Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
In this chapter is the fifth section of the first principal part of Isaiah, containing the burdens or threatening prophecies. In this section he returns from the burden of the world to the burdens of the nations, and these are various and mixed. This chapter therefore deals with the destruction of the ten tribes; chapter 29, with the destruction of Ariel, that is, Jerusalem and the two tribes; chapter 30, with the defeat of the Jews fleeing to Egypt, Jeremiah forbidding this, from which he flies to Topheth and the hell of the damned; chapter 31, he returns to the ruin of the ten tribes; chapter 32, under the type of the kingdom of Hezekiah he describes the happy and holy kingdom of Christ; chapter 33, he predicts the slaughter of Sennacherib by the Angel; chapter 34, he flies again to the destruction of the world; chapter 35, he passes to the golden age of the Gospel, and describes the calling and glory of the Gentiles; chapter 36, he passes from prophecy to the history of Sennacherib and Hezekiah, and narrates that the things he had predicted about them were in fact fulfilled.
He therefore predicts in this chapter 28 the destruction of Ephraim, that is, of Samaria and the ten tribes, on account of their pride and drunkenness. Second, in verse 7, he predicts the same for the two tribes for the same reasons, and because they mocked the words and threats of the Prophets, and therefore he says that their covenant with death and hell will not stand: wherefore, in verse 16, he promises them a cornerstone, solid, that they may rest upon it: for the worship of God does not tolerate alongside it the worship of idols. Finally, in verse 24, he teaches that God, like a farmer, now sows His people, now purges, now reaps, now threshes with tribulation; because vexation gives understanding to hearing.
Vulgate Text: Isaiah 28:1-29
1. Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of the glory of his joy, who were on the head of the very fat valley, staggering with wine! 2. Behold the Lord is mighty and strong, like a storm of hail; a destroying whirlwind, like the rush of many overflowing waters, poured out upon a wide land. 3. The crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be trodden under foot. 4. And the fading flower of the glory of his joy, which is upon the head of the fat valley, shall be as a hasty fruit before the ripeness of autumn: which when he that sees it shall behold, as soon as he takes it in his hand, he shall devour it. 5. In that day the Lord of hosts shall be a crown of glory and a garland of joy to the remnant of His people: 6. and a spirit of judgment to him that sits in judgment, and strength to those who return from the battle to the gate. 7. But these also have been ignorant through wine, and through drunkenness have erred: the priest and the prophet have been ignorant through drunkenness, they are swallowed up by wine, they have gone astray in drunkenness, they have not known the one who sees, they have been ignorant of judgment. 8. For all tables are full of vomit and filth, so that there was no more room. 9. Whom shall he teach knowledge? And whom shall he make to understand the hearing? Those weaned from milk, those drawn from the breasts. 10. For command upon command, command upon command; expect and expect again; a little there, a little there. 11. For in the speech of the lip and in another tongue He will speak to this people. 12. To whom He said: This is My rest, refresh the weary, and this is My refreshing: and they would not hear. 13. And the word of the Lord shall be to them: command upon command, command upon command; expect and expect again; a little there, a little there: that they may go and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. 14. Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men, who rule over My people that is in Jerusalem. 15. For you have said: We have made a covenant with death, and with hell we have made a pact. The overflowing scourge when it shall pass through shall not come upon us: for we have placed our hope in lies, and falsehood has protected us. 16. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold I will lay a stone in the foundations of Zion, a tried stone, a corner stone, a precious stone, founded in the foundation. He that believes, let him not hasten. 17. And I will set judgment in weight, and justice in measure: and hail shall overturn the hope of falsehood, and waters shall overflow its protection. 18. And your covenant with death shall be abolished, and your pact with hell shall not stand: when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, you shall be trodden down by it. 19. Whenever it shall pass through, it shall take you: because in the morning early it shall pass through, in the day and in the night, and vexation alone shall give understanding to the hearing. 20. For the bed is straitened, so that one must fall out, and a short covering cannot cover both. 21. For the Lord shall stand as in the mount of divisions, He shall be angry as in the valley which is in Gabaon: that He may do His work, His strange work, that He may perform His act, His strange act. 22. And now do not mock, lest your bands be tied strait. For I have heard of the Lord God of hosts a consumption and a cutting short upon all the earth. 23. Give ear, and hear my voice; attend, and hear my speech. 24. Shall the plowman plow all day to sow? Shall he cut and harrow his ground continually? 25. Will he not, when he has leveled its surface, scatter dill and sow cummin and plant wheat in rows, and barley and millet and vetch in their borders? 26. For his God instructs him in judgment, his God teaches him. 27. For dill is not threshed with threshing sledges, nor is the cartwheel turned upon cummin: but dill is beaten out with a staff, and cummin with a rod. 28. But bread grain shall be broken small: but the thresher shall not thresh it forever, nor shall the cartwheel disturb it, nor break it with its teeth. 29. This also has come forth from the Lord God of hosts, to make His counsel wonderful and magnify justice.
Verse 1: Woe to the Crown of Pride
1. WOE TO THE CROWN OF PRIDE, TO THE DRUNKARDS OF EPHRAIM — as if to say: Woe to the proud and gluttonous kingdom of Israel! for by "Ephraim" he means Israel, that is the ten tribes, because Ephraim was the first and most powerful of them, and Jeroboam, the first king of these tribes, was of the tribe of Ephraim.
He aptly says "crown," because Samaria, the capital of Ephraim, built by King Omri on the summit of Mount Shemer, was encircled by the same with a magnificent display of proud buildings in the form of a crown, and offered a most pleasant view stretching in every direction for a very great distance, says Adrichomius in his entry on Samaria.
WHO WERE ON THE HEAD OF THE VERY FAT VALLEY. — That is, who dwelt in the city of Samaria, which is situated on the summit of the mountain, beneath which lies a most fertile valley abounding with vineyards and olive groves.
