostles and Evangelists, whether in their own words or in those of the Seventy Translators, set down from the Seventy only those testimonies that agree with the Hebrew, and wholly passed over whatever had been added by others, you at once brought me no small little question: namely, that the Apostle, writing to the Romans, made use of eight verses of the thirteenth psalm which are read in the churches but are not found in the Hebrew: Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have dealt deceitfully; the poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes (Rom 3:13ff.). When I heard this, as though I had been struck by a most powerful boxer, I began to seethe in silence and to betray the stupor of my mind by the pallor of my face. A Hebrew, I said, of the Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, and taught at the feet of Gamaliel, either did not know these things, or abused the ignorance of those who were going to read him (Phil 3:5; Acts 22:3). The one of these belongs to an unlearned man, the other to one cunning in malice, and neither to him who said: Though I be unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge (2 Cor 11:6); and again: in simplicity and sincerity I have announced the word to you (2 Cor 1:12). At last, coming back to myself, I asked for the space of one day, so that my answer might in no way be the product of human wit, but the fruit of constant reading. And so, running through the whole of Scripture in my mind, I noticed that, just as almost the whole Epistle to the Romans is built out of the Old Instrument, so this testimony too has been woven together from the Psalms and Isaiah (Verse 11). For the first two verses, Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have dealt deceitfully, belong to the fifth psalm (Verse 11). What follows, The poison of asps is under their lips, belongs to the hundred and thirty-ninth psalm (Verse 4). Again, what is said, Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, is taken from the ninth psalm (Verse 29). The three little verses that follow, Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known, I found in the prophet Isaiah, and I am going to expound them in the sixteenth book of my explanation of him, which I now wish to dictate. The last verse, that is, the eighth, There is no fear of God before their eyes, is at the beginning of the thirty-fifth psalm. Nor should it seem to anyone a discrepancy if what is said in the singular number in its own places is said in the plural by the Apostle, who was writing to many and was drawing many examples together into one sense. I think your question is solved, and that our rule about the translation of the Old Instrument has been shaken rather than moved. And it is not so much that the Apostle took from the thirteenth psalm what is not found in the Hebrew, as that those who did not know the Apostle's art of weaving the Scriptures together sought a fitting place in which to set the testimony he had taken up, since they did not think it had been set down in Scripture without authority. In short, all the Greek commentators who have left us commentaries on the Psalms from their learning mark these little verses with an obelus and pass them by, plainly confessing that they are not found in the Hebrew, nor are they in the Seventy Translators, but in the common edition, which in Greek is called κοινὴ, and which differs throughout the whole world. But now it is time for us to apply ourselves to the work we have begun and to pursue what remains.
57:3-4
But draw near hither, you sons of the sorceress, seed of the adulterer and of the harlot. Against whom have you made sport? Against whom have you opened wide the mouth and thrust out the tongue? LXX: But draw near hither, you lawless sons, seed of adulterers and of a harlot. In what have you made sport? Against whom have you opened your mouth, and against whom have you thrust out your tongue? The righteous man having been taken away, whose burial is in peace, or rather having been taken out of the midst, you who are sons of iniquity, draw near to me and hear what I shall say (John 8). For just as he who commits iniquity is a slave of iniquity, so he who, like Judas the traitor, is a son of perdition, can be called a son of iniquity. Indeed it is written of the Lord the Savior: And the son of iniquity shall not proceed to afflict him (Ps 88 [89]:23). For of iniquity, or of the lawless, which the Seventy translated, Theodotion set down the Hebrew word itself, ONENA (עננה), which we, following Symmachus, have rendered of the sorceress, because, that is, Jerusalem, who is the mother of those who hear, was always given over to idolatry. Therefore he calls them the seed of the adulterer, or of adulterers (of whom it is said: And they committed adultery with wood and stone [Jer 3:9]), and of a harlot; and without doubt he means the same woman of whom we read above: How has the faithful city Zion become a harlot? (Isa 1:21). Against whom, he says, have you made sport, spitting in his face and plucking his beard; and against whom have you opened wide and opened your mouth, and thrust out your tongue, saying to him: You are a Samaritan and have a demon (John 8:48)? And again: This man does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the prince of demons (Matt 12:24). And afterward, at the passion: Crucify, crucify such a one (Luke 23:21). And again: His blood be on us and on our children (Matt 27:25). And elsewhere: Ah, you who destroy the Temple and in three days rebuild it! He saved others; himself he cannot save. Let him come down now from the cross, and we believe him (ibid. 40).
57:4-5
Are you not wicked sons, a lying seed, you who take comfort in gods under every leafy tree, sacrificing little children in the torrents under the overhanging rocks? LXX: Are you not sons of perdition, a lawless seed, you who call upon idols under leafy trees, sacrificing your sons in the valleys in the midst of the rock? You, he says, have done these things which the preceding discourse has related. You who are wicked sons, or sons of perdition, such as was Judas the traitor, who was called the son of perdition (John 17); and a lawless seed, or a lying seed and a seed of falsehood, who delight in gods under every leafy tree, and sacrifice your sons in the torrents (Acts 8). Of this the history of Kings and of Chronicles also tells, that they sacrificed their sons to gods and consecrated them in the fire (2 Kgs 16 and 17). That Ahab king of Israel and Manasseh king of Judah did this is not in doubt; they went on from the murder of their children to the blood of the Prophets. Of this also it says in Hosea: Sacrifice men, he says, for the calves have failed (Hos 13:2); or, as it is written in the Hebrew: Sacrificing men, you adore calves. And in the psalms it is written more fully: They were mingled among the nations and learned their works, and served their graven images, and it became a stumbling block to them. And they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons, and they shed innocent blood, or harmless: the blood of their sons and of their daughters, and they sacrificed to the graven images of Canaan. And the land was stained with bloods, and was polluted in their works (Ps 105 [106]:35ff.). Since, then, the history is plain, that the slayers of Christ are the sons of those who did these things, a question arises against those who will have it that there are different natures, one lost and evil, which cannot be saved, and another good, which cannot perish: how are sons called sons of perdition? For if, as they think, the sons of perdition are of a most evil nature, how was that found which had first been lost? Indeed in the parables of the penitent, both the sheep lost out of a hundred sheep and the drachma that had perished out of ten are recovered, and the lost son is found, of whom the father had said to the elder son: This your brother had perished, and is found; he was dead, and has come to life again (Luke 15:32). For nothing ever perishes unless it was first safe, and nothing ever dies unless it had lived before. Therefore these who are now called sons of perdition, or of iniquity and wickedness, forsook the Lord by their own fault, and from sons of the Lord began to be sons of perdition, as this same Prophet says to them: You have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger (Isa 1:4). We can also take these things, according to tropology, of the heretics, who are sons of perdition and a most evil seed, or a seed of falsehood. For they are liars from the beginning, like the devil, who is its father, who is the father of every lie. These call those whom they have deceived to idols, or to the images of their dogmas, under leafy and shady trees, promising them pleasures and delights, or concealing their impurities. Hence Adam too, after he had sinned, hid himself in paradise under a tree, so as not to be open to the sight of God (Gen 3). Nor is there any doubt that sons of perdition of this kind, and a lawless seed, have very many sons, whomever they have deceived, and that they slay them in deep valleys and in the abyss of impiety under overhanging rocks, which always threaten to fall; and these, because of the diversity of falsehood and the variety of perverse dogmas, are called rocks in the plural. But we have one rock, which always follows the people of God, from which the people of Israel once drank, when it enjoyed the familiar friendship of the Lord.
57:6
In the parts of the torrent is your portion; this is your lot, and to them you have poured out a libation, you have offered a sacrifice. Shall I not be angry over these things? LXX: This is your portion, this is your lot; and to them you have poured out libations, and to these you have prepared victims. Shall I not then be angry over these things? The things said fit the times of Isaiah. For all the mountains, valleys and torrents were full of the worship of demons, of which Jeremiah speaks: that the fathers and sons gather wood and kindle the fire, to make chavonas for the host of heaven, while the women knead and mix fat with fine flour, in order to provoke the Lord to anger (Jer 7). And no one doubts that he means cakes, or little pastries prepared by the hand of an artisan; for that is what chavonas means in our tongue. Of these Moses, speaking in the person of the Lord with a prophetic spirit, sang beforehand in the Canticle of Deuteronomy: They provoked me with strange gods, and with their abominations they stirred me to anger; they sacrificed to demons and not to God (Deut 32:16, 17); and this they did by their own will, because it lies in our choice to choose good or evil. Thus to those who have offered themselves to God by virtues it is said: He chose for us his inheritance, the beauty of Jacob, which he loved (Ps 46 [47]:5). And in another place: The Lord's portion was made his people Jacob, Israel the cord of his inheritance (Deut 32:9). And in the Acts of the Apostles it is related that very many gave themselves to the portion and lot of Paul and Silas. Those, then, who have been the portion and lot of the Lord, like the Levites, will have the Lord as their portion and will be able to say with David: The Lord is my portion (Ps 72 [73]:26). These things we can also take of the person of the heretics. For they, having abandoned the worship of God, venerate the images of their errors, and offer victims to them and pour out libations, doing in secret things that it is shameful even to speak of, and leading captive silly women laden with sins, who are led away by various desires, always learning and never arriving at the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim 3). Since, then, the impious do these things in both kinds of impiety, is it not just that the anger of God should be provoked against them?
57:7
Upon a high and lofty mountain you have set your bed, and there you went up to sacrifice victims. And behind the door and back of the post you have set your memorial. LXX likewise. That Israel sacrificed victims to the gods of the nations on high mountains and hills, and like a most shameless harlot spread her feet for all the demons, sacred history relates; and there was no place that was not defiled by the filth of idolatry, so much so that they set idols behind the doors of their houses, which they call the household Lares, and poured out the blood of their souls in public as much as in private. With this error and most evil custom of antiquity the cities of many provinces are afflicted; and Rome herself, the mistress of the world, venerates with wax tapers and lamps, in every tenement block and every house, the image of Tutela, whom they call by that name for the protection of their dwellings, so that, as they enter and as they leave their homes, they may be ever reminded of their inveterate error. The heretics too, whose heart is lifted up in pride, and who, despising the humility of the Church, promise themselves lofty things, go up the most lofty mountains of their dogmas, and there prostitute their bed to demons. And because, according to the Prophet, they have turned backward, imitating the wife of Lot (Gen 19), they are changed into a pillar of salt, having the appearance of the Church's seasoning and none of its savor at all; they are cast out of doors, and are good for nothing except to be trodden under the feet of all. Therefore the Lord warns in the Gospel that he who holds the handle of the plow should not look behind him (Luke 9).
57:9
For beside me you have uncovered yourself and received the adulterer; you have enlarged your bed, and you have made a covenant with them; you have loved their couch with open hand; and you adorned yourself for the king with ointment, and you have multiplied your perfumes. You sent your envoys far off, and you were humbled even to hell. LXX: You thought that if you had departed from me you would have something more. You have loved those who sleep with you, and you have multiplied your fornication with them, and you have made many to be far from you, and you have sent envoys beyond your borders, and you were humbled even to hell. Let us discuss the Hebrew first, which in this place differs much from the Seventy. To her of whom he had said above, Upon a high and lofty mountain you have set your bed, and whom he had rebuked as a harlot, prostituted at the entrance of houses and in dark places behind the doors, so that whoever wished to enter the dwelling might have the pleasure set out before his eyes: this same woman he now rebukes and refutes as an adulterous wife, because, while sleeping with her husband, she secretly received the adulterer, and uncovered the coverlet, or rather enlarged her bed, and made a pact, as though drawing up the instruments of a dowry with the adulterers. He says this to show that they worshiped idols not only in the fields and in houses, but also set up the image of Baal in the Temple, which Ezekiel too says he saw when he had dug through the wall. You have loved, he says, their couch with open hand (Ezek 8), so that you did not blush at your sin, nor desire to hide the shame of your fornication, but sinned with all freedom. And you adorned yourself for the king with ointment, and you have multiplied your idols. And the sense is: You sought various ornaments, so as to entice the adulterers both by sight and by scent. What is said, you adorned yourself for the king with ointment, is understood in two ways: either for God the king, while you adorn yourself with the things that he had given and prostitute yourself to idols; or certainly for the king who is the idol of the Ammonites, who is called Moloch, which in our tongue means king, and whom according to the Seventy we read in other places as Melchom (Zeph 1). And you sent your envoys far off, so that you might have a zeal for fornication not only with the idols of the neighboring nations, but also with those of nations set far away. He means the gods of Babylon and of Egypt. And you were humbled, he says, even to hell: not with the humility that is praised, but with that by which Amnon had humbled his sister Tamar (2 Sam 13). And truly it is a great humiliation, or rather a hurling down even to hell, to be hurled from the light and summit of chastity into the darkness of the brothel, or rather into the abyss of lusts. To her it is said in another place: You shall be brought down even to hell. According to the Seventy, in the things in which they disagree, the sense seems to me this: Did you think, harlot, that if you had departed from me and joined yourself to your lovers, you would find something more? To her God also speaks through Ezekiel: To all harlots wages are given, but you have given wages, and in you this perverse thing has been done (Ezek 16:33). For not only did you receive nothing from your lovers, but you even lost the things you had received from your husband. What follows, You have enlarged your bed, and you have made a covenant with them, is not found in the Seventy. This woman loved those who sleep with her, the blind watchmen and the dumb dogs, who in their sleep see dreams of vanity. And she multiplied her fornication, so as to have intercourse not once with one, but often and with very many. For this reason she made many depart far from her: the Angels who were her guardians, or the holy men who withdrew from the company of such a harlot. This we can also say of the heretics, who, having forsaken God, follow their own errors and think they have something more, when by following falsehoods they have lost the truth, and have multiplied their fornication, not in one dogma but in many, and have made the Angels who preside over the Churches depart from them; who, not content with fornication near at hand, send envoys beyond their borders to the dogmas of the gentiles and the errors of barbarous nations, in order to deceive their hearers with novelty of words.
57:10
In the multitude of your way you have labored, and you did not say: I will rest. You have found the life of your hand; therefore you have not asked me. LXX: In your many journeys you have labored, and you did not say: I will leave off. Strengthened, you have done these things; therefore you have not asked me. He who walks in the one royal way does not labor, the way about which God commanded through Moses: You shall walk in the royal way, and you shall not turn aside to the right or to the left (Deut 5:32). There is one way of truth, which says in the Gospel: I am the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6); and many ways of falsehood, in which Jerusalem is now accused of having walked. God, knowing the difference between these ways, speaks above to those who stray: Your ways are not as my ways (Isa 55:8); and they, confessing to the Lord, say: You have made our ways turn aside from your ways (Ps 43 [44]:19). Having come to know, then, the one royal way, let us see which are the ways to the right and to the left, by which we are forbidden to go. The royal way is the tempered one, having in itself neither more nor less. For example, the straight and royal way is prudence. We turn aside to the right if we are wiser than we ought to be wise, and love cunning instead of prudence; for the serpent was more prudent than all the beasts in paradise (Gen 3), and the sons of darkness are more prudent than the sons of light (Luke 16). And we turn off to the left when we are foolish and are less wise than is needful; of whom it is said: The fool has said in his heart, There is no God (Ps 13 [14]:1). Piety too and true religion is a royal way. He turns aside to the right who is superstitious, and deserves to hear: Be not overly righteous (Eccl 7:17); to the left, he who neglects the worship of God and is numbered among the kids and the he-goats. Liberality too and stewardship is a very great virtue, from which he turns aside to the right who is stingy and does not give what is needful, not only to others but not even to himself; to the left, he who devours his substance with harlots and says with Israel: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die (Isa 22:13). Fortitude also and constancy is a royal way, from which he turns aside to the right who is rash and stubborn, to the left he who is fearful and timid. Hence the holy man, desiring to walk by the straight way, prays: Lead me, Lord, in the straight way (Ps 138 [139]:24). And in another place: Make known to me, Lord, the way in which I should walk, for to you I have lifted up my eyes (Ps 142 [143]:8). Of a way of this kind Scripture also speaks elsewhere: Seek the good way and walk in it, and you shall find purification for your souls (Jer 6:16). Jerusalem, then, was humbled even to hell for this reason, that she labored in many ways and did not say: I will amend my error by repentance; but on the contrary: I will be strengthened in what I have begun, and I will not heed the sentence of him who warns: Turn your foot away from the rough way, and your throat from thirst (Jer 2:25). Then it follows: But she answered, ἀνδρίσομαι, that is, I will act manfully, which is now said with another word: I will be strengthened. And because she has done the things that the preceding discourse related, therefore she has not entreated the Lord, having confidence in her own strength rather than in God. Further, what is set down according to the Hebrew, You have found the life of your hand; therefore you have not asked, has this sense and meaning: Because you have abounded in all things and overflowed with riches, therefore you have neglected the Lord. Such riches Solomon too refuses to have, lest he forget God (Prov 30 and 31). And to Sodom it is said through Ezekiel that because she was filled with bread, she therefore grew proud (Ezek 16). Yet not only riches but poverty too tests a man. Hence it is written above: I have tested you in the furnace of poverty (Isa 48), in which Lazarus too was tested, the poor man who endured want and infirmity together (Luke 16).
57:11
For whom have you been anxious and feared, that you have lied, and have not remembered me, nor thought of me in your heart? For I am silent and as one not seeing, and you have forgotten me. LXX: Whom have you feared and been terrified of, and you have lied to me, and have not remembered me? Nor have you set me in your mind and in your heart. And I, seeing you, will despise you, and you have not feared me. Because, with your barns full, you have confidence in riches and would not ask me, therefore you have feared a great many. For you could not say: The Lord is my helper, and I will look down on my enemies (Ps 117 [118]:7); and again: The Lord is my light and my savior; whom shall I fear? (Ps 26 [27]:1). And even if at some time you wished to say this against the conscience of your mind, you lied. For how could you call upon me, you who had no memory of me, and never thought on the precepts of him who says: Honor the Lord, and you shall be strengthened, and apart from him fear no one (Prov 7:1)? For I am he who, according to Symmachus and Aquila, always kept silent about your sins, and passed over with dissimulation whatever crimes you committed, as though I did not see them, so that you might return to me, if not out of fear of me, at least because of my patience; I who question the sons of men not with my eyes but with my eyelids. But you on the contrary have forgotten me, and have deserved to hear: You have forgotten the law of your God, and I will forget your sons (Hos 4:6). And again: They walked perversely against me, and I will walk against them in perverse fury. The mind, which in the Seventy is joined with the heart, is not written in the Hebrew, but has been added as a kind of interpretation of what ought to be understood by the heart in the Scriptures.
57:12
I will declare your righteousness, and your works shall not profit you. When you cry out, let those whom you have gathered deliver you. LXX: I will declare your righteousness and your evils, which shall not profit you. When you cry out, let them rescue you in your tribulation. I who always kept silent, and passed over your sins as though I did not see them, will by no means keep silent any longer, but will say what I already said before: I have kept silent; shall I always keep silent? And I will declare your righteousness and your works. This is to be read as irony, as if someone were to say to a man caught in crimes: See your good works! Therefore, if ever a time of tribulation comes upon you, and you begin to stretch out your hands not to the idols you have worshiped but to heaven, and to implore the help of God, let those hear you and deliver you from danger whom you worshiped in your security. God speaks to the same woman through Jeremiah also: Where are your gods which you had made? Let them rise and save you in the time of your evils (Jer 2:28). Where the Seventy translated, Let them rescue you in your tribulation, and we have said, Let those whom you have gathered deliver you, Symmachus translated: Let your synagogues rescue you. He therefore speaks properly to the Jews, that the crowd of their synagogues will not be able to deliver them in the time of siege.
57:13-14
And the wind shall carry them all away, a breeze shall take them off. But he who has confidence in me shall inherit the land and shall possess my holy mountain. And I will say: Make a way, provide a road, turn aside from the path, take away the stumbling blocks from the way of my people. LXX: For the wind shall take all these away, and the tempest shall carry them off. But those who hope in me shall possess the land and shall obtain my holy mountain by inheritance, and they shall say: Make clean the ways before his face, and take away the stumbling blocks from the way of my people. The Jews assert that these things are prophesied of the Babylonians: that when these have been overcome by the power of God, the people return to Judea and possess Mount Zion, and all the hindrances of the journey are taken away, and they suffer the ambushes of no nation, because the Lord has made the way level for his people. And they contend that these things were fulfilled under Zerubbabel and Ezra. But we, joining what is said to what goes before, assert this: that the wind and the tempest take away all the idols which could not deliver them, and they are like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth; but that those who have had confidence in the Lord will possess the land of which we shall read in this same Prophet: He will lift you up to the good things of the land. From this it is clear that this land is not below but above, to which the saint will climb as the Lord lifts him up, the land of which we have often spoken: Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land (Matt 5:4); and I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Ps 26 [27]:13). The holy mountain of God is to be understood as that of which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks: You have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to many thousands of Angels, and to the Church of the firstborn who are written in the heavens (Heb 12:22). We can also understand the land and the mountain of the Lord which the saints are going to possess as the holy Scriptures, which the Lord threatens shall be taken away from the Jews, saying: The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you and given to a nation that produces its fruits (Matt 21:43), so that they may find in them that mountain of which we read in this same Prophet (Isa 2) and in Micah: In the last days the mountain of the Lord shall be manifest (Mic 4:1). And the Lord himself commanded the Apostles and all the teachers of the Church to resolve by their interpretation whatever seemed harsh and difficult, and to provide a way for understanding, and to take all stumbling blocks out of the midst, so that the people of the Lord may understand what it reads without any hindrance and may advance in the fear of God. Of these ways John the Baptist too said: Prepare the ways of the Lord, etc. (Matt 3:3). Where we have put, in the person of God, and I will say, the Seventy put and they shall say: namely those who shall possess the land and obtain the holy mountain of God by inheritance. Nor will they be content with their own salvation, but will also call forth the other peoples to teaching. Symmachus interpreted this place thus: But he who trusts in me shall possess the land, and shall obtain my holy mountain by inheritance, and shall say: Make a straight way, and so on; because he who has possessed the land and the mountain himself instructs the others to prepare a way for the Lord.
57:15
For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, and holy is his name: dwelling in the high and holy place, and with the contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite. LXX: Thus says the Most High, who dwells in the heights for ever, Holy among the holy is his name, the Most High resting among the holy, and giving patience to the fainthearted and life to those who are contrite of heart. The prophetic discourse had begun against the people of the Jews, whose teachers he called blind watchmen and dumb dogs and shepherds who know no understanding, and lawless sons, and the seed of adulterers and of a harlot. After this he came to Jerusalem, whom he reproaches for her fornication, because she enlarged her bed for her lovers, and received them with open hand, and adorned herself for all the idols, and sent envoys far off, so as to enjoy foreign lovers too. This rebuke finished, he comes to those who trust in the Lord, to whom he had promised the land and the mountain as a possession, and for whose return he had ordered the road to be prepared: doubtless to the Apostles, at whose preaching men of both peoples believed. Hence he begins with the praises of God, and in the following discourse bears witness to what he has promised concerning the return of his people. For thus says the Lord, high and lofty, who dwells in the heights, and Holy among the Holy, not by place but by the merit of those in whom he dwells, one of whom says in the psalm: I will exalt you, Lord, for you have upheld me (Ps 29 [30]:2); and again: Be exalted, Lord, you who judge the earth (Ps 93 [94]:2). Not that God is lifted up by human words, but, according to what is said elsewhere, The Lord has become my salvation (Ps 117 [118]:21), he becomes high even for the humble. He resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (Jas 4), so that he may lift them up and dwell in the heights. For the Lord is high, and looks upon the lowly (Ps 137 [138]:6). And in the Gospel the Angels cry out: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace (Luke 2:14). And again in the Psalms: Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights (Ps 148:1). And not only does the high one dwell in the heights, but the holy one also among the holy, he who says in another place: Be holy, for I am holy (Lev 11:44). And just as wisdom does not enter a perverse soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins (Wis 1), so the holy one dwells among the holy; and wherever there is filth, purity cannot dwell, as the saint says to the Lord: But you dwell in the holy place, the praise of Israel (Ps 21 [22]:4). Hence we too dare to say in prayer: Our Father, who are in heaven, hallowed be your name. And in the second psalm we read: He who dwells in the heavens shall laugh at them, and the Lord shall deride them (Ps 2:4). For Christ does not dwell in those who are earthly, but in those who are above the heavens, who tell the glory of the Lord, of whom it is said: May he hear him from his holy heaven (Ps 19 [20]:7). And again: The heaven of heaven is the Lord's (Ps 113 [115]:16). With this sense Moses too, the servant of God, agrees in like words: Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heaven belong to the Lord your God (Deut 10). We must certainly not take this in the Jewish manner, as though God, who is diffused everywhere and by whom all things are contained, were shut in any place and dwelt in heaven alone; rather, let us rightly understand the heights and the heavens as the Saints and the Powers. For he it is who dwells in heaven, of whom it is written in the Gospel: No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven (John 3:13). He rests among the holy and dwells in the humble and in those who are contrite in spirit, of whom it is said: A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise (Ps 50 [51]:19). He gives patience to the fainthearted, so that those set in straits may endure tribulation in the hope of things to come. He gives life, namely to those who were dead through sin. Of him it is said: With you is the fountain of life (Ps 35 [36]:10). He it is who says in the Gospel: I am the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).
57:16
I will not contend for ever, nor will I be angry to the end; for the spirit shall go forth from my face, and I will make the breaths. LXX: I will not take vengeance on you for ever, nor will I always be angry with you. For the spirit shall go forth from me, and I have made every breath. The Lord who dwells in the heights and looks upon the lowly, whose name is holy, and who rests among the holy, who upholds the afflicted and grants life to the oppressed (Ps 112 [113]), has spoken thus: I will not always be angry, nor will I be indignant without end. I strike in order to amend; I kill in order to give life. For I have pity on my creature, and those whom I myself have made I will not allow to perish for ever. My spirit too, which shall go forth from me, or which, according to the Hebrew, Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, surrounds all things (for this is what περιειληθήσεται and περιβαλλεῖ signify), is the quickener of all things. And the breath, or in the plural the breaths (for this is what NASAMOTH נשמות means), I have made, of which it is written elsewhere: Every breath, or everything that breathes, praises the Lord (Ps 150:6). Of this spirit and breath it is written at the beginning of Genesis: God breathed in the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Job says something of the kind: The spirit of the Lord which is in my nostrils, and the breath of the Almighty which teaches me (Job 27:3). Since, then, the spirit goes forth from me, and all things are quickened and live by my breath and inspiration, it is not just that those who are upheld by my breath and spirit should perish for ever. Some of our writers say that this is the spirit by which the whole world is breathed upon and governed, and through which all things have knowledge of God; the distinguished poet, writing of it after the Stoics, says (Virgil, Aeneid 6): In the beginning, the heaven and the earth and the watery plains, the shining globe of the moon and the Titanian stars, a spirit nourishes within; and mind, poured through the limbs, moves the whole mass and mingles itself with the great body; and so on. Others, however, understand the Holy Spirit, who in the beginning was borne over the waters and gave life to all things; who goes forth from the Father, and because of the fellowship of nature is sent by the Son, who says: It is expedient for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you (John 16:7). Of him again he says: When the Paraclete comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who goes forth from the Father (John 15:26). Let it scandalize no one if the Spirit is said to go forth from the Father, since the Son too said of himself: I went forth from the Father and have come; for I did not go forth of myself, but he sent me (John 16:28). Of this Spirit he spoke: I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you always, the Spirit of truth (John 14:16). This is the Spirit of whom Moses also writes: Who will grant that all the people of the Lord be prophets, and that the Lord give his Spirit upon them? (Num 11:29). And Joel, in the person of God: I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy (Joel 2:28). And Zechariah: But receive my words and my ordinances, which I command by my Spirit to my servants the Prophets (Zech 1:6). And again: I will pour out upon Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and of mercy (Zech 12:10). And many other things from both Testaments, which it would take long to repeat now. This alone we say, that the same Prophet has spoken of this Spirit and breath together: Thus says the Lord God, who made the heaven; and a little after: Who gives breath to his people that is upon it, and spirit to those who tread on it (Isa 42:5).
57:17ff.
Because of the iniquity of his covetousness I was angry, and I struck him; I hid, and I was indignant; and he walked mourning in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, and I healed him; and I brought him back, and restored consolations to him and to those who mourn for him. I created the fruit of the lips, peace, peace to him who is far off and to him who is near, said the Lord, and I healed him. But the impious are like the raging sea which cannot rest, and its waves overflow into trampling and mire. There is no peace, said God, for the impious. LXX: Because of sin I grieved him for a little while, and I struck him; and I turned my face away from him, and he was grieved and walked sad in his ways. I have seen his ways, and I healed him; and I comforted him, and gave him true consolation, peace to those who are far off and to those who are near, says the Lord, and I will heal them. But those who are lawless shall be tossed like waves, and shall not be able to rest. There is no joy for the impious, says the Lord God. After the casting off of the people of the Jews and of those who refused to believe in the Savior, he had promised those who have confidence in him the land of the meek and the mountain of the saints, and had commanded the Apostles: Make a way for the returning people, and take all stumbling blocks out of the midst. And lest this seem incredible, he sets forth his power: that, being high and great, he can easily grant pardon to the penitent, and that it is just for the Creator to have pity on his creature. Because of this he adds that he was angry and grieved his people, and that he did so because they had sinned and had the covetousness of iniquity, and were not content with one iniquity, but always added sins to sins. And I struck, he says, him for a short while, in order to heal him, and I hid, understood, my face, so that he might long for me the more and say: Show your face, and we shall be saved (Ps 79 [80]:4). And I was indignant; and he, perceiving this, went about sad, saying: All the day I went about sad (Ps 37 [38]:7). And he walked mourning, or turned, in the way of his heart, so as to do penance not before the faces of men but in his heart. Therefore, seeing the ways of his conversion, I healed the wounds with which I had struck him before. And I brought back to me him whom I had first cast out, and restored to him true consolation; for many are the false consolations by which the human race is deceived. Or: I comforted those who mourn for him, saying in the Gospel: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted (Matt 5:5). What follows, I created the fruit of the lips, has this sense: I have fulfilled what I had promised, saying: As I live, says the Lord, I would rather the repentance of the sinner than his death (Ezek 33:11); or: I have granted all that I had promised before. And what is the Lord's promise? My peace I give you; my peace I leave you (John 14:27). And this is what he now says: Peace upon peace; not to one nation only, but to the whole world: namely to those who were far off and to those who were near, that is, first to the nations, and afterward to those of Israel who were willing to believe. Of these the Apostle too says: To you indeed it was necessary that the word of God be preached; but since you judge yourselves unworthy of salvation, behold, we turn to the nations (Acts 13:46). He, writing to the Ephesians and discussing most fully the people of the Circumcision and of the Gentiles, adds: But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the Blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition, dissolving the enmity in his flesh, and so on (Eph 2:13, 14); and again: And coming, he announced peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near (ibid., 17). For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father: giving peace upon peace to those who had been far off and to those who were near, both those who had not had the Law and the Prophets and those who had received them before, he received them and healed them. But the impious, or lawless, shall be tossed like the raging sea, and shall never be able to rest. Although this can be understood of every impious man, yet it refers properly to the people of the Jews, who cried out with one voice and persevered in their impiety, saying: Crucify, crucify such a one. We have no king but Caesar (John 19:15). As, then, the raging sea cannot rest, but its waves overflow and roll up on the shores and are sucked back again, and breaking upon themselves make a mire that is trampled underfoot, so the impious will be subject to eternal trampling; they have no joy, and they rest in no peace, because they persevere in being impious. Some understand this place specifically of the Savior: that because of the sins of the world he was grieved for a little while, saying: My soul is sorrowful even unto death (Matt 26:38); and that the Father struck him, he who speaks through Zechariah: I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered (Zech 13:7); and that he himself said of himself in the sixty-eighth psalm: For they persecuted him whom you struck (Ps 68 [69]:27); and that God turned his face away from him, so that for a little while he took the form of a servant and walked sad, mourning the sins of the people, lamenting and bewailing Jerusalem; and that the Father, who saw his ways, therefore healed him who was free among the dead, and his flesh did not see corruption, so that he who was struck on the cross might be healed in the resurrection. And I comforted him, he says, giving him the whole world in place of the one nation of the Jews. And those who mourn for him, understood, I comforted; and there is no doubt that he means the Apostles. And he fulfilled the fruit of his lips, he who had said to him: Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession (Ps 2:8): peace upon peace, reconciling the world to God, so that he might call both peoples to himself and be healed by the Father. But the impious, of whom we have spoken above, he compares to the sea, which can never rest, but even in the greatest calm rolls with its waves breaking on the shores, and its end is mire and trampling.
58:1
Cry, cease not; lift up your voice like a trumpet, and declare to my people their crimes, and to the house of Jacob their sins. LXX: Cry with strength, and spare not; lift up your voice like a trumpet, and declare to the people their sins, and to the house of Jacob their iniquities. The preceding chapter finished, in which peace is announced to the righteous and no rest to the impious, God commands the prophet Isaiah to cry with strength, and to lift up his voice like a trumpet, and not to fear to tell the sins and crimes of the people of Israel, by no means afraid of death, nor of the threats and abuse of the impious, but rather considering the Lord who commands him. And because they have deaf ears and can scarcely hear, according to Symmachus and Aquila he is to turn his throat into a horn, which in Hebrew is called SOPHAR (שופר), and which they interpreted as κερατίνην, that is, of horn. Above, indeed, where it was said to the Apostles, Go up onto a high mountain, you who bring good tidings to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good tidings to Jerusalem; lift it up, do not fear (Isa 40:9), neither horn nor trumpet is taken up, but they are ordered to go up the mountain. Here, however, because those to whom the message must be announced were sinners and lingered below, the Prophet is not ordered to go up onto a mountain, but only to lift up his voice like a trumpet and announce to them the wars to come. Besides, of the day of judgment, when the resurrection of the dead and the last trumpet are spoken of, it is written: For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise incorrupt; so that, as they are to be judged at the sound of the trumpet, so Israel, dead in sin, may hear his crimes. And at the same time he is called the people of God, so that he may learn what kind of father he has lost, who calls even a sinner his people.
58:2
For they seek me from day to day, and wish to know my ways, as a nation that has done righteousness and has not forsaken the judgment of its God. LXX likewise. This properly fits the Jews, who run every day to the synagogues and meditate on the law of God, desiring to know what Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did, and what the rest of the saints did, and, turning over the books of the Prophets and of Moses by heart, chant the divine commandments. To them this will most rightly be applied: The wicked will seek me and will not find me. For thus it is written: Everyone who seeks finds (Matt 7); whoever does not find is proved to have sought wrongly. For the Lord is found by those who seek him in goodness, and is shown to those who are not unbelieving toward him. Since, then, they have forsaken the righteousness and the judgment of God, by which names Christ is shown, as the psalmist says, O God, give your judgment to the king, and your righteousness to the king's son (Ps 71 [72]:1), for Christ has become for us redemption, holiness and righteousness (1 Cor 1), in vain do they boast of their knowledge of the law, since the saint glories not in the knowledge of the Scriptures but in works, saying: I have run the way of your commandments, when you enlarged my heart (Ps 118 [119]:32).
