Cornelius a Lapide

Isaiah I

Table of Contents

Synopsis of the Chapter

First, he exaggerates and convicts the sins of the people. Second, he threatens punishment, namely the destruction of the nation, when he says in verse 7: Your land is desolate, etc. Third, he shows how they can appease God through repentance, when he says in verse 16: Wash yourselves, be clean, etc. Up to this point Isaiah acts as a preacher and teaches the method and order of preaching, which our preachers should imitate. Fourth, he properly acts as a Prophet, when in verse 26 he soars to Christ and the Apostles, and in verse 31, to the fire of hell.

Vulgate Text: Isaiah 1:1-26

1. The vision of Isaiah the son of Amos, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. 2. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have despised Me. 3. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger: but Israel has not known Me, and My people have not understood. 4. Woe to the sinful nation, a people heavy with iniquity, a wicked seed, corrupt children: they have forsaken the Lord, they have blasphemed the Holy One of Israel, they are estranged backward. 5. On what part will I strike you further, you who keep adding transgression? Every head is sick, and every heart is sorrowful. 6. From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, there is no soundness in it: wound, and bruise, and swelling sore, it is not bound up, nor treated with medicine, nor soothed with oil. 7. Your land is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your region before your eyes strangers devour, and it shall be desolated as in the destruction by enemies. 8. And the daughter of Zion shall be left as a booth in a vineyard, and as a hut in a cucumber field, and as a city that is laid waste. 9. Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have been as Sodom, and we would have been like Gomorrah. 10. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. 11. What is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me, says the Lord? I am full; I have not desired the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fatlings, and the blood of calves, and of lambs, and of goats. 12. When you came before My presence, who required these things from your hands, that you should walk in My courts? 13. Offer sacrifice no more in vain: incense is an abomination to Me. New moons, and sabbaths, and other festivals I will not endure; your assemblies are wicked. 14. My soul hates your new moons and your solemnities: they are become troublesome to Me, I am weary of bearing them. 15. And when you stretch forth your hands, I will turn My eyes from you: and when you multiply prayer, I will not hear: for your hands are full of blood. 16. Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices from My eyes: cease to do perversely, 17. learn to do well: seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless, defend the widow. 18. And come, and accuse Me, says the Lord: if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall be as white wool. 19. If you are willing and will hear Me, you shall eat the good things of the land. 20. But if you will not, and will provoke Me to wrath: the sword shall devour you, because the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. 21. How is the faithful city become a harlot, that was full of judgment? Justice dwelt in it, but now murderers. 22. Your silver is turned into dross: your wine is mixed with water. 23. Your princes are faithless, companions of thieves: they all love bribes, they pursue rewards. They do not judge for the fatherless: and the widow's cause does not come before them. 24. Therefore says the Lord God of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: Alas, I will comfort Myself over My enemies, and I will be avenged of My foes. 25. And I will turn My hand upon you, and I will refine your dross to purity, and I will take away all your tin. 26. And I will restore your judges

as they were before, and your counselors as in ancient times: after this you shall be called the city of the just, the faithful city. 27. Zion shall be redeemed in judgment, and they shall bring her back in justice: 28. and He shall crush the wicked and the sinners together: and those who have forsaken the Lord shall be consumed. 29. For they shall be confounded by the idols to which they sacrificed: and you shall blush over the gardens which you had chosen, 30. when you shall be as an oak whose leaves fall off, and as a garden without water. 31. And your strength shall be as the tinder of tow, and your work as a spark: and both shall burn together, and there shall be none to quench it.

Verse 1: The vision of Isaiah the son of Amos, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerus...

1. The vision of Isaiah the son of Amos, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, etc. — This is the title of the book containing the name of the author himself, that is, the Prophet, and of the people to whom he prophesies, and the time

in which he prophesied, namely under Uzziah, or Azariah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

Note first: "vision," that is, what was seen, or the thing seen, namely the prophecy which Isaiah saw not with the eyes of the body, but of the imagination, or rather of the mind and intellect: where to see and to hear are often the same thing, namely to know a thing clearly. For although Isaiah sometimes saw certain symbols, as in chapter 6 he saw God on a throne with the Seraphim; yet commonly he only heard God speaking to him.

Second, he says "vision" rather than prophecy, both to indicate the certainty of his prophecy — because, as St. Basil says, sight is the most certain of the senses — and so that we may know that Isaiah in this divine illumination saw not as it were a foreknowledge of a future thing, but as it were a clear inspection of something present: for in God's foreknowledge and foresight all things, even future things, are as if present. So Cyril.

St. Gregory reports, in Book II of the Dialogues, chapter 35, concerning St. Benedict, that he was so elevated in mind toward God during prayer that under Him he saw the whole world as if a small globe gathered in the rays of the sun. To one asking how this could have happened, he responds and assigns the cause and manner, saying: "Because to one seeing God, all creation is narrow," and the mind of St. Benedict, expanded in God, saw the world under Him as a little ball. In a similar way our Prophets were so elevated in spirit toward God that they discerned even remote things as if placed before them, and therefore their prophecy is called a Vision, and they themselves are called Seers, as the book of Iddo the Seer, that is, the Prophet; and Saul said to Samuel: "Where is the house of the Seer?" to whom Samuel replied: "I am the seer," that is, the Prophet, 1 Samuel 9:18. God communicated this foresight to the Prophets, but especially to Isaiah. For Isaiah sets forth what he predicts so distinctly and clearly that one who reads it thinks he is seeing things present rather than hoping for things future. Thus Thales, when asked "how far truth was distant from falsehood," replied: "As far as the eyes from the ears." The wise man perceived that only those things are of undoubted faith which are discerned by men's eyes, not those which are heard by their ears.

Third, the Prophets often take these three terms for the same thing, namely, "vision, word, burden," that is, for prophecy, about which see chapter 13:1. See Canon I.

Fourth, he says "vision," not mine, but of Isaiah: not so much for modesty's sake as for historical record, namely so that in following ages it may be known that this is the book of Isaiah, not of another: for this reason writers prefix their name to the books they publish.

Son of Amos. — This Amos is different from the Amos who is the third among the minor Prophets, as I said in the Proem. The Hebrews consider both to have been Prophets; for they hand down this rule: whenever in the title of the Prophets the father of the Prophet is named, or the grandfather, or great-grandfather, it signifies that each of them was a Prophet; but this rule seems doubtful and false to the learned, about which matter I will discuss elsewhere.

Which he saw (that is, heard from God) concerning Judah and Jerusalem. — The Septuagint has: which he saw against Judah and Jerusalem. For the Hebrew אל (al) means both "concerning" and "against": here it is better translated "concerning." For Isaiah foretells not only adverse things but also joyful things for Judah. Under "Judah" include also the tribe of Benjamin: for this tribe in the schism of the ten tribes under Jeroboam adhered to Judah with Rehoboam, and to the house of David, as if to say: This book of Isaiah contains both the prosperous and the adverse things which he himself foresaw in the spirit in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, destined to befall the descendants of Judah and Benjamin, and especially the inhabitants of Jerusalem, partly under those very kings, partly after them. For the phrase "in the days of Uzziah" is to be referred to "saw," as is evident: for although Isaiah, in chapter 13 and following, prophesies also against the Babylonians, Medes, Syrians, Egyptians, etc., yet he principally and most commonly prophesies to the Jews. Hence he inscribes his prophecy to them.

St. Jerome notes, moreover: "What is stated in the titles that Isaiah prophesied under Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah is not to be understood confusedly, as in other Prophets, so that we do not know what was said under which particular king; but it is recorded throughout the entire volume what was said separately under Uzziah" — namely what is said from chapter 1 to chapter 6, verse 1 — "and what under Jotham" — namely what is said in chapter 6 — "and what under Ahaz" — namely what is said from chapter 7, verse 1, to chapter 14, verse 28 — "and what was revealed to him by the Lord under Hezekiah" — namely the rest from chapter 14, verse 28, to the end of the book. So he says. This is generally true; however, it admits of exception, as will be evident from chapter 17, verse 1.

Verse 2: Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken

2. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. — Isaiah wins attention for himself through a pathetic appeal by invoking heaven and earth, that they may hear the words, not his own, but the Lord's. Now Haymo understands by heaven virtuous, spiritual, and heavenly men; by earth, rougher and earthly men, or even wicked and incredulous ones. But this sense is tropological.

Literally, then, St. Basil, Jerome, and Cyril by the heavens understand the inhabitants of heaven, namely Angels; by earth, earth-born creatures, namely men, so that it is a metonymy.

Second, more literally and genuinely, the same Cyril and Rupert take the heavens and earth properly: for Isaiah uses prosopopoeia toward inanimate creatures, so that the speech may be weightier and full of indignation, and this, first, to signify that the Jews received all their goods from heaven and earth through God, toward whom they had been so ungrateful; second, because the Jews had worshipped the sun, moon, and stars in heaven, and on earth beasts and stones, therefore he now invokes those very things as their judges; third, and especially, because since rational men, namely the Jews, would not hear God and the Prophets, Isaiah here invokes inanimate creatures which always obey God, so that the complaint and reproach may be most serious; he invokes them, I say, as mute and eternal witnesses, so that heaven and earth may be witnesses both of the past covenant made by God with the Jews, Deuteronomy 30:19: "I call heaven and earth to witness this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing;" and of the present perfidy of the Jews, by which they violated this covenant — for these words of Isaiah correspond exactly to those of Moses just cited; and of their future punishment, so that heaven and earth may be not only witnesses, but also avengers of their Creator. For "the whole world shall fight with Him against the foolish." Wisdom 5:21. Similar are Psalm 49:4, and Deuteronomy 32:1: "Hear, he says, O heavens, what I speak; let the earth hear the words of my mouth." So St. Ambrose on Psalm 118, sermon 14: "God, he says, calls the elements to witness in order to convict those who refuse to observe the divine precepts; that He may block all refuges of excuse." And St. Chrysostom here, who also adds examples: "For this reason, he says, the Prophet sent to Jeroboam,

passing over the king to whom he was sent, wisely directed his speech to the altar," 3 Kings 13: "And Jeremiah summoned the earth itself, saying: Earth, earth, earth, write down this man, a man excommunicated, or cast out," Jeremiah 22. He says therefore: since the impiety of men is so great that they become hardened at the words of God, I will speak to heaven and earth. Heaven, though most remote, will hear; earth, though stony and dense, will listen. But the ears of men are deaf.