Allegorically, St. Jerome, Cyril, Procopius, Eusebius, Nazianzen, and Theodoret in Leo Castrius: The crown, they say, of glory, or, as the Seventy have it, of insult (for the Seventy are accustomed to put insult for pride, that is, the effect for the cause; for the proud are usually insulting to others; so St. Jerome), is Jerusalem and the Jews, especially the Scribes and Pharisees, who placed the crown of thorns on the head of Christ, says Procopius. These same are drunkards, not so much with wine as with avarice and fury, or, as the Seventy have it, they are hirelings (for the Hebrew sickor or socker, with sin means hireling, but with shin means drunkard) of Ephraim; because they hired Judas to betray and destroy Christ; Judas, I say, who was from the village of Ephraim, whose name was Iscariot, and who was once the flower of the Apostolic glory, as those were of the Jewish glory; but he fell drunk in Gethsemane, that is in the fat valley, when there with the Jews he was cast to the ground and prostrated by Christ, and betrayed Christ. Leo Castrius holds this to be the literal sense: whence he himself, translating hoi, that is "woe," as "alas," paraphrases this verse according to the Seventy thus: "Alas the shameful crown imposed on the Lord! Alas those who hired Judas! Alas the dying flower, the magnificence and honor of the Father! Alas the glory of the people Israel dying at the hands of the Jews! Alas the valley of Gethsemane! Alas the sacred feet nailed! The sacred hands nailed!" But more truly this sense is allegorical, as I have said; especially, because Gethsemane, over which Jerusalem looms, does not mean fat valley (for that is what Gethsemane means), but oil press.
Thirdly, Vatablus translates and explains it thus: Woe to the crown and glory, etc., which is upon the head of the fat valley of those stricken with wine, or, upon whose head is the valley of ointments, and they are stricken with wine. By valley he understands a stream, which flows through valleys, that is a great abundance, as if to say: Woe to the Ephraimites, upon whose heads descends an abundance of ointments like a stream, and who are accustomed to become drunk with wine! A man drenched with ointments he calls by hyperbole a valley of ointments. But this sense is symbolical and mystical, not literal.
Verse 2: The Lord Is Mighty and Strong
2. BEHOLD THE LORD IS MIGHTY AND STRONG (He will mightily lay waste and ravage the fields of Samaria), LIKE A STORM OF HAIL (and) A DESTROYING WHIRLWIND — which is accustomed to flatten and crush crops: for "like" must be repeated before "whirlwind."
Verse 4: As a Hasty Fruit Before Autumn
4. AS A HASTY FRUIT — that is, as early fruits, like apples, pears. Whence the Seventy translate: as the first and premature figs (for the Hebrew biccora means these; whence the Punic word abbocoras). It is a proverb similar to that which Plautus uses: "It will be done as easily as a fox eats a pear," as if to say: Just as the first fruits, for example figs, being new, excite the palate and are most eagerly devoured before the ripeness of others: so also you, O Samaritans! who on account of your steep mountains thought yourselves impregnable, shall be devoured most easily, most eagerly, and swiftly, before you acquire full glory and riches. This happened when the ten tribes were carried off by Shalmaneser into Assyria, IV Kings XVII.
Verses 5-6: A Crown of Glory to the Remnant
5 and 6. IN THAT DAY (as if to say: When the ten tribes have been laid waste and carried off, the Lord will encircle and adorn the remaining two tribes, namely Judah and Benjamin, like a crown, and will gloriously protect them against Sennacherib, the Philistines, and other enemies, and He shall be) TO HIM THAT SITS IN JUDGMENT (that is, to King Hezekiah, the judge and ruler of the people), A SPIRIT OF JUDGMENT (as it were assisting the king and directing him, that he may judge and govern the people with right and just judgment: and to the soldiers) RETURNING FROM BATTLE TO THE GATE (of Jerusalem, He shall be) STRENGTH. — It is a metonymy, as if to say: God will cause that from the labor and struggle of battle, the soldiers, having won the victory, shall return strong, fresh, and vigorous to the gate by which they had gone out to war, as if they had not gone out nor fought.
Allegorically, Cyril, Theodoret, and Leo Castrius (who holds this to be the literal sense): Christ gave the Apostles the spirit of judgment, that is the Holy Spirit, that they might teach men judgments, that is the truth and commandments of the Gospel: indeed He gave them the power of communicating this Holy Spirit to others through the laying on of hands: and to "those returning from battle," that is to the holy Martyrs, who shall return victorious from the contest of martyrdom to the gate of the city, there shall be fortitude and constancy, so that thrust back again into prison, they may prepare themselves for new contests and torments, and overcome them with equal constancy.
Verse 7: These Also Have Been Ignorant Through Wine
7. BUT THESE ALSO HAVE BEEN IGNORANT THROUGH WINE. — From the ten tribes he turns to the two, and their destruction, and foretells that they have imitated the drunkenness of the Samaritans.
THE PROPHET (a false prophet, under which term he includes the priests and all the clergy; for he censures the gluttony of all, namely both the people and the clergy of Jerusalem): THEY HAVE NOT KNOWN THE SEER — namely God: for God is the Eye who sees all things, Proverbs chapter XV, 3. Secondly, "the seer," that is the seers, namely the Prophets — through wine they did not understand them, or they refused to hear and understand. Thirdly, from the Hebrew it can be translated: they hallucinated in seeing. For the eyes of drunkards, moist with wine, with their spirits disturbed, waver and hallucinate, so that they cannot see anything rightly and certainly. The Seventy translate: they erred: this is a phantasm. For the Hebrew roe, which our translator renders "the seer," the Seventy took as an abstract noun, so that it is the same as vision, a phantasm, an apparition. Phantasms, says St. Jerome, are certain shadows and images which quickly perish and dissolve, such as drunkards frequently experience. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Their vision is not prophecy, but is the empty phantasm, apparition, and dream of drunkards: they prophesy what their drunkenness suggests, what they dreamed in their intoxication; they sell their dreams and phantasms as oracles.