58:3
They ask of me the judgments of righteousness, and they wish to draw near to God. Why have we fasted, and you have not looked? Why have we humbled our souls, and you have not known? Behold, in the day of your fast shall be found your own will, and you have exacted again from all your debtors. Behold, you fast for lawsuits and contentions, and you strike with the fist wickedly. LXX: They now ask of me righteous judgment, and they desire to draw near to God, saying: Why have we fasted, and you have not seen? Why have we humbled our souls, and you have not known? For in the days of your fasts your own wills are found, and you afflict all who are subject to you, fasting for lawsuits and quarrels, and you strike the lowly with your fists. This is another rashness of the Jews: as though in the confidence of a good conscience, they demand righteous judgment and imitate the words of the saints, who say: Judge me, Lord, for I have walked in my innocence (Ps 25 [26]:1, 2); and again: Prove me, Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart; and in another place: Judge my cause and redeem me (Ps 118 [119]:154). And they desire to draw near to God, whereas this is not a matter of place but of affection, and not of an idle mind but of laborious work. In short, what it is to draw near to God, Scripture teaches, saying: Seek the Lord; and when he has drawn near to you, let the impious man forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts. For the Lord draws near to those who draw near to him, and to those who righteously pursue what is righteous and can say: But for me it is good to cling to God (Ps 72 [73]:28). For if Almighty God is the Father of truth and righteousness, whoever is a liar and unrighteous cannot draw near to God, of whom it is written: The malicious shall not dwell beside you, nor shall the unrighteous abide before your eyes (Ps 5:6). Why have we fasted, they say, and you have not looked? Why have we humbled our souls, and you have not known? They accuse the Lord of unrighteousness, because he does not regard their good works, and they press upon God only the hunger of the belly, without the work of the virtues: not eating the foods which God created for the faithful and for those who know the truth, to be taken with thanksgiving, but those of which it is written in Proverbs: For these are fed with the foods of impiety, and are drunk with the wine of iniquity (Prov 4:17). Glutted with feasts of this kind, the Pharisee, among his other words of pride, boasted that he fasted twice in the week (Luke 18); he had not drunk the wine of the vine of Sorek, but of the vine of Sodom, whose wine is the fury of dragons and the incurable fury of asps, and their grape is a grape of gall. Them God rebukes through the Prophet: They eat the sins of my people (Hos 4:8); and again: Why have you kept silent about their impiety, and gathered the vintage of iniquities, and eaten the grain of falsehood? (Hos 10:13). Since, then, they had put a question to God, desiring to know why they had fasted and humbled their souls and God had not looked on them, forgetting the ancient history, why he did not look on the gifts of Cain, who offered rightly but did not divide rightly with his brother (Gen 4), not seeing the charity of God, as Scripture says, You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:39): therefore God answered that he does not reject fasts but the works done during fasts, saying: In the days of your fasts your own wills are found, so that you do not God's will but your own wills, which Paul, writing to the Ephesians, rejects: According to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of unbelief, among whom we all too once lived in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of the thoughts; and we were by nature sons of wrath, as the rest also (Eph 2:2, 3). What follows according to the Seventy, And you goad all who are subject to you, or you afflict, Theodotion and Symmachus translated better, and we have followed them in this place: And you exact again from all your debtors. By this he shows that it is not without danger to dun a poor man who is unable to pay, and not to give back to a debtor shivering with cold the cloak you have taken in place of a pledge, lest his cry come to God. For he who has pity on the poor lends to God (Prov 19); and on the contrary he who duns one who has nothing does violence to God. And that we may know that this is the sense in the present place, we are going to read further on in this same chapter: Loose the bonds of impiety, undo the bundles that weigh down. Doubtless he means bonds of debt. For what does it profit for the face to grow pale with fasts, and to fast for lawsuits and quarrels, when Scripture says, He who loves sins rejoices in quarrels (Prov 17:19)? The servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle (2 Tim 2), and imitate him who says: Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart (Matt 11:29), so that the humility be not affected but of the heart, seeking not the glory of men but the conscience of the soul. You fast, he says, and strike the lowly with your fists, and beat them with slaps (1 Tim 3). Hence a bishop must not be a striker. For how can he rein in lust who cannot restrain either his hand or his tongue? Fasts of this kind the Lord rebukes at the beginning of this prophet too, saying: Fasting and idleness, new moons and sabbaths and your other solemnities my soul hates (Isa 1:13). Hence it is commanded through Joel: Sanctify a fast, proclaim a healing (Joel 2:15), so that we may fast from vices, and, by good works and the healing of our sins, our fasts may become holy. Then it follows: Let the bridegroom go forth from his chamber, and the bride from her bridal room, so that in the time of fasting we may be free for prayer, lest our inner man feed on the flesh of the dragon, which was given as food to the peoples of the Ethiopians. And we say these things not as rejecting fasts, through which Daniel too, the man of desires, came to know the future (Dan 9), and the Ninevites appeased the wrath of God (Jonah 3), and Elijah (1 Kgs 19) and Moses (Exod 34), in a hunger of forty days, were filled with the familiar friendship of God, and the Lord himself (Matt 4) fasted as many days in the desert, so as to leave us the solemn days of fasts; but because it does not profit to carry an empty belly and to do other things that displease God. And, to pass over the rest, there are those who disfigure their faces so as to appear to men to be fasting, who, obtaining glory in the present, will be shut out of the kingdom of God, because they have received their reward (Matt 6). Hence the Apostle too says that, even if he hands over his body to martyrdom so as to burn, or to glory (for both are found in the copies), without the charity of God (1 Cor 13), which is in the conscience of the heart, he sheds his blood in vain.
58:4-5
Do not fast as you have until this day, so that your cry may be heard on high. Is this such a fast as I have chosen, for a man to afflict his soul for a day? Is it to twist his head round like a ring, and to spread sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast and a day acceptable to the Lord? LXX: Why do you fast to me as today, so that your voice may be heard in clamor? I have not chosen such a fast, and a day for a man to humble his soul. Not even if you bend your neck like a ring and spread under you haircloth and ashes, not even so shall you call it an acceptable fast. Lest he seem to reject the fast which he himself had commanded, he teaches how one should fast; or rather, before teaching what they should pursue, he instructs them in what they ought to avoid. So that your cry, he says, may be heard on high: do not bring a clamor to prayer, praying in the synagogues and at the corners of the streets so as to be seen by men (Matt 6), and lifting up your voice on high, and proclaiming your fasts and works with the Pharisee, who is condemned by the Lord's judgment (Luke 18). For this reason the Lord, rejecting the prayer of the Pharisees, teaches his disciples how they ought to pray (Matt 6): with the chamber of their breast shut, so that they may speak to God alone, who can hear the silence of the heart; that they may cry in their hearts, Abba, Father (Rom 8:15); and that they may not disfigure their faces, but wash them with water and anoint their head with oil. Of this John the Evangelist too writes: And you have an anointing from the holy one (1 John 2:20); when they have been anointed with it, they too become holy. For God does not seek only affliction and the humbling of the soul through injury to the body, that a man should twist his body like a ring, and bow his neck, and go about sad, according to what is said in the Psalms: I am afflicted and bowed down to the end; all the day I went about saddened (Ps 37 [38]:7); nor that one should be clothed in sackcloth and sleep in ashes, as we read of David and of Ahab (2 Sam 3; 1 Kgs 21); but that along with these he should do the things that follow. Otherwise the Apostle too says that he fasted often (2 Cor 6 and 11), and the Lord teaches that his disciples will fast when the bridegroom has been taken from them (Matt 9); and in the Psalms the penitent says: I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping (Ps 101 [102]:10); And when they were troublesome to me, I put on haircloth (Ps 34 [35]:13). From this we learn that the things the Lord wills must be done first, and the others not passed over.
58:6-7
Is not this rather the fast that I have chosen? Loose the bonds of impiety, undo the bundles that weigh down; let those who are broken go free, and break every burden. Break your bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the wanderers into the house. When you see the naked, cover him, and do not despise your own flesh. LXX: Is not such a fast what I have chosen, says the Lord? But loose every bond of iniquity. Undo the obligations of violent contracts. Let the broken go in release, and tear up every unjust writing. Break your bread to the hungry, and bring the poor without a roof into your house. If you see the naked, cover him, and do not despise those of the household of your seed. After teaching what kind of fast he rejects, he shows what kind he gladly accepts. Loose, he says, the bonds of impiety; undo the bundles that weigh down; or, as the Seventy translated more plainly, the obligations of violent contracts, which our translators, deceived by the ambiguity of the word, that is, συναλλαγμάτων, rendered as exchanges instead of bonds of debt. He means the bundles of papers in which the frauds of moneylenders are contained and by which the poor are oppressed with debt, which in all cities is the chief cause of sedition. Hence the Roman people too occupied the neighboring hills, and hence the New Tables, which the Greeks call χρέων ἀποκοπάς. The Prophet, then, does not command that no one should exact what is owed, especially what he lent justly and justly asks back; otherwise he would be a champion of tribunician sedition. But where the contract is unjust, where the poor are oppressed by fraud, there the bundles of contracts and all the bonds of iniquity must be broken. Or certainly this must be said, since the discourse is about fasts, and a fast involves the affliction and humbling of the soul, while the affliction of the body begs for the pardon of sins: the divine Scripture teaches that we should forgive our debtors, so that the heavenly Father too may forgive us our debts (Mark 11). The old history relates that in the seventh year of release, or in the fiftieth, which is the true Jubilee, all possessions return to their owners, and their former freedom is restored to slaves, and all the debts, which people commonly call contracts, become void (Lev 25 and 27). But if this is commanded in the old Law (Exod 21), how much more in the Gospel, where (Matt 5) all good things are doubled, and we are by no means told to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but to offer the cheek to him who strikes us! And so that we may know that what we said above, You exact again from all your debtors, is written of creditors, something is added more plainly about debtors: Let those who are broken go free, that is, those who are broken by poverty, whom want has afflicted: do not let their children go begging. And break every burden by which they are weighed down. For this the Seventy translated more plainly, and tear up every unjust writing; which Symmachus translated: And break every false contract. But it could happen that someone would say: I have no debtors; what must I do for my fast to be accepted? It follows: Break your bread to the hungry. Not many loaves, lest you plead poverty, but one loaf; and not even the whole of it, but a part of the loaf, which you would have eaten if you were not fasting, so that your fast may not be a gain for your purse but a filling of your soul. And he fittingly added your, lest you make alms out of plunder: For the ransom of a man's soul is his own riches (Prov 13:8); and in another place: Honor the Lord from your righteous labors (Prov 3:9). Surely, if you have no bread, and the multitude of the hungry is very great, give something from which you suffer no loss. A thing in which there is no expense: the poor without a roof bring into your house; or, as it is in the Hebrew, into the house, so that, if you have no house of your own, you may bring them into the little lodging which you hold either on rent or by favor. If you see the naked, cover him. This the Lord too said in the Gospel: He who has two tunics, let him give the other to him who has none (Luke 3:11). For he did not order one tunic to be cut and divided, which many do for the sake of popular favor, but the second not to be kept back; increasing the precepts of righteousness, so that he said that even a cup of cold water held out has its rewards. And do not despise, he says, your own flesh. For every man is our flesh; and according to the Gospel parable of the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and was wounded by robbers, he who did him good is called his neighbor (Luke 10). Or certainly, according to the Seventy, who said, And do not despise those of the household of your seed, let us understand those of the household of the seed as those of whom the Apostle too teaches that alms must be given to all, but above all to those of the household of the faith (Gal 6). For they are our flesh and our seed, who are begotten with us of one parent. To them the Savior also stretched out his hand, saying: These are my mother and my brothers, who do the will of my Father (Mark 3:34, 35). And so that we may know that there is one Lord of both the New and the Old Instrument, the Lord says the same things in the Gospel of those who will stand on the right hand on the day of judgment: Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink; I was sick and in prison, and you came to me; a stranger, and you brought me into your house; and naked, and you clothed me (Matt 25:34ff.). And when they say in humility that they have done nothing for the Lord the Savior, he answers: As long as you did it to one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me. According to tropology we can say this: Let him who fasts from all evils, and wishes his fast to be regarded, not only turn away from evil but also do good, so as to loose every bond of iniquity by which the simple among believers have been bound through the frauds of the heretics; and the στραγγαλιὰς, the obligations of violent treatises, which the Prophet too points out in the psalm, saying: But those who turn aside into obligations the Lord will lead away with the workers of iniquity (Ps 124 [125]:5). For all who are bound with the chains of the heretics turn aside from the Lord, and are like an ox led to the sacrifice; and they choose and exchange falsehood for the truth. Such men, then, who are broken in judgment, let the churchman release and set free; and let him undo and break every writing of the heretics, of whom this same Prophet says: Woe to those who write iniquity; for writers write malice, robbing the judgment of the poor of my people (Isa 10:1, 2), so that they may by no means hold the simple entangled in their snares. And when he has done this, let him break the bread of the Church's doctrine to the hungry, as the Lord too did, giving the broken loaves to the Apostles; he left these to them in seven baskets and twelve hampers, by no means whole as they were held in the Law, but crumbled and broken in the Gospel, so that they might have something to bestow on the poor (Matt 15). Those whom you see not having the warmth of faith, but shivering outside the Church in the cold of unbelief, needy and strangers, bring, he says, into the house of the Church, and cover them with the cloak of incorruption, so that, clothed with the tunic of Christ, they may by no means remain in the tombs, as we read of him who, possessed by a legion of demons, lived naked among the memorials of the dead. And when, he says, you have done this, and your liberality has been laid open to all, do not, in particular, despise those of the household of the faith.
58:8-9
Then your light shall break forth like the morning, and your health shall quickly arise, and your righteousness shall go before your face, and the glory of the Lord shall gather you up. Then you shall call, and the Lord will hear; you shall cry, and he will say: Here I am. LXX: Then your morning light shall break forth, and your healings shall quickly arise, and your righteousness shall go before you in your sight, and the glory of God shall surround you. Then you shall cry, and God will hear you. While you are still speaking, he will say: Here I am. When you have not done the things which the preceding discourse related, and have done these of which we have now spoken, then your fast will be acceptable, and your morning light will break forth: the sun of righteousness, namely, of whom the prophet Malachi speaks in the person of God the Father: For you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, and healing in his wings (Mal 4:2). He who is called the sun there is called the light here. For as the morning light dispels the darkness, so the light of knowledge and truth puts all errors to flight. And your healings, he says, shall quickly arise. For this Aquila, rendering word for word, put: And the scar of your wound shall quickly close over; so that, that is, the wounds of our sins may be closed at the rising of the sun of righteousness, the scar quickly forming over them. Where the Seventy translated τὰ ἰάματά σου, that is, your healings, the Latin translators, led by the likeness of the word ἱμάτια, that is, garments, put that instead. Hence many, deceived by the falseness of the translation, use this testimony to prove the resurrection of the body, wanting the body to be taken as the garment of the soul, which is to arise on the day of resurrection. And your righteousness, he says, shall go before you in your sight (Gen 30:33 LXX), according to what Jacob says: My righteousness will hear me tomorrow; and what is written will be fulfilled: Behold the man and his works. And the glory of the Lord shall surround you, as with a most beautiful garment, so that you may be glorified before God and before men. Then you shall call, and the Lord will hear; you shall cry, and he will say: Here I am, not by voice but by deed, not by an answer but by benefits. This is proved according to the letter in the Gospel too, when the leper said to the Lord, If you will, you can make me clean, and the Lord answered, saying: I will; be clean.
58:10
If you take away the chain from your midst, and cease to stretch out the finger and to speak what does not profit; when you pour out your soul to the hungry, and fill the afflicted soul, then your light shall rise in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday. LXX: If you take away from you the bond, and the ordination, and the word of murmuring, and give your bread to the hungry from your soul, and satisfy the humbled soul, then your light shall rise in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday. The Hebrew word MOTA (מוטה), which in Jeremiah is translated iron collar (Jer 28), is read twice in the present chapter. For in the place where, above, according to the Seventy, we said, Undo the obligations of violent exchanges, let us know that for the one word MOTA they put violent contracts, for which Aquila translated error, Symmachus turning aside, Theodotion κλοιὸν, that is, collar. Again, in the present place, where we have rendered, If you take away the chain from your midst, for chain the Seventy translated συνδεσμὸν, that is, binding together, or bond; Aquila, as above, interpreted it error; Symmachus, going over to Theodotion's view, put collar. Let this be said about the variety of interpretation. For the rest, the sense is joined with what precedes thus: The morning light will rise for you, and your healings will quickly arise, and your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will crown you; and he will hear you at once when you entreat him, and will show that he is present. Only on this condition: that to the works mentioned above you also add these, that you take away from yourself the bond and the chain with which your soul is bound. Of this Peter too spoke to Simon: For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity (Acts 8:23). And Paul grieved, seeing the city of the Athenians bound to idolatry. For each one is bound fast by the cords of his own sins (Prov 5). For these bonds of the soul David too prayed in the psalm: Cleanse me, Lord, from my hidden sins, and from those of others spare your servant (Ps 18 [19]:13). It is hard to find one who is not bound by these chains. Rarely is a soul found that does not have this most heavy collar put around its neck, weighing it down to earthly works, so that it looks not to heaven but to the earth. This is related of the woman in the Gospel too, whom Satan had bound for eighteen years, so that, bent over, she could not see the things of heaven (Luke 13). If, then, he says, you take this chain out of the midst of your heart, and scatter bonds of this kind, and the χειροτονίαν, for which the three other translators with one voice translated the outstretched finger, so that not only do you not think evil yourself and not do it, but you do not even disparage your neighbor and point out each person as if with your finger, and speak what does not profit your soul, considering not your own evils but the errors of others: then you will receive what the following discourse adds. Very many of our writers understand χειροτονίαν, that is, the ordination of clerics, which is accomplished not only by the invocation of the voice but by the imposition of the hand (lest, namely, as we have laughed to see in some places, a clandestine invocation of the voice should ordain clerics without their knowing it), in such a way as to take up the testimony of Paul writing to Timothy: Lay hands hastily on no one, and do not share in the sins of others (1 Tim 5:22). For it is no light sin to cast pearls before swine and to give what is holy to dogs (Matt 7), and to bestow ordination to the clergy not on the holy and those most learned in the law of God, but on one's own hangers-on and on the ministers of base services, and, what is more disgraceful than these, at the prayers of silly women. Here we must consider the wisdom of the Apostle, in whom Christ was speaking, who, to show the danger of ordination, joined to it the torments of those who sin: And do not share in the sins of others. As, then, in the ordination of wicked men he who appoints such men is a partaker of their sins, so in the ordination of saints he who chose good men is a partaker of their righteousness. It follows: And the word of murmuring, understood ἀπὸ κοινοῦ: if you take it away from you. Now the word of murmuring is when God speaks against us, Let the murmuring of this people cease from me, and it shall not die; and we refer our sins to God, to make excuses in sins, and say: The heat of the body overcame me, the incitements of youth conquered me, I was created such by God, poverty forced me to theft. So if we do not do the things that have been said, and do the things that are to be said, so as to give to the hungry not, as above, our bread, but our soul, so as to help him in whatever ways we can, and to give not as if out of sadness and necessity but from the soul, receiving rather than giving a benefit, for God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor 9:7); so as not to refresh the hungry or afflicted soul in part but to satisfy it, and to grieve with those who grieve and mourn with those who mourn (Rom 12): then our light will rise in the darkness, he who says: I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me may not remain in darkness, but may have the light of life (John 12:46). For the lamp of our body is the eye: if it is single, our whole body will be full of light. But if what ought to be light has been turned into darkness, then the whole body will be dark, and it will be said to us: If the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness itself! (Matt 6:23). Let us consider by what great virtues we may come to the light of God, so that the darkness may be turned into noonday, and we may say with the bride: Where do you pasture, where do you lie down, at noonday? (Song 1:6).
58:11
And the Lord will give you rest always, and will fill your soul with splendors, and will deliver your bones. And you shall be like a watered garden, and like a fountain of waters whose waters shall not fail. LXX: And your God shall be with you always, and you shall be filled as your soul desires, and your bones shall grow fat. And they shall be like a drunken garden, and like a fountain for which the water shall not fail. What has been added in the Alexandrian copies at the beginning of this chapter, And still my praise shall be in you always, and at the end, and your bones shall spring up like grass, and shall grow fat, and they shall possess by inheritance unto generation and generations, is not found in the Hebrew, nor even in the corrected and true copies of the Seventy; hence it must be marked beforehand with an obelus. When the darkness, he says, of your breast has been dissolved by the rising of the light, and noonday has arisen in place of a palpable night, then you will always have God dwelling in you, to fill your soul with splendors. Of these we read in the psalm: With you is the principality in the day of your power, in the splendors of the saints; from the womb before the daystar I have begotten you (Ps 109 [110]:3). Or: you will be satisfied with all that your soul desires, because you yourself have satisfied the hungry soul, and you will be able to say: Bless the Lord, O my soul, who fills your desire with good things (Ps 102 [103]:5); and your bones will be delivered from destruction and from everlasting fire. Or: they will grow fat, so as to recover their former stoutness, having been wasted by the famine of the word of the Lord. This indeed we can understand according to the letter of the resurrection of the bodies which are to fall, and also of the virtues of the soul, which the saint signifies when he says in the psalm: All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like you? (Ps 34 [35]:10). Of these it is also written in Proverbs: A good report makes the bones fat (Prov 15:30). And to those to whom rewards are promised: There shall be health for your body, and healing for your bones (Prov 16:24). Of these again it is written: The Lord keeps all their bones; not one of them shall be broken (Ps 33 [34]:21). On the contrary, he who is a sinner, and has lost the strength and virtue of the soul, laments and says: Our bones are scattered beside hell (Ps 140 [141]:7). For we cannot believe that the bones of sinners are not in hell but beside hell. And a good report makes the bones fat (Prov 15:30), which has nothing to do with the fattening of the body. It follows: And you shall be, or it shall be, that is, either you or your soul, like a watered garden; of which it is written: A fountain went forth and watered the whole face of paradise (Gen 2:6), where in the Hebrew garden is read. This fountain we can call no other than him to whom it is said, With you is the fountain of life (Ps 35 [36]:10), who unceasingly waters his Church and the hearts of all believers.
58:12
And the deserts of ages shall be built up in you; you shall raise up the foundations of generation and generation; and there shall be called in you the builder of hedges, turning the paths into rest. LXX: And the places desert from of old shall be built up for you, and your foundations shall be everlasting for generations and generations; and you shall be called the builder of the wall, and you shall make the paths in the midst to rest. Not only, he says, will your light rise in the darkness, and your darkness be like noonday, and the Lord give you rest always, and you be like a watered garden, and the rest, but there shall be built up in you the things that had been desert for a long time; and the foundations of your dwellings will be laid to endure through many generations; so that either you yourself will be called the builder of hedges and walls, or one will arise in you who will be the builder of hedges and will turn the paths into rest, or, according to the Seventy, will make the tracks in the midst to rest. The Jews, and the friends only of the letter that kills, refer these things to the restoration of the cities of Palestine; and they contend either that they were done under Zerubbabel and Ezra and Nehemiah, or that they will be in the last time: that for the restoration of Jerusalem and of the cities round about, very deep foundations are to be laid, and walls built so high that none of the enemy can enter, and the entry of all foes into them is barred. But we, following the order of the explanation we have begun, say that the things that had been desert among the Jews are built up in the Church, not for a short time but for ever, and that its foundations are to be raised up from both peoples, that is, in two generations. Hence the Apostle said: As a wise architect I have laid the foundation; another builds upon it; but let each one see what he builds upon it (1 Cor 3:10); and in another place: We are God's husbandry, God's building; and again: Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets (Eph 2:20); and that she, or he who was born in her, is to be called the builder of hedges. Of him we read in the psalm: A man was born in her, and the Most High himself has founded her (Ps 86 [87]:5). These hedges and walls (for this is what φραγμοῦς signifies in the Greek tongue) Scripture records as being set around a field and vineyards: You brought a vine out of Egypt; you cast out the nations and planted it; and a little after: Why have you broken down its wall, and all who pass by the way gather its vintage? (Ps 79 [80]:9 and 13). And in this same Prophet: A vineyard was made for the beloved; describing it in beautiful language, he adds: I built a tower and surrounded it with a wall (Eccl 2:4). Whoever breaks it down, according to Ecclesiastes, a serpent will bite him. It was surrounded for this purpose, that the approach of all beasts into the vineyard of God might be barred. This is the crooked serpent who deceived Eve in paradise; because she had broken down the precepts of God, she was therefore open to his bites, and heard from the Lord: You shall watch for his head, and he shall watch for your heel (Gen 3:15). In the place where we, lest we seem to innovate in anything, interpreted according to the Seventy, because the testimony is widely known, and you shall be called the builder of hedges, in the Hebrew is read and there shall be called in you GODER PHERES גדר פרץ, which Aquila interpreted περιφράκτης διακοπῆς, which we can render according to the sense as one who sets himself against the raging anger of God. Indeed, Symmachus translated setting a wall against the one who strikes (1 Sam 7), such as were Moses and Aaron and Samuel, who withstood the anger of the Lord and, as though by building a wall, set a limit to his indignation. This is also said to Jeremiah: that he should not run to meet the Lord, nor wish to resist his anger, and so shut off his indignation by prayers as by a kind of wall (Jer 7); and to Moses, as though the Lord were being held back by him: Let me go, he says, and I will strike this people (Exod 32:10). A builder, then, of walls, ramparts and hedges of this kind will turn the paths into rest, so that the wrath of God may by no means rage, but the Lord may be appeased toward them, and all the paths of indignation may come to rest.
58:13
If you turn away your foot from the sabbath, from doing your own will on my holy day, and call the sabbath delightful, and the holy of the Lord glorious, and glorify him while you do not make your own ways, and your own will is not found to speak a word. LXX: If you turn away your foot on the sabbaths, so as not to do your own wills on the holy day; and you shall call the sabbaths delightful, holy to the Lord; you shall not lift your foot to work, nor speak a word ÷ in anger from your mouth ⁚. To the one to whom he had said above, Is not this rather the fast that I have chosen: loose the bond of impiety, undo the bundles that weigh down, and the rest, he now too promises rewards, if he is willing to do the things that follow (Exod 20): namely, that he restrain his foot on the sabbaths, and not do his own wills, nor stain the holy day of the Lord with his wills. It is commanded in the Law that on the sabbaths we should do no servile work, kindle no fire, sit in one place, and do only those works that belong to the salvation of the soul. If we take this according to the letter, it cannot be fulfilled at all. For who can do this: sitting the whole day and night on the sabbath, not go away from one place, or rather not even move slightly, since if he did he would be a transgressor of the law? From one commandment, then, which is impossible according to the letter, we are compelled to understand the rest spiritually as well: that we should not do servile work and lose the freedom of the soul, for he who commits sin is the slave of sin (John 8); that we should not carry a burden on the sabbath, such as he carried who says: My iniquities have gone up over my head; like a heavy burden they have weighed heavily upon me (Ps 37 [38]:5); that the iniquity which sits upon the talent of lead should have no power in us; that the pleasure and lust of the body should not set us on fire (Zech 5), for all adulterers, their hearts are like an oven (Hos 7); and the fiery darts of the devil are there to shoot in the dark at the upright of heart (Ps 10 [11]). We are commanded too that, having taken hold of the plow, we should not look behind us; that, having climbed to the height of the roofs, we should by no means wish to come down to take the garments of the world (Luke 9); but that we should hear with Moses, But you, stand here with me (Exod 34:2); and sit with the Lord, weary on the way of this world, at the well of the Samaritan woman, thirsting for the conversion and salvation of those who stray (John 4); that we should hear the Apostle warning, Be firm and immovable (1 Cor 15:58), lest we suffer what Judas the traitor suffered, who lost the place of his ministry and became a transgressor; and let us always remember that sentence: If the spirit of him who has power rises up against you, do not leave your place (Eccl 10:4). He who rests thus on the sabbath washes his hands among the innocent, and does not move his feet to do his own wills: he keeps the delightful sabbaths of the Lord. This sabbath rest, according to the Epistle written to the Hebrews, is promised to us in the heavens, and glory is prepared (Heb 4): so long as we do not make our own ways on the sabbath, nor is our own will found, to speak a word; that is, that we sin neither in deed nor in word. Otherwise, if these things are forbidden only on the sabbath, then on the other six days freedom to sin is granted us. And since it is foolish to believe this, it remains that the sabbath, which means rest, must be sanctified by the faithful at all times, while they do the wills not of the flesh but of the soul. What is added according to the Seventy, in anger from your mouth, is not found in the Hebrew. To this sabbath, to be celebrated with all festivity, the Savior calls us in the Gospel, saying: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest (Matt 11:28); for this is what ἀναπαύσω ὑμᾶς signifies: that, laying down the burdens of sins, we may keep sabbath in Christ and say: He has set my feet upon a rock (Ps 39 [40]:3), and may avoid what the saint says he almost suffered: But my feet were almost moved (Ps 72 [73]:2).
58:14
Then you shall delight upon the Lord, and I will lift you up above the heights of the earth, and I will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob your father. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. LXX: And you shall be confident upon the Lord, and he will lift you up above the good things of the earth, and he will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob your father. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. When you have called the sabbaths delightful, and have not moved your foot on the sabbath to do servile work, nor spoken a word, that is, have always kept silent and fulfilled what is commanded, Keep your tongue from evil, and let your lips speak no deceit (Ps 33 [34]:14), then you will delight in the Lord, and will see fulfilled in yourself: Delight in the Lord, and he will give you the petitions of your heart (Ps 36 [37]:4). Or: you will have confidence in the Lord, according to what is written: He who trusts in the Lord is blessed; and in Jeremiah: Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and the Lord shall be his hope (Jer 17:7); and elsewhere: It is good to trust in the Lord rather than to trust in man (Ps 117 [118]:8). And the Lord will lift you up and raise you above the heights and good things of the earth. For the land of the meek and the land of the living is not below but above. Thus it is said to Lot as he fled from the valley of Sodom and Gomorrah: Save yourself on the mountain (Gen 19); and after he had reached it, the sun rose for him in Zoar. Of this land the Lord said: Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land (Matt 5:4); and many other things which we have often used, among which is this: Honor your father and your mother, and you shall be long-lived upon the land which the Lord your God will give you (Exod 20:12). According to the letter this cannot stand at all; for many honor their parents and die soon, and other men, parricides, live a long time. But so that we may know more surely that this land is in the heights, let us briefly recall the thirty-sixth psalm, in which it is written: The meek shall possess the land, and shall feast in the abundance of peace. After this it adds: Wait for the Lord and keep his ways, and he will lift you up to possess the land (Ps 36 [37]:11); of which it is sung in another place: The righteous shall possess the land, and shall dwell upon it for ever and ever (ibid., 34). This too is impossible: for if the earth shall pass away, this one certainly which we inhabit, how shall the righteous dwell upon it for ever and ever? From this we learn that there is a land which is set in the heights. After this it adds: And I will feed you, or the Lord will feed you, with the inheritance of Jacob your father. For as he who has the faith of Abraham is called a son of Abraham, so he who supplants vices and sins is called a son of Jacob; and whose virtue anyone imitates, his son he is also called. The good things of the land set in the heights, with which the son of Jacob is satisfied, must be taken as those which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man (1 Cor 2). Of them it is written in the Epistle to the Hebrews: For those who say these things show that they seek a homeland; and if indeed they were seeking that from which they had come out, they had time to return to it. But now they desire a better homeland, that is, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 11:14ff.). From this we learn that the fable of the thousand years, in which marriages are promised again, and foods, and the conduct of an earthly life, is to be rejected. For if in the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like the Angels, because they are sons of the resurrection (Matt 22); and the Apostle speaks of the belly and foods: Food for the belly, and the belly for foods; but God will destroy both the one and the other (1 Cor 6:13): how shall we seek again, in an incorrupt, spiritual and immortal body, the vices of our former mortal and corrupt flesh? And we say this not as denying the substance of the glorified body, but as taking away entirely the former works in those who are like the Angels. Otherwise, even in this body of ours we imitate the angelic virtues by fasts and continence and perpetual chastity and charity, and yet we do not lose the substance of our bodies. That we may believe all these things to be future, let us know that they have been promised by God, whose mouth has spoken; so that, as in the hands we understand work, and in the feet walking, and in the belly generation, and in the ears and eyes hearing and sight, so in the mouth we may understand the speech of God.
59:1-2
Behold, the hand of the Lord is not shortened, that it cannot save, nor is his ear made heavy, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have divided between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he would not hear. LXX: Is the hand of the Lord not able to save, or is his ear made heavy, that it cannot hear? But your sins separate between you and God, and because of your sins he has turned his face away from you, so as not to have mercy. The things which I have now said I will do, You shall be confident in the Lord, and he will lift you up to the good things of the land, and will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob your father, I could have fulfilled before as well. For my hand is not shortened and drawn in, so that I cannot stretch it out to set my people free; nor do I have deaf ears, so that I cannot hear. From this it is shown that the ears of the Lord, which hear the righteous and do not hear sinners, are by no means like our ears, which hear equally the voice uttered, whether of righteousness or of unrighteousness. But the sins, he says, of yours, like a wall set up in the midst, divide you and God. Hence the Savior too in his passion made both one (Eph 2), and, dissolving the middle wall of partition, destroyed the enmity in his own flesh, so that those whom the wall of sins had divided the blood of Christ might join together. He opened the gate of paradise, which had been shut for a long time (Gen 3), and quenched the fiery sword with his own blood, so that the thief might hear: Today you shall be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43). What follows, And because of your sins he has turned his face away from you, so that he would not hear, or so as not to have mercy, shows this: that he could not bear the stench of their sins and their iniquities, but turned away his face, so as not to see their foulness and be compelled at once to strike. Hence the sinner, longing to see the face of the Lord, says in the psalm: How long, Lord, will you forget me to the end? How long will you turn your face away from me? (Ps 12 [13]:1). And elsewhere: Show your face, and we shall be saved (Ps 79 [80]:4).
59:3-4
For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken falsehood, and your tongue utters iniquity. There is none who calls for righteousness, nor is there any who judges truly; but they trust in nothing and speak vanities. LXX: For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with sins. Your lips are defiled with iniquity, and your tongue meditates unrighteousness. No one speaks righteous things, nor is there righteous judgment. They trust in vain things and speak empty things, iniquities and sins. What he named above in general, he now sets out in its parts. And we must note that he by no means charges them with the idolatry in which they were held in the times of Isaiah, but with the shedding of blood, of which he had already spoken before: The righteous man perishes, and there is none who considers it. And righteous men are taken away, and no one understands in his heart. For the righteous man has been taken away from the face of iniquity; his burial shall be in peace, and he shall be taken from the midst (Isa 57:1, 2). And although they themselves did not lay hands on the Lord the Savior, yet by crying with one voice of impiety, His blood be on us and on our children (Matt 27:25), they are guilty of his death and have defiled hands. Of them the same Prophet testifies, saying: If you lift up your hands to me, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood (Isa 1:15). Their lips too and their tongue speak iniquity and falsehood, so that instead of Christ they promise themselves the Antichrist; and there is no one among the people who calls for righteousness and judges truth, or, as it is in the Hebrew, faith, that is, who believes in Christ; but they trust in nothing and speak vanities. Hence the Apostle commands that we should not give heed to Jewish fables and the commandments of men who turn away from the truth (Titus 1). For truly they trust in nothing and follow vanities; in which the Lord's prophecy is fulfilled: I have come in the name of my Father, and you have not received me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive (John 5:43).
59:5-6
They have conceived toil and brought forth iniquity; they have broken the eggs of asps and woven the webs of the spider. He who eats of their eggs shall die, and what has been warmed shall break out into a basilisk. Their webs shall not serve for a garment, nor shall they be covered with their works. LXX: For they are in labor with pain and beget iniquity. They have broken the eggs of asps and woven the web of the spider. And he who wishes to eat of their eggs, breaking one, will find it rotten, and in it a basilisk. Their web shall not serve for a garment, nor shall they be covered with their works. Those who await the coming of the Antichrist, and cannot say, From your fear, Lord, we have conceived, and been in labor, and brought forth; we have wrought the spirit of your salvation upon the earth (Isa 26:18), rightly conceive pain and bring forth iniquity, so that the one whom they seek with much labor they may receive in iniquity. Of their father it is written: He conceived pain and brought forth iniquity (Ps 7:15). These break and burst the eggs of asps, so as to take their poisons into their own minds; to them it is said in the Gospel: Serpents, brood of vipers (Matt 3:7). And he fittingly set down the eggs of asps and serpents, which are said to produce eggs first. And because they not only retain the poisons of malice in their hearts, but also meditate on the law of the Lord day and night, muttering old wives' fables, therefore it is said: And they weave the webs of the spider, with which they catch flies and gnats and small creatures; but if anything strong comes against them, it flies through as though through empty air. He who eats, he says, of their eggs shall die, that is, he who yields to their counsels, as Abel yielded to Cain when he said, Let us go out into the field (Gen 4:8), will at once be killed; or, as the Seventy translated: He who wishes to eat of their eggs, crushing one, will find it rotten, and in it a basilisk. For he who, deceived at first sight, thinks them the eggs of hens and other birds, which are harmless to eat, if he breaks one before he eats, will at once perceive a most foul stench and stink, and in what has been warmed he will find a basilisk; or, according to Symmachus and Theodotion, an asp. Aquila put a viper, for which in the Hebrew is read EPHEE (אפעה). He, then, who, hearing the Jewish traditions, wishes to prepare himself for the feasts of the thousand years, and, entangled in the delights of the promises, to stretch out his hand to the egg: if before he eats, that is, before he yields to deadly words, he is willing first to consider what is said, and to examine each word and handle its reasoning, he will at once find that in them the Antichrist is being prepared. According to the Hebrew, then, he who eats of their eggs shall die. But he who, according to the Seventy, is willing to break them first, and to look more carefully and see what lies hidden, will find a most foul stench, and the serpent, the prince of all, the devil, lying hidden in their traditions. And because he had said above, They weave the webs of the spider, he explains that the weaving of these webs does no good. Their labor, he says, and all their doctrine does not make the garment of Christ, nor a cloak by which the nakedness of the soul may be covered; but they sweat with fruitless labor, as this same Prophet says: This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain do they worship me, teaching the doctrines and precepts of men (Isa 29:13); following these, they neglect the law of God. And so that we may know that works are signified by the web, he added: Nor shall they be covered with their works. Some explain this place thus: The eggs of asps they have split, or broken: that is, they abandoned all the biting words of the Prophets, and wove for themselves the smooth speeches of the false prophets; and whoever eats of them will be struck by the serpent, and will understand that the words of falsehood have profited him nothing.
59:7-8
Their works are useless works, and the work of iniquity is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they hasten to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are useless thoughts; desolation and destruction are in their ways. The way of peace they have not known, and there is no judgment in their steps. Their paths have become crooked to them; everyone who treads in them does not know peace. LXX: For their works are works of iniquity, and their feet run to malice; swift to shed harmless blood; and their thoughts are the thoughts of fools. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known, and there is no judgment in their ways. For their paths are perverse, which they pass along, and they do not know peace. Therefore they are not covered with their works, because their works are works of iniquity, which the Apostle calls unfruitful, that is, having no fruits (Eph 5). And their feet run to evil and hasten to shed harmless blood (Prov 1). For they had this custom in the slaying of the Prophets too. To them Stephen said: For which of the Prophets did your fathers not persecute? (Acts 7:52). And the Lord in the Gospel: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the Prophets and stone those who are sent to you (Matt 23:37); and again: All the righteous blood that has been shed upon the earth shall come upon you, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the Temple and the altar (ibid., 35). Hence it is said to them above as well: For your hands are defiled with blood, and your tongue speaks iniquity (Isa 59:3). And through this practice of cruelty and blasphemy they came to the slaying of the Lord, just as Judas too came by the way of avarice to murder, or rather to sacrilege joined with avarice. What follows, Their thoughts are the thoughts of fools; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known, and, above, Their feet are swift to shed blood, the Apostle set down in Romans (ch. 3). Many, not knowing this, think it was taken from the thirteenth psalm, in which the verses were added in the common edition and are not found in the Hebrew; about this we spoke more fully at the beginning of this volume. Rightly did they not know the way of peace, who refused to receive its author. For he is our peace, who says to the Apostles: My peace I give you, my peace I leave you (John 14:27); and to Jerusalem: If you knew the things that are for your peace; for the days shall come upon you, and your enemies shall surround you with a rampart, and besiege you, and dash your children to the ground (Luke 19:42, 43). And those who have not received peace consequently have no judgment in their ways either: namely him of whom it was said above, Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved whom my soul has loved; he shall bring forth judgment to the nations (Isa 42:1). It follows: Their ways are perverse, not by nature, but by their own will. For whatever is perverted and bent is twisted from straight into crooked. The whole doctrine of the Pharisees is a subversion of the truth; whoever walks by it not only does not find peace, but does not even know it, so as to know what he ought to seek.