The sense then is, as if to say: You, insensible and inanimate heavens, you, brute and deaf earth, hear from me what my people refuses to hear; hear my just complaint against them: that as you were mute and eternal witnesses of my covenant made with the Jews, and of the law given to them by me, so now also you may be witnesses both of their disobedience, ingratitude, and rebellion; and of my just complaint and threatening against them, and in the future you may be witnesses of my vengeance, by which I will carry out and inflict the evils I here threaten against them: and be not only witnesses, but also executioners and avengers — namely you, earth, show yourself iron to the impious Jews; you, heaven, be bronze to them. Furthermore and more so, on the day of judgment, you, heaven, hurl thunderbolts and lightning upon them; you, earth, swallow them up. So Rupert; see what was said on Deuteronomy 4:16. Let the preacher likewise say in the name of God to any sinner: Hear, O heavens, hear, O elements, hear, O rocks, hear, O brute beasts, a new thing for you; hear an unheard-of deed; hear a portent of the ages: This sinner whom I created, redeemed, and endowed with My grace and all good things, has despised Me, blasphemed Me, preferred Venus and Bacchus to Me; he has had his belly for God, and thus has stripped Me of My divinity, and transferred it to Venus and his own belly: why then, O heavens, O thunderbolts, do you not rush upon this wretch? Why do you not strike, beat, torment, and destroy the one guilty of offended divine majesty?

Allegorically, "this was fulfilled in the passion of the Lord, when heaven at midday lost its daylight, and the earth through excessive trembling lost its firmness. From this one may judge what is reserved for those in whose cause nature endured the punishment of funereal mourning," says Zeno, Bishop of Verona, sermon 5 On Isaiah, who flourished distinguished in learning, holiness, miracles, and martyrdom under the Emperor Gallienus, and whom St. Gregory also mentions, Book III of the Dialogues, chapter 19. His writings are extant in volume II of the Library of the Holy Fathers.

For the Lord has spoken. — He prepares attention from the dignity of the speaker, as if to say: Not I, but the sacred and divine majesty decrees these things through me; for my tongue is the pen of a divine scribe, namely the Holy Spirit, and my throat is a trumpet inflated and sounding with divine breath.

I have nourished and brought up children: and they have despised Me. — By "children" he properly and primarily means the Jews of his own time, not those who lived in the time of Christ, as Jerome would have it, though these words can be extended and applied to them, indeed to all men, by analogy; for the ingratitude of all is taxed here. You therefore, O my people! as a son "I nourished," and as Theodoret translates, "I brought up;" the Septuagint translates, "I begat," namely when by creation a servant, through calling and adoption I adopted you as My son, Exodus 4:22. In Hebrew it is הגדלתי (higdalti), that is, "I magnified," meaning: I nourished you, I made you grow and mature. For I nourished you when you were small and few in number, through Joseph in the land of Goshen, so that you might grow into an immense multitude. Again, I nourished you with manna in the desert, and with milk and honey in Canaan. Second, and more importantly, I nourished you with spiritual food, namely the law given on Sinai, so many prophecies, so many sacred books, so many admonitions, so many promises. This is what Hosea says, chapter 11, verse 3: "I was like a nurse to Ephraim, I carried them in My arms;" and Isaiah, chapter 46, verse 3: "You who are carried from My womb." Finally, "I exalted," that is, above all other nations I heaped upon you riches, miracles, victories, kingdom, temple, and other gifts, and made you lofty and glorious, and formidable to other nations.

And they have despised Me. — He does not say: They have forgotten, they have neglected, but positively, "they have despised Me," as if directly contemning Me and My commands, spurning, violating, and transgressing, as the Hebrew has it, and finally crucifying Me, says Zeno of Verona, sermon 1 On Isaiah. How great is this, O Jew! O Christian! — your impudence, how great your ingratitude, how great your pride! These words of Isaiah again, like an antistrophe, correspond to the words of Moses, Deuteronomy 32:6: "Is this what you render to the Lord, O foolish and senseless people? Is He not your father, who possessed you, and made you, and created you? etc." Lycurgus was unwilling to enact a law against the ungrateful, because it would be a monstrous thing not to acknowledge a benefit. Therefore the ungrateful son toward his father is a double portent: but toward a generous and beneficent father, a triple one.

3. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger: but Israel has not known Me. — This is an argument from the lesser to the greater, namely from brute beasts to men, and this to move emotion. St. Jerome notes that the rebellious and ungrateful Jews are here compared not to a noble horse, or a keen and grateful dog, but to a stupid ox and donkey; for what is more stupid than an ox? What more dull than a donkey? Yet the Jews and all ungrateful people are more stupid than these. Conversely, Plato used to call Aristotle a mule: for the mule, when it has been sated with its mother's milk, kicks its mother; so also Aristotle, stuffed with all the best doctrines of Plato, opened a school against him in the Peripatus, and desired to be his perpetual adversary. So Aelian, Book IV.

Note second: "The ox has known," that is, is accustomed to know, "its owner," and to show itself gentle and grateful to him by plowing, threshing, and carrying his burdens. Likewise "the donkey its master's manger," that is, the master of its manger, or the master who feeds it at the manger (it is a hypallage), recognizes him; and serves and obeys him, namely either by plowing

or by carrying him and his pack-saddles. For "ox," in Hebrew it is שור (schor), in Chaldean תור (tor), (for the Chaldeans change shin into tau): whence the Latin taurus. Hence Francis Forerius, by schor, takes it to mean a stud bull, which goes before the herds as a leader, and is wild and impatient of the yoke, as if to say: This bull, though wild, recognizes its master, and leads the herd of cows which it heads back into its master's folds. But Israel does not recognize Me, its Lord; on the contrary, it leads My flocks, that is, My people, away from Me to idols. However, the Hebrew schor signifies not only a bull, but also any ox that is tamed and gentle, and Isaiah seems to be speaking more of this.

Do you want a rare example of a wild beast recognizing and repaying a benefit to a man? Accept what Gellius narrates, Book V, chapter 14, from the eyewitness Apion, in his own words, which I have abbreviated to avoid prolixity. In Rome a fight of men with beasts was being given in the circus: there was among others a lion, vast and terrible: "There had been introduced among several foreigners for fighting with beasts a Dacian, a slave of a consular man. The slave's name was Androdus (or rather Androcles, as Aelian writes). When the lion saw him from afar, he suddenly stopped, as if amazed: and then gradually and gently, as if trying to recognize him, approached the man. Then he moved his tail, in the manner and fashion of fawning dogs, softly and gently; and pressed himself against the man's body, and with his tongue softly stroked the legs and hands of the man, who was nearly dead with fear. Androdus amid these caresses of so fierce a beast recovered his lost courage; and gradually turned his eyes to look at the lion. Then, as if by a mutual recognition, you could see, he says, man and lion joyful and congratulating each other. At this truly remarkable event, he says the greatest shouts of the people were raised; and Androdus was summoned by Caesar, and the reason was asked why that most ferocious of lions had spared one man alone. Androdus told an amazing tale: I fled, he said, from a cruel master, and came to a cave, where I found a lion showing his paw and asking for help: there I pulled out a huge thorn from his foot, squeezed out the pus, and dried the wound: he, relieved in his paw, lay down in my hands and rested. And from that day for three whole years the lion and I lived in the same cave and on the same food. For the more choice parts of the wild animals he hunted he would bring to the cave for me, and I, having no supply of fire, would eat them dried in the midday sun. But when, he said, I had grown weary of that wild life, with the lion gone out to hunt, I left the cave, and having traveled a journey of nearly three days, I was seen by soldiers, seized, and led from Africa to Rome to my master. He immediately arranged for me to be condemned to death and given to the beasts. But I understand, he said, that this very lion was also captured after my departure, and is now repaying me the gratitude for my kindness and medical care." Apion reports that Androdus said these things; and all this was written on a tablet and circulated and made known to the people: and therefore, at the request of all, Androdus was released and freed from punishment, and the lion was given to him by the votes of the people. Afterward, he says, we used to see Androdus and the lion tied with a slender leash, going around the city through all the shops; Androdus would receive money as a gift, the lion would be scattered with flowers, and nearly everyone met along the way would say: "This is the lion, guest of the man; this is the man, physician of the lion." The lion, brute and wild, recognizes a benefit, spares its benefactor, fawns upon and serves him: and rational man does not recognize his Creator, does not obey Him, does not serve Him, to whom he owes his soul?

No less rare and wonderful is what Democritus writes, and from him Lilius Giraldus in his book On the Ungrateful, that a serpent saved Thoas in Arcadia: Thoas, he says, had raised a serpent as a boy, which when it had grown, fearing its nature and size, he brought to the wilderness: having departed from there, when he had fallen into an ambush of robbers, he cried out; the serpent, hearing his voice and recognizing it to be that of its caretaker Thoas, rushed immediately and snatched him from the robbers' hands.

A similar story he tells from Demetrius the naturalist about a panther, which is the fiercest of animals: for when her cubs had fallen into a pit, and she could not extract them from it by herself alone, she waited there until, catching sight of a man passing by, she gently pulled him by his garment with her claws, and by nods and gestures indicating the fall of her cubs and entreating his help, with his assistance she extracted the cubs from the pit. Wherefore the panther, rejoicing and returning thanks, accompanied the man with her cubs through the byways of the woods and groves until she led him back to the road and to safety.

But all these are surpassed by what Philarchus relates about an asp. An asp, he says, raised by an Egyptian man, having given birth in the home of his host, it happened that one of the young killed the host's son with a venomous bite. The asp was then absent from the house by chance: returning, and judging it unjust that the host's son had been killed by her young, in the host's presence, lest she appear ungrateful, or rather to punish the ungrateful one, she killed her own murderous offspring.

To this add the lion of St. Gerasimus the Abbot (the common people err, thinking it was St. Jerome, to whom painters on account of this error attach a lion), which, on account of the thorn removed from it by him, faithfully served him throughout his whole life, and dying of grief at his death, honored him with its own death, as Sophronius relates in the Spiritual Meadow.

Note third: This passage speaks generally of any oxen, donkeys, and masters. Nevertheless the ancients, such as St. Augustine Against the Jews, chapter 13, St. Ambrose, Book II on Luke, chapter 2, Origen, homily 13, and others whom Leo Castrius cites here (whom Calvin here too impertinently and arrogantly mocks, calling them story-tellers and asses; thus indeed the calf himself acts the calf), adapt these words to Christ the child and Lord reclining in the manger between the ox and the donkey, and acknowledged and worshipped by them with either ordinary and natural

Verse 4: Woe to the sinful nation, a people heavy with iniquity, a wicked seed, corrup...