THEY HAVE BEEN IGNORANT OF JUDGMENT — through drunkenness they could not rightly judge, discern, and decide, but they erred in judging, and, as the Hebrew has it, paku, that is they stumbled. Wherefore King Alphonsus of Aragon wisely, when asked why he quenched his thirst with very diluted wine, replied: "Because wisdom is obscured by wine." Panormitanus is the witness, in book I of his Life.
Verse 8: All Tables Are Full of Vomit
8. FOR ALL TABLES ARE FULL OF VOMIT AND FILTH. — Others translate: vomit and dung; others: dungy vomit. That barbarous and swinish gluttony existed among the ancients, which we still see even now among certain nations, even those that glory in the name of Christ, so that they do not hold banquets and drinking parties unless they make themselves and their guests drunk; indeed they place vomit-basins and chamber pots under the table, into which they may pour out above and below the wines and foods they have consumed, so that they may gorge and drink again. Julius Caesar did this habitually, as Cicero attests in his oration for Deiotarus, and Gaius Caligula, as Philo attests in his Embassy to Gaius, and Vitellius, as Suetonius attests in his Life. Tiberius was so given to wine that soldiers, instead of "Claudius Tiberius Nero," called him "Caldius Biberius Mero" (Hot-wine Drinker of Unmixed), says Suetonius in his Life. Furthermore, Plutarch, in his book On Precepts of Health, near the end, teaches that this was customary, when he says: "The common people, who fill their bodies for the sake of evacuation, and conversely evacuate against nature for the sake of filling, are tormented by gluttony no less than by emptiness; indeed they are weighed down by gluttony as by a chain of pleasures: they always contrive emptiness to make room for pleasures." And Seneca, in his Consolation to Helvia: "They vomit," he says, "in order to eat: they eat in order to vomit. The feasts which they seek from the whole world, they do not deign to digest." St. Bernard said that gluttons do nothing else but "take in, digest, and expel:" but these men do not digest, they only take in and expel: wherefore they have as much stench and torment in expelling as fragrance and pleasure in taking in. Did not Diogenes rightly say: "The belly is the Charybdis of life?"
SO THAT THERE WAS NO MORE ROOM — for vomiting, as if to say: The tables, the floor, the corners, and everything are full of vomit, so that there is no clean place where one might wish or be able to vomit further.
Verse 9: Whom Shall He Teach Knowledge?
9. WHOM SHALL HE TEACH KNOWLEDGE, etc., THOSE WEANED FROM MILK — as if to say: God is accustomed to teach knowledge and wisdom to those who, drawn away from childish pleasures, from an imperfect and carnal life, are as men capable of solid food, that is of true knowledge: but these Jews delight in these pleasures of wine and drunkenness, and do not grasp heavenly and solid things; therefore they are like unteachable children regarding divine doctrine and admonition, and incapable of true wisdom. Paul alluded to this saying in Hebrews chapter V: "For everyone who partakes of milk is unskilled in the word of justice." So say St. Jerome, Haymo, Dionysius, and Hugo.
Secondly, Vatablus, Forerius, and Sanchez, who read all these things as a question: Weaned from milk? Drawn from the breast? explain it in the opposite way, as if to say: Who will there now be who will not receive my words idly and vainly, when these priests and Prophets of the Jews, who are considered teachers among the people, are just like children who have just been torn from their mothers' breasts? This exposition is fitting and connects well with what follows, if you read everything as a question. But the Roman Plantinian Bible and others everywhere read "those weaned from milk," etc., assertively, not interrogatively: wherefore the former sense is more fitting, and is the common one among the Fathers.
Allegorically and tropologically, Cyril says: "God both calls and teaches the saints, who, weaned from the milk and breasts of the old law, have been advanced through Christ to perfect manhood, so that they may bravely undergo every danger for Him." So also St. Ambrose on Psalm CXVIII, on the words: I anticipated in maturity and cried out: "Such a one," he says, "was Isaac, weaned, who did not shrink from the sword of his father the striker."
Hence St. Paula, as St. Jerome attests in her Life, used to repeat this passage of Isaiah according to the Seventy in tribulations and distresses: "You who are weaned from milk, who are drawn from the breast, expect tribulation upon tribulation, hope upon hope, yet a little while because of the malice of lips, because of the malicious tongue." And she would expound the testimony of Scripture as her consolation, saying that it belongs to the weaned, that is to those who have reached manly age, to endure tribulation upon tribulation, that they may merit to receive hope upon hope, knowing that tribulation works patience, etc.
Verse 10: Command Upon Command
10. FOR COMMAND UPON COMMAND. — He gives the reason why the Jews, like unteachable and incorrigible children, cannot and should not be taught heavenly knowledge, namely because they themselves mock it and its teachers. For "command upon command," in Hebrew it is tsav latsav, command by commanding, that is, command upon command, kav lakav, expect by expecting, that is, expect and expect again. St. Jerome, Haymo, and Lyranus note that in these words there is a mimesis, or ethopoeia, which is the reporting of another's words with mockery.
For Isaiah and the Prophets often proclaimed: "Thus commands the Lord;" hence these men, given to wine at banquets, repeated these words mockingly, saying: "command upon command," that is, command again, O Isaiah, O Prophet! "Expect and expect again," that is, expect once more, as though they were saying: The Prophets deafen our ears by so often repeating: "Thus commands the Lord," and they threaten or promise things that do not happen; they bid us expect a little, now here, now there, and nothing follows. So even now it sometimes happens to preachers, that the wicked laugh at, repeat, and mock their sermons and threats.
Wherefore the Jews, R. David, R. Abraham, and after them Vatablus, Isidorus Clarius, Pagninus, and Forerius translate these words of Isaiah flatly thus: Line upon line, precept upon precept, a little there, a little there, as if Isaiah were saying: These men must be taught rudely and very gradually like children, line upon line, precept upon precept, just as children are taught the alphabet. But that these are not the words of children being taught, but of mockers and scoffers, is clear from the punishment which Isaiah threatens for their mockery in the following verse.