59:9ff.
Because of this judgment is far removed from us, and righteousness will not overtake us. We waited for light, and behold, darkness; for brightness, and we have walked in darkness. We have groped for the wall like the blind, and we have felt about as if without eyes; we have stumbled at noon as in darkness; in dark places as dead men. We shall all roar like bears, and like doves we shall moan in meditation. We waited for judgment, and there shall be none; for salvation, and it is far removed from us. LXX: Therefore judgment has departed from them, and righteousness does not overtake them. While they waited for light, darkness came upon them. Waiting for it, they shall walk in darkness; they shall grope for the wall like the blind, and shall feel about as though having no eyes. They shall fall at noon as at midnight; like dying men they shall groan; like a bear and like a dove they shall walk together. We waited for judgment, and there is none; salvation has departed far from us. After the accusation of the people of the Jews, the Prophet answers in their person what they ought to say as penitents, if indeed they wish to recover health after their wounds. And I wonder why the Seventy framed the speech as though the Prophet were speaking about them, and not they themselves answering the Prophet's words, when in what follows, overcome by the truth, they did this very thing, saying: We waited for judgment, and there is none; salvation has departed far from us. For our iniquity is great in your sight, and our sins have withstood us, and the rest. In the present time, then, all things are fulfilled. Judgment, which has been announced to the nations, is far removed from the Jews; and righteousness, which has been laid hold of by the nations, will not overtake them. They waited for the light, saying, Send forth your light and your truth (Ps 42 [43]:3), which had been promised them through the Prophets, and they have been seized by the darkness of error. They waited for brightness, and they walked in darkness. So they grope at the holy Scriptures like the blind feeling for a wall, seeking in them only the words and the leaves, not the sense and the fruit which is held in the letters. Then he adds and says: We have stumbled, or we shall fall at noon as in darkness; in dark places, as dead men. For while the sun of righteousness flashes its brightness over the whole world, they linger in darkness, namely as men dead in sin. We shall all roar, he says, like bears, and like doves we shall moan in meditation; so that they are at once cruel and wretched: fierce and savage toward the lowly and those subject to them, fearful and trembling toward those who are stronger, whom they dread as doves dread hawks. We read in another place too: Like a she-bear robbed of her cubs; and in Daniel the bloody kingdom, in which there are three rows of teeth, is compared to a most ferocious she-bear (2 Sam 17:8; Dan 7). And like doves we shall moan in meditation, without sense and understanding of the Scriptures, meditating only on the words, which they chant by heart. But just as the doves of which it is written, Ephraim is like a dove that has no sense (Hos 7:11), and as in the Gospel the simplicity of doves is set against the malice of serpents (Matt 10), so in the present place simplicity without prudence, which is close to folly, is shown in the mere meditation of words. They will wait for judgment, and there will be none; for salvation, understood, they will wait, and there will be none, because it has gone far away to the nations. Here it must be noted that everything is said in the future tense, so as to indicate what the Jews are now enduring.
59:12ff.
Our iniquities are multiplied before you, and our sins have answered against us; for our crimes are with us, and we have known our iniquities: to sin and to lie against the Lord; and we have turned away so as not to go behind our Lord, so as to speak calumny; and we have conceived transgression, and have spoken from the heart words of falsehood. And judgment is turned backward, and righteousness has stood far off, for truth has fallen in the street, and equity could not enter. And truth has been given over to forgetfulness, and he who departed from evil lay open to be a prey. LXX: For our iniquity is great in your sight, and our sins have withstood us. For our iniquities are in us, and we have known our unrighteousnesses. We have acted impiously, and we have lied, and we have departed from our God. We have spoken unjust things and been disobedient. We have been in labor with and meditated from our hearts unjust words. And we have departed from judgment, and righteousness has stood far off, for truth has been consumed in their ways, and they could not pass by the straight road. And truth has been taken away, and they turned aside their mind so as not to understand. He gives the reasons why they roared like bears and meditated like doves, and waited for a judgment that was not there, and for a salvation that passed over to the nations: because multiplied, they say, are our iniquities in your sight, from which you had turned away your face for a long time, so as not to see them, so as not to strike. And our sins have answered against us, so that we have received what we deserved. And our crimes are with us, and we have known our iniquities, which, while we committed them for a long time, we thought to be righteousness. And what are the iniquities? To sin and to lie against God; or, as Aquila translated according to the Hebrew, to deny God: which refers to the Savior. And we have forsaken, they say, our God, saying: We know that God spoke to Moses; but as for this man, we do not know where he is from (John 9:29); so as to speak calumny: If this man were from God, he would not break the sabbath (ibid., 16); and: By Beelzebub the prince of demons he casts out demons (Luke 11:15). And transgression, which in Greek is called more expressively ἀπόστασις, when someone denies God and is convicted of prevarication. We have conceived and spoken from the heart words of falsehood, despising the law of God and following the traditions of men, which they call δευτερώσεις, and which we feigned in our heart: And judgment is turned backward, and righteousness has stood far off. For what share has righteousness with iniquity? What agreement has Christ with Belial? Righteousness has taken its stand among the nations and has departed from us, because truth has fallen in the street. For wide and spacious is the way that leads to death (Matt 7), because they would not enter the narrow way in which truth abides. And truth has been given over to forgetfulness, of which it is written: Truth has sprung from the earth, and righteousness has looked down from heaven (Ps 84 [85]:12). Here we must observe that truth is named often, so that the person of Christ might be shown; forsaking him, they followed falsehood. And he who departed from evil lay open to be a prey. Although this seems obscure, it can be explained thus: when we were fashioning falsehood from our own heart and forsaking the law of God, righteousness stood far off, and truth fell in the streets, and equity could not enter in to us, and the Son of God, who is the truth, was given over to forgetfulness; so much so that whoever wished to depart from the traditions of the Jews at once lay open to plots and persecutions, so that they cast out of the synagogues the man blind from birth who had received his sight (John 9). And after the resurrection of the Lord the Savior they persecuted and stripped all who believed in him, to whom the Churches from the whole world of the nations sent ministrations, for them to distribute through the hands of the Apostles.
59:16-17
And the Lord saw, and it appeared evil in his eyes, that there is no judgment; and he saw that there is no man, and he was at a loss, because there is none to meet him. And his own arm will save for him, and his righteousness itself has strengthened him. He has put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon his head. He has put on the garments of vengeance, and is covered as with a cloak of zeal. As for vengeance, as for the repayment of indignation to his foes, and recompense to his enemies, he will repay recompense to the islands. LXX: The Lord saw, and it did not please him, because there was no judgment. And he saw, and there was no man. And he considered, and there was none to defend. And he avenged them with his arm, and upheld with mercy. And he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and set the helmet of salvation on his head. And he was wrapped in the garment of vengeance, and in a cloak, as one repaying vengeance, reproach to his adversaries. Up to this point the prophetic discourse has been woven in the person of the people; now the prophet speaks in his own person. When they said these things, the Lord saw that they made a show of repentance with the mouth and did not practice it in the heart, and it did not please him. For he sought in them the truth of judgment, which had been transferred to the nations, and did not find it. He longed for some righteous man who could meet him in his anger, and did not find one; he who had said above as well: I came, and there was no man; I called, and there was none to hear (Isa 50:2). And because, while they persisted in their crime, not even one righteous man was found, but all had turned aside, together they had become useless, and there is none who does good, there is not even one (Ps 13 [14]), he strengthened him with his arm and righteousness, or mercy, so that those who wish to be converted from error may be preserved not by their own merit but by the clemency of God. Then he put on the breastplate of righteousness, and the helmet of salvation, and the garments of vengeance, and was wrapped in the cloak of zeal; and thus armed he went forth to war, to render vengeance to his enemies, doubtless meaning the Jews who persevered in their blasphemies, and recompense to his foes, when the Roman army surrounded them; and in their victory the Lord is shown to have fought. Paul used this testimony when writing to the Ephesians, wishing us to put on the armor of Christ, by which we may resist the fiery darts of the devil (Eph 6). And what is not found in the Seventy Translators, He will repay recompense to the islands, signifies the cities of Judea, which the Roman army laid waste. For above too (Isa 20) the Lord speaks through the Prophet to the inhabitants of the island, that is, of Jerusalem.
59:19-20
And those from the West shall fear the name of the Lord, and those from the rising of the sun his glory, when he comes like a violent river which the spirit of the Lord drives on; and the redeemer shall come to Zion, and to those who return from iniquity in Jacob, says the Lord. This is my covenant with them, says the Lord: My spirit which is in you, and my words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of the seed of your seed, says the Lord, from now and for ever. LXX: And those from the West shall fear the name of the Lord, and those from the rising of the sun the glorious name. For the wrath of the Lord shall come like a violent river, ÷ it shall come with fury ⁚ and he who delivers shall come from Zion. And he shall turn away impieties from Jacob, and this shall be my testament to them, says the Lord. My spirit which is in you, and my words which I have given in your mouth, shall not fail from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your seed, says the Lord, from now and for ever. After the Lord has put on the breastplate of righteousness, and the helmet of salvation, and the garments of vengeance, and the cloak of zeal for the fight, and has come to the contest and to vengeance, to repay his foes and render to his enemies, and to overthrow their islands, that is, their cities and villages, then the foreigners who are to come from the West and the East to rest in the bosom of Abraham (Matt 8), of whom it was also said above (cf. Isa 49:12), Behold, these shall come from afar, some from the West, and others from the North, and others from the land of the Persians, will fear the Lord with that fear which is the beginning of wisdom (Sir 1). Of this we read in many places, of which let us set down a few: Blessed is the man who fears the Lord (Ps 111 [112]:1); and: There is no want for those who fear him (Ps 33 [34]:10); and: The fear of the Lord is discipline and wisdom (Prov 15:33); and: Come, children, hear me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord (Ps 33 [34]:12); and: Blessed is the man who fears the Lord (Ps 127 [128]:4); and: The fear of the Lord adds days (Prov 10:27). That, once Israel has been rejected, the crowd of the nations takes its place, the prophet Malachi teaches more fully, in whom it is said to the Jews: I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord Almighty, and I will not accept a sacrifice from your hands (Mal 1:10, 11); and again of the multitude of the nations: For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among the nations. The author of this blessedness is he who will come like a violent river which the spirit of the Lord drives on; or, as Aquila translated, like a narrow river, the spirit of the Lord its seal; or Theodotion, like an assailing river, the spirit of the Lord is sealed. In this testimony, then, as the Seventy translated it, like a violent river the wrath of the Lord shall come with fury, the last part is not found in the Hebrew. For wrath and fury are not to be set among the promises of God, since in the other things that follow there is the blessedness of things to come, and the threat and punishment of sinners. According to Aquila and Theodotion, the spirit of the Lord which is sealed in Christ confirms the example which is read in John the Evangelist: For him God the Father has sealed (John 6:27); of whom it has already been said before: A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up from its root, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and the spirit of the fear of the Lord has filled him (Isa 11:1ff.). Hence we too say: The light of your countenance, Lord, is sealed upon us (Ps 4:7). And in Ezekiel the foreheads of the men who groan are sealed with the impression of THAV, the Hebrew letter which is the last among them (Ezek 9). But if we wish to know how the Holy Spirit is a violent river, let us read again the Acts of the Apostles, in which it is written: And when they were gathered together, suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a violent wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues parted as of fire, and it sat upon each of them; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:2, 3). It follows: The redeemer of Zion shall come, and of those who return from iniquity in Jacob, says the Lord. For this the Seventy translated: He who delivers shall come from Zion, and shall turn away impieties from Jacob. If, then, he who turns away the impieties from Jacob will come from Zion, we understand this: that a man was born in Zion, and the Most High founded her, he who turns away the crimes of Jacob. But if the redeemer shall come to Zion, and to those who return from iniquity in Jacob, says the Lord, this is the sense: Christ will come, who will redeem Zion with his blood; or, according to the Hebrew idiom, he who is the kinsman of Zion and was begotten of the stock of Israel; for this is what GOEL (גואל), that is, ἀγχιστεὺς, means. And lest we think that all of Zion is redeemed and freed from its crimes, Zion which is bloodied with the blood of the Lord, he added significantly: to those who return from iniquity, if they are willing to do penance, in whom the Lord's prayer may be fulfilled: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34). Theirs, then, is the redemption in Zion, and theirs the kinsman, who from Jacob have received him; and to them he promises, saying: This is my covenant with them, or pact, as all the others translated, or testament, as the Seventy put it. What the covenant, pact and testament is, the following verse shows: My spirit, he says, which is in you, and my words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your seed, from now and for ever. This is said either to Isaiah, as it seems to me, or to the Lord, as very many think. With reference to Isaiah, then, the order is connected thus: This is the everlasting pact of the Gospel: that my spirit which is in you, and my words which I have put in your mouth, by which you foretell things to come, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from that of your sons and grandsons and your seed, so that every generation in succession is indicated: namely, that the grace of the Prophets comes upon the Apostles, and through those of Israel who are to believe through the Apostles. What he adds, from now and for ever, agrees with that testimony: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away (Matt 24:35). Paul, explaining this place carefully, writes to the Romans that there is no distinction of Jew and Greek, but the same Lord of all, rich toward all who call upon him (Rom 10); and that the nations did not believe in such a way that Israel was wholly driven out. For I too, he says, am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast off his people whom he foreknew (Rom 11:1, 2). And a little after, when he had set down the example of Elijah, complaining to the Lord that he alone was left, and hearing from him that the Lord had left for himself seven thousand men who had not bent the knee before Baal (1 Kgs 19), he added: So then at this present time also a remnant has been saved according to the election of grace. And if by grace, it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. What then? What Israel was seeking, this it has obtained; but the election has obtained it, and the rest have been blinded. And they, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in. For God is able, he says, to graft them in again (Rom 11:5ff.): not against nature from the wild olive, as the multitude of the nations was grafted in, but according to nature into the good olive, that is, into their own. And at the end he set down, so as to arrive at the present chapter: For I would not have you ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own eyes: that blindness has befallen Israel in part, until the fullness of the nations should come in, and so all Israel should be saved, as it is written: He who delivers shall come from Zion, and shall turn away impieties from Jacob; and this is my testament to them, when I take away their sins (Rom 11:25ff.). We have pursued these things at greater length so that we may understand that whatever promises we have read, and are going to speak of, concerning Zion and Jerusalem, are said not generally to all the Jews, but specially to those of Israel who were chosen in the Apostles and through the Apostles.
Book Seventeen
How many mysteries the number seventeen, which the book of the Explanations on Isaiah has now reached, holds in the holy Scriptures, I should like, Eustochium, virgin of Christ, to run through in a brief discourse. But since I cannot say everything in every place, I give only this brief reminder: that the psalm which is headed with the title of this number is of David, the servant of the Lord, and that he sang the words of the Song on the day on which the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul, and said: I will love you, O Lord, my strength, and the rest. Now the servant of the Lord is he to whom the Father speaks in Isaiah: It is a great thing for you to be called my servant (Isa 49:6). And in another place: Behold my servant whom I have chosen, and my beloved in whom is well pleased my soul (Isa 42:1). This servant, whose name means strong of hand, on the day on which the Lord delivered him from the hand of Saul, which in our language sounds as sought for or hell, and from all his enemies, who cried out against him: Crucify, crucify such a one (Luke 23), when he ascended as victor to the Father in tawny garments from Bozrah, spoke among other words of one triumphing these: Deliver me from the contradictions of the people; you will set me as head of the nations. A people which I did not know has served me; at the hearing of the ear it has obeyed me (Ps 17 [18]:44, 45). And again concerning the people of the Jews: Alien sons have lied to me; alien sons have grown old, and have limped away from their paths (ibid., 46); to whom Elijah too had said: How long do you limp on both feet (1 Kgs 18:21)? Moreover, a thing that is hard to find in others, this psalm is contained both in the history of Samuel and in that of the Chronicles (2 Sam 22). This number, advancing by increments from one up to seven, comes to the twenty-eighth psalm, which is itself also inscribed 'of David', for the completion of the tabernacle, when the angels are commanded: Bring to the Lord, sons of God; bring to the Lord the young of rams. And all the mysteries of saving baptism and of the Church are sung in it together: The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of majesty has thundered; the Lord is upon many waters; the voice of the Lord in power (Ps 28 [29]:1). And a little after: The voice of the Lord preparing the stags, and he has revealed the thickets, and in his Temple all will speak glory (ibid., 3, 10). And to show the multitude of believers he added: The Lord makes the flood to be inhabited, and the Lord will sit as king for ever. And again, when the mystery of eight is added, it makes the thirty-sixth psalm, the alphabetical one, whose beginning is: Do not be envious among the evildoers, nor be jealous of those who work iniquity. Its exposition belongs not to a preface but to a volume of its own. And not to rehearse many things now: growing by increments up to the number fifteen, in which are the Psalms of the Steps, and in which the vessel of election stays with Peter at Jerusalem, it makes the number one hundred and twenty, those who were the first to believe in Christ and who climbed with the Apostles to the upper room of faith (Acts 5); and the Holy Spirit came down upon them (Gal 1). And after that, advancing in order up to the number seventeen, and possessing the dignity of the Gospel, at the Lord's command it takes from the right-hand side one hundred and fifty-three great fish and places them in the Church (John 21). To her now also the prophet Isaiah speaks.
60:1ff.
Arise, be enlightened; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth, and thick gloom the peoples; but upon you the Lord will rise, and his glory will be seen in you. And the nations will walk in your light, and kings in the brightness of your rising. LXX: Be enlightened, be enlightened, ÷ Jerusalem ⁚ for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Behold, darkness will cover the earth, and thick gloom upon the nations. But upon you the Lord will appear, and his glory will be seen in you. And the nations will walk in your light, and kings in your brightness. What we thought about the restoration of Zion and Jerusalem, and about everything that is promised to her by the prophetic oracle, we said more fully at the end of the preceding book, where we explained what that little verse meant: The redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who return from iniquity in Jacob. Now we must touch briefly on what most people think of this passage, so that, once the error has been seen through, we may more easily take up the truth. The Jews and our half-Jews, who expect a golden and jewelled Jerusalem from heaven, contend that these things will come to pass in the kingdom of a thousand years, when all the nations are to serve Israel, and the camels of Midian and Ephah, coming from Sheba, will bring gold and incense, and all the sheep of Kedar will be gathered, and the rams of Nebaioth will come to be sacrificed upon the altar of the Temple that will have been built. They say too that from the islands, and above all in the ships of Tarshish, her daughters will fly like doves, bringing riches of gold and silver; that the walls of Jerusalem will be built by foreigners, with the kings of the nations set over them; that the gates of the city will always stand open, so that by day and by night the riches of Jerusalem and the victims may be brought in; and that everything that lies desolate will be rebuilt with cypress and pine and cedar cut in Lebanon, above all the Temple of the Lord, in which there will be everlasting gladness; so that she will suck the milk of the nations and eat the riches of kings, and there will be such an abundance of all things that they will have gold for bronze, silver for iron, bronze for wood, iron for stones. Her princes too, they say, will enjoy everlasting peace, and bishops will preside over the peoples in righteousness, and her gates will be carved in relief. And what is greater than these, instead of the sun and the moon the Lord himself will shine with everlasting light; and for one man she will have a thousand very strong men, and for little ones she will possess very mighty nations. So say those who desire earthly pleasures, and seek beauty in wives and a great number of children, whose god is their belly and whose glory is in their shame (Phil 3); and whoever follows their error confesses himself, under the Christian name, to be like the Jews. Others, however, assert that all these things were promised to the Jews in a carnal sense, if they had received him who says in the Gospel: I am the light of the world (John 8:12), which enlightens every man coming into the world; so that, just as victims were granted to the people of Israel, not because they were good in themselves, but so that they might not be offered to demons, so too the Lord promises these things to the gluttonous Jews, who seek nothing but the pleasures of the body, so that at least for the sake of their carnal desires and an abundance of wealth they might receive the Son of God; and since they did not receive him, the promises too, they say, became void. Thus to the Canaanite woman pleading for her daughter: I did not come, he says, except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 15:24). And to his disciples: Do not go away into the way of the nations, and do not enter the cities of the Samaritans; go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 10:5, 6). For this reason the Apostles too first proclaimed the Lord in the synagogues, and when these did not receive the Gospel they said to them: It was necessary that the word should be preached to you; but since you have not received salvation, behold, we turn to the nations (Acts 13:46). For the light came into the world, and the Jews loved darkness rather. Hence the Lord too, when he had wept over Jerusalem, added: If you also had known the things that make for your peace (Luke 19:42). And since she did not receive it, he went on: But now a day will come upon you, and your enemies will surround you with a rampart, and hem you in, and bring you down to the ground together with your children (ibid., 43). But let us, following the former sense, believe that all of this is said to the Church, which was first gathered from the Jewish people, and which through the Apostles passed on to the nations the light that had risen upon her. To her it is said: Arise, be enlightened, so that she who fell in the unbelievers may rise in the faithful; she who fell in the synagogues may rise in the churches; and, once she has risen, may be enlightened, so that she may have no darkness of error at all. For your light, he says, has come, the light that all the Prophets promised, which you were ever awaiting. And the glory of the Lord, which was once upon the tabernacle and his Temple, has risen upon you; of which it is said: Glorious things have been said of you, city of God (Ps 86 [87]:3). For behold, darkness will cover the earth, that is, those who savor earthly things; and thick gloom the peoples, or, as we read in the Hebrew, the tribes: which refers properly to the Jews, of whom it is written in another psalm: For there the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord, the testimony of Israel (Ps 121 [122]:4). But upon you the Lord will rise, the sun of righteousness, and his glory will be seen in you, of which it is written: And we saw his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). And the nations will walk in your light. We all shall walk in the light of the Apostles, which shines in the world, and the darkness did not comprehend it. And kings, he says, in the brightness of your rising, when you were first born in Christ. This is fulfilled both spiritually and carnally: so that kings whose heart is in the hand of the Lord, and in whose mortal body sin does not reign (Prov 21), may walk in the brightness of the newborn Church, or in him who has risen in the Church, and may bow their necks to the faith of Christ, the true king (Rom 6). And we see this fulfilled daily, when the Roman princes, the error of idolatry and the fury of persecution being removed, pass over to the faith and tranquillity of Christ. There are some who await in a time to come all these things which we relate as partly fulfilled and wholly to be fulfilled from the first coming of the Savior until the consummation of the world, when, as the fullness of the nations comes in, all Israel is to be saved (Rom 11). Their opinion is by no means to be rejected, provided we know that these things are to be fulfilled spiritually and not carnally. Further, the name Jerusalem and of the nations, which the Seventy set down here, is not found in the Hebrew, and must be marked beforehand with an obelus, against those who assert that everything said here is said to Jerusalem.
60:4
Lift up your eyes round about and see: all these have gathered and come to you. Your sons will come from afar, and your daughters will suck at your side. LXX: Lift up your eyes round about, and see all your sons gathered. All your sons have come from afar, and your daughters will be carried upon the shoulders. It is said to the Church, Zion, which was first gathered through the Apostles; of whom we also read in the Acts of the Apostles that devout men from the whole world were in Jerusalem, who received the word of God, and in the tongues of their own and of foreign nations either heard others speaking or themselves spoke to the rest (Acts 2). And they are commanded to lift up their eyes round about, which the Lord too commanded the Apostles, saying: Lift up your eyes and see, for the crops are already white for the harvest (John 4:35). For out of Zion, and by no means out of Mount Sinai, the law will go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And she is commanded to lift up her eyes and see her sons gathered, who come from afar. To her it is said in another place too: Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion, proclaim, daughter of Jerusalem: Behold, I come, and I will dwell in your midst, says the Lord (Zeph 3:17); and: Many nations will come to the Lord, and they will be my people, and I will be their God (Zech 2:11). Now we are the sons who come to the Lord from afar, once strangers to the Testament of God and to his promises, having no hope, and without God in the world. But what does the Apostle say? You who were once far off have now been brought near (Eph 2:13). And what follows, And your daughters will suck at your side, signifies that souls that are sucklings in Christ, and in the infancy of baptism, of whom the apostle Peter too speaks, Like newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile (1 Pet 2:2), suck the milk of the apostles. To such babes and sucklings Paul also spoke: My little children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ be formed in you (Gal 4:19). And in another place: As a nurse cherishing her children, so, longing for you, we desire to impart to you not only the Gospel of Christ but our own souls as well (1 Thess 2:7, 8). But what is said instead of this in the Seventy, your daughters will be carried upon the shoulders, must be considered more carefully. For the sons, who are strong, come from afar by themselves and are gathered to the faith of the Lord. But the daughters, who are weaker and, through the frailty of their sex, have not yet come to the perfect man, are carried on the shoulders of the Apostles, so as to be brought into the bosom of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
60:5
Then you will see and overflow, and your heart will marvel and be enlarged, when the multitude of the sea has been turned to you, and the strength of the nations has come to you. LXX: Then you will see, and you will fear, and you will be astonished in heart: because the riches of the sea, and of the nations, and of the peoples will be transferred to you. When you have lifted up your eyes and beheld your sons and daughters either coming swiftly by themselves or carried on the shoulders of the saints, then you will rejoice, and like rivers you will overflow with sudden waters, and your heart will marvel and be astonished, nay rather will be enlarged, as it hears the Apostle: My mouth is open to you, O Corinthians. And again: Be enlarged, and we too (2 Cor 6:11); lest through narrowness of heart you should be unable to have as your guest Christ, who says in the Gospel: I and the Father will come and will make our dwelling with him (John 14:23). But what is added in the Seventy, and you will fear, is not found in the Hebrew; unless perhaps, after the greatness of the joy, fear crept in, lest she lose so great a good. Or is it not joy to see riches, and the multitude of the sea being transferred and turned to oneself, and the strength of the nations coming to oneself, so that whatever is in the world and on the face of the earth is one's own; and, the faith of the nations being strengthened, to say: I can do all things in him who strengthens me, Jesus Christ (Phil 4:13)?
60:6-7
A flood of camels will cover you, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah. All from Sheba will come, bringing gold and incense, and proclaiming praise to the Lord. All the flock of Kedar will be gathered to you; the rams of Nebaioth will minister to you; they will be offered upon my altar of propitiation, and I will glorify the house of my majesty. LXX: And herds of camels will come to you, and the camels of Midian and Gephar will cover you: all from Sheba will come, bringing gold and incense, and they will proclaim the salvation of the Lord. All the sheep of Kedar will be gathered to you, the rams of Nabaeoth will come, and they will be offered as propitiatory upon my altar; and the house of my prayer will be glorified. After the riches of the sea and the strength of the nations, herds of camels too, and the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah, are promised to Jerusalem, all of which will come from Sheba carrying gold and incense, and, what is greater than these, proclaiming the salvation of the Lord. All the sheep of Kedar too will be gathered to the Church, and the rams of Nebaioth will come, or, as is written in the Hebrew, will minister, and will be offered, or will offer victims upon the altar of the Lord, so that his house may become renowned. Midian and Ephah are regions beyond Arabia, fertile in camels, and the whole province is called Sheba, whence came also the queen of Sheba, who came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, she too bringing gold and incense, carrying much to the peaceable king and receiving greater things from him (1 Kgs 10). Kedar is the region of the Saracens, who in Scripture are called Ishmaelites. And Nebaioth is one of the sons of Ishmael, from whose names the desert is called, which, poor in crops, is full of flocks. Through the familiar names of barbarian nations, then, that are neighbors to Israel, the conversion of the whole world is proclaimed. For in this place Midian means iniquity; Ephah, loosed, or pouring out; Sheba, conversion, or captivity; Kedar, darkness; Nebaioth, prophecies. So herds of camels, loosed from the bonds of iniquity and pouring out their souls to God, will cover Jerusalem with gifts, and all will come from captivity and in their conversion, bringing the gold of faith and the incense of sacrifice. And through these gifts, by no means content with their own salvation, they will advance so far as to proclaim the salvation of God to others as well. That rich man in the Gospel who, like a camel, carried the burdens of riches, and was a camel, would not listen to the Lord's counsels nor be unloaded, so that, the pack cast off, he might fly to heaven on the wings of a dove; therefore he went away sad. And of a camel of this kind the Savior speaks: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man into the kingdom of heaven (Matt 19:24). He set forth the difficulty of the thing, not its impossibility. Indeed your mother Paula, of holy memory, and your brother Pammachius passed through the eye of a needle, that is, through the strait and narrow way that leads to life, into the kingdom of heaven, leaving behind with its burdens the broad way that leads to Tartarus. Nay, whatever they had they carried into the gifts of the Lord, fulfilling what is written: The ransom of a man's soul is his own riches (Prov 13:8). For the things that are impossible with men are possible with God (Matt 19). Having among their gifts the chief things, gold in understanding and incense of the sweetest odor, and saying: Let my prayer be directed as incense in your sight, and: We are the good odor of Christ in every place (2 Cor 2:15), they proclaim daily the salvation of the Lord by the example of their virtue, so that all the sheep of Kedar may be gathered in the Church and pass from the darkness of error to the light. And let the rams of the Prophets, of whom it is sung in the twenty-eighth psalm, Bring to the Lord, sons of God, bring to the Lord the young of rams, come and be offered, or, according to Theodotion, offer themselves as a sacrifice to the Lord, and become propitiatory victims, so that the Church of Christ may be glorified. Of sheep of this kind the Savior spoke to his disciples: Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 10:6). And again: My sheep hear my voice (John 10:27). And more fully in Ezekiel: Behold, I will seek my sheep and visit them, as a shepherd seeks his flock. Thus says the Lord: I will seek the lost, and bring back the straying, and bind up the broken, and strengthen the weak, and guard the strong, and I will feed them with judgment (Ezek 34:11, 12). And so that we might know who the sheep were, he puts it more plainly: And they will know that I am the Lord their God, and they are my people, the house of Israel, says the Lord God; and you are my sheep, and you are all the sheep of my flock, and I am the Lord your God (ibid., 27, 28). If anyone among the nations is rich, then, let him be saved as a camel, not without gifts and offerings, with which he may proclaim the word of the Lord. If anyone is of the simplicity of sheep and of the authority of rams, let him go up, or be offered upon the altar of the Lord by those who have the power, so that his house may be glorified. But what we noted as written in the Hebrew, The rams of Nebaioth will minister to you, and they will offer upon my altar of propitiation, is properly understood of those who, chosen from the nations for the priesthood, are ministers of the Savior. And if anyone is contentious, and contends that these things were promised in a carnal sense, let us answer him: We have no such custom, nor has the Church of God (1 Cor 11:16). And let us say this too: that even if they were promised carnally to the Jews, still they were promised under a condition, namely that if they had received their light, which had been sent to them, then these things also would follow; that is, that through the desire of gold and an abundance of wealth and of carnal things, by whose allurements this nation was always captivated, they might receive the Son of God sent to them; and since they did not receive him, all was taken away, and the inheritance was given back spiritually to those who received him.
60:8-9
Who are these who fly like clouds, and like doves to their windows? For the islands wait for me, and the ships of the sea in the beginning, that I may bring your sons from afar, their silver and their gold with them, to the name of the Lord your God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he has glorified you. LXX: Who are these who fly like clouds, and like doves with their young to me? The islands have waited for me, and the ships of Tarshish among the first, to bring your sons from afar, and their silver and gold with them, for the sake of the holy name of the Lord, and because the Holy One of Israel has been glorified. Since the Lord entered Egypt upon a light cloud, and commanded the clouds of the Prophets, to whom the truth of God has come, not to rain showers upon Israel, the Church, first gathered from the people of the Circumcision, marvels that a crowd of nations is flying to her from the whole world, and, having taken the wings of the Holy Spirit, is hastening, according to Symmachus and Theodotion, to their windows, according to Aquila to their floodgates, in order to enter the Church. Or that teachers with their disciples, that is, doves with their young, are flying to the Church from the islands of the nations, which, according to the oracles of the Prophets, will wait for the Lord. The ships of THARSIS (תרשיש) too, that is, of the sea, of which we spoke more fully in the vision of Tyre, will bring the sons of the Church in the beginning of faith, carrying gold and silver. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation (Rom 10:10). Of this gold and silver it is written in the sixty-seventh psalm: The wings of a dove covered with silver, and her hinder parts in the gleam of gold (Ps 67 [68]:14). And in the seventy-first psalm: The kings of Tarshish and the islands will offer gifts, and the kings of the Arabians and of Sheba will bring presents (Ps 71 [72]:10). All these things are brought to the name of the Lord God and to the Holy One of Israel, who has glorified him.
60:10ff.
And the sons of strangers will build your walls, and their kings will minister to you. For in my indignation I struck you, and in my reconciliation I have had mercy on you. And your gates will be open continually; they will not be shut by day or by night, so that the strength of the nations may be brought to you, and their kings be led in. For the nation and the kingdom that will not serve you will perish, and the nations will be laid waste with desolation. LXX: And foreigners will build your walls, and their kings will stand by you. For because of my wrath I struck you, and because of mercy I have loved you. And your gates will be open always; they will not be shut by day or by night, so that they may bring in to you the strength of the nations, and their kings who are to be led in. For the nations and the kings that will not serve you will perish; the nations will be made desolate with desolation. Among the other things with which the Church is enriched and the city of the Savior is built, foreigners too and the sons of strangers build her walls, so that the enemy cannot enter nor faithlessness find a place. Foreigners and strangers properly signify the people of the nations, who truly built up the Church of Christ, so much so that their kings and princes minister to her, or stand by her. This is taken either carnally or spiritually. If carnally, we see the Roman Caesars bow their necks to the yoke of Christ, build churches at public expense, and issue decrees of law against the persecutions of the heathen and the snares of heretics. If spiritually, whoever among them are princes in continence, eloquence and holiness, and subjugate the servitude of the flesh to the rule of the soul, these minister to her and stand by her, or give aid to her whom he often forsakes because of her negligence, or strikes with the rod of persecutors, so that he may again love her for his own mercy's sake. Or certainly this must be said: that she who was once afflicted and handed over to captivity in the people of the Jews he reconciles to himself in the calling of the nations, so that her gates are always open, and are shut neither by day nor by night, and stand continually open to those who desire to be saved; that is, that entrance to her is not denied to those who wish to believe, whether in joy or in tribulation. And let the strength, or the riches, of the nations be brought in to her, and let their kings minister to her, or be led to her as captives. This you will understand when you see the most eloquent men led to the faith of Christ, and the wisdom of the wise made foolish, and the prudence of the prudent rejected (1 Cor 1), so that the foolishness of God is wiser than men. But the nation and their kings who refuse to render the Church a good and profitable service, so as to pass over into apostolic dignity, will perish with the perdition that is prepared for the ungodly; and whatever was in them who refused to have God as their guest will be reduced to desolation.
60:13-14
The glory of Lebanon will come to you, the fir and the box and the pine together, to adorn the place of my sanctification; and I will glorify the place of my feet. And the sons of those who humbled you will come to you bowed down, and all who disparaged you will worship the footprints of your feet, and they will call you the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. LXX: The glory of Lebanon will come to you, in cypress and pine and cedar together, so that my holy place may be glorified, ÷|÷ and I will glorify the place of my feet ⁚ And the sons of those who humbled you will go to you in fear, ÷ and provoked you ⁚ and all who provoked you will worship the footprints of your feet; and you will be called the city of the Lord, Zion, of the Holy One of Israel. Much is lacking in the Seventy, which I have set down from the Hebrew under asterisks, and what they added I have marked beforehand with an obelus. Lebanon is a mountain of Phoenicia, planted with lofty trees, which the Psalmist describes when he says: I saw the ungodly exalted above measure and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon (Ps 36 [37]:35). And in another place: The Lord will break the cedars of Lebanon (Ps 28 [29]:5). And many other things which I pass over for the sake of brevity. From this mountain Hiram king of Tyre once sent timber to Solomon at Joppa, for building the Temple of God (1 Kgs 5). From it too Scripture now promises that the fir and the box and the pine, or, according to the Seventy, the cypress and the pine and the cedar, or, according to Aquila, the fir, thaadaor, and thaassur, or, according to Theodotion, Brais, Thadaar, and Theassur, are to be cut together, so that the temple of Zion may be built (2 Chr 2). If that is so, where will the golden and jewelled Jerusalem be? Where the wife of the Lamb? Where the twelve gates adorned with a variety of gems? Unless perhaps she will have jewelled walls and foundations, and the Temple, which ought to be more richly adorned, will be built of wood! For this reason we are compelled to take everything spiritually: that the fir, the cypress, the pine and the cedar, once lofty trees of Lebanon, have glorified the Temple of God and the place of his feet, and made it renowned. And not to draw out the sense in a long discourse: do not the holy man and most eloquent martyr Cyprian, and Hilary, the confessor of our own time, once lofty trees in the world, seem to you to have built the Church of God? And what follows, And the sons of those who humbled you will come to you bowed down, or returning, and all who had disparaged you will worship the footprints of your feet, we ought to understand of those who are Christians not by will but by necessity, and who bow with fearful minds through dread of offending those who reign. Or certainly that those who were formerly persecutors afterwards believed: such as was the apostle Paul too, who persecuted the Church of God and was afterwards called a vessel of election (Acts 9). When these things have been so fulfilled that the fullness of the nations enters in, then all Israel will be saved. And she will truly be called the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel, who stands upon the watchtower and has been gathered from both peoples.