4. Woe to the sinful nation, a people heavy with iniquity, a wicked seed, corrupt children. — Here the Prophet is in the third tone of his sermon. For "woe" in Hebrew it is הוי (hoi), which Vatablus translates as "alas": for it is, he says, the voice of one commiserating and lamenting another's misery and calamity. But better do others generally translate it as "woe": for here it is the speech of God threatening and being indignant. "Woe" signifies threats, a decree and sentence, both of temporal devastation and of eternal damnation, says St. Gregory, homily 9 on Ezekiel. Israel is called here first, "heavy with iniquity," that is, weighed down by the burden and multitude of crimes, and bent almost to the ground. Second, "a wicked seed," because the Jews, degenerating from the grace of God by which they had been made His children, turned the depravity of their will into something like a second nature, says St. Augustine, Book VII Against the Adversaries of the Law and the Prophets, chapter 22. Here there is a climax or gradation: for the speech gradually grows and becomes weightier and more vehement. For there are here five degrees of impiety and of the impious. The first, when it says: "Woe to the sinful nation," that is, straying from the law of God! for this is חטא (chote). The second, when he says, "a people heavy with iniquity," who, namely, has already become calloused to crimes, and is pressed down to the very ground by their weight. The third, when he says, "a wicked seed," as if to say: Of the worst parents come the worst children, who, namely, as if from their parents

obedience, or perhaps even by some extraordinary and miraculous reverence (as St. Bonaventure would have it), He was recognized and worshipped. For if the lamb of St. Francis bent its knees before the Holy Eucharist; if larks and birds by their silence and applause revered and honored St. Francis as he preached to them; if wild beasts honored Anthony, Paul, Hilarion, and others who approached the primal innocence of Adam; if bees on more than one occasion protected the Holy Eucharist: why should it not be believed that the ox and the donkey in the manger honored with some special worship the most innocent Christ present and newly born, their Lord and ours, and served Him by bowing to Him, covering Him with hay, warming Him with their breath, and in other ways? Especially since not only Angels and shepherds, but even the star served Him then, calling and leading the Magi to Him in Bethlehem. Certainly in the same literal way oxen, horses, and donkeys have revered and honored the saints of Christ. Illustrious is what we read in the Life of St. Kilian, Apostle of Franconia: for when Geila, the wife of Gosbert, Duke of Franconia, because he reproved her unlawful marriage, had sent executioners against him, he said: "You will fulfill the command; we will finish the course." Therefore, slain by them, when Geila, to cover the crime, had ordered a stable for horses to be built where the Martyr had been buried, the horses

refused to enter, indeed those that entered immediately fell dead. So also St. Cyprian, or rather Origen (as Pamelius infers from the style and other features), in the book On the Celibacy of Clerics: "As, he says, a small drop of water poured into much wine completely loses itself and puts on the color and taste of wine; as glowing iron is stripped of its original and proper form and becomes most like fire; as air suffused by a ray of the sun is transformed into the same brightness of light; as a mirror directly irradiated by solar rays receives into itself the likeness of the sun, and you would think it was another sun: so also the Saints in their inmost being are totally penetrated by the charity of God, and thus made deiform are transformed into the likeness of God." Mystically, on these words of Isaiah, Richard of St. Victor wrote a treatise On the State of the Interior Man.

The Holy One of Israel. — This is emphatic, as if to say: they blasphemed God, who is the Holy of Holies, and holiness itself to be worshipped, and supremely to be revered and glorified, especially by Israel, inasmuch as He chose them for His own peculiar and holy people, and gave them His sacred law, holy faith, holy sacrifices and ceremonies. "Israel" here is in the genitive case: "the Holy One of Israel" therefore is the God of Israel, whose holiness the impious profaned and polluted. For blasphemy directly violates the holiness of God: hence it is the greatest sin.

St. Jerome and Cyril refer these words to the Jews in the time of Christ: for the same spirit, as they took after their fathers, was their character, and the Holy Spirit foresaw and foretold it here through Isaiah: for they properly blasphemed Christ, calling Him a wine-drinker, a demoniac, and saying that He cast out demons in the name of Beelzebub.

Note: Isaiah here speaks not so much of bodily diseases, wounds, and blows, as of those of the soul, namely of vices and sins: for he passes from effect to cause, namely from the blow to the fault, as if to say: Your whole body is wounded by My blows; because the same whole body is infected and sick with guilt and sins. So St. Jerome and Basil. Hence second, by the head and heart as the primary parts of the body, he leaves the remaining members to be understood synecdochically, and therefore the whole political body of the Synagogue, namely the whole people of Israel, is in bad condition and corrupted by vices: for that Isaiah is speaking literally of the body of his people, and not of the body of Christ in His passion, torn and afflicted on all sides by scourges and blows (to which most preachers apply these words), is clear from what precedes and follows. Third, by an enallage "every" is taken for "the whole," as is clear from what follows; yet he says "every" because the head can be applied to the princes, the feet to the people subject to them, the heart to the priests. First, because as the senses are strong in the head, so in the prince wisdom and provident governance should be strong. Second, as the heart is the principle of motion and direction in man — for the heart first receives life from the soul and diffuses it through the vital spirits into the whole body, whence the heart in an animal is the first to live and the last to die (while conversely the eyes, being farthest from the heart, are the last to live and the first to die): so the priest stands between God and men, and transfuses into the people the spiritual gifts and movements which he receives from God; and thus moves and directs them in the way of God. Third, when the heart dies the body dies, when it lives the body lives: so when the priest is vigorous the people are vigorous, when he languishes they languish and die in spirit. So Cyril, Haymo, St. Thomas, and others.

or of what He said: "They are estranged backward." For God is the strength, health, and joy of the soul and of the commonwealth. If therefore you fall away from God, you will become weak and sad. Hear St. Cyprian, or rather Origen (as Pamelius infers from the style and other features), in the book On the Celibacy of Clerics: "As, he says, a small drop of water poured into much wine completely loses itself and takes on the color and taste of wine; as glowing iron is stripped of its original and proper form and becomes most similar to fire; as air suffused by a ray of the sun is transformed into the same brightness of light; as a mirror directly irradiated by solar rays receives into itself the likeness of the sun, and you would think it another sun: so also the Saints in their inmost being are totally penetrated by the charity of God, and thus made godlike are transformed into the likeness of God." Mystically, on these words of Isaiah, Richard of St. Victor wrote a treatise On the State of the Interior Man.

Verse 5: On what part shall I strike you further, you who keep adding transgression?

5. On what part shall I strike you further, you who keep adding transgression? — There is here a triple meaning, and a fitting one. First, "on what," that is, to what purpose, why should I strike you, since you are obstinate in evil, so that I have no hope of your amendment? So Vatablus.

Second, "on what," that is, on what member, on what part of the body? As if to say: I find no remaining member on your body where there is room for a new blow. For all is one wound, one bruise and swelling, as follows. So St. Jerome and Nazianzen, in the oration On the Plague of Hail. So Ovid says, Book IV From Pontus:

What good is it to thrust the sword into lifeless limbs?
There is no longer room in us for a new wound.

Third, "on what," that is, with what kind of blow shall I strike you? So St. Jerome, as if to say: Henceforth I will strike you in vain: for I have sent upon you every kind of blow, and spent them in vain, and you have not become any better: I have afflicted you with famine, war, pestilence, and slavery, and have virtually exhausted My entire arsenal against you: I have nothing further with which to strike you: it remains therefore that I abandon you and cast you away from Me entirely. So Cyril. This abandonment and rejection is the most grievous blow of God, concerning which Psalm 80:13 says: "I let them go according to the desires of their heart; they shall walk in their own inventions;" and Ezekiel 16:24: "My jealousy shall be taken away from you, and I shall be angry no more;" and Romans 1:24: "Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart."

Every head is sick, and every heart is sorrowful. 6. From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no soundness in it. — Behold, here is the effect of falling away from God. Hence the Chaldean also translates: "From the people up to the princes, all are rebels." For, as Seneca says to Nero: "From the head, good health either spreads vigorous and upright to all, or sinks with languor." And Sirach, chapter 10, verse 3: "A foolish king shall destroy his people." And Hesiod: "For one man's crime the whole city pays." He names

He therefore names the heart and head, because just as the natural body receives animal spirits from the head and vital spirits from the heart, so the political body, namely the commonwealth, receives its vigor and strength from the royal and priestly order, and when that languishes, it languishes and dies. Sanchez not unreasonably suspects that Isaiah, when he says "every head is sick," notes and censures King Uzziah, who, arrogating to himself the right of the priesthood in burning incense, was struck with leprosy on his head and forehead, and this perhaps at the very time when Isaiah said these things. Finally, he says "every" or "the whole," that is, many, the greater part, not all or the whole absolutely. For the holy Church always remained, that is, some assembly of the faithful, pious, and holy, though small, and as Christ says, a little flock. So St. Augustine, in the book On the Unity of the Church, chapter 4. Delrio cites similar pagan proverbs, proverb 133.

Wound, and bruise, and swelling sore — from the pus and discharge, that is: whence for "swelling" in Hebrew it is טריה (teria), that is, a festering, purulent, and putrid wound. So Pagninus, as if to say: The whole body of this people is so infected and diseased with vices that it appears to be nothing other than one continuous wound, ulcer, bruise, and sore of sin. Others specifically apply these: so that "wound" is the inmost sin of the heart, "bruise" is the external sin of the mouth, "sore" is the public sin of deeds. Others by "wound" understand open malice, by "bruise" hidden envy, by "swelling sore" the swelling and pride of the soul, says Sasbout. Our Sanchez agrees: "By wound, he says, which is a break in continuity, and which gapes and cries out as with an open mouth, is understood public sin; by bruise, which is putrid fluid collected under the skin, secret sin; by swelling sore, a long-standing sin," which already rots and stinks.

It is not bound up (the wound just mentioned), nor treated with medicine, nor soothed with oil. — As if to say: There was no one to cure this wound of your sin. Second and more truly, as if to say: You, obstinate in the disease of your sins, have been unwilling to admit any physician's hand and treatment; hence the Septuagint translates: There is no poultice to apply, as if to say: The lack of treatment comes from your obstinacy, by which you reject all medicine: but not from a lack of physician; because Prophets, who like physicians of the soul exhort you to repentance, are not lacking to you: but you despise their warnings. Far more truly will this be said of Christians, who have so many Sacraments, graces, and other means of salvation; and yet neglect or reject them.

Verse 7: Your land is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your region before y...