From the Hebrew kav lakav, that is expect and expect again, the Nicolaitans fashioned their filthy deity Caulaucam, as though a patron of fornication, as Epiphanius teaches, in Heresy 15, and Nicetas, in book I of the Treasury of Orthodoxy, whom St. Jerome criticizes here without naming them.
Morally, Richard of St. Victor, and Delrio quoting his words in adage 747, refer these words of Isaiah to the sluggish and lukewarm, even Religious, who procrastinate the amendment of their lives.
Finally, the Syriac and Arabic, reading for tsav the word tse, that is exit, excrement, from the root yatsa, that is he went out; and for kav reading ko, that is to vomit, translate: the Syriac thus: For dung upon dung, and dung upon dung, and vomit upon vomit, and vomit upon vomit, a little there, and a little there; the Arabic thus: Among whom knowledge or doctrine is as vomit upon vomit, and dung upon dung in the privy, a little in one place, a little in another place, here and there it is full of dung: so that it refers back to verse 8: "All tables are full of vomit and filth." Hence it is clear that the Syriac and Arabic versions were made from the Hebrew.
Verse 11: In the Speech of the Lip
11. FOR IN THE SPEECH OF THE LIP. — In Hebrew belaage sapha, that is, as Lyranus, Forerius, and Pagninus have it, in the stammering of the lip; Arias, in the lisps of the lip, as those who mock are accustomed to speak with a gesture of tongue and lips composed into stammering; which our translator renders "the speech of the lip:" for the lisping and stammering seem to speak and babble with their lips almost alone, as also infants when they begin to speak and stammer. Whence Sanchez, when it says "in the speech of the lip," thinks there is an allusion to labial letters, which are familiar to children, namely B, M, P; wherefore they call baba abba, that is father, mama mother, papa porridge: for these letters are formed with compressed lips; hence they are called labials, and can rightly be called infantile. Whence clearly the Seventy and others translate: in mockery, or derision of the lip. For he who deals in a lisping and stammering manner with men who are great in age but infants in mind and character, mocks their childishness. For the Hebrew laag properly applies to stammerers, lispers, and mockers. And perhaps Isaiah alludes to the Ephraimites who were lispers: whence in Judges XII, 6, instead of schibbolet they said with a lisp sibbolet: so here instead of tsav, that is "command," the mocking Jews said with a lisp sav.
St. Paul renders these words not word for word, but according to the sense, saying: "In other lips" (whence also the Chaldean translates: in a change of speech), because he adapts the passage of Isaiah to the gift of tongues given to the Apostles, who spoke in other tongues not for mockery, but for edification. Although Salmeron, volume I, page 33, thinks that in the Hebrew a gimel has erroneously crept in for the neighboring zain, and that instead of beloage, as is now read in Isaiah, one should read belaaze, that is in barbarian tongues, and consequently tongues other than and different from your own: for the Hebrew loez means barbarian.
The sense therefore is, as if Isaiah, or rather God through Isaiah, were saying: My exhortation to repentance made to the Jews through Isaiah and the other Prophets has seemed to you, O Jews, bothersome and ridiculous, just as if I had spoken to you with lisping lips and a foreign tongue: hence imitating and mocking the Prophets' stammering, as it were, you say lisping and stammering and repeat: "Command upon command." Wherefore through the Chaldeans (who seem to you to be lispers and stammerers), the soldiers and ministers of My justice, I will punish you, so that with the mockeries of their foreign Chaldean tongue they may summon and restrain you unbelievers, and once you are conquered and captive, they may mock you, and mock and refute your Hebrew words with their Chaldean ones: and by the type, figure, and likeness of these, in the time of Christ I will send the Apostles, who with the gift of other tongues will likewise convict your unbelief, O Jews, and they will seem to you to be lispers, and by you and the wise of this world they will be mocked as foolish preachers of the cross of Christ. For in this sense the Apostle cites these words of Isaiah, I Cor. XIV, 21. So say St. Jerome and Cyril.
Note: the word "for" is taken here not in its proper sense, but adversatively for "but": for when he says "for in the speech of the lip," it is the same as if he had said: "But, or nevertheless, in the speech of the lip, and with another tongue" God will speak through the Chaldeans "to this people," in order to convict them.
Verse 12: This Is My Rest
12. TO WHOM HE SAID: THIS IS MY REST, REFRESH THE WEARY, etc. — as if to say: God said: For a long time I desired to rest among the Jews, both then and especially in the time of Christ, and I not only desired it, but also prayed and besought them, saying: "Refresh" Me, by praying and beseeching you, "the weary one."
Secondly, and more properly, "refresh the weary," that is, refresh the weak, the wretched, and the fatigued; for in this mercy is My rest and consolation. Whence God through the Prophets was, as it were, crying out nothing else than: "Show mercy and compassion each one to his brother," as is clear from Zechariah VII: but they refused to hear Me, and despised Me. So say St. Jerome and Cyril.
Verse 13: The Word of the Lord Shall Be to Them
13. AND THE WORD OF THE LORD SHALL BE TO THEM: COMMAND UPON COMMAND — Here God punishes the mockers, and turns their mockery back upon themselves, as if to say: Because they mocked the words of the Prophets, saying: "Command upon command," hence in turn God, when calamity and disaster shall press upon them, will mock them and say: COMMAND UPON COMMAND, EXPECT AND EXPECT AGAIN, EXPECT AND EXPECT AGAIN — hence it shall come about, THAT THEY MAY GO AND FALL BACKWARD — as though shamefully overcome by the enemy, and thrown on their backs so that they cannot rise, and thus they are crushed by him and trampled underfoot, and as though led into the nets of hunters they are captured. Thus God justly mocks and punishes the mockers, according to that saying in Proverbs chapter I, 23: "You have despised all my counsel, etc. I also will laugh at your destruction, and will mock, when that which you feared shall come upon you."