60:15-16
Because you were forsaken and hated, and there was none who passed through I will make you the pride of the ages, a joy from generation to generation; and you will suck the milk of the nations, and you will be suckled at the breast of kings. And you will know that I am the Lord who saves you, and your redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. LXX: Because you were forsaken and hated, and there was none who helped, I will make you an everlasting exultation, a joy of generations unto generations. And you will suck the milk of the nations, and you will eat the riches of kings. And you will know that I am the Lord who has saved you, and who has rescued you, the God of Jacob. She who before had been forsaken and hated, when the branches in you were broken off because they had not borne fruit, branches which were broken off for this reason, that there was no one who passed through and offered help there, of whom it is said in the psalms, And those who passed by did not say: The blessing of the Lord be upon you (Ps 128 [129]:8): therefore I will make you an everlasting pride, or an exultation and joy of two generations, other branches from the wild olive of the nations being grafted in place of the former branches, which contrary to the nature of the pattern will bear fruit, not of the former bitterness but of the sweetness which they have drawn from the root. You will suck too the milk of the nations, and you will be suckled at the breast of kings. What sense this passage has we explained more fully above, when discussing the little verse, Your sons will come from afar, and your daughters will suck at your side. Or, according to the Seventy, you will eat the riches of kings. These riches, according to the Hebrew truth, are the breasts of kings and teachers, by which the infancy of those born in Christ is instructed and nourished. When you have sucked these and have come to solid food, so that you also eat the riches of such kings, then you will know that I am your Savior, who redeemed you with my blood, or the mighty God of Jacob.
60:17ff.
For bronze I will bring gold, for iron I will bring silver, and for wood bronze, and for stones iron; and I will make your visitation peace, and your overseers righteousness. Iniquity will no more be heard in your land, devastation and destruction in your borders; and salvation will occupy your walls, and praise your gates. LXX: For bronze I will bring you gold, and for iron I will give you silver, and for wood I will grant you bronze, and for stones iron. And I will give your princes in peace, and your bishops in righteousness; and iniquity will no more be heard in your land, nor destruction and misery in your borders; but your walls will be called salvation, and your gates carving. The same thing, according to the nature of its position, is a genus to one, a species to another. And so as not to seem to say anything about the arts of rhetoric and dialectic, I shall give common examples which can instruct the simple reader. My son, who in relation to me is a species and has me as his genus, is a genus to his own son. I shall give another: what is greater to one is smaller to another. A centurion is greater than a common soldier, smaller than a tribune. Five are few compared with ten, many compared with one. So in the restoration of the spiritual Jerusalem, wood will be turned into bronze, and stones will be changed into iron; that is, men once brutish and senseless will be changed into those materials which provide some use to the city. And the bronze and iron themselves, through the increase of virtues, will be changed into gold and silver, so that they have not merely the appearance of usefulness but value as well and beauty. What gold and silver signify in the holy Scriptures we have often said. I will make, he says, your princes in peace, and your bishops in righteousness. For which it is written in the Hebrew: I will make your visitation peace, and your overseers righteousness. Here is the admirable majesty of holy Scripture, that it named the future princes of the Church bishops, all of whose visitation is in peace, and the title of whose dignity is in righteousness: so that they do not respect persons in judgment, and nothing unjust is heard in the land of the Church, nor destruction and unhappiness in her borders. For wherever there is iniquity, and righteousness is not kept, and peace is lost, all these things follow. But instead of all these, he says, salvation will occupy your walls, or the Savior, which in the Hebrew reads JESUS, which properly sounds as the name of the Lord. For he himself is the strength of the walls of the Church, which has her gates in the praise of the Lord, so that those who enter her may first learn to praise the Lord and to confess his name. But as for the Seventy having translated γλύμμα, that is, carving, instead of praise, we can say this: that the gates of the Church, through which we enter her, ought to be engraved with all the virtues.
60:19-20
You will no longer have the sun to give light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon illumine you; but the Lord will be to you an everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun will no more go down, and your moon will not wane, for the Lord will be an everlasting light, and the days of your mourning will be ended. LXX: And you will no longer have the sun for the light of day, nor will the rising of the moon give you light by night; but the Lord will be to you an eternal light, and God your glory. For the sun will not go down for you, and the moon will not fail you. And the Lord will be an everlasting light, and the days of your mourning will be ended. From this passage we are compelled to refer everything that has been said and is still to be said to the last time, when, as heaven and earth pass away, the office of the sun and the moon will cease, and the Lord himself will be a perpetual light; so that what the χιλιασταὶ assert is to be fulfilled carnally, we believe will come to pass spiritually, differing from them in the nature of the promises, not in the time. To them this must briefly be answered: if for false prophets and sinners the sun goes down at noon, and on the contrary for those who fear the Lord the sun of righteousness rises, why should he not always rise for the saints who says, I am the light of the world (John 8:12), who shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend him (John 1)? For the sun will not burn us by day, nor the moon by night (Ps 120 [121]:6), because we have the Lord as a perpetual light, and the days of our mourning will be ended; we shall by no means be lamenting over the overthrow of Jerusalem, but rejoicing at the building up of the Church. For blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who weep, for they shall laugh. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled (Matt 5). So that, once they have been filled with the flesh of the Lord, they may pour forth the word of the Lord and tell their works to the king (Ps 44 [45]).
60:21-22
And your people will all be righteous; they will inherit the land for ever, the shoot of my planting, the work of my hand, for glorifying. The least will become a thousand, and the little one a very mighty nation. I the Lord will do this suddenly in its time. LXX: Your people, all righteous, will possess the land for ever, keeping the planting, the works of their hands, for glory. He who is small will become thousands, and he who is least a great nation. I the Lord will gather them in time. When the days of mourning are finished and completed, when sorrow will be turned into joy, the people of Zion will be all righteous, not for a short time but for ever; and because it is righteous, it will possess the land of the gentle. Nor is it to be wondered at if, to receive the good things of the promise, it holds the land of the meek and of the living, for which the Prophet sighs, saying: I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Ps 26 [27]:13), since it is the shoot of the Lord's planting and the work of his hands for glorifying God. For every planting, he says, which my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up (Matt 15). Or, according to the Seventy, the people that keeps the planting of God and the works of the Lord's hands will be preserved in the glory of the Creator. Of the good planting God speaks through Jeremiah: I planted you a good vine, wholly true, which in Isaiah is called the vine of Sorek (Isa 5). And because Paul, conscious of the virtues of Christ speaking in him, could say, Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ (1 Cor 11:1), he therefore said to the Corinthians: I planted, Apollos watered, but the Lord gave the increase (1 Cor 3:6). For those planted in the house of the Lord will flourish in his courts (Ps 91 [92]). Then he who was a little one will become thousands, hearing from the Lord: Have authority over five or ten cities (Luke 19:17, 19), so that he is called a χιλίαρχος. And he who had said with the Apostle, To me, the least of all the saints, this grace was given (Eph 3:8), will be prince of a great nation in the heavens, when at the appointed time the Lord sends his angels, and they gather to him all the saints from the height of heaven to its summit (Matt 24): not only from Israel but also from the people of the nations, signifying whom he said: And I have other sheep which are not of this fold, and them also I must gather, that there may be one flock and one shepherd (John 10:16). And he will do this suddenly, so that when everything has been despaired of, then they may be gathered into a very mighty nation. And although we see these things being fulfilled in part daily in the Church, yet they will be more fully fulfilled at the consummation of the world and at the second coming of the Savior.
61:1ff.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the meek, to heal the broken in heart, and to preach indulgence to the captives, and opening to those who are shut in; and to proclaim a year of favor to the Lord, and a day of vengeance to our God; to comfort all who mourn; to appoint for those who mourn in Zion, and to give them a crown instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, a mantle of praise instead of a spirit of sorrow. LXX: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken in heart, to preach remission to the captives and sight to the blind, to call an acceptable year to the Lord, and a day of retribution, to comfort all who mourn, to give to those who mourn in Zion, to give them glory instead of ashes, the anointing of gladness to those who mourn, a garment of glory instead of a spirit of sorrow. He who said above, I the Lord will gather them in time, or, according to the Hebrew, I the Lord will do this suddenly in its time, says next, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me: not that the Lord God has a Lord God, but that, according to the dispensation of the flesh he assumed, he speaks the things that are lowly. To him the Psalmist had already said: You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of exultation above your fellows (Ps 44 [45]:8). For when fellows are named, understand the nature of the flesh, since God has no fellows of his substance. And because the anointing was spiritual, and by no means of a human body, as it was among the priests of the Jews, he is therefore said to have been anointed above his fellows, that is, the other saints. His anointing was fulfilled at the time when he was baptized in the Jordan, and the Holy Spirit came down upon him in the form of a dove and remained on him (John 1). Of him this same Prophet also said: A rod will come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower will rise up from its root, and the spirit of God will rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and godliness (Isa 11:1, 2). Hence the Savior too, after he was baptized in the Jordan, when he had come to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, entered their synagogue on the sabbath day, according to custom; and when he had stood up to read, the book of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and on opening it he found written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor, to preach remission to the captives and sight to the blind, to set the broken at liberty, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Then he rolled up the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them: Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your ears; and all bore witness to him, and marveled at the words of grace that came forth from his mouth. If, then, the prophecy was fulfilled at that time, how do some refer what is said here to the times of the consummation? Unless perhaps we can say this: that what was then fulfilled in part is to be fulfilled more fully when the whole people of God will be righteous. For now we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect has come, the things that are in part will be done away (1 Cor 13). He was anointed, then, with the Holy Spirit to bring good news to the poor, or the meek, saying to them in the Gospel: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:3). And: Blessed are the gentle, for they shall possess the land (ibid., 4). And he was sent to heal those who are broken in heart (Luke 4), and who say: A broken and humbled heart God does not despise (Ps 50 [51]:19). Or, according to Symmachus and Theodotion, to bind up the wounds of sinners, to preach remission to the captives, sight to the blind, or opening to those who are shut in, which Symmachus translated more plainly, release to those in chains. Of whom, or rather to whom, it is said above: Behold, I have set you as a light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to lead out the bound from their chains, and from the prison house those who sit in darkness (Isa 42:6, 7). By the acceptable year and the day of retribution understand the whole time of his preaching, during which he lived in the flesh. This the apostle Paul too interprets of the first coming of the Savior, saying: Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation (2 Cor 6:2). Of this we spoke more fully above (cf. Isa 60). But if retribution is taken not in the rewards of the good but in the punishments of sinners, in accordance with its being called the day of vengeance, it must be understood of the Jewish people, upon whom, after his passion, the wrath of God came at once. And he comforted all who mourn, saying: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted (Matt 5:5), so that he might appoint for those who mourn in Zion, and give them glory and a crown instead of ashes. Among these was the apostle Paul too, who mourned for Zion and said: For I have sorrow and continual grief (Rom 9:2); and again: I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren and kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites (ibid., 3). And therefore those who mourned and lamented received the oil of joy instead of ashes, seeing that very many of the Jews had believed and were receiving a most pure robe instead of the garment of mourning.
61:3, 5
And in her they will be called the mighty ones of righteousness, the planting of the Lord for glorifying. And they will build the places deserted from of old, and raise up the ancient ruins, and restore the cities deserted and scattered from generation to generation. And strangers will stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of foreigners will be your farmers and vinedressers. LXX: And they will be called generations of righteousness, the planting of the Lord for glory. And they will build the everlasting desert places; those that had formerly been made desolate will be raised up, and they will renew the deserted cities, desolate for generations; and foreigners will come and feed your sheep, and ploughmen and vinedressers of other nations. After both the Apostles and apostolic men have received, instead of ashes and a spirit of sorrow, the oil of joy and the mantle, or, according to the Seventy, the robe of glory and praise, then they will be called generations of righteousness, the glorious planting of the Lord; or, according to the Hebrew ELE (אילי), with both syllables lengthened, mighty ones, and of the righteousness of God, or the planting of the Lord for glorifying; so that, when they have been glorified, or have themselves glorified the Lord, they may build the cities deserted from of old, and raise up the ancient ruins, both of the people of the Jews and of all the nations. They will have not only the skill of building and restoring cities, but they will also be the best of shepherds, so that, the old shepherds being driven away, to whom God had said through Ezekiel, O shepherds of Israel, do shepherds feed themselves, and not rather the sheep (Ezek 34:2)?, they may hear with the apostle Peter: Feed my sheep (John 21:17). And in a wonderful manner they will pass from masons and shepherds to farmers, that is, to ploughmen and vinedressers, so that they may say with the Apostle: We are God's building, God's husbandry (1 Cor 3:9). Thus the Savior asks the scribes and Pharisees, the vinedressers and farmers of the Jews, what he will do to the wicked vinedressers and farmers; and when they answered, He will destroy the wicked wickedly, and give the vineyard to other farmers (Matt 21:41), he went on: The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation producing its fruits (ibid., 43). The matter needs no interpretation. For how few of the princes of the churches are from the Jews, and not from foreigners and men of outside nations! Formerly serving idols, and strangers to the testament of God and aliens from his promises, having no hope and without God in the world, they now preside over the churches, and with the plough of faith they tame the hard and formerly untamed hearts of the Gentiles to bear fruit, so that they may multiply the seed of the Lord's doctrine with an abundance of good works.
61:6-7
But you will be called the priests of the Lord; it will be said to you, ministers of our God. You will eat the strength of the nations, and you will pride yourselves in their glory. Instead of your double confusion and shame they will praise their portion; therefore in their land they will possess double things; everlasting gladness will be theirs; for I am the Lord who loves judgment, and hates robbery in burnt offering. LXX: But you will be called the priests of the Lord, ministers of our God. You will eat the strength of the nations, and in their riches you will be admirable. Thus they will possess the land a second time, and everlasting joy will be upon their head. For I am the Lord who love righteousness and hate robberies from iniquity. The builders of the deserted cities and the shepherds of the flocks, who are themselves the ploughmen and vinedressers, that is, the sons of foreigners, are themselves also the priests of God, to whom the Prophet now says: But you will be called the priests of the Lord, and it will be said to you, ministers of our God: there is no doubt that he means the princes of the churches. Or certainly it is to be understood of the Apostles, so that the order is: When masons, shepherds, ploughmen and vinedressers from the nations have been set over the churches, you, of whom it was said, A remnant will be saved (Rom 9:27), and, Unless the Lord Sabaoth had left us a seed, we should have been as Sodom, and should have been like Gomorrah (Isa 1:9), will be called priests and ministers of God, such as the sons of David also were, of whom Scripture says: And the sons of David were priests of God (2 Sam 8:18). These will eat the strength of the nations, and in their riches they will be admirable. For the crown of fathers is the glory of their children, and the progress of the people is the feast of the priests (Prov 17). Of riches of this kind Paul wrote to the Corinthians: I give thanks to my God through Jesus Christ that in everything you have been made rich in him, in all speech and in all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ has been confirmed in you, so that you lack nothing in any grace (1 Cor 1:4ff.). The strength of the nations is the triumph of the Martyrs, and we are proud in their glory, not with that pride which lies in vice, which God resists, that he may give grace to the humble, but with that which is taken for power and glory (Jas 4). Hence Moses too had a horned face (Exod 34), who could say: In you we shall toss our enemies with the horn (Ps 43 [44]:6). And for the pride of glory Aquila translated καὶ ἐν δόξῃ αὐτῶν πορφύρᾳ ἐνδύσεσθαι, that is, you will be clothed in purple, to show the badge of royal splendor. And what follows, Instead of double confusion and instead of shame they will praise their portion, which is not found in the Seventy, I think should be explained thus: Because you had a double confusion, both over the people of the Jews, which had departed from God, and over the nations, which served idols, you will see them, converted to the fear of God, praising their portion: without doubt the Lord, of whom the holy man also spoke: My portion is the Lord (Ps 72 [73]:26). No one can say this except one who has no other portion. Because, then, you had over them a double confusion and the shame of their sin, over which they themselves did not blush, therefore in their land, that is, in the land of the gentle and of the living, they will possess double things, since they will have believed both in the things present and in the things to come. And they will have everlasting gladness. For which we read in the Seventy, thus they will possess the land a second time. And everlasting joy will be upon their head, so that those who had possessed the land within the very narrow borders of Judea afterwards possess the whole world. Of this land the Father speaks to the Savior: Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession (Ps 2:8). This the Lord has granted, who loves the truth of judgment and hates robbery in burnt offering. For which the Seventy translated robbery from iniquity, as though there were some robbery that did not consist of iniquity. What he says, then, is this: God loves the poverty of the righteous more than the gifts of the rich, which come from robberies and iniquity.
61:8-9
And I will give their work in truth, and I will strike an everlasting covenant with them. And their seed will be known among the nations, and their offspring in the midst of the peoples. All who see them will recognize them, that these are the seed which the Lord has blessed. LXX: And I will give their labor to the righteous, and I will set an eternal testament with them. And their seed will be known among the nations, and their descendants in the midst of the peoples. Everyone who sees them will recognize them, that these are the seed blessed by God. God, who loves righteousness and judgment and detests violent burnt offerings (for whatever comes from robbery he reckons as the hire of a harlot and the price of a dog), will himself give the labor of those who will possess the land a second time, and whom he will have crowned with a double gladness, to the righteous, or, as is better in the Hebrew, in truth: so that it is no longer, as in the Law, the shadow of the truth, but the truth itself. And he will strike an everlasting covenant, not such as he had given to Moses, which has passed away, but the covenant of the Gospel, of which Christ speaks: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away (Matt 24:35). And then the apostolic seed will be known among the nations, and all future generations will receive the sowing of God's doctrine; by no means saying that in which the people of the circumcision formerly erred, saying: For what else does God seek but seed? Everyone who sees them will recognize at first sight that they are the seed which the Lord has blessed. For who would not recognize the people of God from their manner of life, their gentleness, continence, hospitality and all their virtues? And who, on the contrary, would not detest the bloody hands of Israel, against whom the Prophet prays, saying: Fill their faces with shame, O Lord (Ps 82 [83]:17)?
61:10-11
Rejoicing I will rejoice in the Lord, and there has exulted my soul in my God: for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, and with the vesture of righteousness he has encompassed me, as a bridegroom adorned with a crown, and as a bride decked with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoot, and as a garden makes its seed spring up, so the Lord God will make righteousness and praise spring up before all the nations. LXX: With joy they will be glad in the Lord; let my soul exult in the Lord. For he has clothed me with the garment of salvation, and has put about me the tunic of gladness. As a bridegroom with a mitre, and as a bride he has adorned me with a woman's finery, and as the earth putting forth its flower, and as a garden makes its seeds spring up, so the Lord God brings forth righteousness and praise in the sight of all the nations. The beginning of the passage according to the Seventy, who said, With joy they will be glad in the Lord, is joined to the end of the preceding passage. But according to the Hebrews it is the opening of another section, in which the Church is brought in answering the words of Christ: Rejoicing I will rejoice in the Lord, and my soul will exult in my God: by no means in the fathers, as the Jews gloried, saying, We are the seed of Abraham, and have never been slaves to anyone (John 8:33), but in God, as Scripture says: Now the multitude of the believers had one heart and one soul (Acts 4:32). And she gives the reasons for her gladness: For he has clothed me with the garment of salvation, and with the vesture, or tunic, of righteousness and gladness, which in Hebrew is called MAIL (מעיל), he has adorned and encompassed me. For as many of us as have been baptized in Christ put on Christ, and have the tunic of righteousness, who has been made for us holiness, righteousness and redemption (Gal 1). And she sets forth a likeness of two companies in the Church, the perfect and the beginners (1 Cor 1). The perfect she compares to the beauty of the bridegroom; the beginners she likens to the adornment of the bride. Paul was perfect, who, like a bridegroom adorned with a crown and to be crowned, or, as Aquila translated, ἱερατευμένος στεφάνῳ, which in our language is bearing a crown as a priest, said by the authority of Christ speaking in him: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; for the rest, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness (2 Tim 4:7). And in another place: As many of us, then, as are perfect, let us be thus minded (Phil 3:15). But he was a beginner in comparison with fullness, when he spoke in the person of beginners: When I was a little child, I spoke as a little child, I understood as a little child, I thought as a little child (1 Cor 13:11). And again: We see in part and we know in part, until that which is perfect comes (ibid., 9). And therefore he is likened to the adornment of the bride, who is adorned with a woman's finery, or, as the others translated, with vessels, or with her jewels. And she sets forth examples of another comparison, of which the first refers to the bridegroom, the next to the bride. As the earth brings forth its shoot and is watered by the rains of heaven, and as a garden makes its seed spring up, which longs for the waters of springs and rivers, so, he says, the Lord will make righteousness and gladness spring up before all the nations: by no means before Israel, so as to strike down the haughtiness of the Jews, but before all the nations, which are gathered in the Church.
62:1ff.
For Zion's sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her righteous one goes forth as brightness, and her savior is kindled as a lamp. And the nations will see your righteous one, and all kings your renowned one, and a new name will be called for you, which the mouth of the Lord has named. And you will be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a diadem of the kingdom in the hand of your God. LXX: For Zion's sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not leave off, until her righteousness goes forth as light, and her salvation burns as a lamp. And the nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory, and he will call you by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord will name. And you will be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a diadem of the kingdom in the hand of your God. The Lord and Savior had said, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me (Luke 4:18), up to the place where it is written, All who see them will recognize them, that these are the seed which the Lord has blessed (Isa 61:1). After this promise the Church answered, Rejoicing I will rejoice in the Lord, she who in the third of the Psalms of the Steps, in the person of the repentant people, sang joyfully: I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: we shall go into the house of the Lord (Ps 121 [122]:1). Now the person of the prophet is brought in, saying: For Zion's sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest. By day and by night, he says, I will not close my mouth, nor will my prayer ever be silent; but I will cry out so long, and join prayers to prayers, until he who was promised comes and enlightens the whole world with his brightness. Who it is whom he seeks, whose coming he longs for, he puts more plainly: Until her righteous one goes forth as brightness, and her savior is kindled as a lamp. Or, according to the Seventy: Until her righteousness goes forth as light, and her salvation burns as a lamp: the light which said in the Gospel, I am the light of the world (John 8:12); which, when it has been kindled in Zion and in Jerusalem, will by no means shine in Judea alone, but it will be said to her: The light that is in you has been kindled; the light that went forth from the Father has begun to burn within your borders, and it will enlighten all the nations (Matt 6). And all kings will see your renowned one, O Jerusalem and Zion: he who was begotten of your stock, who, lifted up in you on the gibbet, drew all men to himself; so that the nations see his righteousness, by which the Creator of all has had mercy on the nations, and kings his glory, by which he was glorified on the cross and subjected all kingdoms to his rule. Indeed she will no longer be called Jerusalem and Zion, but she will receive a new name, which the Lord will have given her, saying to the apostle Peter: You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matt 16:18). This title he derived from the name of the Lord, so that she is called the Lord's. And her people will no longer be called by the old name, Israel, but by a new one, that is, Christian. And she will be as a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and as a diadem of the kingdom in the hand of her God, when the throng of believers has crowned her, and the diadem of empire, which the Martyrs have adorned with the variety of their gems, is in the hand of God, that he may crown his Son with their victories. Hence the apostle Paul too said to the saints: My joy and my crown.
62:4
You will no longer be called Forsaken, and your land will no more be called Desolate; but you will be called My-will-is-in-her, and your land Inhabited, for the Lord has been well pleased in you, and your land will be inhabited. LXX: And you will no longer be called Forsaken, and your land will not be called Deserted any more. For you will be called My will, and your land Inhabited. Instead of Zion and Jerusalem you will be called the Church and the Lord's; instead of Jews they will be called Christians. Nor will you be content with this end of names; but you who before were called forsaken, which in Hebrew is AZUBA (עזובה), will be called EPESI-BA (חפצי־בה), which means my will is in her; and your land, which before was called SEMEMA (שממה), desolate or deserted, will afterwards be called BULA (בעולה), which Aquila translated ἐσχημένη, Symmachus and Theodotion συνωκισμένη, the Seventy οἰκουμένη, all of which signify inhabited and possessed. It is a custom of the Hebrews always to give names to things from what befalls them: as Abram, who was first called high father, when he heard the promise, And in your seed all the nations will be blessed (Gen 12:3), was named father of many nations, that is, Abraham. And above, a name is given to the Lord Savior: Quickly take the spoils, swiftly plunder (Isa 8:1). The sons of Zebedee too, one of whom could utter the voice of thunder (Mark 3), In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1), were called BANEREEM (בני רעם), which means sons of thunder. But what follows, For the Lord has been well pleased in you, and your land will be inhabited, has been passed over by the Seventy; and it gives the reasons why she is called EPHSI (חפצי) and why she is called BULA (בעולה): because the Lord has been well pleased in Zion, and has made habitable her land, which before had been deserted through the error of the Jews. Or we may refer this same thing to the Church, which, possessed before by idols, had been deserted by God.
62:5
For the young man will dwell with the virgin, and your sons will dwell in you. And the bridegroom will rejoice over the bride; your God will rejoice over you. LXX: And as a young man dwelling with a virgin, so will your sons dwell. And it will be that as a bridegroom is glad over a bride, so the Lord will be glad over you. The Apostle too says: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church (Eph 5:25). And when in another place he had set down the example, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and will cleave to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh, he added: This is a great mystery; but I speak in Christ and in the Church (Eph 5:31, 32). If, then, because of the shortness of the time, which is straitened, husbands ought so to have their wives as though they had them not, how much more holy will the union between the bridegroom and the bride be? This is the bridegroom of whom it is sung in the eighteenth psalm: And he as a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber (Ps 18 [19]:6). And this is the bride who is written of quite often in the Song of Songs, who has neither wrinkle nor spot (Song 4); whom Paul longs to present as a chaste virgin to one husband, so that she may be holy in body and spirit (1 Cor 2). Of her also, under the title of the beloved, the forty-fourth psalm sings: The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety (verse 10). As, then, the bridegroom rejoices in the bride, and the young man with the virgin, examples in which there is a holy union, so the Lord will be glad in her whose names have been changed.
62:6-7
Upon your walls, Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they will never be silent. You who remember the Lord, do not be silent, and give him no silence, until he establishes, and until he makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth. LXX: And upon your walls, Jerusalem, I have set watchmen, all the day and all the night, who will never be silent, remembering the Lord: for there is none like you if he corrects, and he will make Jerusalem a joy upon the earth. The Prophet had said, For Zion's sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, and the rest, up to the place where the passage has now ended: The bridegroom will rejoice over the bride; your God will rejoice over you. And he had promised that he would pray by day and by night that the Savior and Righteous One who had been promised might come and, like a lamp, light up the whole world. After this is brought in the person of God speaking to Jerusalem, that is, to the Church of the firstborn, and to her that was built in the Apostles and through the Apostles: Upon your walls I have set watchmen, whom we can take to be either the angels, or the Apostles and all her princes and teachers. They guard the walls of the Church, so that our adversary the devil, who as a roaring lion goes about and seeks how he may enter (1 Pet 5), may not find an occasion for laying waste the Lord's flock. These watchmen ought not to be silent by day or by night, neither in glad times nor in sad, but ought always to entreat the Lord's mercy, so that his flock and the walls of Jerusalem may be guarded and fortified by his help. Hence the word is directed to these same watchmen and teachers: O you who remember the Lord, and weary his mercy with your prayers day and night, take care that prayer is never silent in your mouth. Give him no silence, understand: the Lord; but be always troublesome, in season, out of season, and imitate the woman who importuned the hard judge. For if he laid aside the fierceness of his mind because of constant entreaty, how much more will the heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him? And you ought to ask for as long as it takes until Jerusalem, which fell in the Jews and is become an example and a curse, is turned into the praise of the whole world. And I wonder what the Seventy meant, instead of what is in the Hebrew, give him no silence, until he establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth, by saying what does not cohere in sense with what precedes: For there is none like you, if he corrects, and makes Jerusalem a joy upon the earth. Unless perhaps we fit it together with artful speech, so that it is said to the watchmen of the Church that there will be none like those who by their preaching have brought it about that Jerusalem is corrected and becomes the joy of the whole earth.
62:8-9
The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by the arm of his strength: If I give your wheat any more as food to your enemies, and if the sons of strangers drink your wine, for which you have labored! For those who gather it will eat it and praise the Lord, and those who bring it in will drink it in my holy courts. LXX: The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by the strength of his arm: If I give my wheat any more to be food for your enemies, and if the sons of strangers drink any more your wine for which you have labored! But those who have gathered will eat it and praise the Lord, and those who have gathered will drink it in my holy courts. Almighty God, who had said to the Church, Upon your walls I have set watchmen, who will never be silent, and whom I bid never to cease praying until they obtain what they pray for, now swears by his right hand and the arm of his strength. Of this we have often said that it is our Lord and Savior, who according to the Apostle is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1). And he swears that the wheat and wine of Jerusalem will by no means go to be food for enemies, nor will foreigners enjoy her labor; but whoever have sown in tears will reap in joy, and those who have harvested, and, the chaff cast away, have gathered the pure grain into the barns, will themselves eat the labors of their hands, and extol the Lord with everlasting praise, and drink the wine in his holy courts. By these we understand either the many mansions with the Father, if we take it of the future blessedness in the kingdom of heaven, or certainly the churches spread throughout the whole world, in which we are planted, and afterwards shall flourish in the house of the Lord. And when he says, I will by no means give your wheat any more to your enemies, and foreigners will not drink your wine for which you have labored, he shows that the labor of the Jews and all their works were formerly possessed by demons, when they wavered between God and idols, when Elijah said to them: How long do you limp on both feet? If the Lord is God, follow him (1 Kgs 18:21). And according to the typical history which is narrated in the book of Judges, the Midianites came and laid waste its fruits as far as Gaza, so that the food of men was turned into the fodder of brute beasts (Judg 6). Now this is the wheat and this the wine which they will not eat except praising the Lord, and will not drink except in his holy courts; of which the Lord said in his passion: Amen, amen, I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of this vine until I drink it new in the kingdom of my Father (Mark 14:25). These things are fulfilled in part in the Church, when the Lord says to his disciples: Drink, my friends, and be inebriated, brethren, for wine gladdens the heart of man (Ps 103 [104]). And it is drunk in full light and at midday by Joseph with his brothers (Gen 43). And it will be fulfilled more fully when the earth is inebriated with the blessings of the Lord. The wheat too, from which the heavenly bread is made, is that of which the Lord speaks: My flesh is truly food. And again of the wine: And my blood is truly drink (John 6).
62:10, 12
Pass through, pass through the gates, prepare the way for the people, make the road level, and pick out the stones; lift up a signal to the peoples. Behold, the Lord has made it heard at the ends of the earth: say to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your Savior comes; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. And they will call them a holy people, redeemed by the Lord. But you will be called a city sought out, and not forsaken. LXX: Go through my gates, and make a way for my people, and throw the stones off the way. Lift up a signal to the nations; for behold, the Lord has made it heard to the end of the earth. Say to the daughter of Zion: Behold, your Savior comes, having his reward with him, and his work before his face; and he will call it a holy people, redeemed by the Lord. But you will be called a city sought after, and not forsaken. He commanded the watchmen of the walls of Jerusalem, whom he had commanded before not to be silent and never to cease praying, to pass through the gates of Jerusalem and make a way for the people. This the half-Jews contend will come to pass in the last time, when, after the fullness of the nations, Israel is to be saved and return to the Lord. Others think it is to be fulfilled in the kingdom of heaven, when there will be true gladness, and each will receive according to his merit, and they will by no means see the Lord in humility, but will perceive him in the guise of a judge, when he comes upon the clouds with a multitude of angels to render to each according to his work. But we, following the explanation we have begun, can understand these things of the first coming as well, so as to say that the Apostles and apostolic men are commanded to go in and pass through the gates against which hell does not prevail, and to remove every hindrance from the way, so that the people may enter the Church of the Savior without any stumbling block. Hence John too cried in the wilderness: I am the voice of one crying in the desert, as Isaiah said: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight; every valley will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be brought low (John 1:23; cf. Isa 40:3, 4). And the same sense is now expressed in other words. The churchman chooses the stones, who softens all hardness from the heart of believers; of whom the same Baptist said: God is able from these stones to raise up sons to Abraham (Matt 3:9). Or, according to the Seventy, he throws the stones off the way who separates the unbelieving from the believers. And lest the Jews should think this was said of themselves, there is joined to it: Lift up a signal to the nations, and to the peoples of the Gentiles, so that it is not the narrow confines of the one land of Judea that are called to salvation, but the message is made heard at the ends of the earth, so that the whole world may hear of the passion of the Creator of all. Say, he says, to the daughter of Zion. She is called the daughter of Zion either because she first arose from the Jews, she of whom it says in the Song of Songs, The sons of my mother have fought against me (Song 1:5); or certainly she is called daughter because she received from God the name of adoption. For as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God (John 1). And what is it that the masters and teachers are bidden to announce to the daughter of Zion? Behold, your Savior comes, who in the Hebrew is called Jesus. Hence Gabriel too, to Joseph: And you will call, he says, his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21). This Savior is the judge of all believers, to render to each according to his works: to the righteous rewards, to sinners everlasting punishments (Matt 16). And he will call, he says, them, the Lord and Savior himself. Or, according to the Hebrew, they will call them, the Apostles and apostolic men, a holy people, and redeemed by the Lord, who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. The city itself too will by no means be called forsaken, as she had been called before, whether among the Jews because of their trafficking, or among the nations because of their idolatry, but sought after, as it is said in Hebrew DRUSA (דרושת); so that, according to the growth and variety of their virtues, they may always receive new names.
63:1
Who is this who comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? This one, beautiful in his robe, marching in the greatness of his strength. LXX: Who is this who comes from Edom, with tawny garments from Bosor? So beautiful in his robe, violence with strength. This whole passage, from the place where according to the Seventy it is said, Be enlightened, be enlightened, Jerusalem, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you (Isa 60:1), up to the present passage, where it is said, Who is this who comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah?, many of our people refer to the end of the world, in which they contend these things are to be fulfilled, whether carnally or spiritually (for the opinion of most is divided). But we, since we read above in this same section too, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the poor, which the Lord and Savior, having read the volume of Isaiah in the synagogue of the Jews, showed to be fulfilled in himself, saying, Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your ears (Luke 4:21); and since it is now said of the same one that after his passion he ascended to the Father bloodied, we are compelled by necessity to take everything that is said of the first coming of the Savior. For it cannot be, as most of our people strive to make it, that things joined together in the works should be divided in time. Nor do we deny that it is a task of the greatest toil to join all these things together, and so to show that they are to be fulfilled spiritually at the consummation as to teach that they have already been fulfilled in Christ both according to the flesh and according to the spirit. Since, then, the Savior has come to the daughter of Zion, whose reward is with him and his work before him; and the righteous one has gone forth as brightness, and the Savior has been kindled as a lamp; and the bridegroom has rejoiced over his bride the Church, nay rather her God has exulted over her, who is himself both bridegroom and Lord: therefore, according to the assumption of the flesh and the passion of the cross, it is said to him: That your foot may be dipped in blood (Ps 67 [68]:24). And under the name of Judah it is prophesied in Genesis: Judah, your brothers will praise you; your hands will be on the necks of your enemies (Gen 49:8ff.), the sons of your father will worship you. Judah is a lion's whelp; to the prey, my son, you have gone up; resting, you have couched as a lion, and as a lioness: who will rouse him (Gen 49:8, 9)? And again: Binding his foal to the vineyard, and his she-ass, O my son, to the vine, he will wash his robe in wine, and his cloak in the blood of the grape (ibid., 11). This is he whom the angelic powers, seeing him ascend bloodied to the Father, command the other angels, and hear from them: Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, O everlasting gates, and the king of glory will come in. Who is this king of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle (Ps 23 [24]:7, 8). And again: The Lord of hosts, he is the king of glory (ibid., 10). We have set this down beforehand to show that the present passage too agrees with the other testimonies. Hence it is said in the Song of Songs too: My kinsman is ruddy and white (Song 5:10): ruddy in the passion, white in the resurrection. The angels, then, terrified by the strangeness of the thing (for the mystery of the passion and resurrection of Christ, according to the apostle Paul (1 Cor 2), had been unknown to all past generations), ask: Who is this who comes bloodied from the land of Edom? For EDOM (אדם) is expressed in our language as both earthly and bloody. With dyed garments from Bozrah? Many, falling into a pious error, think this is to be understood of the Lord's flesh, that is, BASAR (בשר); but if this word signified flesh, it would be written with the letter SIN in the middle, whereas now it is written with SADE, and means strong and fortified. This we take either of Jerusalem (Ps 59 [60]:11), which formerly was surrounded with very strong walls, in which the Lord suffered; or of hell, of which it is written in the fifty-ninth and in the hundred and seventh psalm: Who will lead me into the fortified city (Ps 107 [108]:11)? in which the souls of the dead are shut up, and which is surrounded with very strong guards. It must be known also that according to the history BOSRA (בצרה) is not in Edom but in Moab. There follows: So beautiful in his robe, marching in the greatness of his strength. Of him the forty-fourth psalm too sings: Beautiful in comeliness above the sons of men. Gird your sword upon your thigh, O most mighty. In your comeliness and your beauty set out, proceed prosperously, and reign (Ps 44 [45]:3-5). For which the Seventy translated, violence with strength. What sense this has, let the prudent reader inquire.
I who speak righteousness, and am a champion to save. LXX: I who speak righteousness, and the judgment of salvation. The Lord answered the angels who asked: Do you ask who I am, who ascend bloodied to the heavens, and that the blood with which I am sprinkled has given me not unsightliness but beauty? I am he to whom the Father has given all judgment (John 5). Of him the Psalmist too said: O God, give your judgment to the king, and your righteousness to the king's son (Ps 71 [72]:1). I who speak righteousness, so as to repay evil to the evil and good to the good; who came to fight against the adverse powers, and to preach remission to the captives, and to free the bound from prison, so that the adversaries may feel punishment and the captives liberty.