7. Your land is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your region before your eyes (as you watch, lament, groan, and gnash your teeth) strangers devour. — Up to this point Isaiah has set forth the crimes of the people and their obstinacy in them: now he threatens punishment worthy of the guilt. Sanchez and some others take "desolate, burned" properly, as past or present tenses, as they sound: for often

the Jews were devastated by the Egyptians, Ammonites, Moabites, Philistines, Midianites, and Syrians in the time of Amaziah, and by the Assyrians in the time of Ahaz and Hezekiah. But because this appears to have been the first prophecy of Isaiah (as it is placed here), made under King Uzziah, when the affairs of the Jews were flourishing, and because what follows is future — "shall be desolated, shall be left," etc. — we shall better say that in Hebrew these are not past tenses but participles; which can be explained as future as well as past or present; so that what our translator says: "Your land is desolate," supply "will be"; "your cities are burned," supply "will be"; "strangers devour your region," in Hebrew, "devouring," supply "will be," that is, they will devour: or the translator put participles (which in Hebrew are present) for futures: "desolate," that is, it will certainly be desolated: "burned," that is, they will certainly be burned: "devour," that is, they will certainly devour — namely the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, says Basil, and much more the Romans under Titus and Vespasian: for in Jerusalem they did not leave stone upon stone. So Cyril, Jerome, Haymo, and others, and this will be more evident at verse 9.

Note here: Although Isaiah and the Prophets speak to the Jews of their own age who are present, yet by the prophetic spirit they extend themselves and speak also to future generations, who were to share in the crimes of their parents, and consequently in their punishment as well, especially in the time of Christ. Hence the ancient writers generally (one can see them cited in Leo Castrius) take all these things said by Isaiah to the people of his own age as also said to the Jews in the time of Christ: for He was the Holy One of Israel, whom they blasphemed, and therefore they were destroyed and desolated by Titus.

Tropologically, St. Clement, Book IV of the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 1, rightly applies these words to the rich who, having no children, do not take in orphans to have in the place of children. To these it usually happens, by the just judgment of God, that strangers enjoy their goods: "If any rich man, he says, is ashamed of an orphan, the father of orphans and the judge of widows will indeed look after the orphan; but the rich man himself will fall into the hands of one who will consume the goods which he spared and from which he abstained; and there will happen to him what was said: What the saints did not eat, the Assyrians will eat, as Isaiah says: Strangers devour your region before your eyes." Here applies that saying of St. Augustine: "What Christ does not receive, the tax collector seizes."

And it shall be desolated as in the destruction by enemies. — "As" here is a mark of truth, not of comparison, and it means truly, completely, and fully, as if to say: With a true and full devastation, such as hostile devastation usually is, Judea shall be desolated by the enemy Chaldeans. So in John 1:14 it says: "We saw His glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father," as if to say: We saw the glory of Christ as great as it was fitting for Him to have who truly was the Only-begotten of God the Father.

Verse 8: And the daughter of Zion shall be left as a booth (Tertullian, in the book Ag...

8. And the daughter of Zion shall be left as a booth (Tertullian, in the book Against the Jews, chapter 3, reads "as a hut," and in Book III Against Marcion, chapter 23, "as a watchtower," to allude to the etymology of Zion, which signifies a watchtower) in a vineyard, and as a shed in a cucumber field.

— Zion, or Jerusalem, is called "daughter," both for the reasons given in Canon 18, and specifically because the city of Jerusalem lies at the foot of Mount Zion, so that it seems to descend and be born from it as a daughter; and because God singularly loved and protected it as a daughter. Now the sense is, as if to say: Jerusalem shall be desolated by the Chaldeans, and then by the Romans, and shall become deserted, just as after the vintage the booth or shelter is usually abandoned and demolished, in which before the vintage the vineyard keeper lived, to protect the grapes and fruit from thieves and animals: so that, just as from this dismantled shelter nothing remains except the timbers and stakes projected here and there, so from devastated and burned Jerusalem, besides the ruins and the stones of the sanctuary scattered here and there, nothing of its ancient glory shall survive: indeed it shall be burned, just as after the grapes and fruit are gathered and removed, the little huts of the guards in the cucumber fields are burned.

Second, Sanchez aptly takes "the daughter of Zion" to mean the citadel of Zion, which overlooked the city of Jerusalem as a fortress, and was to it what a hut is to a cucumber field, or a tent to a vineyard, as if to say: When the enemy vintaged the city like a vineyard, the citadel of Zion and the temple were likewise demolished like a hut.

Note: A cucumber field is a garden or place in which cucumbers grow, under which understand citrons, watermelons, melons, and gourds: for there is a great abundance of these in Palestine, being a hot region. Hence the guardians in those places are accustomed to build huts in the cucumber fields, and to keep watch against thieves in them. The Septuagint, here and elsewhere, understands by ἐπωροφυλάκιον, that is, a fruit-watching hut, the same or a similar hut erected in orchards for guarding fruit: a word which they frequently and readily use. Tertullian and Cyprian, writing against the Jews, translate it as "a guardhouse."

And as a city that is laid waste. — In Hebrew, and as a city besieged, that is, captured and laid waste by besieging; it is a metalepsis. So Vatablus.

Verse 9: Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have been as Sodom

9. Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have been as Sodom. — In Hebrew it is: Unless the Lord צבאות (sabaoth), that is, of hosts: for sabaoth is a name, or rather an epithet of God, signifying the power of God equipped with the greatest, most ready, and most invincible forces of heavenly and earthly armies, namely of Angels, stars, lightnings, hailstones, thunders, bears, lions, wasps, and all creatures, which no one can resist, as if to say: Why then do you, O Jews, dare to resist the God of hosts? The first person recorded to have named and invoked the God of hosts is Hannah, the mother of Samuel, 1 Samuel 1. See what was said about the ten names of God at Exodus 6:3.

Note: For "seed" in Hebrew it is שריד (sarid), that is, a remnant, a few survivors, as if to say: Unless God from that common and universal hostile devastation had preserved a few, as remnants and a seed of the nation (as Noah was the seed of the human race), and made them survivors, we Jews would all have been utterly destroyed like Sodom: for so great was the impiety of Jerusalem as much as of Sodom, that Josephus, Book VI of the War, chapter 16, says: "I think that if the Romans had delayed coming against the guilty, either the earth would have swallowed up the city, or it would have perished by a flood, or it would have suffered the fires of lightning and of Sodom: for it bore a far more impious generation than that one had produced." Literally, Isaiah speaks both of those few Jews who survived the Babylonian captivity and returned to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak; and of the fewer still who survived the Roman destruction under Titus. The Jews therefore, because they sinned as much as, indeed more than, the Sodomites, were also punished more than they: for this is what Jeremiah says, Lamentations 4:6: "Greater has become the iniquity (that is, the punishment of iniquity) of the daughter of my people than the sin (that is, the punishment of the sin) of Sodom." This sense corresponds to the Hebrew sarid, and is the plainest and simplest, and therefore the genuine one. Sanchez explains it slightly differently, as if to say: On account of a few just men, such as Hosea, Amos, Joel, Jonah, and Micah, who were the true seed of God, that is, holy men, God did not utterly destroy the city and nation of the Jews: just as He would not have destroyed Sodom if ten just men had been found in it.

Allegorically, the Apostle, Romans 9:29, transfers these words to Christ, as if to say: Unless God had selected and preserved from among the Jews a few remnants, namely the Blessed Virgin, the Apostles, and a few others who believed in Christ, all Israel would have been rejected for its unbelief, and would have perished like Sodom and Gomorrah. So St. Jerome, Cyril, Rupert, and Haymo. Origen and Oecumenius on Romans 9 agree, who by "seed" understand Christ, or the doctrine of Christ. So also St. Basil and Hugh explain, as if to say: Unless God had decreed that His seed, that is Christ, should be born from the Jews, and therefore had preserved some Jews, from whom He would be born, in this destruction, all would have been destroyed. To Christ therefore the Jews owe it that they were not completely cut off. So about Fabius Maximus Ovid said, Book I From Pontus, elegy 2:

So that you could be born, though three hundred fell,
One day did not carry off all the Fabii.

As if to say: In the great slaughter of the Fabii by Hannibal, God preserved one, from whom Fabius Maximus, the pillar of the Republic, might be born.

Quocirca solerter S. Chrysostomus, hom. 5 De Pœnitentia, docet Deum magnos etiam peccatores tolerare non raro, ob sanctas proles quas ex eis vel prævidet, vel prædestinat nascituras.

Wherefore St. Chrysostom skillfully teaches, in homily 5 On Repentance, that God not rarely tolerates even great sinners, on account of the holy offspring which He either foresees or predestines to be born from them. "Terah, he says, the father of Abraham, both a worshipper and maker of idols, nevertheless did not suffer the punishment for his impiety; and rightly so. For if God had cut off the root, from where would so great a fruit of faith (Abraham) have sprung? What was more wicked than Esau? But if he had been cut off, the world would have lost a very great fruit of justice; and hear what kind. Esau begat Raguel, Raguel begat Zerah, Zerah begat Job. You see how great a flower of patience would have withered, if God, acting in advance, had exacted punishment from the root. He used the same providence with the Egyptians, blasphemous beyond belief: for He waited until there were monasteries there, in which those who imitated the angelic life might flourish. But even human laws preserve a pregnant mother unharmed, even if she is a sinner, up to her delivery, lest they destroy the innocent child. Finally, if God had been swift to punish, the Church would not have possessed Paul: therefore He delayed punishing the blasphemer, that God's long-suffering might show a penitent. And how many children did Paul beget for God?" These and more from Chrysostom.

Tropologically, let the penitent soul say this to itself: Unless the Lord had left in my heart the seed of good inspiration, fear, compunction, and repentance, I would have perished like Sodom: "It is through the mercies of the Lord that we are not consumed: I will sing the mercies of the Lord forever." This is what St. Mary of Egypt felt and said.

Verse 10: Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; give ear to the law of our Go...

10. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. — Note: The Jews are here called "people of Gomorrah," just as "rulers of Sodom" is the name given to the rulers of the Jews, both those who lived in the time of Isaiah, and, as Basil and Jerome say, those in the time of Christ, namely Annas, Caiaphas, the Scribes, Pharisees, and the magistrates themselves: and this, first, because the sins of Sodom were "pride, fullness of bread and abundance, and the idleness of her and of her daughters: and they did not extend their hand to the needy and poor;" as Ezekiel says, chapter 16, verse 49; for from there they plunged into all crimes and became the worst. The sins of the Jews were the same. Hence God expressly, through Ezekiel in the same passage, verse 48, swears by His own life, saying: "As I live, Sodom and her daughters have not done as you have done; you have surpassed them in your crimes." Second, because the Jews themselves were subject to the abominable vice of sodomy, as is evident from chapter 26. So Cyril. Third, because in their crimes they were as brazen and shameless as the Sodomites; for this is what is said in chapter 3, verse 9: "They have proclaimed their sin as Sodom." Fourth, because, as in Sodom few were found just, namely Lot with his family, so also in Judea, says Cyril. Fifth, because Sedom or Sodom, in Hebrew, says Basil, means deviation, and Gomorrah means rebellion: and these princes together with the Jewish people were transgressors and rebels against God. See Canon 22, as if to say: Hear the word of the Lord, once Israelites, now Sodomites, once sons of Abraham and Jacob, now people of Gomorrah. He alludes to Deuteronomy 32:32: "From the vine of Sodom is their vine, and from the suburbs of Gomorrah: their grape is a grape of gall, and their clusters are most bitter." So Ezekiel says, chapter 16, verse 3: "Your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite," and Daniel to the lustful elder, chapter 13, verse 56: "Offspring of Canaan, and not of Judah."