So Suidas narrates under the word Datis, that Datis and Artaphernes, generals of Darius, sent ambassadors to Greece, intending to test the cities and demand earth and water. And the islanders indeed all assented; but the Lacedaemonians, promising to give both, threw them into a well and buried them with earth; declaring that they had given what had been demanded.
Verses 14-15: The Covenant with Death
14. YOU SCORNFUL MEN — who mock the threats of the Prophets, saying: "Command upon command."
15. WE HAVE STRUCK A COVENANT WITH DEATH. — As though they say: We are safe from the Assyrians and Chaldeans, we do not fear their devastation, nor death and hell, that is the place and state of the dead, which the Prophets threaten us with, as though we had made a pact with them. It is a catachresis. Secondly, properly, Sanchez says: Just as the Gentiles counted death, that is Atropos or fate, and hell, namely Pluto or Orcus, among their gods: so these mockers, imitating the rites of the Gentiles, venerated them as gods, and having performed certain rites and ceremonies, they thought they could win them over to themselves, and as it were make a pact with them, so that nothing evil was to be feared from them.
AND WITH HELL WE HAVE MADE A PACT. — For "pact" the Hebrew is chose, that is vision, as if to say: We have entered into conversation with hell: and we have dealt and made terms with it. The Prophets say that many things dreadful to behold are in hell: we have now seen them, and we are not horrified. So the impious commonly say: "The devil is not so black as he is painted." So says Vatablus.
Secondly, Viegas in Apocalypse II, Commentary IV, section IV, number 5, translates chose as provision, supplies, which belongs to many living together or wishing to sail together: which none do except those in alliance, as if to say: With hell we have made provision, or supplies, as though about to sail together and to arrive at the same port of the underworld. So the demon, appearing to witches and playing with them, persuades them that he is well, that he is joyful and happy, and not much tormented by the fire of hell; and accordingly that they themselves after death will enjoy the same happy lot as he.
Thirdly, some understand by death and hell the king of the Assyrians: for the Samaritans had made a pact with him and were his tributaries: whence under his wings they lived securely, fearing nothing. To these therefore the Prophet announces that this pact is dangerous and ruinous; because the king of the Assyrians is going to devastate them and send them to death and hell. Some add that this king is called death and hell because he ruled over the Pontics and Cimmerians, and from these he gathered his army. And these are called the underworld and hell, because in Pontus there is Mount Cerberion and a town of the same name; likewise Heraclea and the cave from which Hercules is said to have dragged out Cerberus; likewise the Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Tartarus. Finally, Homer places the abode of the underworld among the Cimmerians, either because of the perpetual darkness, or because of the frequent mines, or because of the very dark valleys inaccessible to the winter sun: whence the Gentiles believed that the entrance to the underworld was there.
Morally, St. Gregory, book VI on the Book of Kings, chapter II: "The impenitent," he says, "like Saul, have struck a covenant with death and hell. To strike a covenant with death is to boldly perpetrate evils, and to promise to keep doing them always. They indeed do evil unceasingly; but by loving what they do, they promise, as it were, never to withdraw from friendship with death. These indeed, the more insensible they become in their covenant with death, the more bitterly the bowels of their mother the Church are shaken with pity for them."
WHEN THE OVERFLOWING SCOURGE SHALL PASS THROUGH, IT SHALL NOT COME UPON US — as if to say: The scourge and calamity of the Assyrians, when it has swept through the ten tribes, will not come upon us. Secondly and properly, just as Attila, so Nebuchadnezzar is called here "the overflowing scourge of God," absorbing all the nations neighboring the Jews.
BECAUSE WE HAVE MADE LIES. — The Prophet gives the reason for their presumed security, as if to say: The basis of your security is nothing but a lying hope, which you have either in your idols, or in God's excessive mercy, or in your strength and wealth: which although you call truth and security, I nevertheless call falsehood and deception, as indeed it is. Add that these are words of the mockers, who usurp the name and voice of the Prophets, as though they say: We have placed our hope in idols, etc., which you, O Prophets, call falsehood. Finally, Sanchez thinks that the name of "lie" applied to idols among the Gentiles, from continual use, did not have a bad reputation, but as though respectable it passed into common nomenclature. So among the Romans the Bruti, Porcii, and Asinii were honored, even though the etymology of their names signified something indecorous. So also the words hostis (enemy) and tyrannus (tyrant) once meant strangers and princes, but now from their misuse they have a bad reputation.
Verse 16: The Cornerstone in Zion
16. THEREFORE THUS SAYS THE LORD. — The Prophet flies, as is his custom, to Christ, whom he opposes to the falsehood of the mockers, to teach that solid hope is placed in Christ, which they had placed in their lying idols: for God is accustomed to avenge the crimes of men in the new law not by punishing, but by curing them with His clemency and pardoning them through Christ. See Canon XLVI. Wisely Bias, and after him Ausonius, say: What is the work of a wise man? When he can harm, to choose not to.
The sense is, as if to say: Therefore, in order to overturn your futile pact and lying confidence with a wiser and more solid counsel, indeed to correct and amend it, for this reason I will mercifully send Christ to you, though you are unworthy, who may build Zion, that is the Church, and whose own cornerstone He may be, that is the first and lowest foundation, as the Apostle has it, Ephesians II, 20; which, being solid, will firmly connect all its parts, and especially the two walls, that is the two peoples opposed to each other, namely the Jews and the Gentiles. So say St. Cyril, Theodoret, and Augustine in Psalm XCIV, indeed St. Peter, epistle I, chapter II, verse 6, and Paul in Romans IX, 33, and Christ Himself, Matthew XXI, 42. In Hebrew it is: behold I place in Zion a tested stone of the corner, of preciousness, of the foundation, that is a cornerstone, precious, foundational, most solid; for He opposes this stone on account of its solidity to a reed, that is to the vain and lying hope which the Jews placed in their idols; whence he says, verse 18: "Your covenant with death shall be abolished, and your pact with hell shall not stand;" because it is of reed, not founded on a solid stone, that is on Christ and God.