63:2
Why then is your clothing red, and your garments like those of men treading the winepress? LXX: Why are your garments red, and your clothing like that of men treading the winepress, full and trodden down? Where it now says red, the Hebrew reads EDOM (אדום). So above too, where Edom is written, it is not the name of a place but a word for blood. And again the angels ask and say: We have learned that you are he who speaks righteousness, and that the salvation of all has been placed in your judgment. Now we wish to know why your garments are as if dyed with new wine; or what cause there was for you to stain with blood the tunic that was woven from the top and cannot be torn, and that had from the virgin's womb such whiteness as no fuller on earth could make? For mercy befits you more than cruelty, whiteness more than gore. To them the Lord answered, not with one little verse as before, but with many words, so as to teach everything to those who did not know, lest they be compelled to ask again.
63:3ff.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the nations there is no man with me. I have trodden them in my fury, and trampled them in my wrath; and their blood has been sprinkled upon my garments, and I have polluted all my clothing For the day of vengeance is in my heart; the year of my redemption has come. I looked round, and there was no helper; I sought, and there was none to give aid. And my own arm saved for me, and my indignation itself helped me. And I trampled the peoples in my fury, and made them drunk in my indignation, and brought down their strength to the earth. The Seventy, instead of what we have said, I have trodden the winepress alone, translated full and trodden down, which is rather to be read with the preceding passage than taken as the beginning of the following one. The rest they translated thus: And of the nations there is no man with me; and I trampled them in my fury, and broke them like earth, and brought down their blood to the earth, and I have defiled all my garments. For the day of retribution has come upon them, and the year of redemption is at hand. I looked, and there was no helper; I considered, and there was none to give aid; and my arm rescued them, and my fury came on, and I trampled them in my wrath, and brought down their blood to the earth. For the winepress, which in Hebrew is called GETH (גת), Theodotion set down the Hebrew word itself, PHURA (פורה). But Symmachus is better in this place, and we have followed him. For the word PHURA is ambiguous, and generally signifies both winepress and flask. Something must be said, then, about the winepress: that according to the custom of holy Scripture it is sometimes put for the vengeance and punishment of sinners, sometimes for the gathering of new fruits. It is put for penalties and torments when Jeremiah, lamenting the overthrow of Jerusalem in Lamentations, says: The Lord has trodden the winepress for the virgin daughter of Judah; therefore I weep (Lam 1:15, 16). In a good sense the eighth and the eighty-third psalms are inscribed 'for the winepresses'. Of these we shall speak in their own places, if life goes with us, the Lord granting it. This winepress, in which both punishments for the evil and rewards for the good are trodden out by the Savior, he alone trod, and he had no helper. For neither angel nor archangel, Thrones, Dominions, nor any of the heavenly powers assumed a human body, and suffered for us, and trampled and crushed the adverse powers, but only he who speaks in the psalm: Save me, O Lord, for the holy one has failed (Ps 11 [12]:1); so much so that even the most confident apostle Peter, most firm in the truth of faith, fled terrified with fear, nay even denied the Lord (Matt 27). And what follows, And their blood has been sprinkled upon my garments, and I have polluted all my clothing, must by no means be understood as though we believed that demons and the adverse powers have blood; but everything is to be taken tropologically, when the most merciful God, in order to instruct his people and free them from the bonds of captivity, is compelled to strike the enemies. For the day of vengeance, he says, is in my heart; the year of my redemption has come. Of this we read above too (cf. Isa 61), in a good sense, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of retribution to our God; and now it is taken both in a bad and in a good sense. In a bad sense: For the day of vengeance is in my heart. In a good sense: The year of my redemption has come; so that at the time when the adversaries are punished, the people of God might be set free, nay rather redeemed by the precious blood of the Lamb, who in the Apocalypse of John is said to have been slain. Of this day of retribution Moses too prophesied by the Holy Spirit: And he will render vengeance to his enemies, and will repay those who hate him. I looked round, and there was no helper; I sought, and there was none to give aid (Deut 32:41). He had also said in the psalm: And I looked for one who would grieve with me, and there was none, and for one who would comfort me, and I found none (Ps 68 [69]:21). For he, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself (Phil 2), taking the form of a servant, and became obedient to the Father unto death, even the death of the cross; and therefore he gave him a name above every name, so that he might save for himself by his right hand those who believe in him, and his indignation, which was against the adversaries, might set the people of God free. Or he rescued the believers by his arm, and no longer put off his fury; and he brought down their blood to the earth, either that of the demons, τροπικῶς, or certainly the blood of the Jews; for which the other translators rendered contention; who strove with all zeal that they might let the bound people go.
63:7
I will remember the mercies of the Lord, the praise of the Lord for all that the Lord has rendered to us, and for the multitude of good things to the house of Israel, which he has bestowed on them according to his indulgence and according to the multitude of his mercies. LXX: I have remembered the mercy of the Lord; I will remember the mighty works of the Lord in all that he has rendered to us: the Lord, a good judge to the house of Israel, will repay us according to his mercy and according to the multitude of his righteousness. Now that the passage on the coming of the Savior has been completed, the first coming, as we judge, the second, as most suppose, in which is understood the voice of one judging, nay rather fighting and slaughtering the adversaries of himself and of his people, and in which he is described as bloodied and victorious, another περικοπή begins, in which the Prophet speaks in the person of the people, recounting God's benefits toward it and the hardness of its own heart, on account of which Jerusalem was given over to burning and Israel to captivity. This the Jews refer to the Babylonian times. But we have shown by order and by reason that it is said of the present time, in which they serve the Romans, and Israel having been shut out, the crowd of the nations has taken its place. Let us run, then, through each member of the discourse, and set them forth briefly, so that the exposition may not be rambling. Pressed by the weight of evils, I have hope in nothing else but in the mercy of God, who shows mercy to thousands of those who love him, and extends his mercy to those who know him. From this it is shown that the mercy of the Lord comes to the aid of those who love and know God. For it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9). And unless the Lord builds the house and guards the city, he who builds and guards it watches in vain (Ps 126 [127]). For he himself will grant strength, so that we may do valiantly and be able to say: My strength and my help, and my refuge in the day of my evils (Jer 16). These evils in the present place we ought to take not for vices and sins but for distresses. And as for what follows according to the Seventy, I will remember the mighty works of the Lord in all that he has repaid me, for which the Hebrew contains the praises of the Lord, let us understand signs and miracles, for which 'mighty works' is often put, as there: My glory I will not give to another, nor my mighty works to graven images (Isa 42:8). And elsewhere: They will proclaim his mighty works in the islands, that is, either to the nations of the whole world, or to the churches, which are founded on a firm mass, and are struck rather than overthrown. Sometimes virtue is by no means taken for strength and miracles, but for good conduct, as in that saying of the Apostles, of Peter: Supply virtue in your knowledge (2 Pet 1:5); and of Paul: If there is any virtue, and if any praise (Phil 4:8). In accordance with which it is said in another place too: Better is barrenness with virtue. The first understanding of virtue befits God, the second men. And instead of what we have translated, For all that the Lord has rendered to us, which can be taken both in a good and in a bad sense, Symmachus set it down more plainly as a repayment of good things, saying: For all things in which he has done good to us, and for the multitude of goodness which he has shown toward the house of Israel. For which the Seventy translated: The Lord, a good judge to the house of Israel, has repaid us according to his mercy and according to the multitude of his righteousness. No one can say this except one who understands that he justly bears what he suffers. Thus in the seventy-second psalm, whose opening is, How good is the God of Israel to those who are upright in heart, the prophet speaks in the person of those who are troubled by the judgments of God: But my feet were almost moved, my steps had well nigh slipped, seeing the peace of sinners, and the rest, up to the end of the psalm. Hence the apostle Paul, who had known the Lord as a good and righteous judge, speaks with confidence: There is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the righteous judge will render to me; and not to me only, but also to all who love the coming of our Lord and Savior (2 Tim 4:8). Nor is there any difference, as the heretics would have it, between good and righteous, for the same Apostle writes: So the law is holy, and the commandment holy and righteous and good (Rom 7:12), so that goodness is understood as the genus and righteousness as the species. Wherefore he writes to the Romans: For scarcely will anyone die for a righteous man; for perhaps for a good man someone would dare to die (Rom 5:7).
63:8ff.
And he said: Surely they are my people, sons who do not deny; and he became their Savior. In all their tribulation he was not troubled, and the Angel of his face saved them; in his love and in his indulgence he himself redeemed them, and he bore them and lifted them up all the days of the age. But they provoked him to anger and afflicted the spirit of his Holy One and he was turned to be their enemy, and he himself fought them down. LXX: And he said: Is it not my people? Sons will by no means reject. And he became their salvation out of all their tribulation; not an envoy nor an angel, but he himself saved them, because he loved them and spared them; he himself redeemed them, and took them up, and exalted them all the days of the age. But they did not believe, and they embittered his Holy Spirit; he was turned to be their enemy, he himself fought against them. Where we have translated, In all their tribulation he was not troubled, the word which in Hebrew is LO, and is an adverb of negation, for not, can also be read as he himself, so that the sense is: In all their tribulation he himself was troubled, that is, God; so that he himself bore not only our sins but also our tribulations. For he bears our infirmities and grieves for us. Further, the Seventy put down something else which is not found in the Hebrew, not an envoy nor an angel, but he himself saved them, of which we shall speak in its place. So God, who is a righteous judge to the house of Israel, and who tempers the severity of righteousness with the mercy of one who judges, said: I have begotten sons and exalted them, and they have spurned me. Yet because they are my people, and have once been named sons, they will not perish for ever; if they cease to spurn and deny me, they will find a Savior, because in all their tribulation he himself was troubled. Or, he was not troubled, so that he forsook them for a little while, and compelled them, stripped of his help, to pray. Or certainly, he by no means troubled them, but on the contrary, when others persecuted them, he was their helper, and sent his angel to free them from danger. Or, according to the Seventy, he did not wish to save his people through angels and prophets and other holy men, but he himself came down to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to carry back the sick sheep on his shoulders, and to find the drachma that had been lost, and to run joyfully to meet the prodigal son as he returned. For this reason the bride says in the Song of Songs: Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: not through the Patriarchs, Moses and the Prophets, but let him assume my body, let him dwell in my flesh, let the Word become flesh, and so let him kiss me, dwelling in me, that he may be Emmanuel. Not as an envoy, then, nor as an angel, but he himself will save those who have received salvation, not by the merit of their works but by the love of God. For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. But if the prudent reader should answer in silent thought, Why have many not been saved, if he himself saved them, and loved and spared his sons, and redeemed them with his blood, and took them up and exalted them once assumed?, a clear reason is given: But they did not believe, and they embittered his Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of his Holy One, which in Hebrew is CADESO (קדש). God, then, willed to save those who desired it, and he called them to salvation, so that their will might have its reward; but they would not believe. Otherwise it is written of John too: There was a man sent from God, whose name was John; he came to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him (John 1:6). Nor is he at once at fault if many would not believe; but the will of the one who came was this, that all should believe and be saved. And if whoever has exasperated and afflicted the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of his Holy One, that is, of Christ, exasperates God, it is because the Holy Spirit is of the same nature with the Father and the Son. Wherefore the Apostle commands: Do not grieve the Holy Spirit, in whom you have been sealed (Eph 4:30). This Holy Spirit withdraws from a body subject to sins, and wisdom does not enter a perverse soul (Wis 1). Hence David too, conscious of his sins, prayed that he might not lose the Holy Spirit, saying: And do not take your Holy Spirit from me (Ps 50 [51]:13). And so that we may know that everyone who exasperates the Holy Spirit offends God, and from a friend becomes an enemy and a foe, the apostle Peter speaks more expressively in the Acts of the Apostles: Why have you agreed to lie to the Holy Spirit? You have not lied to men but to God (Acts 5:9). This is the Holy Spirit of whom the Lord said in the Gospel: If you love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth (John 14:15, 16). Of him we find also in the Wisdom which is written under the name of Solomon: For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will withdraw from foolish thoughts (Wis 1:5).
63:11ff.
And he remembered the days of the age, of Moses, of his people. Where is he who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is he who put in its midst the Spirit of his Holy One? Who led Moses by the right hand with the arm of his majesty; who divided the waters before them, to make for himself an everlasting name; who led them through the depths like a horse in the desert that does not stumble. Like a beast going down into the plain, the Spirit of the Lord was its leader; so you led your people, to make for yourself a name of glory. LXX: And he remembered the ancient days, he who brought up from the land the shepherd of the sheep. Where is he who put the Holy Spirit in them? Who led Moses by the right hand, the arm of his glory. So he led his people through the mighty water in his sight, to make for himself an everlasting name. He led them through the deep like a horse through the wilderness, and they did not labor. And like cattle through the plain the Spirit came down from the Lord, and was their leader: so you led your people, to make for yourself a name of glory. The Lord, who from a protector became the adversary of the people of the Jews, who provoked his Holy Spirit to anger, and who fought them down, himself remembered the ancient days, when Moses prayed for them in the wilderness, saying: Either forgive them this offense, or if you do not, blot me out of the book which you have written (Exod 32:31, 32). Isaiah, then, remembering the ancient history, says: Where is that Moses who brought them up out of the Red Sea? Where is the shepherd of the sheep? Where is he who labored with the other shepherds of the Lord's flock? Who obtained the Spirit of God by his prayer and entreaties, and put it in the Lord's flock? Or certainly it is to be understood thus: Where is that mercy of the Lord with which he once had pity on his people, so as to grant them the grace of the Holy Spirit too; who led Moses his servant to the right-hand side, not to the left, with the arm of his majesty; who divided the waters before them, to make for himself an everlasting name, so that his power might be told even to the present day? For he led his people through the boundless depths of the waters like a horse through the wilderness, and like cattle over the plain, and the Spirit of the Lord was its leader, that is, of the Lord's flock (Exod 14). By Spirit here we ought to understand the angel who was the leader of the people of Israel, according to what is written: Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire (Ps 103 [104]:4). And in the Epistle to the Hebrews: These are ministering spirits, sent forth to serve for the sake of those who are to possess salvation (Heb 1:14). Let us consider whether what is written in the Acts of the Apostles, The Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, and the eunuch saw him no more (Acts 8:39), ought to be taken of an angel. There are some who maintain that the angel did these things in the Holy Spirit. We run through what is plain so as to dwell on what is more obscure.
63:15ff.
Look down from heaven, and see from your holy dwelling and that of your glory. Where is your zeal and your strength? The multitude of your bowels and of your mercies toward me have held themselves back. For you are our father; and Abraham has not known us, and Israel has been ignorant of us. You, O Lord, are our father, our redeemer from of old is your name. LXX: Turn from heaven, and see from your holy house and that of your glory: where is your zeal and your strength? Where is the multitude of your mercies and of your compassions, with which you bore with us? For you are our father, because Abraham has not known us, and Israel has not known us. But you, O Lord our father, deliver us: from the beginning your name is upon us. You who granted such great things to the people as the preceding discourse has related, so that you even deemed us worthy of the fellowship of your Spirit, now too look down from heaven and see our works, if indeed they are worthy of you. Why do you turn away your face from us? Now heaven is called the holy dwelling and the house of his glory (Ps 43 [44]), according to that saying: Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet (Isa 66:1); and in another place: He who dwells in the heavens will laugh at them; and: To you I have lifted up my eyes, who dwell in heaven (Ps 122 [123]:1). Not that almighty God, who holds heaven in his palm and the earth in his fist, is shut in by any place, but that the things which are holier are called his place and dwelling. Thus Solomon, who built the house of God, says in prayer to him: The heavens of heavens and the earth do not suffice you (Sir 16:18). And in the Lord's Prayer it is said: Your will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth (Matt 6:10). Wherever, then, the will of God is done, that is his dwelling and the house of God. As for what follows, Where is your zeal and your strength?, let us discuss it by that testimony in which God, through Ezekiel, speaks to Jerusalem, who had followed her lovers: Now I will not be angry with you, and my zeal has departed from you (Ezek 16:42). And the sense is: Because we have sinned and you have begun to hate us, your zeal has departed from us, the zeal which does not depart when he speaks through Zechariah: I have been zealous for Zion and Jerusalem with great zeal (Zech 1:14). Hence he says too in what follows: And I will be angry over the nations that have gathered against her round about. When zeal departs, the strength of God departs too, and the affection of a father's bowels is overcome, while the incredible mercy of God is conquered by the greatness of our sins, so that he who could not bear to see me oppressed holds himself back from helping me. For you, he says, are our father, you who are the creator of all. Abraham does not know us, and Israel is ignorant of us, because we have offended you, nor do they recognize as sons those whom they perceive not to be loved by their God. A sudden question arises: why did he set down Abraham and Israel, that is, Jacob, and leave the name of Isaac unspoken (Gen 32)? To this we shall answer that, when the beginning and the end are set down, the middle too is named. Or thus: Abraham was called to faith from the nations, and according to the character of his former and his subsequent condition received a change of name. Jacob too reached it only by much toil, to be called Israel. Hence too Abraham had three wives, and Jacob four; but Isaac kept his ancient name from beginning to end, and, signifying the chastity of the Church, was content with one wife. Those, then, who pray for a change from sinners to a better state take on the likeness of those to whom joy succeeded after sorrow. And this is all that they ask: that, since he is their father and has deigned to give them this name, he may not forget his sons, lest through them the name of God be blasphemed among the nations.
63:18-19
Why have you made us stray, O Lord, from your ways? You have hardened our heart, so that we did not fear you. Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your inheritance. As if for nothing they have possessed your holy people; our enemies have trodden down your sanctification. We have become as in the beginning, when you did not rule over us, nor was your name called upon us. LXX: Why have you led us astray, O Lord, from your holy way? You have hardened our hearts, so that we did not fear you. Return for the sake of your servants, for the sake of the tribes of your inheritance, that we may possess a little of your holy mountain; our adversaries have trodden down your sanctuary; we have become as from the beginning, when you did not rule over us, nor was your name called upon us. The Epistle which Paul writes to the Corinthians, though it is written to the people of one city, according to the variety of its inhabitants, that is, of saints and sinners, now praises them, now corrects them, now teaches, now rebukes; it calls them to continence; it does not refuse marriage; it draws them back from idolatry; it instructs them about the resurrection; it stretches out a hand to second marriage, lest it give place to fornication. We have said this so that we may understand that the present passage too, which is woven entirely out of the prayer of the people entreating God, belongs either to the righteous or to sinners, and that they now praise the Lord, now raise a question with the Lord and refer their own fault to God. Hence after the rest they say this too: Why have you made us stray, O Lord, from your ways, or led us astray from your way? You have hardened our heart so that we did not fear you? Not that God is the cause of error and of hardness, but that his patience, as he waits for our salvation and does not correct those who do wrong, seems to be a cause of error and hardness. Hence, when he is vehemently angry with some, he withholds his hand from striking and says: I will not punish your daughters when they have committed fornication, nor your brides when they have committed adultery (Hos 4:14). For he scourges every son whom he receives, and he strikes in order to amend (Heb 12). Thus of those who have by no means lost the name of sons, but are drawn back to repentance through punishment, he says: I will visit their iniquities with the rod, and their sins with scourges; but my mercy I will not take from them (Ps 88 [89]:33). For there is a sorrow that leads to life, and there is a sorrow that leads to death. Hence the sinner too says in the psalm: You have made our paths turn aside from your way, and have humbled us in the place of affliction (Ps 43 [44]:19). And for forty years the people wander in the desert, so that they may not find their former way nor return to the Egyptians (Num 32). In Hosea too the paths of Jerusalem are hedged in and closed with thorns, so that she may not follow her lovers, and, compelled by necessity, may return to her former husband (Hos 2). And God is said to have hardened the heart of Pharaoh, so that he would not let his people go, and so that he might be afflicted with ten plagues (Exod 4). This question Paul discussed most carefully to the Romans (Rom 9), and we have touched on it in a certain work. Return, he says, O Lord, or turn us back, for the sake of your servants, Abraham and Israel, who have not known us, or whom we believe to be among the people. For as if for nothing, and without any toil, our adversaries have possessed your holy people. Or, turn us back so that, according to the Seventy, we may possess a little of your holy mountain, since we cannot possess the whole of your mountain; so that when we have had a part we may come to its fullness and contemplate the glory of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1); of which it is said in this same prophet: In the last days the mountain of the Lord will be manifest (Isa 2:2). As for what is set down above, Why have you made us stray (Isa 63:17)?, in what sense it is to be taken Jeremiah teaches most fully: You have led me astray, O Lord, and I was led astray; you took hold of me, and you prevailed (Jer 20:7). For while you promise me mercy, and like a merciful father you conceal your severity, and like a skilful physician you hide the sharpest knife so as not to frighten the sick man before you heal him, you have made me careless. For this reason God says of Jerusalem too: Behold, I will lead her astray, and I will make her like a desert, and set her like a land without water, and I will speak to her heart; and I will give her possessions from there, and the valley of Achor to open understanding (Hos 2:14, 15). Let us consider the order of each thing: he leads her astray, and makes her deserted and without water, so that she may suffer thirst for the virtues. After she has said, My soul has thirsted for you, how many ways my flesh for you (Ps 62 [63]:2), then he will speak to her heart and console her as she mourns. And he will give her a possession from there, that is, from the repentance and sorrow which works salvation. And the humility of her troubled heart (for this is what the valley of Achor means) opens her understanding, so that she may not be ignorant of her Creator. Our enemies, he says, have trodden down your sanctuary. There is no doubt that he means the Temple, which the victorious Romans trod down. And we have become as in the beginning, before we were called in Abraham, and while we were in Egypt, having no God, nor kings, nor princes, nor Prophets, nor the Law of the commandments of God (Hos 3); all of which was fulfilled after the passion of the Lord, and is being fulfilled today. For since they said, His blood be upon us and upon our children (Matt 27:25), an everlasting curse remains, and God does not rule over them, nor is his name called upon them, since they are by no means called the people of God.
64:1ff.
O that you would rend the heavens and come down! At your presence the mountains would flow down. As the burning of fire they would melt away; the waters would burn with fire, so that your name might be made known to your enemies; at your presence the nations would be troubled. When you do wonders, we shall not endure them; you came down, and at your presence the mountains flowed down. LXX: If you open heaven, trembling will seize the mountains because of you; and they will melt as wax melts before the fire, and fire will burn up the adversaries; and your name will be manifest among the adversaries; at your presence the nations will be troubled. When you do glorious things, trembling will seize the mountains because of you. Since our enemies have trodden down your sanctuary, and we have become as in the beginning, when your name was not called upon us, therefore we entreat and say: O that you would rend the heavens and come down, and that you who are always promised would at some time fulfill your promises. This was said at the time when the Savior had not yet come, nor had yet assumed from the virgin's womb, out of our nature and substance, the man whom he would save; so that, as we have borne the image of the earthly, we may bear the image of the heavenly (1 Cor 15). If you did this, they say, and the heavens, or heaven, were opened, at the coming of your majesty the mountains would flow down, or trembling would seize the mountains, and they would be consumed as wax is consumed before the fire. To Ezekiel too the heavens were opened, and he saw a great vision (Ezek 1). And Moses as well, in the blessings of Deuteronomy, prays: May the Lord open to you his good treasure, the heaven, to give you blessing (Deut 28). And in the Gospel (Matt 3) John the Baptist is related to have seen the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit coming down upon the Lord in the form of a dove. The mountains which at the coming of the Lord, of whom it is written, God is a consuming fire (Deut 4:24), will be consumed and melt like wax, are the adverse powers and all who raise themselves up against the knowledge of God. Of them it is sung in the ninety-sixth psalm too: He saw, and the earth was shaken. The mountains melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of the whole earth (Ps 96 [97]:4, 5). For if you came down and fulfilled your promises, the waters of the sea would melt away (according to Symmachus), and that fire would consume all their saltness. Of this it is written in another psalm too: As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish; as wax is consumed before the fire, so let sinners perish before the face of God (Ps 67 [68]:2). And this is to be noted, that when the waters of the sea have been consumed by the divine fire, then the name of the Lord Savior will be made known to his enemies; of whom it is said in the sixty-seventh psalm: The tongue of your dogs, from the enemies, by him; so that him whom they had not perceived through his benefits they may come to know through the overthrow of their city and their own captivity. And at his presence the nations will be troubled, or, as is said more expressively in the Hebrew, will be moved: so that those which before were immovable may come to salvation. And when he has done wonders, and shown in the Gospel the signs which he once showed in Egypt and in the wilderness, they will confess that they cannot bear the glory of his coming, or that trembling has seized the mountains. And beautifully, according to the Hebrew, as though those who above had entreated, O that you would rend the heavens and come down! At your presence the mountains would flow down, had been heard, they afterwards add: You came down: you, the Word, were made flesh and dwelt among us, truly Emmanuel, which means God with us. And therefore at your presence all the mountains flowed down, of which we spoke above. The Hebrews expound this passage thus: The fire will burn up the wicked just as the waters boil with the heat of fire; for by AMASIM (חמסים) they wish to be understood not consumption and melting, as the others translated, but the wicked.
64:4-5
From of old they have not heard, nor perceived with their ears; the eye has not seen, O God, besides you, what you have prepared for those who wait for you. You have met him who rejoices and does righteousness in your ways; they will remember you. LXX: From of old we have not heard, nor have our eyes seen a God besides you, and your works, which you will do for those who wait for mercy; for he meets those who do righteousness, and they will remember your ways. A paraphrase of this testimony the apostle Paul, as a Hebrew of the Hebrews, takes from the authentic books in the Epistle which he writes to the Corinthians, not rendering word for word, which he altogether disdains to do, but expressing the truth of the sense, which he uses to support what he wished (1 Cor 2). Let the ravings of the apocrypha, then, fall silent, which on the pretext of this testimony are thrust upon the churches of Christ. Of them it can truly be said that the devil sits in ambush with the rich in the apocrypha, to kill the innocent. And again: He lies in wait in the hidden place like a lion in his den; he lies in wait to seize the poor (Ps 9 [10]:8). For the Ascension of Isaiah and the Apocalypse of Elijah contain this testimony. And on this pretext, and through many things of this kind, silly women of the Spains, and above all of Lusitania, laden with sins, led away by various desires, always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim 3), were deceived into taking up the monstrosities of Basilides, of Balsamus and Thesaurus, of Barbelo too and Leusibora, and of the remaining names. Of these the apostolic man Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons and martyr, writes most carefully, explaining the origins of many heresies, and above all of the Gnostics, who through Mark the Egyptian deceived noble women, first of the Gauls about the Rhône, then of the Spains, mixing pleasure with fables and claiming for their ignorance the name of knowledge (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book 1). What the people says in the present passage is this: that they have never come to know, either by ears or by eyes, what God prepares for his saints in the future; that he meets those who do righteousness and remember his ways. Further, according to the Seventy, they say that they have never known any other God besides him who is truly God, nor seen such and so great works of another, which he will do for those who wait for his mercy and do righteousness and remember his ways. And how is it written, No one has ever seen God (John 1:18), and again, No one sees my face and lives (Exod 33:20)? God, then, is by no means set forth in words, nor is he visible to the eyes; but he is seen by those of whom it is written: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8).
64:6
Behold, you are angry, and we have sinned; in them we have always been, and we shall be saved. And we have become as one unclean all of us, all our righteousnesses as the cloth of a menstruous woman. And we have all fallen like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have carried us away. LXX: Behold, you are angry, and we have all sinned; therefore we have gone astray, and we have all become as unclean, all our righteousness as the cloth of a woman who sits apart; and we have fallen away like leaves because of our iniquities; as the wind will carry us away. The order is inverted. It is not because you are angry that we have sinned, but because we have sinned that you are angry. And because we have sinned, you are angry with us, O Lord; therefore we have gone astray and left the right way. Or, according to the Hebrew: we who have always been in sins shall be saved only by your mercy, we who of ourselves are unclean; and whatever righteousness we seem to have is compared to the cloth of a woman who sits apart, or of a menstruous woman. For this Theodotion set down the Hebrew word itself, EDDIM (עדים), which Symmachus translated κυουσῶν, that is, of women in childbirth; Aquila μαρτυριῶν, that is, of testimonies: when in the first marital union the blood proves a bride a virgin. And we have fallen away, he says, like leaves from the trees, which because of our iniquities are scattered by the blasts of the winds. Here it must be considered that the righteousness which is in the Law is called uncleanness in comparison with the purity of the Gospel. For what was formerly glorified has not been glorified, because of the surpassing glory. Hence the apostle Paul too, who had fulfilled everything according to the righteousness which is in the Law, says that he counted all things as loss, that he might gain Christ (Phil 3), and because of the surpassing knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, for whose sake he reckons all things as dung, that he may gain Christ and be found in him, not having his own righteousness, which is from the Law, but the righteousness which is from God through the faith of Christ. For there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness (Eccl 7), if after the truth of the Gospel he wishes to practice the shadows of the Law, and not to pursue justly what is just. Hence, according to the most wise Solomon, every man seems righteous to himself when he lives in the Law; to whom the Lord says in the Gospel: You are those who justify yourselves before men (Luke 16:15). Fleeing this, Paul says: I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this (1 Cor 4:4). But out of sin, the righteousness of God, of which the same Solomon speaks: Understand true righteousness. There is, then, another righteousness which has no truth, and this is the true righteousness, of which again it is said in the Gospel: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt 5:6); which many prophets and righteous men desired to see, and did not see (John 8). But Abraham saw this righteousness and was glad, by no means following the letter that kills, but the spirit that gives life. Nor is it surprising to say this of men, when even the stars, compared with the righteousness of God, are not clean, and he has found out something perverse in his angels (Job 4:18; 15:15). If anyone, then, after the Gospel of Christ and the coming of the Son of God, observes the ceremonies of the Law, our tutor, let him hear the people confessing that all that righteousness is compared to a most filthy cloth; to which Esther too compares her diadem, which was the badge of royal power, and which she wore by no means willingly but of necessity: You know my necessity, that I detest the sign of my pride, which is upon my head in the days of my display; I abhor it like a menstruous cloth, and I do not wear it in the days of my quiet (Esth 14:16).
64:7
There is none who calls upon your name, who rises up and takes hold of you. You have hidden your face from us, and have dashed us down in the hand of our iniquity. LXX: And there is none who calls upon your name, and who, remembering, lays hold of you. For you have turned away your face from us, and have handed us over because of our iniquities. Because we have fallen away like leaves from the trees, which the wind scatters when they are dried up, therefore no one has been found who would call upon your name, and, rising from the ruin of his iniquities, would lay hold of you or take hold of you, and say with the bride: I have found him whom my soul sought; I will hold him and will not let him go (Song 3:4). The wind is put in the Scriptures in three ways: either for the greatness of temptations, or for perversity of doctrine, or simply for the wind by which the clouds are gathered and the air is driven together into clouds. Of temptations there is that saying of the Gospel: The rivers came, the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and they could not overthrow it, for it had been founded upon rock with a firm mass (Matt 7:27). Of perversity of doctrine: That we may not be carried about by every wind of doctrine in the wickedness of men (Eph 4:14). Of the wind simply: And they could not sail, for the wind was against them (Mark 6:48): not that this too cannot be understood tropologically, but that it only provides a likeness for the present sense. For when the Lord turns his face away from us, we are dashed down in the hand of our iniquity, or we are handed over to temptations because of our sins. From this we learn that iniquity too has hands, and so have all sins, which desire to hold us tightly bound. Hence too death and life are in the hand of the tongue (Prov 18); and the holy man prays: Let not the foot of pride come to me (Ps 35 [36]:12). But we, since the Lord has turned his face away from us, knowing what is written, Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved (Joel 2:32), let us call upon his name and say: I have made my sin known to you, and I have not covered my iniquity. I said, I will declare my iniquity against myself to the Lord; and you forgave the impiety of my heart (Ps 31 [32]:5). And at once we shall have the Lord answering: I have blotted out your iniquities like a mist, and your sins like a cloud (Isa 44:22); and we shall say: Show your face, and we shall be saved (Ps 79 [80]:4), so that we may by no means be slaves of sin, but your servants. For everyone who commits sin is its slave (John 8).
64:8ff.
And now, O Lord, you are our father, and we are clay; and you are our fashioner, and we are all the works of your hands. Do not be angry, O Lord, exceedingly, and do not remember iniquity any longer. Behold, look: we are all your people. The city of your Holy One has become a desert; Zion has become a desert, Jerusalem desolate. The house of our sanctification and of our glory, where our fathers praised you, has been made a burning of fire, and all our desirable things have been turned into ruin. Will you hold yourself back over these things, O Lord, will you be silent, and afflict us exceedingly? LXX: And now, O Lord, you are our father; but we are clay, we are all the works of your hands. Do not be angry with us, O Lord, too much, and do not remember our sins in time. And now look, for we are all your people; the city of your Holy One has become a desert, Zion; Jerusalem as a wilderness, for a curse; the house of our sanctuary and glory, which our fathers blessed, has been burned with fire, and all our glorious things have fallen. And over all these things you have held back, O Lord, and you have been silent, and have humbled us exceedingly. If we consider our merits, we must despair. But if we consider your mercy, you who scourge every son whom you receive, we dare to pour out prayers (Heb 12). For you are our father, who deigned to say: Israel is my firstborn son (Exod 4:22). And although we are clay, and the works of your hands, and you are our fashioner, and the vessel cannot answer the potter as to why it was made thus or thus, yet, knowing that we are sons, we dare to say: Do not be angry, O Lord, exceedingly. We do not forbid wrath, nor do we seek any further your patience, through which we have stored up for ourselves wrath on the day of wrath. But this we ask: that you be not angry with us exceedingly, that in the time of vengeance and punishment you do not remember our iniquity, but rather look upon your people, which was once called your people. And have mercy on the city of your sanctuary, in which your name has been called upon. This city is called Zion and Jerusalem, which the rush of the river makes glad, and in which there was once the watchtower of the virtues and the vision of peace (Ps 43 [44]). Your house too, that is, the Temple of our sanctification and glory, in which our fathers praised you, has fallen into ruins and ashes, and has been destroyed by devastating fire; so that no victims are offered in it, no Passover is celebrated, nothing is done of the ceremonies which you commanded to be done; but all our desirable things have been turned into ruins. Since, then, this is how things stand, will you, O Lord, hold back your mercy over these things, and be silent toward the adversaries who blaspheme, and afflict and humble us, not in the usual manner but exceedingly? All this the Jews think was fulfilled in the times of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. But we, in accordance with what follows in the person of the Savior, I appeared to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me (Isa 65:1), refer everything to the time of the Roman victory, which Josephus, the writer of the Jewish history, sets forth in seven volumes, to which he gave the title The Capture of the Jews, that is, περὶ ἁλώσεως. And it is superfluous to discuss in words what lies open to the eyes, since all their desirable things have been turned into ruins, and the Temple, celebrated throughout the whole world, has become the dunghill of the new city, which was called by its founder Aelia, and has passed into a dwelling-place of owls; and in vain they say daily in their synagogues: Over all these things, O Lord, you will hold back, and you will afflict us and humble us exceedingly. We can refer these things to the Church, or to the soul of a holy man, which can rightly be called a watchtower and vision of peace when the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have dwelt in it. But if, through our fault or that of the people, such a Zion has been forsaken by the Lord, it will at once lie open to the burning of the fiery arrows of the devil; for all who commit adultery, their hearts are like an oven. And when the coolness of chastity has been driven out, the flame of lust will rage in the temple of God, so that whatever in us was formerly glorious and renowned may collapse, be destroyed and perish. And then is fulfilled what is said in the Psalms: They have burned your sanctuary with fire; they have profaned on the earth the tabernacle of your name. This he alone can quench out of whose belly flow rivers of living water.
Book Eighteen
The eighteenth book on Isaiah, or rather the last, is dedicated to your name, O daughter Eustochium, and to that of your holy mother Paula, so that I may now recall with equal remembrance those whom I have looked up to with equal honor: especially since she too, while she lived, often asked for this work together with you, and your brother Pammachius, a most learned man, did not cease, both then and afterwards, to press me with frequent letters; and for me there is one and the same devotion toward friends present and absent, and toward men and women sleeping in Christ, that is, a love of souls, not of bodies. Nor am I unaware how great a diversity of opinions there is among men. I do not speak of the mystery of the Trinity, whose right confession is the ignorance of knowledge, but of the other doctrines of the Church: namely of the Resurrection, of the state of souls and of human flesh, of the Promises of things to come, how they ought to be taken, and in what way the Apocalypse of John is to be understood; for if we take it according to the letter, we must judaize; if we discuss it spiritually, as it was written, we shall seem to go against the opinions of many of the ancients: of the Latins, Tertullian, Victorinus, Lactantius; of the Greeks, to pass over the rest, I shall mention only Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, against whom Dionysius, a most eloquent man, bishop of the Church of Alexandria, writes an elegant book, mocking the fable of the thousand years, and the golden and jeweled Jerusalem on earth, the restoration of the Temple, the blood of victims, the idleness of the sabbath, the outrage of circumcision, marriages, childbirths, the rearing of children, the delights of banquets, and the servitude of all the nations; and again wars, armies and triumphs, and the slaughter of the vanquished, and the death of the sinner a hundred years old. To him Apollinaris replied in two volumes, and not only the men of his own sect but also a very great multitude of ours follow him, in this part at least, so that with a foreboding mind I already see how many people's rage is to be stirred up against me. I do not begrudge them, if they love the earth so much that in the kingdom of Christ they desire earthly things, and after an abundance of food and the gorging of gullet and belly, seek the things that are beneath the belly. Of whom the apostle Paul says: Food, he says, for the belly, and the belly for foods: but God will destroy both it and them (1 Cor 6:13). And: The kingdom of God is not food and drink (Rom 14:17). And the Lord and Savior: You err, he says, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but they will be like the Angels (Matt 22:29, 30). Nor in saying this do I take away the reality of bodies, which I confess will rise incorrupt and immortal, so that they change their glory, not their substance. And so we must walk on the straight path, so as to turn aside neither to the left nor to the right, that is, so as to follow neither the Jewish error nor the heretical. Of these, the one sort, who are of the flesh, love flesh alone; the other, ungrateful for the benefits of God, refuse to have what Christ had both when he was born and when he rose. For when the Apostles thought him a spirit, or, according to the Gospel of the Hebrews which the Nazarenes read, an incorporeal demon, he said to them: Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See my hands and feet, that it is I myself: Handle and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet (Luke 24:38, 39). And again he spoke to Thomas when he doubted: Put your finger here, and see my hands; and stretch out your hand, and put it into my side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing (John 20:27). Finally, to prove the reality of his body, he is written to have taken food, as he had also ordered food to be given to the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, whom he raised from the dead. And Lazarus, lest his resurrection be thought a phantom, is related to have sat at a banquet with the Savior (Mark 5; and Luke 13; John 12). Not that after the resurrection we shall eat and drink, as our Millenarians would have it, and that immortal and incorrupt bodies must be sustained by earthly nourishment: otherwise, where there is food, diseases follow; where there are diseases, a physician must be called in; where there are physicians, death often follows; and then again a resurrection, and a new way of life all over again; but so that the taking of food might prove the faith of the resurrection. These things we guard against with great care, and we speak with restraint, knowing that we must walk among serpents and scorpions, which bite and strike in secret (Ezek 2). Of whom Ecclesiastes too says: If a serpent, he says, bites in silence, he who disparages in secret has nothing less than it (Eccl 10:11); and his father David: Sitting, you spoke against your brother, and against your mother's son you laid a stumbling block. These things you did, and I was silent: you thought, wicked one, that I shall be like you. I will rebuke you, and set it before your face (Ps 49 [50]:20, 21); so that you may be shown to have yourself what you charge against others. But if the length of my explanations on the Prophets displeases anyone, let him hear plainly that I have said far less than the obscurity of the matter demands, and that anyone can make brief little commentaries for himself out of our fullness, which nevertheless will not suffice for a full understanding. For the Prophets do not narrate a simple history and the order of events; but all things are full of riddles, and one thing sounds in the words, another is held in the sense: so that the things you would have reckoned plain, and running on in an unhindered reading, are wrapped again in the obscurities of what follows. But it is time for me to put an end to the prophetic volume, in whose exposition, if I am longer than usual, allowance must be made for its final parts, which I did not wish to divide, lest the number of books be increased.