With the same freedom, Pope Agapetus, sent by Theodatus, king of the Goths, to the Emperor Justinian, when, after peace had been made between the two, he was being pressured by Justinian, even with added threats, to confirm the Eutychian heresy, replied: "I desired to come to Justinian, the most Christian prince, but I have found Diocletian," the fiercest enemy of Christians; Cedrenus and others are witnesses. The same thing was later said to the same Justinian by Pope Vigilius. So St. Hilary calls the Emperor Constantius, who persecuted Christians, "a tyrant and enemy of Christ;" Lucifer of Cagliari calls the same man "a Judas the betrayer" and "the worm of Arius;" St. Athanasius calls the same man "Antiochus, Herod," and even "Antichrist." So to the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, who was the first Iconoclast, St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, said to his face: "You are Antichrist," as his Acts record, and Baronius from them.

Verse 11: What is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? I am full

11. What is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? I am full. — Here He refutes the vain and harmful confidence of the Jews in their sacrifices and ceremonies, as if to say: "I am full," that is, in Hebrew, "satiated," with your sacrifices. Those offerings so frequently repeated produce nausea in Me: because although they are good in themselves and prescribed by Me, yet because they are offered by you, they displease Me. First, because you offer them with an impure heart full of sins. "For your hands are full of blood," as follows: for "the sacrifices of the wicked are abominable to the Lord: the vows of the just are pleasing," Proverbs 15:8. Second, because in those external sacrifices you place all holiness, and neglect the internal, which is the true holiness: indeed you think it is lawful for you to rob, get drunk, fornicate, etc., with impunity, because you think you can expiate these sins with your sacrifices; for this is what Jeremiah reproaches them with, chapter 7:4: "Do not trust in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord it is, etc. To steal, to kill, to commit adultery, to swear falsely, to offer libations to the Baals; and you have said: We are delivered because (that is, even though) we have committed all these abominations." In which matter you err most grievously. For God is not nourished by your external sacrifices, but by internal ones, and therefore through external ones as through an image and shadow He only wishes to arouse you to internal acts, namely to acts of religion, piety, love, and obedience to the divine law, in which He delights. You therefore, ambitiously clinging to your sacrifices and empty shadows, and offering those alone to God, act just as if someone inviting friends to dinner set before them when hungry not real hares and meats, but

painted and sketched ones: in which manner Lampridius tells us Heliogabalus mocked his guests; Suetonius teaches the same of Caligula, chapter 37. Thus they explain this passage: Irenaeus, Book IV, chapter 32; Theodoret, in the book On Sacrifices, before the middle; St. Chrysostom on this passage; Haymo, Thomas, Hugh, Adam, Forerius; and St. Jerome clearly: "The sacrifices, he says, were not principally sought by God, but lest they be offered to idols, and that through carnal sacrifices as through a type and image we might pass to spiritual offerings."

Third, these old sacrifices in the time of Christ displeased God; because through Christ, killed by the Jews, they were entirely abolished, rejected, and made death-dealing. That Isaiah here also looks to Christ is taught by St. Cyprian, Book I Against the Jews, chapter 16, Cyril, Basil, Procopius, Dionysius, and Leo Castrius, who accuses those who deny it of near-Jewish perfidy.

The burnt offerings of rams, etc., I have not desired. — For the reasons already stated: to which St. Jerome, Cyril, and Rupert add another, namely that God did not desire the old sacrifices in themselves, because they did not please Him by the work performed (ex opere operato), as the sacrifices of the new law please, but by the work of the one performing them (ex opere operantis), which was lacking here: for the very ones performing or offering were impious. And it should be known that the old sacrifices were prescribed by God for the Jews, not because they were pleasing to God or because God desired them, but so that through them He might divert the people, occupied with these, from the sacrifices of the Gentiles and of idols: on which matter I spoke in Leviticus, in the Proem.

Verse 12: Who required these things from your hands (did I require them? by no means): ...

12. Who required these things from your hands (did I require them? by no means): that you should walk in My courts? — Supply again "who required." That you should walk, in Hebrew, that you should trample My courts? As if to say: In My temple you do nothing other than trample the courts and wear out the pavement: this I do not seek; indeed I judge that in this way the sacred things are trampled and polluted rather than honored and worshipped: for the court before the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies was the temple of both the people and the priests: for these in the court under the open sky burned their sacrifices.

Verse 13: Incense is an abomination to Me

13. Incense is an abomination to Me. — "Incense," that is, the sacrifices burned and consumed by fire for Me: for the discourse was about these, and they are called incense, or burning or a burnt thing; because they were offered to God through fire, as I said in Leviticus. Second, however, "incense" can properly be taken for the smoke-offering of incense; for they sacrificed and burned this on the altar of incense just as they did the sacrifices; which although in itself aromatic and pleasing to the nostrils, yet because from the filthy hands of the impious it contracted a stench, it breathed something heavy and foul into God's nostrils. Therefore Wolfgang Musculus here ineptly and impiously twists these words of Isaiah against the thurifications performed in the Mass, and against the golden and silver thuribles of the Church, which he called abominable, though they are angelic. For the Angels of St. John, Revelation 8:4, and elsewhere, have often been seen with thuribles, and in them offering incense to God.

New moons, and sabbaths, and other festivals I will not endure. — In Hebrew, חודש (chodes), in Greek neomenia, in Latin is the new moon, or calends, as follows: namely the first day of each month (for the Hebrews used lunar months, and counted them from one new moon to another), which was celebrated and festive both with sacrifices and with the blowing of trumpets, as I said at Numbers 28:11. Other feasts were Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, Trumpets, and the Day of Atonement, about which I spoke at Leviticus 23. For the same reason that God rejects the sacrifices, He rejects the feasts of the Jews, namely because, as follows,

Your assemblies are wicked. — In Hebrew, עצרה (atsara), that is, your assembly and iniquity, that is, it is likewise iniquity, that is, it is most wicked as well as most numerous; your assemblies are most wicked, because they are assemblies of impious people obstinate in their sins. Furthermore, because you gather together not so much to sacrifice as to feast, drink, and indulge in luxury: for in the court the laity feasted on the peace offerings. Hence St. Chrysostom beautifully says: "To spend feasts in wantonness is to turn propitiation into guilt;" and St. Augustine, in the book On the Ten Strings: "The Jew, he says, would do better to do something useful in his field than to sit idle in the theater; and it would be better for their women to spin wool on the sabbath day than to dance shamelessly all day at their new moons."

Properly, atsara, that is, the feast of assembly and collection, was the eighth and last day of unleavened bread, or Passover, and the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles: for on that day the people, about to return home, as if the feasts were already completed, first assembled in the temple to give thanks to God and bid farewell, and hence this day was called the day of assembly or collection, as I said at Leviticus 23:36.

The Septuagint translates "fasting and idleness," which St. Jerome explains, as if to say: That fasting does not please God which has idleness from good works, that is, which is empty of good works. Sanchez however explains it thus, as if to say: Your fasting is idle, because although it is laborious, it is nonetheless useless: and those things which lack honorable usefulness, however much they exhaust the one performing them with fatigue, are idle.

Verse 14: My soul hates your calends (new moons), etc

14. My soul hates your calends (new moons), etc. — God properly does not have a soul, just as He does not have a body. But anthropopathically His divinity, which is the purest spirit, is called "soul."

They are become troublesome to Me. — The Septuagint translates: You have become satiety to Me; I will no longer forgive your sins, as if to say: I will shake off or vomit you with your sins, just as a stomach full of harmful food is relieved by vomiting.

Verse 15: And when you stretch forth your hands (when with outstretched hands in tribul...

15. And when you stretch forth your hands (when with outstretched hands in tribulation you flee to Me, and implore My help), I will turn My eyes from you. — For your prayers reek of the stinking soul from which they were formed and poured out. The cause follows:

For your hands are full of blood. — "Blood," that is, the shedding of blood and murders, as if to say: You are bloodthirsty, cruel in revenge, fierce in hatreds, in violence and robbery: for all these things are the beginning and inception of murder, and therefore are rightly signified by blood.

Second, "blood," that is, crimes. Note here that blood in the Prophets is a symbol of sin, as is evident from verse 18, and Hosea 4:2: "Blood has touched blood," that is, they heap sins upon sins, as the Chaldean, St. Jerome, and St. Gregory explain, Book XIII of the Morals, chapter 6: "Blood, he says, touches blood, when guilt has heaped guilt upon guilt." Both because the shedding of blood, that is, murder, is the gravest sin; and because the eating of blood was forbidden to the Jews and detestable, Leviticus chapter 7, verse 27; and finally because nothing is more unclean and more virulent than menstrual blood, as I said at Leviticus 15:25. In the same way the sins of men, especially carnal ones like gluttony and lust, are most unclean and pollute the mind as much as the blood and flesh.

Verse 16: Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices from My eyes: c...

16. Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices from My eyes: cease to do perversely. — Here he undertakes the second part of the sermon, in which he exhorts the Jews to repentance.

St. Paul, a disciple of St. Anthony, having first seen a man entering a church, black and cloudy, being dragged and led by demons who had put a bridle in his mouth, and his holy angel following him from afar in sadness: when the same man was leaving, he saw him with a bright face and white body, and the demons following him from afar, but his holy angel near him, joyful and exceedingly glad, as Rufinus reports, Book III of the Lives of the Fathers, number 167.

Tropologically, to those who are initiated by baptism it is said: Wash yourselves, be clean, says St. Clement, Book VIII of the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 8.

Cease to do perversely: (you have put on the worst habits, you have become accustomed to drunkenness, quarrels, hatreds, frauds, robberies, etc.; now unlearn them, break the habit, and gradually put on the contrary good habits), learn to do well. — "The entire religion of Christians is to live without crime and without stain," says Lactantius, Book V, chapter 9, and Hermes Trismegistus: "The sole worship of God is not to be evil."

Verse 17: Seek judgment

17. Seek judgment. — Investigate more carefully whether the cause of litigants is just: do not on account of gifts, favors, or fears rush or pervert the sentence. This verse pertains to judges, advocates,

was converted by compunction, and completely changed his unchaste life to a chaste one. Whence

Verse 18: And come, and accuse Me, says the Lord: if your sins be as scarlet, they shal...