HE THAT BELIEVES, LET HIM NOT HASTEN — namely, wishing the stone of Zion here promised, that is Christ, to be presented to him immediately, let him not say with the mockers: "Command upon command, a little here," as if to say: We have waited for the fulfillment of the oracles, and we see nothing has followed; but let him wait patiently: because in His own time I will most certainly fulfill My promise, according to Habakkuk II, 3: "If he delays, wait for him: because he that is to come will come, and will not delay."
Note: the Seventy and from them St. Peter, epistle II, chapter II, and Paul, Romans X, instead of "let him not hasten" translate "he shall not be confounded," as if to say: "Let him not hasten," that is, let him not be alarmed: for he shall not be confounded, but shall obtain his hope. So Virgil says of the bees: Those within, anxious about their affairs, throughout their waxen camps rush about; so that it is a metalepsis. So Leo Castrius.
Secondly, Sanchez says "let him not hasten" means let him not flee: for he shall not be confounded. For those who are confounded and put to shame are accustomed to hurriedly withdraw, to flee the eyes of men: hence it happens that haste is taken for shame and confusion. This too is a metalepsis, but drawn from another source.
Finally, Jean Morin, in his Preface to the Septuagint, thinks the Seventy read iabis, that is "be confounded," instead of iachis, that is "hasten."
Verse 17: Judgment in Weight and Justice in Measure
17. AND I WILL SET JUDGMENT IN WEIGHT, AND JUSTICE IN MEASURE. — From His Christ the Prophet flies back and returns to his own times and to what he said in verse 13, as if to say: I will judge those mocking Jews rightly and accurately, as with just weight and measure, punishing them now through the Chaldeans, and in the time of Christ through the Romans and eternal damnation. The Seventy, instead of "justice in measure," translate: Your mercy in scales, which St. Nazianzen, in his oration On Mercy, explains thus, as if to say: God's mercy is granted to us in proportion to the measure of mercy which we have shown to the wretched: "For to nothing," he says, "is God's mercy more repaid than to mercy, by Him who justly weighs and repays all things." So also St. Basil on Psalm CXXIX thinks that by these words of Isaiah it is signified that mercy is to be bestowed on the merciful according to the manner and measure of each one's merit, but judgment on those lacking mercy.
AND HAIL SHALL OVERTURN THE HOPE OF FALSEHOOD. — "Hail" by catachresis signifies the sudden and mighty punishment of God, which He exercised through the Chaldeans, the Romans, and others, by which He overturned the lying hopes of the Jews, which they placed in idols and in the kings of Egypt and others. The waters signify the same, which by their flooding overturned the protection, that is the wall, behind which they thought they would be shielded, which in verse 18 he clearly called "the overflowing scourge."
Verse 19: Vexation Gives Understanding
19. IN THE MORNING, AT BREAK OF DAY IT SHALL PASS THROUGH, IN THE DAY AND IN THE NIGHT — as if to say: This hail, this scourge will seize you quickly and early, as though at the very break of dawn, and will last continuously for whole days and nights. Therefore here is signified the speed and continuity of the scourge.
ONLY VEXATION SHALL GIVE UNDERSTANDING TO THE HEARING — as if to say: This calamity of the Chaldeans will make the Jews understand the oracles and the threats which they hear from the Prophets; it will teach them to fear and worship God, not idols: for the love and worship of both are not compatible with each other, as follows. Just as a donkey is not moved by threats or promises, but by the stick: so also these men. So it was once said of the Phrygians: "A Phrygian is never corrected except by blows." For "vexation" the Hebrew is zaavah, which others translate as terror. For thus stubborn children are forced to their duty now and then by threats and terror. But our translation is more fitting and genuine. So in chapter XXVI, verse 9, he said: "When You shall execute Your judgments in the earth, the inhabitants of the world shall learn justice." And Psalm LXXVII, 34: "When He slew them, they sought Him." So also Plato in the Symposium: "The fool," he says, "becomes wise after receiving a blow." Hence Agesilaus used to say of certain peoples of Asia: "If they enjoyed liberty, they would be bad; if they served, they would be good."
Prudently St. Bernard, book I, On Consideration, chapter III: "It is a sign of a dulled heart," he says, "not to feel one's own continual vexation. Vexation gives understanding to the hearing, but only if it is not excessive: for if it is, it does not really give understanding, but contempt. Finally, the impious man, when he has come to the depth of evils, despises."
Verses 20-21: The Narrow Bed and the Strange Work
20. FOR THE BED IS SO NARROW. — First, the Jews explain it thus: Through the Chaldeans you shall be reduced, O Jews, to such straits that two spouses shall not have a place where they may lie together, but one of them must be thrust from the place and bed; and they shall not have coverings large enough to cover both at once. But this sense is cold and Jewish.
Secondly therefore, and genuinely, as if God were saying: You, O Jews, besides Me your spouse, admit other lovers, namely idols and the devil; and so you cannot remain in marriage with Me, because the bed of My love is so narrow that it admits only one bride and one bridegroom, and utterly excludes a third, namely the adulterer: nor can it hold God and the devil, God and the world, God and mammon: wherefore I scourge you through the Chaldeans and others, that I may call you back to Me, and that you may thrust other gods from this your bed and Mine. "Two things," says Ausonius, "do not admit partners: love and sovereignty." "And every power will be impatient of a consort," says Lucan. Whence also Julius Caesar used to say: "I would rather be first in Gaul than second in Rome;" and since he would not tolerate Pompey as his superior, nor Pompey him as his equal, he wrested from him by war both his power and his life. So also Alexander, when asked by Darius to share the empire with him, replied: "Just as the world does not bear two suns, so neither does the earth bear two kings. Therefore either submit to me, or prepare for battle tomorrow;" he prepared, and being slain, his kingdom passed to Alexander. So also the Tragedian: "Neither kingdoms nor marriages know how to bear a partner." A similar proverb is: "No one can serve two masters," Matthew VI, 24. And: "What agreement has Christ with Belial?" II Corinthians VI.