65:1
They sought me who before did not ask for me: they found, who did not seek me. I said: Behold me, behold me, to a nation that did not call upon my name. LXX: I appeared to those not seeking me: I was found by those who did not ask for me. I said: Behold me, in a nation that did not call upon my name. To the prayer of the people mingled with complaints, in which it had said: Why have you made us err, O Lord, from your way: you have hardened our hearts, so that we did not fear you (Isa 63:17)? there answers, as the Jews would have it, God the Father; as we hold, the Lord and Savior: So far am I from being harsh and cruel, I who prefer the repentance of the sinner to his death, and do not repel repentant sons, provided they have kept the dignity of their name, that I wish to save even strangers (Ezek 33). For those who did not seek me, and could not say: We have found him of whom Moses wrote in the Law, and the prophets, Jesus (John 1:45), to these very ones I appeared; of whom the Prophet also testified elsewhere: Those to whom nothing was announced concerning him will hear, and those who have not heard will understand (Isa 52:15). But you, who meditate on the law of God day and night, boast in vain of a repentance whose works you do not do. Hence the Evangelists and apostles, always wishing to strengthen the coming of the Lord with testimonies of the Old Testament, said: That what was spoken through the Prophet might be fulfilled (Matt 1:22). The centurion was not seeking the Lord, and he heard from the Lord: Not even in Israel have I found such faith (Luke 7:9; Matt 8:10). The Syrophoenician woman did not know the utterances of the Prophets, and she is praised by the voice of the Lord: O woman, great is your faith. The nobleman (John 4), who in Greek is called βασιλικὸς, and whom, from the royal court, we can more correctly render palatine, found healing not only for his son but for his whole house. And what is said according to the Hebrew: They sought me who before did not ask, refers to the same sense: that those who formerly had no knowledge of God afterwards seek the Lord and come to know him by revelation; he who was also revealed to Paul while he was persecuting the Church of believers (Acts 9). And he says to the apostle Peter: Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood have not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven (Matt 16:17). Him Moses too was seeking when he said to God: If I have found favor with you, show yourself to me openly, that I may see you (Exod 33:13). Looking for the reproach of Christ as greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, while he longed for the recompense of things to come, he contemplated in his mind the invisible God as if he saw him. Of whom it is also read in the Psalms: The hope of all the ends of the earth, and in the sea far off (Ps 64 [65]:6). And in Genesis: He himself shall be the expectation of the nations (Gen 49:10). And what follows: I said: Behold, I am: to a nation that did not call upon my name (Exod 3:14), agrees with that sense: He who is has sent me to you. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God, etc. (Phil 2); but, calling forth the nations of the whole world, he made one nation of his name, that of the Christians.
65:2
I have spread out my hands all the day to an unbelieving people, who walk in a way not good, after their own thoughts. LXX: I have spread out my hands all the day to an unbelieving and contradicting people, who have not walked in the good way, but after their sins. This which was said above: I appeared to those who did not ask for me: I was found by those who did not seek me, the apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, when he had expounded it of the person of the nations, added: But to Israel he says: I have spread out my hands to an unbelieving and contradicting people (Rom 10:21); a people which, when it was overcome by the benefits of the Lord and saw signs beyond what a man can do, said: This man does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons (Luke 11:15). And again: You are a Samaritan and have a demon (John 8:48). And again: though you are a man, you make yourself God (John 10:33). And elsewhere: This man is not from God, for he does not keep the sabbath (John 9:16). And many other things, which it would take long to string together. Finally, when he on the cross stretched out his hands to the unbelieving people and said: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do (Luke 23:34), they on the other side said: Ah! you who destroy the Temple and in three days build it up: let him come down now from the cross, and we believe him. He saved others, himself he cannot save (Matt 27:40). Of him Simeon too, holding the little child in his arms, prophesied: Behold, this one is set for the fall and for the rising of many, and for a sign that will be spoken against (Luke 2:34). At Rome the Jews say to Paul: Concerning this sect it is known to us that everywhere it is spoken against (Acts 28:22). We can also take the spread-out hands of the generosity of the giver, in that he denied them nothing when they asked, but at once restored health to the leper who asked (Matt 8), and the man blind from birth received eyes (John 9), and thousands of the people, hungry in the desert, besides children and women, were satisfied (Matt 14). The spread-out hands also signify the mercy of a parent eager to receive his children into his bosom. But they, on the contrary, walked in a way not good, and followed their own thoughts. To them the Lord speaks through the Prophet: Turn your foot away from the rough way (Prov 4:27). For they had loved strangers, and like a harlot had said: I will go after my lovers (Hos 2:5). And leaving the good way, which says in the Gospel: I am the way (John 14:6), they walked on the broad and spacious way that leads to death, and followed their own thoughts; and the Prophet, shunning these, entreats the Lord: From my hidden faults cleanse me, O Lord, and from those of others spare your servant. If they have not ruled over me, then I shall be spotless (Ps 18 [19]:13, 14). And the Apostle teaches that those who did not have the knowledge of God are handed over to a reprobate mind and to evil works, to do the things that are not fitting (Rom 1). But let us say with the voice of the Psalmist: Lead me in the right way (Ps 138 [139]:24).
65:3
A people that provokes me to anger, before my face always: who sacrifice in gardens, and offer sacrifice upon bricks (From Exod 20:4). LXX: This people that embitters me in my sight: they always sacrifice in gardens, and burn incense upon brick ÷ to demons that are not. ⁚ Though the Lord says: You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor a likeness of anything that is in heaven, and that is upon the earth. And though through Moses he rebukes those who do so: They provoked me with strange gods, and with their abominations they provoked me to bitterness. They sacrificed to demons, and not to God (Deut 32:16, 17); they, out of a zeal for sinning, as if to irritate and provoke God, not only did what was not lawful, but did it continually and always, sinning in the sight of the Lord, to whose eyes all things lie open, or in his Temple, sacrificing victims to idols. And so that nothing might be lacking to the sacrilege, they sacrificed in gardens and burned frankincense upon bricks, joining luxury to idolatry and pleasure to sacrifices; and instead of the one altar which by the law of God had been built of unhewn stones, they made baked bricks and the turf of the fields bloody with the blood of victims. Let this be said according to the letter: but according to the spiritual understanding, every heretic provokes the Lord to anger, and in the falsity of his doctrines offers unclean sacrifices, by no means firm and lasting forever, but like gardens green for a short time, making provision for the delights of the flesh. To him it is said: All flesh is grass, and all its glory as the flower of grass. The grass has withered, and the flower has fallen: but the word of the Lord, which is preached in the churches, abides forever (Isa 40:6, 7). Naboth, not wishing such gardens to be made out of his vineyard, poured out his blood to Ahab, that most impious king (1 Kgs 21). For it was not fitting that a father's inheritance should perish, and that, the vines being cut down which bear the fruit that gladdens the heart of man, the herbs of pleasures and vices should spring up in the place of virtues. There is reported a deservedly celebrated and praised saying of the wisest man among the Greeks, who calls all the pleasures of the world, and the pomp and luxury of the world swiftly passing away, the gardens of Adonis. The heretics also sacrifice upon stones, when they strive to make their errors and their studied lies firm by the dialectical art, and to build them up square, and to strengthen them by γραμμικαῖς, as they say, ἀνάγκαις, that is, by dust cut on a brick and marked out with lines. But what is read in the Seventy: to demons that are not, and is not found in the Hebrew, must be taken in this sense: that according to the letter and according to the spirit, neither do demons subsist, since they have already fallen away from God, who truly is, nor do the sects of the heretics, which hold no truth, but pass away and perish like shadows. Hence Esther too speaks to the Lord: Do not hand over your inheritance to those who are not (Esth 14:11). And the saint prays in the psalm: Forgive me, that I may be refreshed before I depart, and be no more (Ps 38 [39]:14). For he who, while he lives in this body, has not obtained pardon of his sins, and so departs from life, perishes to God and ceases to be, although he subsists to himself in punishments.
65:4-5
Who dwell in tombs, and sleep in the shrines of idols: who eat swine's flesh, and profane broth is in their vessels: who say, Depart from me, do not come near me, for you are unclean. LXX: In tombs and in caves they sleep for the sake of dreams: who eat swine's flesh and the broth of victims; all their vessels are profane: who say, Go far from me, do not come near me, for I am clean. There was no sacrilege that the people of Israel left out: not only sacrificing in gardens and kindling frankincense upon bricks, but also sitting, or dwelling, in tombs, and sleeping in the shrines of idols, where they used to lie upon the spread-out skins of victims, so as to learn the future from dreams. This the error of the heathen celebrates to this day in the temple of Aesculapius and in many others, which are nothing else but the tombs of the dead. Nor were they content with this end of impiety, but they also fed on the flesh of swine, which was forbidden by the law, and devoured with greedy throats yesterday's broth, which the Greeks call ἕωλον (Lev 12). Hence both they themselves and their vessels were unclean, and they grew daily to such a pitch of wantonness and pride that whoever was not led by a like error they reckoned unclean, and fled from his touch, as the Samaritans and the Jews do to us, and all the heretics, such as lately sprang up in Gaul under a hot-headed master, who, shunning the basilicas of the Martyrs, flee from us who celebrate prayers there according to custom, as though we were unclean. Yet it is not so much they who do this as the demons dwelling in them, who cannot bear the power and the scourges of the holy ashes. And which of the heretics does not rest in tombs, does not sleep in the caves of his masters? Such was Marcion, and Valentinus, and lately Eunomius, who bore witness to the uncleanness of his mind by his leprous flesh; who, leaving the light of the Holy Spirit and the upper room in which the Apostles stayed, linger in the darkness of the devil and love the caves which Jeremiah condemns in mystical speech: My inheritance has become to me as the cave of a hyena (Jer 12:8), which our people call a beast: an animal that always pursues corpses and lives on the juice and gore of dead bodies. Against these, who dwell in caves, Habakkuk too said with a voice of lament: Woe to him who gives his neighbor a drink of a turbid draught, and makes him drunk, that he may look upon his caves (Hab 2:15). Of these caves the Lord too was speaking: It is written, My Father's house shall be called a house of prayer: but you have made it a den of robbers (Matt 21:13), in which you kill the souls of those you deceive, so that you do not see in them the visions of which the same Savior says: I have multiplied visions, and in the hands of the Prophets I have been likened (Hos 12:10). And another says to him: You spoke, he says, in a vision to your sons (Ps 88 [89]:20); but you believe dreams and phantasms, which the Lord commanded us not to believe. These feed on the flesh of swine, of whom it is said: Do not cast your pearls before swine (Matt 7:6). And they eat profane broth, which is seasoned in their books with heretical art. All their vessels are unclean, that is, both their bodies and their teachings; and they come to such madness that whoever is not like them they detest as one lost.
65:6-7
These shall be a smoke in my fury, a fire burning all the day. Behold, it is written before me: I will not be silent, but I will render and repay into their bosom your iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers together, says the Lord, who sacrificed upon the mountains and upon the hills, reproached me; and I will measure back their former work into their bosom. LXX: This is the smoke of my fury: a fire burns in it all the days. Behold, it is written in my sight: I will not be silent until I render and repay into their bosom their sins, and those of their fathers, says the Lord: who burned incense upon the mountains and upon the hills, reproached me; I will render their works into their bosom. Because of your works, and the incredible arrogance of your mind, in that, being unclean, you thought the clean unclean, you shall be smoke, a burning fire, which is kindled from my fury. But fury, forgetfulness, anger, repentance we ought to take in God in the same way as feet, hands, eyes, ears and the other members which the incorporeal and invisible God is said to have. Not that he is open to these passions, he who by the gift of his grace extinguishes them in us; but so that through our words we may understand God's disposition toward us. For anger, which is the desire for vengeance, is not defined in God as it is in men; it has its matter in our vices, not in the will of the Lord: for we treasure up for ourselves wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, so that a wise flame may consume our thistles and thorns, and the tares that we have brought in place of God's seed, and also the wood, hay and stubble that we have built upon Paul's foundation (1 Cor 3). Of this perpetual fire we read in the song of Moses too: A fire is kindled from my fury, and it shall burn down to hell below. It shall devour the earth and its produce: it shall burn the foundations of the mountains, and my arrows shall consume them (Deut 32:22). The sense of this testimony is that the fire and vengeance of God always burns for sinners, and pursues them even to the lower world. Such was that rich man too in the Gospel (Luke 16), clothed in purple, who, while Lazarus rested in Abraham's bosom, was tormented with eternal burnings. The same flame will also burn the earth, that is, our flesh, and its produce, that is, the desires of the flesh, and the foundations of the mountains that raise themselves against the knowledge of God. The darts of God will also destroy the mountains themselves, so that, humbled in punishments, they cease to be mountains. Behold, he says, it is written before me. For all our sins lie open to the eyes of God, and are written in those books of which we read in Daniel: Thrones were set, and the books were opened (Dan 7:10). Of which it is said in another place: Let them be written upon the earth (Jer 17:13). And he will by no means keep silent any longer, he who had said before: I have kept silent: shall I always keep silent? says the Lord (Isa 42:14). But he will render to each what he has worked, into his bosom, that is, into the secret place of the heart, so that their own conscience may torment them. Of this the prophet Hosea too prophesies: Their princes shall fall by the sword because of the unruliness of their tongue (Hos 7:16). This is their own detraction in their bosom, which proceeds from the heart of each. Something similar is written in Proverbs: In their own bosom all things are rendered to the wicked (Prov 5:22). This bosom, because of the ruling part of the soul (Greek ἡγεμονικὸν), is called by another name the head: I have given their ways upon their heads (Ezek 9:10). And elsewhere: His sorrow shall be turned upon his head, and upon his crown his iniquity shall come down (Ps 7:17). But there is also a good bosom, which will enjoy the holiness of conscience, of which the Psalmist said: And my prayer shall be turned into my bosom (Ps 34 [35]:13). Bosom is also understood as affection and love toward anyone, as when the word is addressed to a husband: The wife who is in your bosom; and to a parent: They will bring your sons in their bosom (Luke 16). Hence all who have Abraham as their father, and have deserved to be like him in his virtues, rest in his bosom. For we ought not to take as fathers, whose iniquities and sins are now repaid to us, those from whose seed our bodies were born. Otherwise Moses himself, who had said that the sins of the fathers are to be repaid to the sons to the third and fourth generation of those who hate God (Exod 20), interprets his own sentence, saying: The sons shall not die for the sins of the fathers: but each shall die in his own sin (Deut 24:16). Ezekiel approves the same sentence, that that parable is by no means to be spoken: The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the teeth of the sons are set on edge (Ezek 18:2), but that only his teeth are set on edge who has eaten, and that the sinning soul perishes, and does not pay for another's sins. From this we understand that those are to be taken as fathers, whether in the good sense or in the contrary, to whom each is added when he has departed from this life. Now Israel sacrificed upon the mountains and hills when it set up the golden calves in Bethel and Dan. And it reproached God over his precepts, when it neglected his ceremonies and gave the worship of God to demons: whose works are to be repaid into their bosom (Hos 4). And every heretic who despises the simplicity of the Church sacrifices on the mountains and reproaches God, when he despises his precepts.
65:8
Thus says the Lord: As if a grain is found in a cluster, and it is said: Do not destroy it, for it is a blessing; so will I do for the sake of my servants, that I may not destroy the whole. LXX: Thus says the Lord: As if a grape is found in a cluster, and it is said: Do not touch it, for there is a blessing in it: so will I do for the sake of my servant, that I may not destroy all. The Lord had said that Israel would perish, and that all its sins lay open to his sight, and that he would repay the works of each into their bosom. After this he brings in a likeness and an example by comparison, to teach that each perishes by his own sin, and that, even if the multitude of sinners be very great, one righteous man does not perish through the vice of all. If anyone, he says, in a cluster and bunch of grapes which could not come to ripeness and has borne sour fruit, or has been spoiled by some fault of the air and the soil, finds one grain unharmed, which still has hope of growing larger and coming to its usual ripeness, let him say to another: Do not touch it, but let it be, that it may grow, for it is a blessing of the Lord that, among so great a multitude of grapes, it alone escaped the drought: so, he says, out of the innumerable multitude of the Jews, which has offended God, if I find a few righteous, I will set them free from the destruction of the many. And this I will do for the sake of my servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom the promise was made, or for the sake of those who serve me among very many sinners. Something of the kind we read in Genesis too, when righteous men to free the city from its sin are sought, little by little, from fifty down to ten (Gen 18), and Lot alone, as a righteous man, is snatched out of Sodom with his daughters (Gen 19). Of him it is written in the Catholic Epistle (2 Pet 2) that his soul was tormented as he saw abominations committed, and that he showed the judgment of his soul by the bearing of his body. Enoch too, alone among a very great multitude of sinners, was taken up to God (Gen 5). And Noah with his children the Flood, sent because all flesh was turning away from the service of the Lord, could not destroy (Gen 7). Abraham too was saved from the fire of the Chaldeans by the integrity of his faith (Gen 11). With this sense the words of Jeremiah also agree, spoken in the person of the Lord: As something warm in the desert, I found Israel with those slain by the sword (Jer 38:2 LXX; Vulg. 31:2). For when, he says, the whole world lay lifeless, wounded by the swords of idolatry, I found Israel in Abraham to have the warmth of faith, like a physician who after a battle, among the corpses of the dead, where he perceives that someone still has something of life in his beating veins, applies care to his wounds to restore him to health. For what is written ὡς θερμὸν, that is, as something warm, the Latin translator, deceived by the ambiguity of the word, rendered lupine, and in this most of the Greeks also err. And yet it should be known that in the Hebrew, for warmth, THODA (תודה) is written, which means grace: namely, that Israel was saved by the grace of God, and not by the merit of its own works.
65:9
And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah one possessing my mountains: and my elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there, and the plains shall be folds for flocks, and the valley of Achor a resting place for herds, for my people who have sought me. LXX: And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah, and it shall inherit my holy mountain, and my elect shall inherit, and my servants shall dwell there, and in the woodland there shall be sheepfolds for flocks, and the valley of Achor for the rest of herds, for my people who have sought me out. Him whom above he called the grain of the cluster, or the grape, or (as many would have it) the bunch, he now calls the seed of Jacob and Judah, who is to possess the mountains, or his mountain. Most understand the seed of Jacob and Judah as Christ, of whom it is said in Genesis: Judah, your brothers shall praise you (Gen 49:8), and the rest. For no one doubts that the Savior was born of the stock of Judah. But others would have the Apostles understood, of whom we have often said: The remnant shall be saved (Isa 1:9). And: Unless the Lord Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have been as Sodom, and we would have been like Gomorrah (Rom 9:29). These possessed the mountain of the Lord by their awareness of Christ dwelling in them, saying: We have come to Mount Zion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22). Or his mountains, of which it is sung in the psalms: Mountains are round about it, and the Lord is round about his people (Ps 124 [125]:2). And: Its foundations are in the holy mountains (Ps 86 [87]:1). And the elect of the Lord will possess Zion, and his servants will dwell in it. Of whom it is written in the same volume: The seed of Abraham his servants, the sons of Jacob his elect (Ps 104 [105]:6). Whoever, then, is still a seed and has not been formed into a son, he is a servant of the Lord, to whom he says in the Gospel: I know that you are the seed of Abraham, but not yet sons (John 8). For if they were the seed of Abraham, they would surely do the works of Abraham. But he who is a son is also an elect of the Lord. Hence the elect possesses Jerusalem, and the servants dwell in it; and of the difference between sons and servants it is said: You have not received the spirit of slavery again unto fear, but the spirit of adoption (Rom 8:15). And there shall be, he says, plains, or woodlands, as folds for flocks. For plains, SARON (שרון) is put in the Hebrew. The whole region around Lydda, Joppa and Jamnia is suited to pasturing flocks. Of it it is also written in the Acts of the Apostles: But the woodlands shall be turned into sheepfolds (Acts 9), according to what is sung in the psalm: The voice of the Lord perfecting the stags, and he will lay bare the woodlands (Ps 28 [29]:9), or the thickets of the forests, so that robbers may cease to lurk there, and beasts and venomous animals, and places once of ambush and blood may pass into churches of the Lord, and flocks may be pastured there by him who laid down his life for his sheep. Of whom it is written: He will shepherd us forever (Ps 47 [48]:15). This voice of the Lord, perfecting the stags and laying bare the thickets of the forests, cries out through John in the desert: Already the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire (Matt 3:10). And again: Every valley shall be filled (Luke 3:5); of which it is now also said: and the valley of Achor a resting place for herds, and for rest for my people who have sought me out. Of this valley we also read in the book of Joshua son of Nun that Achan was put to death there, who stole from the accursed thing and from the spoils of Jericho, and was put to death with all his house; and from the fact that he troubled the people, the very place where this happened received the name ACHOR (עכור), that is, of trouble and tumult (Josh 7). The valley of Achor, then, in which there was once a curse and punishment, will be for the rest of herds. Expounding this, Paul says: Is God concerned for oxen (1 Cor 9:9)? or does he not rather speak of us, since he who plows ought to plow in hope, and he who threshes on the floor ought to thresh in hope of sharing? Of this valley it is also written mystically in Hosea: I will speak to her heart, without doubt to Jerusalem's; and I will give her possessors from there, and the valley of Achor, to open her understanding (Hos 2:14). For this reason, then, the valley of Achor is handed over as a possession to the herds of the people of God, and the woodlands are turned into folds for flocks: that understanding may be opened, and the truth of the Lord be known.
65:11-12
And you who have forsaken the Lord, and have forgotten my holy mountain; who set a table for fortune, and pour libations upon it: I will number you for the sword, and you shall all fall in the slaughter. LXX: But you who have forsaken me, and have forgotten my holy mountain, and prepare a table for fortune, and fill a drink for the demon: I will hand you over to the sword: you shall all fall slain. In places once wooded and full of trouble, in the places of the Gentiles, there will be folds for the sheep, that is, the Churches of believers from the whole world. But you, O people of Israel, who have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger, who have forgotten his holy mountain, of which we have often spoken, whether the Lord Savior, who is the mountain of mountains and the holy one of all the holy, or Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem: you who do this and that, I will hand over to the sword, so that you may all fall slain together. What the sword is, we shall say later. You set, he says, a table for fortune, and pour libations upon it: or according to the Seventy: You prepare a table for fortune, and fill a cup for the demon, or κέρασμα, which all have likewise translated, that is, a mixed drink. Now there is in all cities, and especially in Egypt and in Alexandria, an old custom of idolatry, that on the last day of the year and of the month which is their last, they set out a table loaded with feasts of every kind, and a cup mixed with honeyed wine, taking an omen of the fertility either of the past year or of the coming one. And this the Israelites did, worshiping the monstrosities of all the images, and they offered not victims upon the altar, but poured out libations upon a table of this kind. And where the Seventy translated to the demon, the Hebrew has MENNI (מני), which Symmachus rendered without me: so that the sense is: You who prepare a table for fortune, and fill a drink without me; to teach that it is done not for him but for the demon. Now the sword by which they are slain is taken for punishment. For not all the people of Israel were handed over to the sword, since we see how many thousands of them are scattered over the whole world; but to punishments and torments, to captivity and the utmost servitude, according to what is said elsewhere: All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword; and in the Song of Deuteronomy: I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour the flesh of the wounded (Deut 32:42). It can hardly be believed that the arrows of the Lord are made drunk with blood, and that his sword is sated with the flesh of the wounded. Job speaks of these arrows, which pierced him at every moment of the hours: The arrows of the Lord are in my body: their fury drinks up my spirit; for when I begin to speak, they goad me (Job 6:4). But according to tropology it must be said that all who desert the Church and forget the holy mountain of God, and give themselves over to spirits of error and doctrines of demons, prepare a table for fortune, believing that nothing is God's concern, but that all things are governed either by the course of the stars or by the changes of fortune: whom Paul rebukes, saying: You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons (1 Cor 10:20, 21): for they will be handed over to eternal punishments, so that none of them can escape the slaughter and the ruin.
65:12
Because I called, and you did not answer; I spoke, and you did not hear: but you did evil in my eyes, and what I did not will, you chose. LXX: Because I called you, and you did not hear: I spoke, and you despised, and you did evil in my sight, and what I did not will you chose. You have been handed over to the sword, he says, because you have not only forsaken me and forgotten me and mixed a cup for fortune, but when I was Emmanuel, that is, God with us, of whom John too writes: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14), I called you, present among you: Return to me, returning sons (Jer 3:14). And: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened (Matt 11:28); and you would not answer. I spoke in parables, and did all that I ought to do, and you did not hear me, nay, you even despised me. For I am he who said above as well: I came, and there was no man: I called, and there was none to obey (Isa 50:2). Nor was this impiety enough for you, to despise me when I was present, and to kill the heir sent to you; but you did evil in my sight, and chose what I did not will, and blasphemed the Son of God, so as to ask for yourselves Barabbas the robber, the author of murder and sedition; and you still dare to say: Why have you made us err from your way (Isa 63:17)? For if those who did not know me found me, and those who did not call upon me received me, what torments are you worthy of, who would not receive him who was sent to you and said: I have not come except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 15:24), but on top of that fastened him to the cross? We must consider what is meant by what he says: And what I did not will you chose; or what the will of the Son of God is, who says in the Gospel: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven: but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven (Matt 7:21). Of which God himself also says: I have willed to do your will (Ps 39 [40]:9). This is the will of which the Lord himself was speaking: I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, who will do all my wills (Acts 13:22). Hence the saint too prays and says: Teach me to do your will, for you are my God (Ps 142 [143]:10). For all things are lawful, but not all things are expedient. And concerning virgins the Apostle relates that he has no command of the Lord, yet he wishes us to be as he himself is (1 Cor 6). By this he shows that it is by no means the indulgence of the master that is to be followed, but his will (1 Cor 7); and that we ought to choose the things that are expedient, not those that are lawful, as is that concerning second marriage: I wish the younger women to marry, to bear children, to be mothers of families (1 Tim 5:14). And he gives the reasons why he allows this: For already some have turned aside after Satan. Therefore second marriage is not his pure will, since it is cheapened by the comparison with fornication.
65:13-14
Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, my servants shall eat, and you shall be hungry. Behold, my servants shall drink, and you shall be thirsty. Behold, my servants shall rejoice, and you shall be put to shame. Behold, my servants shall give praise for exultation of heart, and you shall cry out for sorrow of heart, and for contrition of spirit you shall howl. LXX: Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry. Behold, my servants shall drink, but you shall be thirsty. Behold, my servants shall be glad, but you shall be put to shame. Behold, my servants shall exult in joy, but you shall cry out because of the sorrow of your heart, and because of the contrition of your spirit you shall howl. Not only shall you fall by the sword, you who have forsaken the Lord and done evil in his sight and would not hear him when he was present, but you shall see a great difference between yourselves and the multitude of the nations. For those who will be my servants shall eat and drink, they shall rejoice and give praise for exultation of heart. But you, on the contrary, shall be hungry and thirsty, you shall be put to shame, and for sorrow of heart and contrition of spirit you shall howl. All these things the χιλιασταὶ think are to be fulfilled in the thousand years, believing food and drink to be the kingdom of God, and not understanding what is written: Labor not for the food that perishes, but for the bread of life and truth (John 6:27), and desiring to eat the flesh of Christ and the fruit of the tree of life. Of this the Savior speaks: I am the bread that came down from heaven (John 6:33). And Ecclesiastes: Open your eyes, and be filled with loaves (Prov 20:13). And the Psalmist: I was young, he says, and have not grown old, and I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread. All the day he is merciful and lends, and his seed shall be for a blessing (Ps 36 [37]:25). Of this bread and spiritual banquet he instructed the disciples: You who have continued with me in my trials shall eat at the table of my Father in the kingdom of heaven (Luke 22:28). But if we take it of simple bread, how shall we be able to explain this: The Lord will not kill the righteous soul with hunger (Prov 10:3). And again: The Lord knows the ways of the spotless, and their inheritance shall be forever. They shall not be put to shame in the evil time, and in the days of famine they shall be filled (Ps 36 [37]:18, 19). For how many saints die in persecution, worn out by hunger and want; how many righteous men are hungry, while the wicked are distended with surfeit! But the drink is to be taken as that which is drawn from the fountains of Israel; whoever drinks of it will have in himself a fountain of water springing up into eternal life (John 4; Luke 22). This the Savior too promises that he will drink with the Apostles in the kingdom of the Father: it gladdens the heart of man (Ps 103 [104]:14), so that those who drink can say: You have put gladness in my heart (Ps 4:7). Of this food and drink it is said among the eight beatitudes: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt 5:6). And the mother of the Lord, full of the Holy Spirit, prophesied: He has filled the hungry with good things (Luke 1:53), those who before did not have the food of the Lord: and the rich he has sent away empty, those who were given for his burial, and who spat out him whom the Prophets had promised. Of these the Psalmist sings in another place too: The rich have been in want, and have hungered (Ps 33 [34]:11), that is, the people of the Jews. But those who seek the Lord, that is, the crowd of the Gentiles, shall not lack any good thing. And when those who serve Christ and believe in him have rejoiced and praised God for exultation and joy of heart, then those others will be put to shame, seeing others succeed to their place; and they will cry out for sorrow of heart, fulfilling what is written: There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt 13:50): when the lambs of the nations and of the righteous stand at the right hand, and the goats of the Jews and of the wicked on the left: the one receiving eternal rewards, the other eternal punishments. And the contrition of spirit for sorrow of heart is to be understood of the conscience of sins, according to what is written: Those who err in spirit shall know understanding (Isa 29:24). And: A contrite and humbled heart, O God, you will not despise (Ps 50 [51]:19). The spirit is crushed when it has been lifted up; as is written of a king hostile to Israel: The Lord hardened his spirit (2 Kgs 17:14). And of the prince of the Babylonians, when his heart was lifted up and his spirit hardened, so that he said in his pride: This is Babylon, and I have made it (Dan 4:27).
65:15-16
And you shall leave your name for an oath to my elect, and the Lord God shall slay you, and he shall call his servants by another name, in which he who is blessed upon the earth shall be blessed in God, amen: and he who swears in the earth shall swear in God, amen. LXX: For you shall leave your name for satiety to my elect. But you the Lord shall slay: and to those who serve me a new name shall be called, which shall be blessed upon the earth: for they shall bless the true God, and those who swear upon the earth shall swear by the true God. For satiety, which in Hebrew is called SABAA (שבועה), the others translated oath; this word has many meanings and varies with the difference of accents. For it is understood as oath, and fullness, and satiety, and many, and seven. Of this we spoke in the book on Genesis, and in this volume (cf. Isa 4), where seven women took hold of one man. Again, where the Seventy translated true, and in the Hebrew it is said AMEN (אמן), Aquila rendered πεπιστωμένως, that is, faithfully. And what he says is this: when others have succeeded to your place, your name will be an oath for my elect, so that they may hold you up as an example of evils and abhor suffering such things, and swear thus: may I not suffer these things which the people of the Jews suffered. Or your name will be for satiety: which is usually said of those whose recollection and memory is hateful, and who have come to the point of satiety and nausea. Or certainly it must be said that they leave their name to the elect of the Lord, so that the crowd of the nations may succeed in their place, and be called sons of Abraham and Israel. Of whom Paul speaks: Peace upon them, and upon the Israel of God (Gal 6:16). For not all who are of the Israelites are Israel, nor are all who are the seed of Abraham sons (Rom 9:7); to whom it is said: If you were sons of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham (John 8:39). And because they are the seed of Abraham and not sons, of which difference we spoke above, John the Baptist therefore rebukes them, saying: And do not presume to say, We have Abraham as our father: for God is able from these stones to raise up sons to Abraham (Matt 3:9). For how can they be his sons who have said to wood and stone, You have begotten me, since, on the contrary, those who are of faith are called sons of Abraham? But you, he says, the Lord shall slay, so that you are by no means called the circumcision, but the concision (Phil 3); so that you lack eternal life, so that you do not have him who says: I am the life (John 14:6). But his servants, he says, he will call by another name, or a new one, which will be celebrated in the whole world. And it will be blessed: so much so that he who has been called by that name is blessed in the Lord, and receives the seal of the true Circumcision, amen: which the Lord often uses in the Gospel to approve what has been said: Amen, amen I say to you (John 5:19). But the new or other name is none other than that which is derived from the name of Christ, so that the people of God is by no means called Jacob, and Judah, and Israel, and Ephraim, and Joseph, but Christian. For whoever swears in the earth will by no means swear by idols and false gods, but by God: and this sentence again is confirmed by the seal of amen. Further, according to the Seventy, who for amen rendered the true God, so that the true God is blessed, and those who swear upon the earth swear by the true God: we do not, according to the error of the Arians, refer this only to the person of God the Father, of whom it is written: That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (John 17:3), but to the Son, who is himself also true God, as the evangelist John says: The Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, that we may know the true one, and may be in his true Son Jesus Christ (1 John 5:20). This is the true God and eternal life. For if the Savior says of himself: I am the truth (John 14:6), consequently the true God received his name from truth, so that he is by no means called God after the manner of false gods, but after the manner of the true God the Father, and is himself true God. Otherwise, if he is not true, he will be like an idol, which recoils upon the heads of those who deny that Christ is true God. And this is the new name which is written for him on the pebble in the Apocalypse (Chapter 2), which is blessed in the whole world.
65:17-18
For the former distresses have been given over to oblivion, and because they are hidden from my eyes. For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be in memory: and it shall not come up upon the heart: but you shall rejoice and exult forever in the things that I create. LXX: For they shall forget the former tribulation, and it shall not come up upon their heart. For there shall be a new heaven and a new earth: and they shall not remember the former things, and they shall not come upon their heart; but they shall find joy and exultation in it. The cause of the gladness and of the confession of the true God is that an eternal oblivion of the former distresses will follow, so that they will by no means remember the idols and their ancient error, but will pass from darkness to light, so as to enjoy eternal blessedness. For they will forget their former evils, not by a forgetting of memory, but by the succession of good things, according to what is written: In a good day there is forgetfulness of evils (Sir 11:27). And elsewhere: The affliction of an hour brings forgetfulness of delights (ibid. 29): because those placed in distress by no means enjoy in their minds, according to the error of Epicurus, their former pleasures. Though this too may be said: that in the new heaven and in the new earth all memory of the former way of life will be blotted out, lest this very thing be a part of evils, to remember the former distress. Now the new heaven and the new earth those who think that all things we see will perish interpret by the testimony of the Gospel: Heaven and earth shall pass away (Matt 24:35). And by that of the apostle Paul: For the things that are seen are temporal: but the things that are not seen are eternal (2 Cor 4:18). But those who consider newness to be a change for the better, and not the destruction of the elements, use this example: In the beginning, O Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They shall perish, but you remain, and they shall all grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you shall roll them up, and they shall be changed (Ps 101 [102]:26, 27). In this it is clearly shown that perdition and destruction mean not an abolition into nothing, but a change for the better. For neither does what is written in another place: The moon shall shine like the sun, and the sun shall receive sevenfold light (Isa 30:26), signify the destruction of the former things, but a change for the better. That this may be understood, let us set down examples from our own condition: when an infant has grown into a boy, and a boy into a youth, and a youth into a man, and a man into an old man, he by no means perishes through the several ages. For he is the same who was before; but he is changed little by little, and is said to have perished to his former age. Understanding this, the apostle Paul too said: For the fashion of this world passes away (1 Cor 7:31). Let us consider what he said: the fashion passes away, not the substance. Peter too signifies the same thing: This escapes them, willingly: that the heavens were from the beginning, and the earth out of water and through water subsists by the word of God; through which the former world, flooded by the deluge, perished. But the heavens and earth which are now are by the same principle kept for fire (2 Pet 3:5ff.); in what sense this is to be taken, he teaches afterwards: But we see new heavens and a new earth, and his promise (ibid. 13): he did not say, we shall see other heavens and another earth, but the old and ancient ones changed for the better. We can also say this: that those converted from idolatry, having deserted their ancient error, see new heavens and a new earth, by no means reckoning the elements to be gods, nor the things that are born of the earth. Now we confess that heaven and earth are the works of the hands of God: but at that time we venerated servants and the creature with the homage due to God; and David, perceiving this, sings in the psalm: I shall see the heavens, the works of your fingers (Ps 8:4): not that at that time, when he said this, he did not see the heavens; but that through the several increases of virtues, and the knowledge of things to come, he sees as new those which he already saw as old. And what is said at the end of this testimony: Which I create, was omitted by the Seventy.