18. And come, and accuse Me, says the Lord: if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall be as white wool.

If you have stained the garment of innocence with red spots of gore as it were, and have even infected others like the worm of scarlet with the same stains; do penance, change your life, do good works, and immediately all sins shall become white as snow and wool, that is, they shall be completely washed away and pardoned, and instead of the dye of wickedness, says Chrysostom, you shall receive the first garment of grace and justice, a white and splendid robe. Note this: Wool, if it has once absorbed scarlet dye, cannot naturally be washed and whitened: but God purifies the soul that has washed away its sins from them so completely that He leaves no scar or trace of sin, which in healing a wound no physician can do, says St. Chrysostom, homily 80 to the People.

Tertullian explains this differently in the Scorpiace, chapter 11, and from him Leo Castrius tenaciously follows: The stains of the soul, he says, are whitened by scarlet (Tertullian reads "rosy") and crimson, that is, by martyrdom or the blood of Christ, according to Revelation 7:14: "These are they who have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." But this sense does not suit this passage and its literal meaning: for here the sins themselves are compared to scarlet and crimson, not the blood of Christ or of martyrs.

He alludes to the dress of harlots. For he calls Jerusalem a "harlot" in verse 21, since harlots of old adorned themselves with scarlet. Hence Martial:

You give scarlet and amethystine garments to a notorious adulteress.

Or purple. Hence Plautus in the Poenulus:

It is more fitting for a harlot to wear modesty than purple. Shameful morals stain a fine garment worse than mud.

Hence also Babylon, says St. Jerome, is called the purple-clad harlot, Revelation 17:4. He compares sins to scarlet and purple on account of the blood-red color, not on account of its splendor, says St. Cyril, Haymo, Rupert, and others. Cajetan goes further, who thinks that by redness is signified the vengeance of God, by whiteness glory. Wolfgang Musculus plays the buffoon here, when he explains it thus: "If your sins be red as the sins of Cardinals." For sins are not compared to sins here, but to cloths dyed with scarlet: but these jesters know nothing in Scripture except how to talk nonsense and hurl insults.

Note the Hebraism. For sins properly cannot be whitened; so when he says: "Your sins shall be made white," it is the same as if he said: You sinners shall be cleansed and whitened from your sins. It is a metonymy, in which the quality is put for the person in whom the quality inheres. So in Leviticus 14, it is often said that leprosy is cleansed, that is, the leper is cleansed of leprosy; and 3 Kings 14: "As dung is usually cleaned," that is, a house is cleaned of dung. St. Basil reads from the Septuagint: If your sins shall be as crimson, and he thinks sins are compared here to elephantiasis and leprosy; for these diseases are called in Greek φοινικαί, because they are of a reddish color like the palm tree, which is called φοῖνιξ, says Galen: for sin is the leprosy of the soul, says St. Basil. But the Hebrew שני (scani) signifies not leprosy, but scarlet. Hence

Note: Cochineal is a dyeing grain which grows on a certain bush, about which Pliny speaks, Book IX, chapter 12, and Book XVI, chapter 8, and Dioscorides, Book IV, chapter 43. In this grain there grows a certain small worm, reddish and fragrant, which emerging from the grain is sprinkled with strong white wine, is dried and ground into a dyeing and reddening powder for cloths, which are thence called scarlet or cochineal: just as cloths dyed with the blood of the fish called purpura are called purple. Moreover, this color, especially when repeated, that is, dipped twice and double-dyed, is lasting, brilliant, and radiant. Hence Silius, Book XVII:

But on the other side Scipio blazed resplendent in scarlet.

As if to say: If by your sins you have stained the first white garment of innocence with red stains of blood as it were...

Verses 19 and 20: If you are willing and hear Me, you shall eat the good things of the land (of...

19 and 20. If you are willing and hear Me, you shall eat the good things of the land (of Canaan); for he speaks to the Jews, yet anagogically understand by this the land of the living in heaven. Hence Tertullian, in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter 26, explains these words of the endowments of the glorified body, and (as he himself puts it, angelified) you shall eat.

But if you will not, the sword (of the Babylonians, and afterwards of the Romans, says St. Jerome) shall devour you. — Why then do heretics deny that there is free will in the sinner? For the sinner can at his own choice will and refuse to obey God, as Isaiah says here. Musculus and Calvin reply that the sinner does not indeed act freely, but nonetheless spontaneously, not by compulsion, in doing evil, and therefore is reproved and punished by God. But donkeys and brute beasts also act spontaneously; yet who would be so stupid as to give a command to a donkey saying: If you are willing and obey the commands of your master, you shall be fed sumptuously by him? Who would punish it with threats and death for not obeying commands? For "sword" in Hebrew it is חרב (chereb): but if you read it with different vowel points as חרב (choreb), it will be drought and barrenness, which is directly opposed to the fertility and abundance of the good things of the land. So Sanchez.

Symbolically, St. Justin, in the oration to Antoninus Pius, explains that saying of Isaiah 1, "the sword shall devour you," thus: The sword, he says, is the fire of hell, whose fuel is those who commit evil; hence he says, the sword, that is, fire, shall devour you; otherwise he would have said: The sword shall cut you; for to devour is the action of fire, not of a sword.

Verse 21: How (the word expresses wonder and lamentation with wonder) has the faithful ...

21. How (the word expresses wonder and lamentation with wonder) has the faithful city become a harlot? (Jerusalem, that is, which formerly faithful to God, chastely kept her faith to Him as to a husband, and clung to Him alone, and was hence) full of judgment, that is, she had pious and just judges, and just tribunals: now "become a harlot," she has turned aside to idols as to adulterers, and thence to frauds and injustices: whence) justice dwelt in her, but now murderers. — For "harlot" in Hebrew it is זונה (zona), which can be translated as a tavernkeeper, innkeeper, one who plies a trade, who makes gain from everywhere; and therefore receives anyone as a guest. For such was Jerusalem, which received into herself all the nations and their vices and customs, especially frauds and injustices, as follows, so that the crimes of all nations, like a kind of flood, poured into that common inn. So Sanchez. Second, for "dwelt," in Hebrew it is ילין (yalin), that is, spent the night: the Septuagint has ἐκοιμήθη, that is, slept, as if to say: Formerly justice rested softly and slept securely in Jerusalem, as in her own bed; now in it robbers and murderers sleep peacefully and without fear. Third, two capital vices, says Jerome Prado on Ezekiel 9, toward the end, are reproached here by Isaiah against the Jews: first, harlotry and defection from God her husband; second, murder. The first against the first tablet of the Decalogue, the second against the second: to the first he opposes faith, to the second justice, both of which flourished in the noble city while it kept both tablets, that is, the whole law.

Note here: The companion and effect of faith and true religion is justice, just as the companion and effect of unbelief and impiety is injustice: for those who do not keep faith with God, how will they keep it with men? Among heretics therefore, who are prodigal of faith, there can be no true justice, nor indeed true chastity.

Verse 22: Your silver is turned into dross: your wine is mixed with water

22. Your silver is turned into dross: your wine is mixed with water. — Faith, says Prado, is here called "silver," justice "wine": and he laments that both are mixed and corrupted with dross and water, namely, first, in place of fidelity to God has come the filth of idols, in place of religion, superstition; second, in place of the wine of fervent charity and justice toward one's neighbor, has come the water of unbridled license and audacity for every kind of fraud and wickedness. It is therefore a proverb, as if to say: "Your silver is turned into dross," that is, into dregs and scum, meaning the pure religion of God has turned into impure superstitions; "your wine is mixed with water," that is, your justice is mixed with avarice and injustice.

Second, Sasbout and others say: Silver, here and in Psalm 11:7: "The words of the Lord are pure words, (like) silver tried by fire;" and elsewhere, signifies the words, law, and pure doctrine of the Lord. The word "wine" here denotes the same thing, as also in Proverbs 9:5; Revelation 6:6. But by "dross" and "water" is signified the corruption of the law itself, through the traditions which the Scribes and Pharisees introduced, says St. Jerome, Cyril, and Basil.

Third, Leo Castrius by "silver" understands the teachers and wise men of the Jews themselves, and adds: Plato, he says, in Book III of the Republic, borrowing from Isaiah and Jeremiah, calls golden men those endowed with heavenly wisdom and virtue; and he says that heavenly silver is implanted in the souls of those who are distinguished by common wisdom and common virtues; while in the remaining men, according to the variety of their characters, either bronze, or iron, or tin is implanted in their souls. In the same way, among the Jews, Isaiah and the other Prophets were heavenly and incorruptible like gold, the Scribes and Priests were like silver. The sense therefore is, as if Isaiah said: Your teachers and priests, O Jerusalem! are corrupted in doctrine and morals, and corrupt others.

St. Jerome, Cyril, and Basil favor this, who tropologically refer these words to heretics; Basil also refers them to preachers who traffic in men's favor by flattering with their blandishments, and make the Gospel serve their own desire, avarice, and ambition: for these are the adulterated and corrupted silver and wine, of whom it can be said what Ennius said of deceitful soldiers and leaders: "Trafficking in war, not waging it." For thus these men are trafficking in the Gospel (as the Apostle says, 2 Corinthians 2:17), not preaching it. See Ambrose on Psalm 118, sermon 12. These three senses are apt, and tend to nearly the same thing.

Your wine is mixed with water. — He says the same thing with another proverb. The Septuagint translates: "Your tavernkeepers mix water with wine." St. Jerome follows them in the Commentary. The tavernkeepers are the Scribes and Pharisees, who corrupted the law with their Pharisaic interpretations. Note here: St. Jerome sometimes translates differently in the Commentary than he does in the Bible; but the Church received his Biblical translation: therefore that must be followed over the Commentaries when it disagrees with them.

Second, Hector Pintus expounds it thus: "Your wine is mixed with water," that is, there is no pure and genuine virtue in you: your justice is mixed with cruelty, vengeance, and a malicious sort of legal interpretation: your fortitude is mixed with rashness and pride of soul: your temperance is joined with negligence and sloth: your prudence has coupled malice and craftiness to itself. A religious person mixes wine with water when with obedience he mixes his own will and judgment, with prayer curious and secular conversations, with heavenly thoughts and delights cheap and human consolations. Preachers mix wine with water if with the word of God they join the enticements of words, with reproofs flatteries, with the

the glory of God the glory of men. This sense is fitting, but moral.

Therefore Luther erroneously, in a writing published against the king of England in 1522, attempts to prove from this passage of Isaiah that water should not be mixed with wine in the chalice of the Eucharist. "For this, he says, has a most evil signification, since Isaiah says: Your wine is mixed with water." Bellarmine rightly responds to him, Book IV On the Eucharist, chapter 11, that it has the worst signification if tavernkeepers (about whom Isaiah is speaking here) mix wine with water: for this signifies their avarice, fraud, and injustice. But not if those who drink it mix them; for that argues their temperance. But the glutton Luther wants to drink pure wine, not mixed: hence mixed wine has for him the worst signification, because through it he cannot satisfy his gullet and drunkenness.