St. Jerome says: God therefore alone wishes to occupy the entire bed of our heart; whence He commanded, saying: "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul," Deuteronomy VI, 5. Hence also the Apostle, I Corinthians X, 20: "You cannot," he says, "drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils: you cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord and of the table of idols." Truly Lyranus on Matthew chapter VI, 24: You cannot serve God and mammon: "The human heart," he says, "cannot hold God and the devil at the same time; but when the devil is received through sin, God departs; when God is received through charity, the devil departs."
Allegorically, Leo Castrius says: The bed of God, that is the Church, does not hold the shadow and the truth, Moses and Christ, the burdens of the law and the sweet yoke of grace.
THAT ONE MUST FALL OUT. — In Hebrew it is mehistarea, that is from overflowing, or from being in excess, as if to say: So that there is no room left for another, but one must fall out, as St. Jerome rightly translates.
21. FOR AS IN THE MOUNTAIN OF DIVISIONS — as if to say: Just as at Baal Perazim, which means "place of divisions," God struck down the Philistines for David, II Kings chapter V, and there separated and set apart the victorious David from the defeated and scattered Philistines: so He shall rise up and THE LORD SHALL STAND against you — to scatter, divide, and destroy you: and just as for Joshua in the valley of Gibeon He stopped the sun and struck the Amorites, not so much with arms as with hail and stones cast down from heaven upon them, Joshua X; so likewise He Himself shall be angry against you, O Jews, as adulterers and apostates, and in His anger He shall cast you down and strike you.
So says St. Jerome, who allegorically refers these things to the destruction of the world: for then there will be a Baal Perazim, that is a place of divisions in the valley of Jehoshaphat, where Christ will separate the sheep from the goats, and will assign heaven to the sheep, that is the saints, and Gehenna to the goats and the impious.
THAT HE MAY DO HIS WORK — the work decreed by Him, namely vengeance and punishment, demanded by the sins of the Jews, which nevertheless is not God's proper work, if you consider His nature and innate goodness, but HIS STRANGE and, as it were, ALIEN WORK — because He does this unwillingly and as though compelled by the impious. So when He brought the flood upon the world, He did this touched with sorrow of heart within, Genesis VI; so when about to punish, He groans saying: "Alas! I will take comfort from My enemies," Isaiah I, 24. Secondly, "strange and alien work" is a work, that is, a punishment unusual and remarkable. For since God had been kind and beneficent to the fathers of the Jews on account of their piety, it seemed to their impious descendants something unusual and foreign to God's custom to experience God's wrath and vengeance. Again, because this vengeance was to be fierce and unheard of, as bringing about the destruction of God's nation and people, it seemed to them remarkable and entirely extraordinary.
Verse 22: Do Not Mock
22. AND NOW DO NOT — you mockers, who mocked the Prophets and said, verse 10: "Command upon command," likewise — MOCK these threats of mine, LEST YOUR BONDS BE MADE STRONG — that is, lest you be bound sooner and more tightly by the enemy, lest God punish you through him more severely and with a heavier captivity. For just as a fox that has fallen into a snare tightens the knot and snare all the more, the more it tries to free and extricate itself: so the impious by their evasion, and the mockers by mocking God's threats and punishments, more and more entangle and bind themselves in them. Whence there follows:
FOR I HAVE HEARD FROM THE LORD A CONSUMMATION AND A CUTTING SHORT — as if to say: a consumption and destruction, and one that will shortly come upon the whole land, namely of the Jews — as if to say: You shall no longer say: "Command upon command," because shortly God will inflict the disaster which He has threatened upon you: for your mockeries and crimes will shortly fill up the measure of sins appointed for you by God, and will thus hasten His vengeance.
Verses 24-29: The Parable of the Farmer
24. SHALL THE PLOUGHMAN PLOUGH ALL DAY LONG? — Note: From this place to the end of the chapter there is a continuous parable of the farmer, by which he exhorts the Jews and all nations to good works and to fruitfulness, as if to say: The ploughman does not always plough in order to sow, but first, he ploughs; second, when he has ploughed for several days, afterwards he unyokes the oxen, breaks up the clods, and levels and harrows the surface of the earth; third, when he has done this, he casts the seed, and weeds the sprouting crop, that is, purges it of tares; fourth, he reaps and gathers the ripe harvest; fifth, he threshes each thing according to its nature, namely all legumes, such as fennel-flower and cumin, more lightly, that is with a rod or staff; but grains, which are harder to thresh, more heavily, namely in Palestine with carts which have, as it were, saws and teeth underneath, by turning which over the crops they beat out the grain; or also with oxen, who stamp them out by treading with their hooves.
Now apply these things to the Jews and to men as follows. First, the farmer is God; second, the field is Israel; third, God sows this field; the seeds are the law, grace, and gifts of God; fourth, then He reaps and gathers the fruits of good works, and to draw them forth, He threshes, that is afflicts us, some indeed more heavily, others more lightly according to the constancy and strength of their faith.
The sense therefore is, as if to say: Just as the farmer sows, reaps, and threshes each thing in its proper place, order, time, and manner: so God in Israel, and in this great field of the world, now sows grace, now admonishes, now reproves, now punishes, now shows mercy. You therefore, O Jews, and every nation, diligently consider and reflect upon what God does in you at any given time: indeed let each one consider this in himself, what God is working in him this very day and hour: whether He is sowing, or reaping, or threshing, and let each strive to cooperate with and respond to God's working, and through His threshing and affliction to yield grains of patience, charity, and other virtues. So say St. Jerome, Vatablus, and others.