65:19
For behold, I create Jerusalem an exultation, and its people a joy: and I will exult in Jerusalem, and rejoice in my people. LXX: For behold, I make Jerusalem an exultation, and my people a gladness, and I will exult over Jerusalem, and be glad over my people. You ought, he says, to rejoice and exult with everlasting gladness in the creation of new heavens and a new earth, and not to remember the former things at all, lest any sadness should arise in you from the recollection of the old: for I will create not only new heavens and a new earth, but Jerusalem too in exultation, and its people in joy. Without doubt it will be a gladness for the whole earth, so that the city which, when old, was the joy of one nation, when new may be the gladness of all the nations. And so great will be the exultation and gladness of all over the city and people of God, that I too, its founder, will exult and rejoice over Jerusalem and over my people, who shall eat and drink and be glad and exult in it, and who have been called by the new name.
65:20
And there shall no more be heard in it the voice of weeping, and the voice of crying: there shall no longer be an infant of days, and an old man who does not fill out his days. For the child shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. LXX: And there shall no more be heard in it the voice of weeping, and the voice of crying: nor shall there be there any more one untimely and an old man who does not fill out his time. For there shall be an infant a hundred years old, and he who dies a sinner at a hundred shall be accursed. For it will not be fitting that in the city of Jerusalem and in the people of God, which will receive the eternal creation of exultation and joy, the voice of weeping and crying should be heard any more, when sorrow, mourning and groaning have gone away. For contraries cannot exist together. And where there is exultation and joy, which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, there weeping and lamentation cannot abide, which befits those who mourn and grieve, and above all crying, which Paul expels from the Church of believers, lest, like the Jews, we make a crying instead of judgment (Eph 4). In such a city there will not be different ages: an infant and an old man, small and great, who does not fill out his days; but as sons of the resurrection all will come to the perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, so that no one will lack a span of years nor have more than enough, nor will it be that, while one does not yet have firm strength, another ceases to be what he was and withers in decrepit age; and all will come to the number of a hundred, as Abraham was, who at this age received the promise of his son Isaac (Gen 21). Of the praises of this number there is no need to say much, lest the discussion be superfluous. This only we say: that ten decades have equal sides, and possess the firmness of a square form. In the promises too, for the things we have spent, the Lord promises us them multiplied a hundredfold; and the seed falling on good ground has as its first number of most abundant yield the hundred. Finally Isaac too, sowing one seed of faith, received the works of his labor multiplied by this number. At that time, then, when all will be of one age, both the saint and the sinner will be perfected by a like resurrection, nor will they differ from one another in time; but one will be drawn to rewards, the other to punishments: and the sinner will be accursed in this, that he will suffer eternal punishments in an incorrupt body. That too which we read in the Apocalypse of John (Chapter 20), that after the resurrection small and great are brought into the presence of the judge, signifies differences not of ages but of merits. For he who is small, according to the sentence of Solomon, is worthy of mercy: but the mighty shall mightily suffer torments (Wis 6:7). With this sense the words of the Lord also agree: The servant who knows the will of his lord and does not do it shall be beaten with many stripes (Luke 12:47). But he who does not know, and has done things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few. The blessed apostle Paul, with Christ speaking in him, expounding the old Scripture, declares the patriarch Abraham to be the father not only of the circumcision but of the uncircumcision (Rom 4), that is, that two peoples were begotten from him; and that the one which had been born according to the flesh, a hundred years old, lies under a perpetual curse because of Christ, who was born of the stock of Abraham, and on whom it laid hands. The Gospels teach this figure (Mark 5), in which it is related that the woman with the issue of blood began to be ill at the time when the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue was born, and that when the one was healed the other at once died, within one and the same span of years: that the new people persists in youth, and the old dies in unbelief and is accursed. This we have said according to the Seventy translators, whose edition is spread through the whole world, lest in a most famous passage we should seem to take refuge in the citadel of the Hebrew language. Whether you understand this after the resurrection at the second coming of the Savior, or believe it after baptism in the first resurrection, it is not at odds with the faith of the Church. The Hebrews contend that these things will come to pass before the resurrection in a kingdom of a thousand years upon the earth, and that so long a span of future life is promised that a hundred years are counted as infancy; but that the sinner will die in the hundredth year of his age: namely, so that he may not enjoy the wealth he has gathered, but may know that he is accursed because of his sin. But if it is so, where will be the perfect blessedness, which is violated and corrupted by sin, and where sin is punished by an untimely death?
65:21-22
And they shall build houses, and dwell in them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat their fruits. They shall not build, and another dwell: they shall not plant, and another eat. LXX likewise. Of these houses the prophetic word also makes promise in Psalm 68 (69), saying: For God will save Zion: and the cities of Judah shall be built, and they shall dwell there, and acquire it by inheritance, and the seed of his servants shall possess it: and those who love his name shall dwell in it. All this the Jews take carnally, that Jerusalem and the cities of Judea are to be restored to their former state. But if we grant them this, let them hear that this is promised not only to Jerusalem but also to Sodom, as Ezekiel says: Sodom shall be restored to its ancient state (Ezek 16:55). Therefore the houses in which those who build them are to dwell are to be understood either as the Virtues or as the various mansions with the Father, which he who has built them will possess forever. Such houses the midwives too, who feared God, are said in Exodus to have built for themselves: although it is written in the Hebrew that houses were built for them by God, because they feared him (Exod 1). And Jacob, because he was simple, or, as it is said in Greek, ἄπλαστος, that is, by no means feigned, and not such as those who are condemned in the Epistle of Peter, of whom he says: In covetousness they make merchandise of you with feigned words (2 Pet 2:3), therefore dwelt in a house which Esau, who delighted in wild beasts and forests, could not possess. Such a house the words of the Savior in the Gospel also describe: Everyone who comes to me, and hears my words, and does them, will be like a prudent man who built his house upon the rock (Matt 7:24), and the rest. Otherwise, according to the letter, many saints build houses and do not dwell in them, being taken away by travel abroad, or by another's plunder, or by death. Such was Job, who, rich in flesh and spirit, was brought down to such poverty that he sat on a dunghill outside the gate of the city (Job 2). On the contrary, that rich man in the Gospel, clothed in purple, built a house and dwelt in it, to whom it could most rightly be said: Fool, this night your soul shall be taken from you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be (Luke 12:20)? And he says not only, They shall build houses and dwell in them, but also, They shall plant vineyards, and they themselves shall eat their fruit. According to what is said in Micah: Each shall rest under his vine and under his fig tree; and there shall be none to terrify him (Mic 4:4). This is the vine that spoke in the Gospel: I am the vine, and you are the branches, and my Father is the husbandman (John 15:5). Every one that does not bear fruit shall be cut down, and cast into the fire (Matt 3:10). Its fruits are eaten and drunk, and gladden the heart of man, and inebriate the friends of the bridegroom, and are drunk daily in the kingdom of God. And he rests under the fig tree, and fears no one's snares, who enjoys the sweetness of the Holy Spirit and is filled with his fruits: love, joy, peace, faith, continence, patience. Of a planter of this kind it is said: He who plants a fig tree shall eat its fruits (Amos 9:14). He who has built such houses and planted such vineyards, of which the Apostle too speaks: I planted, Apollos watered, God gave the increase (1 Cor 3:6), shall eat the labors of his hands (Ps 127 [128]); and sowing in the spirit, from the spirit he shall reap eternal life (Gal 6): nor shall he be supplanted by the frauds of the devil and his henchmen.
65:23ff.
For as the days of the tree, so shall be the days of my people, and the works of their hands shall wear out for my elect. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth in trouble: for it is the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their grandchildren with them. And it shall be that before they cry out, I will hear: while they are still speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion and the ox shall eat straw, and for the serpent dust shall be its bread. They shall not harm nor kill in all my holy mountain, says the Lord. LXX: For as the days of the tree of life, so the days of my people: the works of their labors my elect shall make old: they shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth sons for a curse: for it is a seed blessed by the Lord, and their grandchildren with them. And it shall be that before they cry out, I will hear them: while they are still speaking I will say, What is it? Then wolves and lambs shall feed together: and the lion like the ox shall eat straw, and the serpent earth as bread. They shall not harm nor destroy in my holy mountain, says the Lord. Eternal will be the dwelling and the planting of the righteous, so that the days of the life of my people are compared to the days of the life of the tree, of which it is said in the Psalms: The righteous shall flourish like the palm (Ps 91 [92]:13), daily triumphing over his adversaries and bearing before him the token of victory. But if we read according to the Seventy, who rendered the sense from the Hebrew rather than the words, the days of the tree of life, we understand the tree of life which is set in paradise. Lest Adam should stretch out his hand to it and live, he was cast out of paradise (Gen 3). To guard it were set the Cherubim, that is, a multitude of knowledge, and a fiery sword, to keep the way of the tree of life, lest Adam, placed in sin and not yet acknowledging his offenses, should eat of it and die the death of impenitence, despair and pride. What this tree of life is, Solomon explains more plainly, who, discoursing of the wisdom of God, says: It is a tree of life to all who come to it, and for those who lean upon it, it is as firm as upon the Lord (Prov 3:18); nor is there doubt that it signifies the Word of God, who is himself the way and wisdom, and says of himself: I am the life (John 11:25). And of whom the Prophet sings: In wisdom you have made all things: the earth is filled with your creation (Ps 103 [104]:24); and the apostle Paul: Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24). The works of the people of God too shall not grow old, but shall be renewed daily, so that they walk not in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the spirit (Rom 7). So that, as through the disobedience of one man very many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one man many may be made righteous. Or certainly this must be said: that the works of those grow old whose house, founded upon the rock, abides forever, and who have built upon the foundation of Christ gold, silver, precious stones (1 Cor 3); and that, on the contrary, the works of those perish whose house, founded upon the sand, is overturned by a sudden storm, and who have built upon the foundation of Christ wood, hay, stubble. Or does it not seem to you that he makes his works old daily who, forgetting the things that are past, stretches forward to what is to come? Hence a Testament is called both old and new: not that the old perishes, but that no other succeeds the new. This too can be said according to the Hebrew: that the works of the people, and of those who believe in Christ, are the fruits of the Apostles, that is, of the elect of God, and are laid up in their treasuries. For many are called, and few are chosen (Matt 20). These shall not labor in vain, as the Jews once labored; but they shall eat the labors of their hands. Nor shall they bring forth in trouble, or for a curse, or, as is put more expressly in the Hebrew, εἰς ἀνυπαρξίαν, which in their language is said LABALA (לבהלה), that is, so that they cease to be and have an end of their substance: for which Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion translated haste: so that they may by no means hasten to believe without reason, but may imitate Nathanael, who was praised by the voice of the Lord: Behold, truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile (John 1:47), who sought Christ by the authority of the Scriptures and longed to recognize him from the Prophets, saying: Can anything good come out of Nazareth? And the sense is: How do you bring me a Messiah from Galilee and Nazareth, whom I know to have been promised from Bethlehem of Judah? The Apostles, then, and apostolic men will so bring forth sons as to instruct them from the holy Scriptures, so that they do not imitate the curse of the Jews, but say with the Prophet: From your fear, O Lord, we have conceived in the womb, and have been in labor and have brought forth (Isa 26:18). For of these it had been said: Blessed is the offspring of your womb (Deut 28:4). Such are the sons of Abraham, who do his works: and in the old history they are called the sons of the Prophets (John 8): such too as the Apostles begot in the new Instrument (Acts 16): Paul begot Timothy, Luke and Titus and many others; Peter Mark the evangelist, and the rest others; whose seed is blessed and is blessed to this day, and the sons of sons remain. Of whom the Prophet says: Blessed is the man who fears the Lord; he will delight exceedingly in his commandments. His seed shall be mighty on the earth; the generation of the upright shall be blessed (Ps 111 [112]:1, 2). And elsewhere: Your sons like young olive plants round about your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord (Ps 127 [128]:4, 5). On the contrary, of Judas the betrayer, and of all who are like him, it is said: Let his sons be orphans, and his wife a widow. Let his sons be shaken and carried off, and let them beg; let them be cast out of their houses (Ps 108 [109]:9, 10). For the end of an evil generation is very bad. They conceive sorrow and bring forth iniquity. Of whose prince it is written: Behold, he has travailed with injustice, he has conceived sorrow, and brought forth iniquity (Ps 7:15). But if this is said of the wicked, how is it that Samuel, a blessed and righteous man, begot very wicked sons, who did not walk in their father's way (1 Sam 8); and David, of whose seed Christ was born, begot two sons, Amnon and Absalom, of whom the one became the murderer of his brother, the other of his father (2 Sam 13, 15 and 16)? From all these things we learn that sons and grandchildren ought to be understood according to what we have said. According to which Paul too is in labor with sons until Christ be formed in them, and begets Onesimus in chains (Gal 4). When these cry out, they will at once be heard, and while they are speaking the Lord will say, Here I am. All of which we see fulfilled even according to the letter in the Acts of the Apostles. For all the nations could not have believed in so short a time unless their faith had in some way been wrung from them by the miracles of signs. For when the Apostles and apostolic men spoke and cried out, the Lord answered with the greatness of his signs, so that Dorcas rose at the prayers of Peter (Acts 9), so that the father of Publius, on the island of Malta, was healed by the prayers of Paul of fevers and dysentery, which are diseases contrary to each other, and so that the whole world said that they were gods walking among men (Acts 28). Then the wolf and the lamb fed together, Paul the persecutor and Ananias the disciple (Acts 9). He is the wolf of whom it is written: Benjamin, a ravening wolf, in the morning shall eat the prey, and at evening shall give food (Gen 49:27); or, as it is said in the Hebrew, shall divide the spoils. His teaching was the food of believers, and he triumphed over his vanquished adversaries in the whole world. But the lambs are to be believed to be all who in white garments follow the Lamb wherever he goes (Rev 14), whom the Lord handed over to Peter to feed, saying: Feed my lambs (John 21:16). The lion too like the ox shall eat straw, when most eloquent men, once powerful in the world, give themselves over to the rusticity of the Scriptures, so that they by no means feed on worldly eloquence, which like honey drips from the lips of a harlot, but follow the plainness and the straw of the history, until by much labor and diligence they deserve to come to the grain of the senses. Of this straw and grain Jeremiah speaks: What has straw to do with wheat, says the Lord (Jer 23:28)? And it must be considered that it is not the ox that is turned to fury, but the lion that is changed to gentleness. The serpent too, which watched for the heel of man, and whose head was watched for by man, will by no means be nourished by the destruction of others, but will eat earth, or dust, as bread (Gen 3). Or certainly it is to be understood thus: that the devil, who formerly fed on the deaths of men, eats only those who are dust and earth: by all of which is shown the change of the wicked into good, who will be harmless, having laid aside their ancient ferocity: not outside, but in the holy mountain of the Lord, that is, in the Church, and in the confession of that mountain by which the prince of Tyre was wounded, and which, cut out of the mountain without hands, grew into a great mountain and filled the world (Dan 2). Let us in this place ask the Jews, and all who under the Christian name still eat the straw of the Scriptures, which, separated from the wheat by the winnowing fan of the Lord, will be given over to the wind and the flames, what blessedness is to be reckoned in this: that in a kingdom of a thousand years, on Mount Zion, in Jerusalem, the city of Christ then present, and in a most august Temple, wolves and lambs, lions and oxen, serpents and men should eat together and dwell alike? and that they should be harmless only to those who have dwelt in the holy mountain of the Lord? From which we understand that all who are outside the mountain are to be slain. So the whole world will be stripped of wolves, lions, bears, leopards and serpents and the other beasts; and the immense woodlands, and the vast waste of the Egyptian desert, which is fertile in venomous creatures; and, as the height of happiness, the holy city will be the dwelling place not only of men but of beasts and serpents, so that, according to the earlier prophecy, the wolf dwells with the lamb, and the leopard with the kid, the calf and the lion, and sheep stay together with bears (Isa 11); and a little child leads them, and an infant from the breast puts his hand into the hole of the asp, and kills the basilisk in its den. And the cause of so great a happiness is that the whole earth has been filled with the knowledge of the Lord.
66:1
Thus says the Lord: Heaven is my seat, and earth the footstool of my feet. What is this house that you will build for me, and what is this place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and all these things have come to be, says the Lord. LXX likewise. Lest we should understand the holy mountain as Zion and be covered with the Jewish error, who think that Jerusalem is to be built up and that all the things the Lord promises are to be fulfilled there carnally, he takes this suspicion away from us, and sets down the testimony which Stephen, the first martyr in Christ, used against the contentiousness of the Jews (Acts 7). Solomon built him a house, without doubt for God; but the Most High does not dwell in things made with hands, as the Prophet says: Heaven is my throne: but earth is the footstool of my feet. And Paul in the same volume: God, who made the world and those who are in it, by no means dwells in temples made with hands (Acts 17:24). For if, like one sitting on a throne and reigning, heaven is his throne and earth the footstool of his feet, how shall he be shut up in a small place who fills all things, and in whom all things are? Hence Moses too: Do not say, he says, in your heart, He is far off: for God is in heaven above and upon the earth beneath: and there is no other God besides him (Deut 4:39). And the Psalmist: Where shall I go from your spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? If I go up into heaven, you are there: if I go down to hell, you are present (Ps 138 [139]:7). With him Jeremiah too agrees, speaking in the person of God: I am a God at hand, and not a God from afar. Can anyone hide in secret places, and I not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth (Jer 23:23, 24)? For in him we all are and move (Acts 17). And he says this to refute the Jewish error, who think that the invisible, incorporeal and incomprehensible God can be shut up in the temple of Jerusalem. This indeed Solomon himself, the builder of the Temple, confesses at length in his prayer to the Lord (1 Kgs 8). And lest we think that the greatness of God is to be measured even by heaven and earth, we read of him in another place: Who holds heaven in his palm, and the earth in his fist (Isa 40:12). By these things God is shown to be both outside and within, both poured into and poured around, since he is not shut in by the throne that surrounds him, and he shuts in with his fist and his palm. He is the creator not only of heaven and earth, but also of the invisible Angels and Archangels, Dominions, Powers, and of all men, of whom the Apostle speaks (Col 1): all of which the hand of God has worked. Of this hand both Job and the Psalmist make mention: Your hand has made me and fashioned me (Job 10:18; Ps 118 [119]:73). For all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made. Of whom John says again: He was in the world, he says, and the world was made through him (John 1). For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created (Ps 32 [33]). And this is what the Scripture of Genesis shows in mystical speech: God said, and God made (Gen 1). For by the Word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth. And there is no place of the Lord's rest except the one which the Prophet adds next.
66:2-3
But to whom shall I look, except to the poor little one and the contrite of spirit, and the one who trembles at my words? He who sacrifices an ox is as one who kills a man. He who slaughters a sheep is as one who brains a dog. He who offers an oblation is as one who offers swine's blood. He who remembers frankincense is as one who blesses an idol. LXX: And upon whom shall I look, except the humble and quiet, and the one who trembles at my words? ÷ But the wicked man ⁚ who sacrifices a calf is as one who strikes down a man. He who sacrifices from the flock is as one who kills a dog. He who offers fine flour is as one who offers swine's blood. He who gives frankincense for a memorial is as a blasphemer. Once the altar and the earthly Temple, which the hand of man had built, have been taken away, the victims of the Jews too are rightly taken away, lest perhaps they should say: We are not so foolish as to think that God can be shut up in a place; but in a place set apart for sacrificing, we sacrifice to God the victims which are prescribed by the law. The inhabitant of heaven, then, or rather the Creator of all, who denies that he has a temple on earth, gladly takes up as his temple the man who is humble and quiet and trembles at his words, according to that saying of the Apostle: But you are the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells in you. If anyone violates the temple of God, God will violate him. For the temple of God is holy, which you are (1 Cor 3:16, 17). Whoever, then, is humble and quiet and trembles at the words of God, him the Lord looks upon; and of him may be understood what is prophesied under the name of the earth: The earth trembled and was quiet, when God arose to judgment (Ps 75 [76]:9, 10). For its inhabitants, for whom the earth is named μετωνυμικῶς, considering the judgment of God, keep quiet from evil works; and sitting at home, rest in an eternal sabbath, so as not to stir themselves to the servile work of sin, as the builders of the tower once moved their feet from the East and left the rising of the true light. Nor did they hear what is said to Cain: You have sinned, be quiet (Gen 4). But according to the Proverbs of Solomon: He who hears God shall dwell confidently, and shall rest without fear from every evil (Prov 1:33). This is the humble and poor little one, contrite of spirit and trembling at the words of the Lord, of whom it is written in the Gospel: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:3). And elsewhere: Blessed is he who considers the needy and the poor (Ps 40 [41]:1). And again: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach good news to the poor (Isa 61:1). And what follows in the common edition: But the wicked man, is not found in the Hebrew, but it simply joins on and says: He who sacrifices an ox is as one who kills a man. This is also written in another place: I desire mercy, and not sacrifice: the knowledge of God rather than holocaust (Hos 6:6). And through Malachi: All that I hated, you did: covering my altar with tears: is it fitting that I should look upon your sacrifice, and receive anything acceptable from your hands (Mal 2:13)? Let the Jews hear that God does not seek sacrifices, but the mind of those who offer. And he who slaughters, he says, a sheep is as one who brains a dog. Hence it is also written through Moses: You shall not offer the hire of a harlot, nor the price of a dog, in the house of your God. (Deut 23:18). And the dog and the harlot are fittingly joined, because each animal is prone to lust. And at the same time let us consider that he did not say: He who sacrifices a ram is as one who sacrifices a dog; but as one who kills, he says, a dog. This word is not used of sacrifices, but of things that are slaughtered unlawfully. He who offers an oblation and sacrifice is as one who offers swine's blood. This too is itself forbidden by the Law; such are the ceremonies of the Jews (Lev 11, and Deut 14). He who gives frankincense is as a blasphemer, or rather as one who blesses an idol. But this too may be the sense: After my Son, who came meek and poor, sitting upon the colt of an ass, I do not want flesh, I detest victims, I reject the sacrifices of the Jews and the shadows of the Law, because the truth of the Gospel is delightful to me (Zech 9, and Matt 21, and Luke 19, and John 12). But if this is said, that after the lightning of the Gospel the old religion ceases in the cloud, what will they answer who, believing from among the Jews, think that they can offer sacrifices carnally without harm to themselves?
66:4
All these things they have chosen in their ways, and in their abominations their soul has delighted. Therefore I too will choose their mockeries, and what they feared I will bring upon them. For I called, and there was none to answer: I spoke, and they did not hear: and they did evil in my eyes: and what I did not will, they chose. LXX: And they themselves have chosen their ways, and their soul has willed their abominations: and I will choose their mockeries, and repay them their sins. For I called them, and they did not hearken: I spoke, and they did not hear. And they did evil in my sight, and what I did not will they chose. To sacrifice an ox, to slaughter a ram, to offer sacrifice, to burn frankincense, which God regards as murder and the offering of a dog, and swine's blood and blasphemy, they themselves chose; and that they should worship such things was of their own choice; according to what he says through Ezekiel: I gave them statutes not good, and precepts not good (Ezek 20:25). And in their own ways, he says, they walked, not in the way of the Lord. And their soul has willed their abominations, so that they were lovers of themselves rather than lovers of God. For this reason, since they chose their own ways, and not him who says: I am the way (John 14:6), the Lord too chose their mockeries, or their mockers, who in Hebrew are called THALULE (תעללי), that is, ἐμπαῖκται, so as to set over them very wicked princes, and bring upon them likewise all their evils, or what they feared. And he gives the reasons why they were handed over to the Scribes and Pharisees, their mockers, of whom the first psalm sings according to the Hebrews: And he has not sat in the chair of the mockers: whom the Seventy call the pestilent: such as were the sons of Eli, sons of pestilence, for which in the Hebrew BELIAL (בליעל) is written, that is, of the devil. For, he says, I called, and there was none to answer: I spoke, and they did not hear: and they did evil in my eyes: and what I did not will, they chose. These verses he sets down a second time in the present place, and also above, where it is said: I will number you for the sword, and you shall all fall in the slaughter: for I called, and you did not answer (Isa 65:12), and the rest likewise. In what sense this testimony ought to be taken was said there.
66:5
Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at his speech. Your brothers who hate you, and cast you out for my name's sake, have said: Let the Lord be glorified, and we shall see in your gladness: but they shall be put to shame. LXX: Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at his speech. Say to your brothers who hate you and abhor you, that the name of the Lord may be glorified: and may it appear in their gladness: and they shall be put to shame. Those of whom he had already said before: Upon whom shall I look, except upon the humble and quiet, and the one who trembles at my words? he commands that, having despised the victims of the Jews and scorned all the swelling pride of the Scribes and Pharisees, they pass over to the worship of him whom those others would not hear when he called, and despised, and did evil in his sight. Nor is he content with this end of his precepts, but he enjoins on them the commandment of the Gospel (Luke 6): that they love their enemies, do good to those who hate them, and pray for their persecutors, and imitate the mercy of the Father, who makes his sun rise upon the just and the unjust: That seeing, he says, your works, they may glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:16). After the general understanding, this is commanded specially to the Apostles and to apostolic men: that they love the Jews, their persecutors, and hold those who abhor them in the place of brothers, saying with Peter: Men, brothers and fathers, hear; and with the apostle Paul: I have sadness, and continual sorrow in my heart, for my brothers who are Israelites (Rom 9:2). And the name of the Lord is glorified when men see the ferocity of persecutors broken by our patience, and the striking hand put to shame by the turning of the other cheek. To these it is commanded in the Gospel: Let your light shine before men, that seeing your good works they may glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:16); and in the Apocalypse of John: Fear God, and give him glory (Rev 14:7). Paul too writes to the Corinthians, calling them to continence: That you may glorify God in your body (1 Cor 6:20). And again: Whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31). Hence the Lord too did not curse in return those who cursed him (1 Pet 2), and prayed for his persecutors. But what he commands: Say to your brothers (Matt 28:10), is not to be taken simply; otherwise many call others brothers and do not keep love in their heart, of whom the Apostle writes: They profess that they know God, but in their works they deny him (Titus 1:16). Of these the Lord too was speaking: Not everyone who says to me: Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven: but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven (Matt 7:21). And so that sentence can stand: No one says, Lord Jesus, except in the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3). For though the heretics say Lord Jesus, and many in the resurrection will say: Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and do many mighty works (Matt 7:22)? the Lord will answer them: Depart from me, I do not know you, workers of iniquity. Therefore saying is proved not by speech, which is easy, but by disposition and works. From these things we learn that the Lord of both Testaments is the same, who commands that if we see the beast of our enemy fall under its burden, we should not pass by, but lift it up with him, and if we find an ox or an ass straying, we should return it to him (Luke 15, Matt 18). So much according to the Seventy. Further, according to the Hebrew, this seems to me to be the sense: Hear, Apostles, hear, my disciples, you who tremble at the word of the Lord: I will tell what your brothers have said, who hate and separate you and reckon you strangers, not because of your evils but because of my name; who think unclean all those of their nation who believe in me, and say: Depart from me, for you are unclean. What, then, is it that he records them to have said: Let the Lord be glorified, and we shall see in your gladness? The sense of this little verse is this: Why do you bring in to us a humble God? why one crucified, and a man of sorrows, who knows how to bear infirmities? We want to behold him reigning in his majesty (as you say): we will look up to him triumphing in his glory too; humble and cast down we cannot see him. And at once he adds: But they shall be put to shame; understood: those who say such things, who do not understand the mysteries of the Scriptures, and will feel through their own evils the power of him whom they had despised for his humility.
66:6
A voice of uproar from the city, a voice from the Temple, the voice of the Lord rendering recompense to his enemies. For uproar the LXX put crying, and the rest likewise. We wish to know what the confusion of the Jews is, who said: Let the Lord be glorified, that we may see your gladness, and may behold the triumphs of your king with our eyes, by no means in empty promises. A voice, he says, of crying from the city: without doubt it signifies Jerusalem surrounded by the Roman army and divided within into three parts by sedition, when one held the Temple and possessed all that had formerly been holy, fighting outside against the enemy and inside against his fellow citizens. At that time, both in the city and in the Temple, there was heard the howling of priests and Levites as well as of the common rabble, of women and children, when the Lord rendered recompense to his enemies, fulfilling the threat in which he had said: Your house shall be left to you desolate (Luke 13:35); and that prophecy: I have forsaken my house. When the Angels presiding over the temple said with one voice: Let us pass out of these abodes. Of these things not only Josephus, the writer of the Jewish history, but many ages before the Psalmist testifies, saying: I have seen iniquity and contradiction in the city (Ps 54 [55]:10), which surrounded its walls all day and all night, so that the city was overthrown (Mic 3), and another prophecy was fulfilled: Zion shall be plowed like a field: and Jerusalem shall be left like a hut in a garden of cucumbers (Isa 1:8).
66:7
Before she was in labor, she brought forth: before her travail came, she brought forth a male. Who has ever heard such a thing? who has seen the like of this ? Shall the earth be in labor in one day: or shall a nation be brought forth at once? for Zion has been in labor and has brought forth her sons: Shall I, who make others bring forth, not bring forth myself, says the Lord? If I, who give generation to the rest, am barren, says the Lord your God. LXX: Before she who travails brings forth: before the pain of those in travail comes, she escapes, and she has brought forth a male. Who has heard such a thing, and who has seen the like? If the earth has travailed in one day; or if a nation has been born at once, because Zion has travailed and brought forth her little ones. But I have given this expectation, and you have not remembered me, says the Lord. Have I not made her who bears and the barren, says your God? While the crying resounded from Jerusalem and its Temple, when it was besieged and overthrown, and the enemies of Christ, who would not receive God as king, were receiving eternal punishments for their impiety and blasphemies, the Church gathered in the name of the Lord, of which it is said in the psalm: A man was born in her: and the most high himself has founded her (Ps 86 [87]:5), before she was in labor brought forth; before her travail came, she bore a male. For it was not over a long time, as the people of the Jews grew greater through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the twelve Patriarchs, and again through their children and grandchildren; but at the preaching of the Gospel the whole world at once conceived, and was in labor, and brought forth a male, whom Pharaoh and Herod tried to kill, and who, both in Moses and in Christ, was saved in Egypt. Finally, Abraham and Isaac had male children, and Jacob, the father of many sons, begot one daughter, for whose sake he suffered hard things (Gen 34). And if the daughters of Zelophehad, by the sentence of God, receive their father's inheritance (Num 27), this is to be considered: that their father, who begot no son, died in his own sin, and that Moses dared to judge nothing concerning them, but referred it to the Lord, who, lest they remain without means, commanded them to be joined to their kinsmen. The book of Genesis also relates (Chapter 6) that after men began to become many, a number that is always associated with vice, and daughters were born to them, they were taken, not by Angels, but by the sons of God, from whom the giants were born: or, as it is written in the Hebrew, ἐπιπίπτοντες, that is, those who fall upon. On the contrary, it is said to the saint: Your wife like an abundant vine on the sides of your house. Your sons like young olive plants round about your table (Ps 127 [128]:3). And again: May you see your sons' sons (ibid. 6). Zion, then, that is, the remnant from Israel and the faith of the believing Apostles, brought forth a male, the Lord Savior, who was born at once in the whole world: something that no one has heard of, that no history relates, nor the teaching of anyone, that all the nations should believe in a short time, and that out of all the nations there should be made one nation of the Christians, of which Paul too speaks: If anyone is a new creature in Christ, the old things have passed away; behold, they have become new (2 Cor 5:17): according to what is written elsewhere: And all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight: for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he shall rule over the nations. For all the nations, he says, which you have made shall come and worship before you, and shall glorify your name (Ps 21 [22]:28ff.). Of him Jacob says: He is the expectation of the nations (Gen 49:10). And the Psalmist: The hope of all the ends of the earth (Ps 64 [65]:6). And the same Isaiah whom we are now expounding: There shall be the root of Jesse, and he who shall rise up to be prince of the nations; in him the nations shall hope (Isa 11:10); the Apostles fulfilling what was commanded: Teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19), so that a new people may be born, of which Psalm 21 (22) also sings: The heavens shall announce his righteousness to a people that shall be born, which the Lord has made (Ps 21 [22]:32). And again: A people that shall be created shall praise the Lord (Ps 101 [102]:19). And this people was created in one day, which the sun of righteousness illumines, as Scripture says: The Lord shall be to you an everlasting light (Isa 60:19). What is said: A nation shall arise at once, for Zion has been in labor and has brought forth her sons, we can also refer to that time when in one day three thousand and five thousand of the Jewish people believed (Acts 2). It is also said in the same book of the Acts of the Apostles that there were in Jerusalem men from all the nations under heaven, who heard them speaking the great works of God in various tongues (ibid.). And what follows according to the LXX: But I have given this expectation, and you have not remembered me, says the Lord. Have I not made her who bears and the barren, said your God, is put more plainly in the Hebrew, with which the other translators also agree: Shall I, who make others bring forth, not bring forth myself, says the Lord? If I, who give generation to the rest, am barren, says the Lord your God; according to what is said elsewhere: He who planted the ear, shall he not hear? and he who formed the eye, does he not consider (Ps 93 [94]:9); namely, that he who created all men out of nothing can make out of all the nations one part of those who believe in him, the Church. Finally, in Psalm 28 (29), where we read: The voice of the Lord shaking the desert (Ps 28 [29]:8), in the Hebrew it is written: The voice of the Lord making the desert bring forth (According to the Hebrew), so that the Church, formerly a desert, may bring forth, and the stags may be perfected when the woodlands are opened and crushed. Further, according to the LXX the sense is this: that at one time, at the preaching of the Gospels, one nation of the whole world should arise. Through many prophets I have often promised, and you have not remembered my promise, O city which is full of cries, O Temple which has been forsaken by the Lord, O people to whom I have rendered its recompense. Have I not, he says, made her who travails and the barren; she who before had been barren afterwards travailed and brought forth? Of her it is written in the psalm: Who makes the barren woman dwell in a house, a mother rejoicing in sons (Ps 112 [113]:9). Or certainly the order of things has been reversed: she who bore has become barren, and she who was once barren has brought forth very many, because this is the sentence of the Lord.
66:10
Rejoice with Jerusalem, and exult in her, all you who love her. Rejoice with her with joy, all you who mourn over her, that you may suck and be filled from the breast of her consolation, that you may milk and abound with delights from her glory of every kind. LXX: Rejoice, Jerusalem, and make an assembly, all you who love her. Rejoice with joy, all you who mourn over her, that you may suck and be filled from the breast of her consolation, that, after you have sucked, you may be delighted from the entrance of her glory. It is commanded to the Apostles and to apostolic men, who love both Jerusalems, bewailing and mourning the one that has fallen, and awaiting with all desire the one that is to rise, that they rejoice with her and in her, who has been built of living stones, which roll upon the earth and, in the likeness of the wheels of the Cherubim, follow the spirit going before: not in those stones which have been dissolved into eternal ashes. Of these the Lord was speaking: Amen, amen I say to you, there shall not remain stone upon stone, until all these things are fulfilled (Matt 24:2). Rejoice, he says, with her with joy, all you who mourn her. Such were those whom we have shown above, the apostles Peter and Paul, and all who were awaiting the redemption of Israel: that they may suck and be filled at the breasts of her consolation. For it could not be that she who had borne a male and had just given birth should lack an abundance of milk for the rearing of that nation and of the little ones who had been born at once, so that she might offer them two breasts, by no means, as formerly in Egypt, broken and lying low, but whole and standing in virginal beauty, those of the Old and New Instrument, to supply rational milk. Of these the bridegroom speaks to her: Your breasts are better than wine (Song 1:1). These were the ones of whom they specially said: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted (Matt 5:5). And this is to be noted: that those who are little ones need the milk of consolation, and are still in a mortal place. But those who after the milk of consolation have advanced to solid food will abound with the delights of truth, and with the knowledge of glory of every kind, which in Hebrew is called ZIZ (זיז). For this the LXX translated entrance; Symmachus fatness; Theodotion multitude. We have said this in order to open an ambiguous word of Psalm 79 (80), in which it is written: The boar from the forest has laid it waste, and the solitary wild beast has fed upon it (Ps 79 [80]:14). For where in our codices and in the Greek one reads μόνιος ἄγριος, that is, the solitary wild beast, in the Hebrew ZIZ SADAI (זיז שדי) is written: which Aquila translated παντόδαπον χώρας, that is, every kind of thing of the region, to signify that Israel was laid waste not only by the Romans but by all the nations. And the glorious entrance of the Church is to be understood as that of which the apostle John writes: And in the twelve gates were twelve pearls, and the streets of the city of pure gold, like transparent glass (Rev 21:21). These pearls the Lord forbids to be cast before swine (Matt 7); and when the good merchant has found them in the Prophets and Apostles, he goes on to the one most precious pearl, not casting away the former ones, but seeking through them the more precious (Matt 13).