23. Your princes are faithless. — In Hebrew there is a paronomasia between שרים (sarim), that is, princes, and סוררים (sorerim), that is, faithless, just as if you were to say, "the first are the worst." Thus, says Calvin as quoted by Marlorat, he calls Bishops "Episcotos" or "Aposcopos," Cardinals "Carnales" or "Carpinales," Canons "Caenonicos," Provosts "Præposteros" [Preposterous]. Thus this buffoon with his venomous tongue has learned nothing but to slander and curse from his father the devil: but let the branded man depart, and mindful of his brand let him go.

Companions of thieves: (because, as follows) they all love gifts; — and therefore they pervert all rights. See how judges ought to despise gifts, and the examples and sayings of the ancients, which I cited at Exodus 23:21 and Exodus 23:8. Moreover, admirable in this regard in this age was Blessed Thomas More, who when he was the supreme judge and Chancellor of all England, and found his tribunal full of cases and lawsuits, within the space of two years dispatched and decided them all, so that he left not even one remaining, and this with such integrity that no one could complain of him: and he was such an enemy of avarice and contemner of gifts that, although from boyhood he had been engaged in public affairs up to his fiftieth year, and had held the highest offices, yet during all that time he had not increased his annual income beyond seventy gold pieces. How many men of small means do we see today who, when raised to positions of dignity, in a few years increase their income by many thousands. These are customs (mores), not Mores.

Blessed Peter Damian, in epistle 2, Book II, which he wrote to the Cardinal Bishops of the Holy Roman Church, applies this passage to avaricious prelates, in which he teaches that all the disasters of the Church spring from the vice of avarice, especially in accepting gifts. He thus begins: "The wise man says, Sirach 20, gifts and presents blind the eyes of judges, and like a muzzle in the mouth he turns aside their reproofs. For by gifts he arms those who approach, and through them he conquers, and blinds the hearts of those who hold a place for whispering at the ears of princes, about whom the Lord says through Isaiah,

complains, saying: Your princes are faithless, companions of thieves, they all love gifts, they pursue rewards. Someone will say: I indeed seek nothing, but if anything is freely offered, I do not refuse to accept it. See, it is not those who seek gifts who are censured here, but those who merely love them. They are also not undeservedly called companions of thieves (for in Italian a thief is called furbo, as it were furo): because while they accept stolen gifts, they are terrified of being caught even by their fellow ministers and associates, as in the crime of theft. And note what is said: They pursue rewards; because although they grant the aid that is requested to their benefactors, yet they do not escape the stains of guilt; because while they receive retaliation for their favor, they lose the fruits of eternal reward. About whom he also says shortly after: Alas! I will comfort Myself over My enemies, and I will be avenged of My foes." He adds the reason: "For having accepted gifts, if we wish to act against the giver, immediately the words in our mouth grow soft; the sharpness of speech is blunted; the tongue is hampered by a kind of blushing shame. For the mind, conscious of the gift received, weakens the vigor of judicial censure, and suppresses the freedom of speech. For even if the rectitude of judgment is not utterly destroyed, yet the authority of judging is enervated. According to the Prophet therefore (Isaiah chapter 33), let us shake our hands free from every gift, and let us preserve for ourselves the genuine freedom of both harming and helping; so that we may not litigate under the servitude of money, but may serve in the liberty of justice."

Note: For "faithless" in Hebrew it is סוררים (sorerim), from the root סור, that is, "he turned aside, departed, was perverse and rebellious." Hence Aquila translates, "backsliders"; Pagninus, "turning aside"; Pintus, "perverse"; the Septuagint and St. Jerome, in the Commentary, "disobedient": for obedience belongs not only to subjects, but also to a good prince. For as the people should obey the prince, so he should obey the laws of God. The prince presides over the people, the law over the prince. Hence, Deuteronomy 17:18, God commands that the king have the law with him, and read it all the days of his life. Hence in 4 Kings 11:12, it is said of Jehoiada the priest: "And he brought forth the king's son (the boy Joash) and put upon him the crown and the testimony; and they made him king." By "testimony" the law is understood, which was given to the king together with the royal crown, so that he might govern according to it. The pagans felt the same. Bias, when asked "who was truly a prince," replied: "He who is the first to submit himself to the law." Pindar says: "Law is the queen of all mortals." The reason is that, since justice is the end of the law, when the law is despised it cannot but happen that the prince despises justice; and from this follows a seditious and turbulent state of the commonwealth, and thence its ruin and destruction. Rightly therefore Justinian said: "It is a voice worthy of a prince to profess himself subject to the laws." But that flatterer wrongly said to Alexander the Great, who was groaning because when drunk he had killed his friend Clitus, that Justice is depicted

standing next to Jupiter, because whatever Jupiter, that is, the king, commands is just.

Finally, St. Bernard, in sermon 1 On the Advent, fittingly applies these words to our first parents: "Your princes, he says, are faithless, or, as another translation has it, disobedient, companions of thieves. For truly our princes Adam and Eve, the origins of our race, were disobedient and companions of thieves: who attempt to steal by the counsel of the serpent, indeed of the devil through the serpent, what belongs to the Son of God. Nor does the Father conceal the injury to His Son, but immediately renders vengeance upon man himself, and lays heavy His hand upon us. For we all sinned in Adam, and in him received the sentence of condemnation."

The widow's cause does not come before them. — Because from poor widows they hope for no gifts or favors, hence they do not undertake to defend or judge their cases, but always postpone them in favor of the richer parties; or, if compelled to judge the case, they award it not to them but to the opposing party, because it is wealthy or friendly.

Note here and in verse 17, how great a care God has for widows and orphans, and commands that their right be rendered to them, and punishes those who oppress them. Illustrious in this regard was the Emperor Theophilus; for, as Cedrenus and Zonaras narrate, volume III, in his Life: A certain commander had despoiled a soldier of a notable horse; this soldier fell in battle; the commander gave this horse to the Emperor Theophilus. The wife of the slain soldier, catching sight of the Emperor Theophilus riding to the Blachernae church as was his custom on her husband's horse, rushed forward at a run, seized the horse's bridle, crying out that this was hers and no other's; and that the Emperor himself had been the cause of her husband's death. The Emperor, alarmed, ordered her to wait while he returned to the palace, and upon returning immediately summoned her and inquired more carefully into the whole matter. When she had recounted it from beginning to end, the commander was also immediately produced, and with the woman hidden by the Emperor's order, he was sharply questioned about the horse. When he asserted it had been his own and not obtained by plunder, the woman was brought out from behind the curtain to prosecute the defendant for violence. At the sight of her he was struck dumb, and stood mute for some time, and finally coming to himself, threw himself as a suppliant in tears at the Emperor's feet, confessing his sin. Therefore the Emperor awarded the commander's possessions to the widow and her children by hereditary right; and stripped him of his rank and condemned him to perpetual exile.

In the same place Zonaras narrates of the same emperor: A woman had approached Theophilus and accused Petronas, the brother of the Empress, of building a house in her neighborhood so high that it blocked her light. Petronas, summoned by the emperor and asked what the woman was saying, said she was talking nonsense. Then the emperor said: "Beware lest she appeal to me again on the same matter, which will not turn out well for you;" and he ordered the woman to go to Petronas, and if the damage was not repaired, to come back to him. When she had done so, and had obtained nothing from Petronas, she appealed to the Emperor again in desperation: he immediately ordered certain senators to see whether damage was being done to the woman. They went at once, and having ascertained the damage, reported it to the Emperor: who went to the forum, and standing in a certain place there, ordered Petronas to be stripped of his garments and beaten on his back and chest, and what he had built in fraud against the woman to be demolished, and the materials and the land itself to be given to the woman.

Verse 24: Therefore says the Lord God of hosts

24. Therefore says the Lord God of hosts. — Here Isaiah begins to act properly as a Prophet, to prepare the way for Christ, who will give a remedy for all the evils narrated thus far. This part of the chapter is therefore joyful and consolatory.

Alas! I will comfort Myself over My enemies, and I will be avenged. — Forerius thinks that "alas," or הוי (hoi), is an interjection not of one grieving, but of one exulting, as if God were saying: I rejoice, because I will receive consolation in the vengeance and destruction of My enemies the Jews. For in a similar way He Himself says, Ezekiel 5:13: "I will fulfill My fury, and I will cause My indignation to rest upon them, and I will be comforted;" and Deuteronomy 28: "As the Lord formerly rejoiced over you, doing you good and multiplying you, so He shall rejoice in destroying and overthrowing you." But properly the Hebrew hoi, and the Latin "alas," belongs to one grieving, not exulting. God therefore signifies by this word: first, that He punishes sinners with grief and reluctance, so that He seems to depart from His own nature and from Himself. Second, that the punishment will be severe. For thus a physician groans when he sees someone so sick that he must be cauterized or cut. "A brave man groans when he braces himself for firmness," says Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations. So woodcutters about to deliver a heavy blow draw it out with a groan and a sigh. "Alas" therefore belongs to one grieving, "I will comfort Myself" to one rejoicing: "I will comfort Myself," that is, I will take vengeance: for the first hemistich, "I will comfort Myself concerning My enemies," is explained in Hebrew fashion by the latter, when He adds, "and I will be avenged of My foes." For men who have been wronged are accustomed to rejoice and be consoled if they can avenge themselves on their enemies: so here God speaks of Himself in human fashion, yet so as to signify that He, being most benign, far differently from men, descends to vengeance against His will, mourning and groaning, though that vengeance is a consolation to His justice. Thus His vengeance and justice are mixed with clemency and mercy, and indeed the vengeance itself afflicts not so much the sinner as God Himself, anthropopathically; because God punishes and afflicts the sinner unwillingly and as if grieving: indeed the same affection in God by which He avenges and punishes is also that by which He grieves with and has compassion on the one punished. Hence the Hebrew hoi belongs to one both grieving and rejoicing, and signifies both "alas" and "woe," as the Septuagint translates; because God perceives with grief the comfort that vengeance usually brings, a truly loving father even in judgment and chastisement.