Wherefore the Saints diligently and attentively received all God's inspirations, admonitions, corrections, tribulations, etc., and either cooperated with them or patiently endured them, and drew from them the fruit which God desired. So Samuel said to God: "Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears." So David: "I will hear what the Lord speaks in me." And Paul: "Lord, what do You wish me to do?" And Isaiah, chapter VI: "Here am I, send me." So St. Francis, hearing any inspiration of God, would stop and collect himself entirely to perceive it, and having perceived it, immediately carried out what he had heard. Wherefore our Holy Father Ignatius rightly said that few know how much they themselves hinder God's operation in them, and place an obstacle before Him when He would work great things, either because they do not hear God's voice, or do not cooperate with it as they should. Indeed, the Blessed Virgin alone always received God's voice, hence she received grace upon grace attentively, and cooperated with it equally, so that, for example, if she received a grace intense as a thousand, she elicited an act intense as a thousand, and that continuously and constantly. None of the other Saints accomplished this: for human weakness fails now in intensity, now in continuity, so as not to match the grace of God: yet those who are generous try to match it as much as possible; and these make the greatest progress in virtue and grace.
The Gentiles saw the same thing in shadow; whence Alexander the Great in Egypt heard the philosopher Psammon, and especially approved his saying, in which he affirmed that "all men are governed by God: for that which presides and commands in everyone is divine." And that he himself thought more philosophically about the same matter, when he asserted that "God is the common father of all men, but He claims as His own sons those who are the most excellent of men, forming, polishing, and perfecting them." So says Plutarch in his Life of Alexander.
Morally, St. Ambrose, book III On the Interpellation, chapter II, teaches that the just man is a farmer like God: For, he says, "he, like a good farmer, ploughs his field with the ploughshare of rather rigorous abstinence; he uproots with a certain sickle of virtues that prunes vices; he manures by humbling himself to the ground, knowing that God raises the needy from the earth, and lifts up the poor from the dung; he guards his fruits, that he may store them more abundantly there."
Scripture frequently uses this agricultural metaphor when dealing with God and divine matters, as is clear from John IV, 35; Matthew XXI, 33; John XV, 1.
So first, you, O Jews, He cultivated with His constant and paternal indulgence. Then He sowed in you the seeds of the law and Holy Scripture. See therefore that you render Him worthy fruits of virtues and merits. But afterwards He will call you to the threshing floor and the threshing of tribulation, from which nevertheless He will deliver you and lead you back to your homeland, just as the farmer stores the grain, purged through hard threshing, in the granaries. For this is what immediately preceded, and the Prophet most insistently presses this threshing, its trial, and its end and fruit in this parable. When therefore God threshes and chastises you, to draw forth and beat out the grains of repentance and virtue and change of life, see to it that you do not frustrate this work of God by your hardness and obstinacy, and compel Him to thresh you unto consumption and destruction, which I heard was impending over you in the parable of verse 22. But rather receive this tribulation patiently, and through it return to your heart and to God; thus be threshed and be sons of the Lord's threshing floor, as he said in chapter XXI, verse 10. For this is a threshing of love, not of hatred.
Allegorically, Leo Castrius, as if to say: God is already ploughing, harrowing, and weeding, that is preparing the fields, that is the souls of the Jews, so that in the time of Christ He may sow the Gospel in them, and reap Christian works, worthy of Christ, worthy of the Gospel.
Allegorically, St. Jerome says: fennel-flower and cumin, that is the common people, will be lightly corrected with a staff: but wheat, that is the priests and the wise, will be pressed with the hard cartwheel, and the powerful shall powerfully suffer torments.
26. AND HIS GOD WILL INSTRUCT HIM IN JUDGMENT — as if to say: God will teach the farmer to distribute all these things with judgment and wisely. So says St. Jerome.
28. BUT BREAD SHALL BE BROKEN SMALL. — It is a metonymy. "Bread," that is wheat and grain from which bread is made, is customarily broken small in Palestine by the cartwheel and the teeth of the threshing-sledge, and beaten out with greater force, yet with moderation and restraint: for it is not threshed forever or perpetually; but the threshing-sledge is driven around, or the ox's hoof treads upon it, only until the grains fall from their husks, but not so as to break the grains of wheat, as if to say: So likewise God does not afflict you, O Jews, and His other faithful, in order to destroy and cut them off, but to purge them from the chaff of vices, and to store them as selected grains in the granary, that is in His Church. So says St. Jerome.
NOR SHALL HE BREAK IT WITH ITS HOOVES. — From this it appears that in Judea, in Isaiah's time, they also threshed with the hooves of horses or oxen treading the crops: for these by treading beat out the grains from their husks, as is still done in some provinces; although St. Jerome seems to deny this, perhaps because in his time this method of threshing among the Jews had already fallen into disuse; or, as Sanchez says, because the crops were not threshed by horses alone, but by the hooves of horses which at the same time pulled toothed threshing-sledges, or sawing carts.
29. THAT HE MIGHT MAKE HIS COUNSEL WONDERFUL, AND MAGNIFY HIS JUSTICE. — For "justice" the Chaldean translates wisdom. Note: In a parable there are three things. First, there is the promythion, or pro-parable, like a prologue to the parable; second, there is the mythos itself, that is the fable or parable; third, there is the epimythion, or post-parable, applying the parable to morals or our instruction, from which the sense and purpose of the parable is to be gathered. The pro-parable here was verse 22: "Do not mock, lest your bonds be made strong." The parable was the various works of the farmer, which he narrated from verse 24 to this point. The post-parable is here. So says Forerius.
The sense therefore is, as if to say: Just as in farming, namely in working the field, sowing, reaping, and threshing, each in its proper places and times, God shows great wisdom and justice, as it were distributive, so as to give to each what the matter and the time demand; so likewise He Himself in the prophecy of this chapter shows His varied providence and His distribution regarding the ten tribes, the two tribes, and Christ. Wherefore there is no reason to marvel at it: for He acts as a wise farmer, who according to the requirement of the situation variously exercises and governs His field, that is the world, and especially His Synagogue and His Church, that is the faithful people: for now He weeds and purges; now He threshes and punishes; now He has mercy and spares; now He gathers fruits and selects and sets apart His own.