66:12
For thus says the Lord: Behold, I turn upon her as it were a river of peace, and as an overflowing torrent the glory of the nations, which you shall suck: you shall be carried at the breast, and upon the knees they shall caress you. LXX: For thus says the Lord: Behold, I will turn toward them like a river of peace, and like a torrent overflowing the glory of the nations. Their little ones shall be carried on the shoulders, and upon the knees they shall be comforted. When Jerusalem has been built up by the Apostles and restored to her former state, after her sons and inhabitants have been comforted at her breasts and through the abundance of milk have come to the delights of truth, through which one comes to the glory of God: then the Lord will turn upon her the river of peace, of which we have often said: The river of God is filled with waters (Ps 64 [65]:10). And: The rush of the river gladdens the city of God (Ps 45 [46]:5); so that, with peace possessing all things, and the wars of the nations ceasing, of whom Scripture says: Scatter the nations that want wars (Ps 67 [68]:32), the torrent of the teachings of God may water the fields of believers. Then her sons, or little ones (as the LXX translated), shall be carried on the shoulders, and upon the knees they shall receive comfort. On the shoulders, of which it was also said in the earlier prophecy, and which Jacob invokes upon his son Issachar: For he put his shoulder under to labor (Gen 49:15), and he was called a husbandman. For it is by sweat and great labor that we come to an abundance of fruits. Hence it is said to Zion through Jeremiah too: Set your heart upon your shoulders (Jer 24:7), so that she may understand the Lord from his commandments, imitating him of whom it is written: Jesus began to do and to teach (Acts 1:1), so that faith may not be idle, but may run through works to the reward. What knees and bosom signify I have briefly explained above too, and now the example of Abraham can teach us, in whose bosom Lazarus rests, and all who come from the East and the West, who shall recline with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
66:13-14
As one whom a mother caresses, so will I comfort you, and in Jerusalem you shall be comforted. You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall sprout like grass. And the hand of the Lord shall be known to his servants, and he shall be indignant with his enemies. For servants the LXX put those who fear; for enemies, the unbelieving: the rest likewise. We learn the mercy of the Creator toward his creatures from the example of mothers, who, nursing their children with love in their bosom, surpass every affection. Finally, God, wishing to show how he loves those whom he has created: Shall, he says, a woman forget, so as not to have pity on the offspring of her womb? but even if she should forget, yet I will not forget you (Isa 49:15). The Gospel passage too has this sense, in which the Lord speaks to Jerusalem: How often have I wished to gather your sons, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not (Matt 23:37)? And Deuteronomy, in which something of the kind resounds: As the eagle protects her nest, and has longed for her young: spreading her wings, she has taken them up and carried them on her shoulders (Deut 32:11). Those who have written on the natures of living creatures say that in all wild beasts, beasts of burden, cattle and birds there is an inborn affection toward their offspring and young, but that the love of eagles is the greatest, which place their nests in high and inaccessible places, lest a snake harm the brood. And that an amethyst stone is found among its young, by which all poisons are overcome. If this is true, the affection of God toward his creatures is rightly compared to eagles, who protects his children with every guard, lest the dragon and ancient snake, the devil and Satan, creep up on the new brood, so that at the name of the stone which is laid in the foundations of Zion all the snares of the adversaries may be broken. And this Jerusalem, in which the sons shall be comforted by their mother and fondled on her knees, is the one of which the Apostle writes: But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is the mother of us all (Gal 4:26). Filled with the milk of her consolation, he comforted the others who needed his words, saying: Blessed be God, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who comforts us in all tribulation, so that we too may be able to comfort those who are in any tribulation, through the consolation with which we ourselves are comforted by God (2 Cor 1:3). After these have been comforted, it will be said to them: And you shall see, and your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall sprout like grass, or shall spring up, or according to Symmachus, shall flourish (John 16:22). And they shall see, without doubt, God, which is true gladness. Of these the Lord spoke: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8). The vision of him is perfect joy, which dwells in the heart of full faith: and the sprouting of the bones follows, of which we have already spoken before. If the reader has forgotten this, let him go back to the earlier explanation. For it is better for him to read again what was written than for us to repeat what was said. And known, he says, shall be the hand of the Lord to his servants, or to those who fear him, and he shall threaten his enemies, or his unbelieving. Now the hand is taken either for power, in that God can do all the things that he promises, according to what Moses says in the person of God to Pharaoh: Now I will send forth my hand, and I will strike you, and I will kill your people, and you shall be blotted out from the earth (Exod 3:20). And again he himself to the same tyrant: Behold, the hand of the Lord shall be upon your cattle (Exod 9:4); of which the Psalmist said to God: Your hand slew the nations, and you planted them (Ps 43 [44]). Or certainly the hand of the Lord is to be understood as Christ, of whom we also read above: My hand has made all these things. This hand the Lord will make known to his servants and to those who fear him, and he will threaten his unbelieving ones and his enemies, so as to promise rewards to the one, and to threaten punishments to the other. In this the propriety of the words is to be considered: that he did not say, He will inflict upon his enemies, but he shall threaten, so that, deterred by the threat, they too may pass over to the service of the Lord.
66:15-16
For behold, the Lord will come in fire: and his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his fury in indignation, and his rebuke in a flame of fire. For in fire the Lord is judged, and with his sword unto all flesh: and those slain by the Lord shall be multiplied. LXX: Behold, the Lord will come as fire, and his chariots as a tempest, to render his vengeance in fury: and his rebuke in a flame of fire. For in the fire of the Lord all the earth shall be judged: and by his sword all flesh shall fall: many shall be wounded by the Lord. The hand of the Lord, which will be made known to his servants and to those who fear him, itself threatens the unbelieving, or his enemies, that if they do not repent they shall endure what follows: For behold, he says, the Lord will come in fire, and his chariots like a whirlwind or tempest. These we ought to understand as the Angelic powers, when the Lord is to come in the glory of the Father with his Angels, to judge the living and the dead: not that the Lord is fire, but that to those who endure punishments he seems to be fire. And although Moses said (Deut 4:24), and the Apostle confirms the same (Heb 12:29): God is a consuming fire; yet the Savior, expressing the substance of the divinity, says: God is spirit (John 4:24). But between spirit and fire, according to bodily understanding, there is much difference. And if he is fire or spirit, how is he said to have eyes and ears and hands and feet and belly and the other members of the body, since spirit and fire do not have these? God, then, is called a consuming fire so that he may consume whatever vices are in us, hay, wood and stubble, and the thorns, that is, the cares of this world, which the unfruitful earth has borne instead of good seed, of which it is said to the Hebrews: But that which bears thorns and thistles is reprobate and near to a curse; whose end is burning (Heb 6:8). Of this fire the Lord too was speaking in the Gospel: I have come to cast fire upon the earth (Luke 12:49). And we read above: Iniquity shall burn like fire, and like dry grass it shall be consumed by fire (Isa 9:18), and all the tares which the enemy sowed over, while the householder slept (Matt 13). Of this it is also written in the Epistle of James: How small a fire kindles how great a matter (Jas 3:5)! And in Proverbs: With much wood the fire thrives (Prov 26:20). Although, in that it is a proverb, something else may be understood (Sir 28). This fire, I think, sat upon the tongues of the Apostles and of all believers, when they spoke in various tongues, and it put to flight all the darkness of error, and illuminated the hearts of those who received the word of the Lord (Acts 2). And what follows: His chariots like a tempest, or his four-horse chariots, we shall explain by examples from the Psalms, in which it is written: God will come openly, our God, and will not keep silent. Fire shall burn before him: and round about him a mighty tempest (Ps 49 [50]:3, 4). And elsewhere: The chariot of God is ten thousandfold, thousands of those who rejoice (Ps 67 [68]:18). With these chariots and horses Elisha was surrounded, which his servant could not see. Hence he says: O Lord, open the eyes of this servant, that he may see. And when his eyes were opened, it says, he saw chariots and four-horse chariots and horses round about (2 Kgs 6:17). In this fiery chariot Elijah too was snatched up to heaven, when Elisha cried: My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its charioteer (2 Kgs 2:12). All these things are related, not that God has chariots or four-horse chariots, or is carried by the swiftness of horses, he of whom it is written elsewhere: Who walks upon the wings of the winds (Ps 103 [104]:3); but as he is said to sit on a throne when he assumes the bearing of one who judges, so when he comes to vengeance, to subdue his adversaries, he is shown in the bearing of a victor and one who triumphs. Of the fury of the Lord we have often said that it ought to be taken in the same way as his forgetfulness, and repentance, and sorrow, and the other affections which do not befit the majesty of God. And so in this fire and fury, in these chariots and in the flame of fire all flesh shall be judged, or the Lord himself with his creatures, so that he may be seen to pass sentence not by power but by the truth of judgment, according to what is said at greater length in Micah and more briefly in Psalm 50 (51): That you may be justified in your words, and may prevail when you are judged (Ps 50 [51]:5). And the sword by which all flesh is to be judged is to be taken as that of which we have spoken before, and shall now speak in part: Unless you are converted, he will brandish his sword (Ps 7:13). This sword, the punisher of sinful flesh and of all vices, the Israelites complain had been given into the hands of Pharaoh; and they say to Moses and Aaron: May God see you and judge: for you have made our odor abominable before Pharaoh, so that a sword was given into his hand, and he might kill us (Exod 5:21). Of this sword it is also written in Amos: By the sword all the sinners of the people shall perish (Amos 9:10): though there are certainly other kinds of punishments as well. Whatever, then, pricks and strikes and tortures and torments is called a sword in the holy Scriptures; by which sword those shall be wounded, or slain, who have not done the will of God, and, having abandoned the light of truth, have wrapped themselves in the darkness of error. Of whom it is written in Jeremiah: If the Ethiopian will change his skin (Jer 13:23). And in Zephaniah: And you Ethiopians shall be wounded, or slain by my sword (Zeph 2:12). In what sense the whole content of this passage is to be taken, the Apostle explains at greater length, writing to the Romans: But according to your hardness and impenitent heart, you treasure up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works. To those indeed who, according to patience in good work, seek glory and honor and incorruption, eternal life. But to those who are of contention and are unbelieving toward the truth, but consent to iniquity, wrath and fury, tribulation and distress upon all men who work evil, the Jew first and the heathen (Rom 2:5ff.).
66:17
Those who were sanctified, and thought themselves clean in the gardens behind one within: who ate swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, says the Lord. LXX: Those who are sanctified and purified in the gardens and on the thresholds: eating pig's flesh, and abominations, and the mouse: they shall be consumed together, says the Lord. Symmachus and Theodotion translated this passage thus: You who are sanctified and cleansed in the gardens one after another, among those who eat swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall fail together, says the Lord, wishing to show that it is not those who are sanctified in the gardens one after another who themselves eat swine's flesh and the abomination and the mouse; but that those who are cleansed associate with those who eat the things that are forbidden. And the divine word rebukes the peoples of the Jews, or rather the Scribes and Pharisees, whom the Lord too rebuked, saying: You are those who justify yourselves before men: but God knows your hearts, for what is exalted among men is an abomination before God (Luke 16:15). Hence he rebuked them and said: Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who clean the outside of the cup and the dish, and within you are full of uncleanness (Matt 23:25). And again: You who are whitewashed tombs: but within you are full of the bones of the dead and of all filth (ibid. 27): who blessed with their mouth and cursed in their heart (Ps 61 [62]); who spoke peaceable things to the Lord and made their words softer than oil, but were themselves darts; of whom it was most rightly said: This people honors me with their lips: but their heart is far from me (Isa 29:13). Now God had commanded through Moses (Num 19) that if anyone had been overtaken in sin, he should be sprinkled with the ashes of the red heifer, and by other modes of expiation, through sacrifices and victims, return to the Temple; neglecting this, they built in places of delight and pleasure, that is, in the most pleasant gardens, either baptisteries or pools for watering their garden beds, thinking to wash away adulteries and all the foulness of lusts with plain water; to whom that saying will most rightly be applied: And they purge the night in the river (Horace). Nor let it seem unfitting to anyone if things that are done shamefully are set out rather plainly, for the correction of those who do not blush to commit such things as it is shameful even to speak of, while they cling to harlots in the manner of dogs, and males work shamefulness upon males, receiving in themselves the recompense of their sin. Those who do these works are, in will and in crimes, with those who eat swine's flesh and all the things that are forbidden by the Law, and the mouse, which we call the dormouse, or, according to the provinces of the East, μυωξοὺς. Both those, then, who eat these things, and these who practice every foulness, doing such things as perhaps even the heathen do not do, shall be consumed alike (Lev 11). According to tropology we can say: all who are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God are sanctified in the gardens and on the thresholds, because they cannot enter the mysteries of truth, and they eat the foods of impiety, since they are not holy in body and spirit; nor do they eat the flesh of Jesus or drink his blood. Of which he himself speaks: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life (John 6:55). For Christ our pasch has been sacrificed (1 Cor 5). He is eaten not outside, but in one house and within.
66:18-19
But I come to gather their works and their thoughts together with all the nations and tongues: and they shall come and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and I will send of those who have been saved to the nations in the sea, to Africa, to Lydia, those who draw the arrow, to Italy and Greece, to the islands far off: to those who have not heard of me, and have not seen my glory. LXX: And I know their works and their thoughts, and I come to gather all the nations and all the tongues: and they shall come and see my glory, and I will let down a sign upon them: and I will send forth of those who have been saved to the nations, to Tharsis and Phud, and Lud and Mosoch and Thobel, and to Greece, and to the islands far off, who have not heard my name, nor seen my glory. Before I explain what the enumeration of so many nations signifies, something must be said briefly about the variety of the translations. Tharsis in the Hebrew language is the name for the sea; and also (as they say) a region of India: although Josephus, with a letter changed, thinks that Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, is named instead of Tharsis, to which Jonah, fleeing from Joppa, wished to go (Jonah 1). And Phud, or Phul, is Libya and all Africa as far as the Mauritanian sea, in which there is to this day a river called Phud, and the whole region around it is called Phutensis. And Lud they call the Lydians, whose colonists were the Etruscans, now called Tuscans, once most skilled in shooting arrows, and they are now called those who draw the arrow. For this one reads in the Hebrew MOSCHE CESETH (משכי קשת), which all, apart from the Seventy, likewise translated those who draw the bow: and the Seventy put μοσὸχ, rendering a name instead of a word. If this is accepted, it signifies the Cappadocians, whose metropolis is Mazaca, which afterwards received from Caesar Augustus the name of Caesarea. Wishing I know not what, they also in Genesis (Chapter 10) rendered as μοσὸχ the last son of Aram, that is, of the Syrians of Damascus, who is called Mes: for which we more correctly translate Maeonians. And Thubal, or Thobel, means either Italy or Iberia, that is, Spain, from the river Iberus; whence to this day a region of the Spains is called Celtiberia. Of whom Lucan finely says (Lucan, book 4): The Celts of the Gauls, mingling their name with the Iberians: whom we can call Gallo-Spaniards. And the Greeks, who in the Hebrew speech are called Javan, signify the Ionians: whence too the Greeks are called Iones, and the sea the Ionian. And this is to be considered: that he set down chiefly Eastern nations from Japheth, one of the sons of Noah: although in Tharsis and Phud he also remembered Shem and Ham, that is, the names of India and Africa, so as to show the whole world. The Lord comes, then, to gather the works and thoughts of each. From this we learn that not only works but thoughts too are to be judged on the day of judgment. For he who has looked on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matt 5). Of these it is said: Now their own thoughts have surrounded them: when the Lord will judge the hidden things of men according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ; so that what the Apostle writes may be proved by the truth of the judgment: their thoughts mutually accusing or excusing them, on the day when God will judge the hidden things of men (Rom 2:15): so that all our thoughts, gathered at one time, may be examined by the righteous judge, while our conscience either accuses us or makes satisfaction for the offense, whether the sins are more or the good works, and whether they are old or new, whether blotted out by repentance or renewed by fresh crimes, when the Lord says: I have given their ways upon their heads: and I will render them their thoughts (Hos 4:9). Who fashioned their hearts one by one, and understands all their works (Ps 32 [33]:15). Of whom we also read in another place: You alone know the hearts of men (2 Chr 6:30). For no one knows the things that are in a man except the spirit of the man that is in him (1 Cor 2). Hence God also speaks through Jeremiah: I am a God at hand, and not from afar, says the Lord: Shall a man hide himself in secret places, and I not know (Jer 23:23)? Finally it is said to the Scribes and to the Pharisees: You are those who justify yourselves before men: but God knows your hearts (Luke 16:15). In this it is to be considered that he did not say Father, according to the blasphemies of the heretics, lest he should seem to exclude the Son, but God, which is common to the Father and the Son. In the beginning indeed was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: he was in the beginning with God (John 1:1, 2). Of whom the same John writes: But Jesus himself did not trust himself to them, because he knew all men, and had no need that anyone should bear witness to him of man: for he himself knew what was in man (John 2:24, 25). With this too agrees: But Jesus, knowing their thoughts (Luke 6:8). And in another place: But Jesus, knowing their malice (Matt 22:18). And lest there be any doubt that he knows all things, since the heretics raise a calumny about the Word of God, it is said at greater length in the Epistle written to the Hebrews: For the word of God is living, and evident, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and dividing even to the parting of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow, and a judge of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature invisible in his sight. But all things are naked and open to the eyes of him of whom we speak (Heb 4:12). And after all thoughts have been gathered into one, accusing us or defending us, then all the nations and tongues will be brought together into the midst with their thoughts. And according to the apostle Paul we read of tongues not only of men but also of Angels (1 Cor 13). From which it is given us to understand that all creatures are to be judged by the Lord, not only upon the earth, but in the air and in the heavenly places, according to what he himself had said in earlier passages: My sword has been made drunk in heaven, and it shall come down upon the earth (Isa 34:5). And all shall come to see the glory of God: and he will set a sign among them, which is shown at the beginning of Ezekiel under the interpretation of the Hebrew letter THAU (Ezek 9). He who has been stamped with this sign will escape the hand of the smiter. With this the doorposts of the houses in Egypt too were marked, when, as Egypt perished, Israel alone remained unharmed (Exod 12). Of this sign, which Ahaz king of Judah would not accept, the prophet Isaiah testifies: Therefore the Lord will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear (Isa 7:14). Hence the Prophet too entreats for what had been promised: Work with me a sign for good (Ps 85 [86]:17). And in another place: You have given to those who fear you a signal, that they might flee from the face of the bow (Ps 59 [60]:4). This the Lord, ascending to the Father, left us, or set upon our foreheads, so that we might freely say: The light of your countenance has been signed upon us, O Lord (Ps 4:7). But what follows: And I will send of those who have been saved to the nations: and he enumerates them one by one, seems to be contrary to our exposition. For if it is said of the day of judgment, how does he run back again to the first coming of the Savior, when the Apostles are sent to the nations and hear from the Lord: Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19)? This is resolved thus: the day of judgment is proclaimed, or rather threatened, so that through fear of the punishment to come they may receive the coming of the Savior and the Gospel of the Apostles, who are to be sent first. And he finely said: And I will send of those who have been saved (Isa 66:18). For unless the Lord had left us a seed, we would have been as Sodom, and we would have been like Gomorrah. And the Apostle: A remnant, he says, has been saved (Rom 9:27). These are sent to the nations, to Tharsis, and Phud, and Lud, and Mosoch, and Thobel, and Greece, and the very many islands that are far off, and that have not heard the name of the Lord nor seen his glory. Of these we have spoken above according to the history (cf. Isa 12). Now the anagogy must be touched upon briefly. Tharsis means the search of joy: so that we may consider not the things that are present, but those that are to come; and may deserve to hear: Because you have been faithful in a few things, you shall enter into the joy of your Lord (Matt 25:21). Of which the apostle Peter too writes: Exult with joy unspeakable and glorious (1 Pet 1:8); so that we may praise God, saying: Our mouth has been filled with joy, and our tongue with exultation (Ps 125 [126]:2). And what follows, Phud, means the shutting out of the mouth: so that, shutting out all blasphemy, we may speak the things that are good and say: My mouth shall announce your righteousness, O Lord: all the day your salvation (Ps 70 [71]:15). And again: I have not hidden your truth in my heart, and I have spoken your salvation (Ps 39 [40]:11). Lud too is rendered in our language profit, and Mosoch stretching out, and Thubal, or Thobel, led to mourning, or turned, or all things: all of which agree with the calling of the nations, that they may pursue profit through the confession of their soul, and, forgetting the things past, stretch out to the things to come. And let them mourn their ancient sins, and be drawn to mourning and to the sorrow that leads to life. For blessed are those who mourn, for they shall laugh (Matt 5). And let all be turned to the Lord, so that they may afterwards pass over to grace, and know what was said by the Apostle: Glory, and honor, and peace to everyone who works good, to the Jew first and to the Greek (Rom 2:10): since he is the God not only of the Jews but also of the nations. Further, what is said: And to the islands afar, which have not heard my name, nor seen my glory, fits those of whom we read above: Those to whom nothing was announced concerning him will see: and those who have not heard will understand (Isa 52:15). And again: I appeared to those who did not ask for me: I was found by those who did not seek me (Isa 65:1). I said: Behold, here I am, to those who did not call upon my name. And we have often said that islands signify either the nations of the whole world or the Churches scattered through the whole world.
66:20
And they shall announce my glory among the nations, and they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as a gift to the Lord, on horses, and in four-horse chariots, and in litters, and on mules, and in carriages, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord. LXX: And they shall announce my glory among the nations: and they shall bring your brothers from all the nations as a gift to the Lord, with horses and wagons, in the lampenae of mules, with canopies, into the holy city Jerusalem, says the Lord. Those who have been saved and sent to the various nations, and to those who had not heard at first nor seen the glory of the Lord, will announce it to all the nations, and will bring the brothers of the Jewish people, whose remnant has been saved, as an offering to the Lord from all the nations: either those very ones who, despising the error of idolatry, have followed the knowledge of the true God, or those of the people of Israel who have believed throughout the whole world. To these the apostle Peter too writes (1 Pet 1). And they will bring them on horses, and in four-horse chariots, and in litters, and on mules, and in carriages. For carriages, which Symmachus alone rendered, whom we have followed in this place, Aquila, the Seventy and Theodotion translated mules. And where the Seventy put with canopies, which we can render sleeping-litters or basternae, the others with one voice translated φορεῖα, which we render as vehicles of various kinds; but where the Seventy and Theodotion said lampenae, for which Symmachus rendered litters, Aquila put σκεπαστὰ, which itself also signifies litters covered with skins. Let this be said about the variety of the translations. Now the horses, and four-horse chariots, and litters, and mules and carriages, and vehicles of different kinds we can understand as Angelic ministries, of which it is said elsewhere to God: Mount upon your horses, and your riding is salvation (Hab 3:8). On these horses, chariots and four-horse chariots Elijah was snatched up to heaven, and Elisha showed his servant, who did not know it, that he was surrounded and kept safe by them (2 Kgs 2). And Zechariah saw in the night: Behold, a man mounting a red horse: and he stood among two shady mountains: and behind him red horses, and starling-colored, and dappled, and white, and I said, he says, What are these, O Lord? And the Angel who spoke in me said to me: I will show you what these are. And the man who stood among the mountains answered and said to me: These are those whom the Lord has sent to walk through the earth (Zech 1:8-10). John too in the Apocalypse testifies that he saw these things: I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse: and he who sat upon it was called faithful and true, and judging in righteousness, and a warrior. And his eyes were like a flame of fire: and upon his head were many diadems: having a name written which no one knows but himself; and he was clothed in a garment sprinkled with blood: and his name was called the Word of God: and the army in heaven followed him on white horses, clothed in white and most pure linen, and from his mouth went forth a sharp sword, that with it he might strike the nations (Rev 19:11ff.). The Lord and Savior sat upon a red horse when he took a human body; to whom it is said: Why are your garments red? And: Who is this who comes up from Edom, his garments tawny from Bozrah (Isa 63:2). And horses of various colors followed him: red in martyrdom, or starling-colored in flight, or dappled in virtues, or white in virginity. And he sat upon a white horse when after the resurrection he took an immortal and incorrupt body. And whoever followed him used white horses, that is, incorrupt and immortal bodies. It would be long if we wished to explain both testimonies: this only I will say, that the various vehicles by which men are brought to faith are Angels, or holy men who have advanced from men to Angels. And that each of us has Angels many Scriptures teach, among which is this: Do not despise one of these least ones: for their Angels daily see the face of the Father who is in heaven (Matt 18:10). And when the girl Rhoda announced the apostle Peter, others believed it was his Angel (Acts 12). But if this is said of the least, and of one man, how much more is it to be thought of all the saints, and especially of the Apostles, whose Angels daily see the face of the Father, according to what is written? The Angel of the Lord encamps round about those who fear him (Ps 33 [34]:8). And Jacob speaks of himself: The Angel who delivered me. These are they who ascend and descend upon the son of man. Those who are swift in faith are carried on horses; those who are manifold in grace, in four-horse chariots; those who need consolation, in covered litters and under canopies, so that they may deserve to hear: The sun shall not burn you by day, nor the moon by night (Ps 120 [121]:6). And mules we take in two ways in the holy Scriptures: either in respect of sterility and continence, such as David and Solomon sat upon, of whom the one means strong of hand, the other peaceable; or in the bad sense, of which it is said: Do not become like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding (Ps 31 [32]:9); over which Doeg was set (1 Sam 21). And the carriages, for which (as we said above) the Seventy translated covered vehicles, the rest simply vehicles, are to be understood as those of whom the Apostle speaks: Bear one another's burdens (Gal 6:2). Further, the lampenae are to be understood as the shining bodies of the saints, and souls illuminated by faith in the Lord, to whom it can be said: You are the light of the world (Matt 5:14). And all this equipage serves this purpose: that we may enter the holy city of God, or the holy mountain of the Lord, Jerusalem: not that which kills the Prophets and stones those sent to her; but the heavenly Jerusalem, of which we have often said: But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother (Gal 4:26). And again: But you have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22). This we can understand either of the present Church, which has been gathered throughout the world by the Apostles, or of the future, so that what the Apostle prophesied by the Holy Spirit may be fulfilled: We shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord (1 Thess 4:16). The Jews, and the heirs of the Jewish error, the Ebionites, who took the name of poor from the lowliness of their understanding, and all who await the delights of the thousand years, understand the horses and four-horse chariots, and wagons, and litters, or basternae, and sleeping-litters, and male and female mules, and carriages, and vehicles of different kinds just as they are written. Namely, that at the consummation of the world, when Christ has come to reign at Jerusalem, and the Temple has been restored, and the Jewish victims have been sacrificed, the sons of Israel are to be brought back from the whole world, by no means on horses, but on mules of Numidia. And those who have been of senatorial rank and have held the place of princes are to come in carriages from the Britons, the Spaniards, the Gauls and the Morini, the farthest of men (Virgil, Aeneid 8, so calls the Morini), and from where the two-horned Rhine is divided, with all the nations, which will have been made ready for their service, coming out to meet them.
66:21
As if the sons of Israel should bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. And I will take of them for priests and Levites, says the Lord. LXX: As if the sons of Israel should offer their victims to me with Psalms in the house of the Lord: and of them I will take priests and Levites, says the Lord. Those who have been sent to the nations, he says, and have announced my glory to them, will bring your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the Lord, with horses, and four-horse chariots, and litters, and mules, and carriages, and various vehicles, to the holy mountain Jerusalem, in the same way as the sons of Israel used, while their religion stood and the ceremonies of the Temple were kept, to offer victims with Psalms in the house of the Lord. Or, as it stands in the Hebrew, and all translated with one voice, in a clean vessel: which the sons of Israel who behold God with the mind offer even to this day in the House of God, which is the Church: spiritual victims, with the fruits and virtues of their soul, in clean vessels, that is, in holy bodies. Of these the Apostle writes: Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells in you (1 Cor 3:16)? And I will take, he says, of them priests and Levites, says the Lord: so that those who have been saved may preach to the nations. One of these said: So let a man reckon us as ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Cor 4:1). And Luke the evangelist: As they delivered to us, he says, who from the beginning saw and were ministers of the word. Of these we also read above: You shall be to me priests of the Lord (Isa 61:6). For as he is a Jew in secret who is circumcised in spirit (Rom 2), of whom it is written: We are the Circumcision, who serve God in spirit (Phil 3:3), and we offer spiritual victims pleasing to God, and sing psalms with the spirit and with the understanding: so too they are priests and Levites in secret who follow not the line of descent but the order of faith. Or certainly he does not speak of the Apostles and apostolic men, who were the princes of the Church from the people of the Jews, but of the nations enumerated above: from the sea, from Africa, from Libya, from Cappadocia, from Italy, from Greece, from all the islands, whose inhabitants at first had not heard the Lord nor seen his glory, and afterwards will be turned into priests, so that those who had been the tail may be the head, and those who were the head may be turned into the tail.
66:22-23
For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I make to stand before me, says the Lord: so shall your seed stand, and your name. And it shall be month from month, and sabbath from sabbath: all flesh shall come to worship before my face, says the Lord. LXX: For as the new heaven and the new earth, which I make to remain in my sight, says the Lord: so shall your seed stand and your name. And it shall be month from month, and sabbath from sabbath: all flesh shall come to worship the Lord in my sight in Jerusalem. When he says: I will take of them for priests and Levites, he shows that the old priesthood has been set aside, which was owed to the tribe of Levi, where there is no choice but the order of nature, and a line of family descending through posterity. For when the priesthood is changed, there must of necessity be a change of the Law as well, and the choice belongs to those on whom the priesthood is conferred by no means according to blood, but according to merits and virtues, who will come from the islands of the nations and will announce the glory of the Lord. And they shall be brought on horses, and in four-horse chariots, and in litters, and on mules, and in carriages. And as there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and a new Jerusalem, so that it is by no means said: Heaven and earth shall pass away (Matt 24:35). And again: The heaven shall be rolled up like a book: and the earth shall be scattered by corruption (Rev 6:14): so, with all things new, the people of God too will become new, as Scripture says: The old things have passed away: behold, all things have become new (Isa 43:19). And in another place: If anyone is a new creature in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). And there will be a new people too; for Christ is the firstfruits, then those who are Christ's, at his coming: and a new heaven and earth, of which it is said among the eight beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth (Matt 5:3, 4). For every creature is now subject to vanity in hope, because of him who subjected it (Rom 8). But they shall be set free from the servitude of corruption into the glory of the sons of God, who from men will become his sons, and will stand always in his sight, and their name will remain continually, so that no other nation succeeds them, as happened in the case of the Jews; but they will remain forever. And it shall be, he says, month from month, and sabbath from sabbath: so that out of carnal sabbaths and months there may come spiritual and delightful sabbaths, which sabbath-rest is reserved for the people of God. And a spiritual month, when the moon is filled from point to point and runs its course, so as to make a month, that is, the kalends, which in Greek are called νεομηνίαι, that is, the beginning of a new month; among whom the beginning of the kalends begins and ends not according to the course of the sun and the different lengths of the months, but according to the circuit of the moon. This is the moon of which it is said in praise of the true Solomon: And he shall remain with the sun and before the moon, for generations of generations (Ps 71 [72]:5). She is called the chosen one in the Song of Songs: Who is this who has come forth like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, and chosen as the sun, wonderful (Song 6:9)? The physicists, and those whose concern it is to discuss the heavenly bodies, say that the moon does not have its own light but is illuminated by the rays of the sun. For it is always filled and shines on that part of its orb by which it is nearer to the sun, and is not darkened by the shadow of the earth: which the poet too showed in one little verse (Virgil, Georgics 1): Nor does the moon rise beholden to her brother's rays.
If this is true, we too can say tropologically that the Church, which grows and wanes in peace and in persecutions, and, when oppressed by the darkness of temptations, takes up again her former light, has her splendor from the sun of righteousness, and that this is what is said: The moon shall shine like the sun (Isa 30:26); and that her righteous inhabitants shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. And that through these months the seed of the Lord, which has been restored forever, comes to its solemnities, which the saint sounded forth with mystical mouth, saying: I had the eternal years in mind, and I meditated (Ps 76 [77]:6). Of the sabbath, which signifies rest, we have treated in full discourse (cf. Isa 56), in the prophecy of the eunuchs and strangers. And now it must be said briefly that those come at the new moons and on the sabbaths who, having passed beyond and left behind the six days in which the world was made, hasten to the seventh day, that is, the sabbath, in which there is true rest. About these solemnities the apostle Paul instructed believers, saying: For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come (Heb 10:1). And again: Let no one, then, judge you in food or in drink, or in respect of a festival day, or of a new moon, or of sabbaths, which are shadows of things to come (Col 2:16). But if these things went before in the shadow of good things to come, and in an image, the whole law is to be understood spiritually, of which the same Apostle said: We know that the law is spiritual (Rom 7:14), whose mysteries David too longed to know: Unveil my eyes, and I will consider the wonders of your law (Ps 118 [119]:18). For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal (2 Cor 4). To run through all of these in a quick discussion does not belong to this time. For if eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor 2), how do we attempt to show the whole Law, like a description of the whole world, on a small tablet? And as for what follows: All flesh shall come to worship in my sight in Jerusalem, it should be known that in the Hebrew Jerusalem is not written, so that we may strike down the haughtiness of the Jews; but only in my sight, so that the word of the Lord may be fulfilled, who says in the Gospel: Amen, amen I say to you, the hour will come when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father (John 4:21). And again: God is spirit. And those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth (ibid. 24). And that saying of the Apostle: Lifting up holy hands in every place (1 Tim 2:8). And all flesh signifies not the people of the Jews but the whole race of men, according to what was said above: All flesh shall see your salvation (Isa 40:5). And in Joel: I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy (Joel 2:28). And in Zechariah: Let all flesh fear before the face of the Lord (Zech 2:13). And in the Psalms: To you all flesh shall come (Ps 64 [65]:2). Which is said in other words in another psalm: All the nations which you have made shall come and worship in your sight, and shall glorify your name, O Lord (Ps 85 [86]:9). Month from month, and sabbath from sabbath, in which all flesh shall come to worship God, the χιλιασταὶ, whom we can call Millenarians, interpret ridiculously: that those who are near shall come to Jerusalem every sabbath; those farther off, by months, that is, when the cycle of the kalends is completed; those very far off, every year, that is, on the days of the Pasch or of Tabernacles, according to what is said in Zechariah: Going up from year to year, to worship the Lord, the king of hosts, and to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles (Zech 14:16). And to offer a greater laugh to their hearers, what is written in the last part of the same prophet's volume: And there shall be no more a merchant in the house of the Lord of hosts in that day, they interpret thus: that traders will cease to exist in the thousand years, because all things will grow in all places, so that, namely, neither shall we need malabathrum leaf, amomum and pepper, nor shall the Indians want pennyroyal from us.
66:24
And they shall go forth, and see the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me. Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched. And they shall be a sight to the full for all flesh. LXX likewise. All flesh that is to worship in the sight of the Lord, whether in the heavenly Jerusalem or in every place in which clean hands are lifted up, will go forth to see the corpses of the dead men who have transgressed against God. This can be understood either of the Jews, of whom it was said: I have begotten and exalted sons: but they have despised me; or of all who, having the knowledge of God in their hearts, have turned aside to vanity, so as to worship the creature rather than the Creator. And they will go forth not in place, but in understanding. For the corpses of the dead cannot be within with the Lord. But if all flesh is to worship the Lord, and, on the contrary, the corpses of the men who have transgressed against the Lord are to be handed over to eternal burnings, on both sides there will be a resurrection of real flesh. And the worm that shall not die, and the fire that shall not be quenched, are taken by most as the conscience of sins, which tortures those placed in punishments: because by their own vice and sin they have lost the good of the elect, according to what is said: I have been turned in misery, while the thorn is fastened in me (Ps 31 [32]:4). And in Proverbs: An understanding heart is a moth of the bones (Prov 25:20). And again, under the obelus: As a moth to a garment, and a worm to wood: so sorrow tortures the heart of a man (ibid.). Provided only that they do not deny the eternal punishments of transgressors and of those who deny the Lord, since the Lord says in the Gospel: Go into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41). And in another place: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt 22:13). If we hear of hands and feet, and of outer darkness, which is the punishment of eyes that do not see the light of God; and of weeping, which itself too certainly belongs to the eyes; and of gnashing of teeth: I am amazed that some bring in after the resurrection an airy body, to be dissolved little by little into thin air, because the Lord, by the power of his majesty, came in to the Apostles when the doors were shut (John 20). He who certainly, even before the resurrection, walked upon the sea with a hovering step, and granted this very thing to the apostle Peter, so that he who walked by faith afterwards sank through unbelief; to whom it was said: Why did you doubt, you of little faith (Matt 14:31)? The fire too is to be taken in the same way as the worm: it burns as long as it has matter on which the devouring flame may feed. If anyone, then, has in his conscience the tares which the enemy sowed over while the householder slept, these too the fire will burn up, these the burning will devour (Matt 13). And before the eyes of all the Saints their punishments will be shown, who instead of gold and silver and precious stone have built upon the foundation of the Lord hay, wood, stubble, the fodder of everlasting fire. Further, those who want punishments to end at some time, and torments, though after long ages, still to have a limit, use these testimonies: When the fullness of the nations has come in, then all Israel shall be saved (Rom 11:25). And again: God has shut up all things under sin, that he may have mercy on all (Gal 3:22). And in another place the saint says: I will bear the anger of the Lord, because I have sinned against him; until he justifies my cause, and takes away my judgment, and brings me out into the light (Mic 7:9). And again: I will bless you, O Lord, because you were angry with me. You turned your face away from me, and you have had mercy on me (Isa 12:1). The Lord too speaks to the sinner: When the anger of my fury has passed, I will heal again (Ps 30 [31]:20). And this is what is said in another place: How great is the multitude of your goodness, O Lord, which you have hidden for those who fear you. All these they unfold, wishing to assert that after torments and tortures there will be refreshments to come, which must now be hidden from those for whom fear is useful: so that, while they dread punishments, they may cease to sin. This we ought to leave to the knowledge of God alone, whose not only mercies but torments too are in the balance, and who knows whom, how, and for how long he ought to judge. And let us say only what befits human frailty: O Lord, do not rebuke me in your fury, nor chasten me in your wrath (Ps 6:1; 37 [38]:1). And as we believe that the torments of the devil, and of all deniers and impious men who have said in their heart: There is no God (Ps 13 [14]:1), are eternal: so we hold that the sentence of the judge upon sinners and impious men who are nonetheless Christians, whose works are to be tried and purged in the fire, will be moderate and mixed with clemency (1 Cor 3:13).