Moreover: this vengeance of God is the highest mercy; for through this chastisement the sinner

is converted and amended, and from an enemy is made a friend, from an unjust man a just one, from a slave of the devil and hell a servant of God and heir of heaven. See Canon 46. Hence it follows:

25. And I will turn My hand upon you, and I will refine your dross to purity, and I will take away all your tin. — Vatablus translates: I will purge your dross like soap. But dross is not usually purged with soap, and the Hebrew בר (bor) signifies not only soap, but everything that has the power of purging: bor also means "pure," as our translator clearly renders it. Again, Vatablus and the Hebrews refer these words to Sennacherib, who besieged Jerusalem in the time of Hezekiah. But those were only threats by Sennacherib: for he neither captured nor devastated the city; on the contrary, through the prayers of Isaiah and Hezekiah he was himself crushed with his army by an angel; therefore these words are better referred to the Babylonian captivity and the Roman one, and this will be clear from verse 27.

Moreover, these words are of God angry at sins, but propitious to sinners: for this is the wondrous vengeance of God, by which He pursues, kills, and abolishes sins in man; but by His wondrous clemency transforms the sinner, transfers him to another life, and bestows upon him His graces and gifts: for He brings it about that, for example, an impure, drunken, licentious, proud Peter dies, and a pure, sober, chaste, humble Peter rises again. It is a metaphor from goldsmiths and silversmiths, who by fire melt silver, separate it from dross, tin, and other metals, and purify it, as if to say: Just as a silversmith melts and refines an impure mass of silver with fire, and does so for a long time and repeatedly (hence in Hebrew for "I will turn" it is אשיב (aschib); that is, I will bring back and turn again My hand, as a goldsmith does to purge, file, and polish the work), until the pure silver is separated from the tin and dross: so also I will refine and afflict you, O Jews, with the fire of tribulations, blows, and the enemies the Chaldeans and Romans for so long, until idolatry, injustice, Pharisaic traditions, and other filth of sins are completely separated and purged from you; and from leaden, tin, and iron men you become silver and golden. Again, I will punish and remove from your midst the impious judges, princes, Pontiffs, Scribes, and Pharisees. For these can be understood by dross and tin, as I said at verse 22. Hence Jeremiah, at the end of chapter 6, uses a similar metaphor of a smelter and rejected silver.

Note: Here tribulation is a furnace and refinery, in which the elect are purged and the wicked are burned. See what was said at Lamentations 1:13 and Daniel 11:35.

Verse 26: And I will restore your judges as they were before, and your counselors as in...

26. And I will restore your judges as they were before, and your counselors as in ancient times. — The former good judges of the Hebrews were Moses, Joshua, Gideon, and others in the books of Judges; and after them David, Solomon, Jehoshaphat, etc. God indeed restored such men after the Babylonian captivity, when He gave them Ezra, Nehemiah, Jeshua the son of Jozadak, the Maccabees, etc. So St. Jerome, Chrysostom, Haymo, Hugh, Sanchez.

Furthermore and more importantly, after the Roman captivity, of which the Babylonian was a prelude and type, in the time of Christ, God restored to the Jews in place of the impious Scribes and Pharisees the pious and holy Apostles, and other Princes of the Church, who surpassed those first judges in wisdom, diligence, and ease and success in teaching and governing. For St. Jerome, Cyril, Hugh, Haymo, Dionysius, and Forerius understand these words of the Apostles, whence it follows:

After this you shall be called the city of the just. — The Septuagint and the Hebrew have: the city of justice, so that just princes, Ezra, Nehemiah, and others may dwell in Jerusalem, and govern and judge it justly, and that justice and the just God may rule in it: for those princes will govern the people according to the just laws of God prescribed and sanctioned by Him. He alludes to the ancient king of Salem, who was called Melchizedek, that is, king of justice, on account of his uprightness. Second, and more truly, "you shall be called the city of the Just One," namely of Christ, when He is born, and teaches and sanctifies you; especially when at Pentecost He sends the Holy Spirit upon you. So St. Jerome. For Christ is preeminently called in Scripture the Just One and the Holy of Holies, and indeed the one who justifies and sanctifies all: hence He brought it about that the Apostles and their successors governed the Church, not looking to their own advantage or glory, but solely to the most just and most holy will and glory of Christ the Lord in governing it.

The faithful city, — namely faithful to God, persisting in faith in Him alone, in His worship and obedience: this therefore pertains to the keeping of the first tablet of the Decalogue: just as the city of justice pertains to the second, as I said at verse 21. For the Church was faithful to God, because she constantly kept the conjugal faith given to God, while the Synagogue often violated it, and like an adulteress turned aside again and again to idols.

Verse 27: Zion shall be redeemed in judgment

27. Zion shall be redeemed in judgment. — As if to say: Israel shall be freed from Babylon through Cyrus after a just satisfaction, namely the punishment of the 70 years of captivity endured: for this is here called "judgment," because it was inflicted upon them by the just judgment of God. Hence the Septuagint translates: With judgment her captivity shall be saved. At that time then Ezra, Nehemiah, and other just judges and princes "shall bring her back" and govern "her in justice," as I explained in the preceding verse. Sanchez explains it differently: "in judgment," he says, that is, not rashly but with discrimination; because those will be brought back who were God-fearing, as Tobit says, in the last chapter, verse 7, and whose spirit God stirred up, as is said in 1 Ezra 1:1. Second, more fully and more truly this was accomplished through Christ (to whom the Prophet here takes flight as usual, according to Canon 6 and 12), who "in judgment," that is, by strict justice, redeemed Zion, that is, the Church of Jews and Gentiles, which began in Zion and Jerusalem.

Note here: Although this redemption by Christ was a work of the highest clemency and mercy, here it is nevertheless called "judgment and justice." First, because Christ from justice, by paying a ransom, namely the price of His blood, redeemed us. Second, because the devil, as a tyrant, unjustly held captive the Jews and other men, though sinners, driving them at his pleasure to every crime; hence he was justly deprived of this tyranny by Christ. Third, because although the devil received from God the power of a torturer over sinners, to kill them with present and eternal death, yet he did not receive power over Christ, who was just and the Son of God. Hence because he abused this power of his, when through the Jews he arranged to have Him killed, he justly deserved to be completely deprived of it: Christ also by His death, so unjust and unworthy, merited this very thing; and this is what Christ says in John chapter 12, verse 31: "Now is the judgment of the world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out." So St. Jerome and Rupert. Fourth, because Christ gives and infuses justice into the Church and sinners, when He redeems them from sin and justifies them.

Anagogically, Christ will most perfectly redeem Zion, that is, the Church, from all evil, both of guilt and of punishment, in the last resurrection, and this through the merit of Zion's repentance and patience in this life.

Verse 28: And He shall crush (namely God, see Canon 17) the wicked and the sinners toge...

28. And He shall crush (namely God, see Canon 17) the wicked and the sinners together: and those who have forsaken the Lord shall be consumed. — Here the Prophet flies back from the time of Christ to his own time and the punishments of his contemporaries; connect these words therefore with verse 24: "I will be avenged of My enemies." Second, however, these words can also be referred to the time of Christ, as if to say: God will redeem Zion, that is, the faithful and pious of Zion, who will believe and obey Christ; but other sons of Zion according to the flesh, namely the Jews, who will refuse to believe and obey Christ, He "shall crush" as wicked or sinners (for it is worse to be wicked than a sinner), and therefore not so much sons as illegitimate children, indeed enemies of Zion. See Canon 7. He shall crush them, I say, partly in this life through Titus and Vespasian, partly in judgment both particular and universal, condemning them to hell: for then all "who have forsaken the Lord," that is, God and Christ, "shall be consumed."

And those who have forsaken the Lord shall be consumed — by the poverty and hardships of the captivity in Babylon: for just as out of so many thousands of Hebrews who went out of Egypt, because of their murmuring only a few, namely Joshua and Caleb, entered the promised land, so also few will return from Babylon to Judea. So Sanchez.

29. For they shall be confounded by their idols. — Castellio treacherously translates "by the gods" (a divis), so as to insinuate an accusation against the invocation of the Saints. "They shall therefore be confounded by their idols," that is, on account of their idols (for a or ab is used for "on account of," Jeremiah 22:22; Hosea 7:16); because they will see that their idols, which they worshipped and in which they trusted, cannot deliver either themselves or them from this blow of God. These words properly pertain to the time of the Babylonian captivity, not of the Roman one in the time of Christ, because at that time the Jews did not worship idols; but at the end of the world under the Antichrist they will again worship them. Hence they will again be confounded in them, when their leader the Antichrist with his followers is slain and thrust down to hell.

And you shall blush over the gardens you had chosen, — in which you wantonly and shamelessly worshipped idols, especially the obscene Baal-Peor, that is, Priapus. See 2 Chronicles 15:16. Under "gardens" understand also groves consecrated to idols. It is an enallage of person: for he passes from the third to the second person, signifying that this calamity is not remote but imminent, and will befall those to whom he is speaking. See Canon 16.

30. When you shall be as an oak whose leaves fall off — which once flourishing, now in winter or old age losing its leaves, withers, dries up, and dies: so it shall be with you: in gardens you sinned, like gardens you shall wither and be punished.

And as a garden without water — which without moisture dries up and is parched, and produces nothing green, so you also in body shall waste away with hunger and hardships: and in soul, deprived of the water of grace, without the fruit of good works you will lead a life not angelic, not human, but brutish, but diabolical, but infernal.

Verse 31: And your strength shall be as the tinder of tow, and your work as a spark: an...

31. And your strength shall be as the tinder of tow, and your work as a spark: and both shall burn together, and there shall be none to quench it. — "Both," namely "work" and "strength." Now he calls the "strength" of the Jews both their cities, walls, weapons, and fortresses, and more especially their idols, in which they placed all their hope and confidence; hence for אוון (chosen), others read with different vowel points חוסן (chosan), that is, "strong one." Hence Vatablus translates: The strongest (of your gods) shall be as tow. By "work" he understands the adornment, pomp, and worship which they displayed to the idols: again, the riches, estates, and palaces acquired by means of the idols and demons through frauds, injustices, and robberies, and consequently the very frauds, injustices, and robberies themselves, and other works of impiety, as if to say: All these things you thought were most strong and would be perpetual; but I through the destruction of Judea will destroy and burn them like tow, which is consumed by a light flame; I will burn them, I say, both through the Babylonians, and more especially through the fire of hell: for this will properly be inextinguishable, in which the works of the wicked, and all their glory, riches, and strength shall be burned up within the wicked person himself. So St. Basil, whom St. Jerome and Haymo follow, and who intermingle both fires here, namely the temporal and the eternal. Hence the Chaldean also translates: "The wicked shall be burned, and their evil works." Sanchez takes this differently: Strength, he says, is the walls and towers, the fire is the sins, as if to say: The walls which would otherwise laugh at their enemies will now be tow: because, even if no enemy attacked them, yet your sins like enemies ravaging from within would consume them and reduce them to ashes, just as fire consumes dry straw; but this seems to be a mystical interpretation.