Commentary on Isaiah 1 part 19/65

What could be more grievous to parents than the slaughter of their children? Or how is it not harder to bear than any torment, to see one's houses ransacked, the dignity of one's womenfolk violated and subjected to the wantonness of the conquerors? The blessed psalmist too somewhere calls to mind something of this sort.

For, making his words concerning the daughter of the Babylonians, he says:

Blessed, he says, is the one who shall seize and dash your little ones against the rock. Now these things did indeed befall the land of the Assyrians in a historical sense, and the cities and regions within it, since they were all idolaters and intolerably arrogant, terribly at war with God, and versed in the art of magic.

And they it was who sacked the holy city, and having laid waste God's inheritance—that is, Israel—and reckoned it among the spoils of war, they laid upon them the unaccustomed yoke of slavery.

And the account concerning these matters will not rest merely in things belonging to history alone and in what came to pass visibly.

Rather it whets the mind of those who listen toward the need to understand also spiritually the things that happened historically, both against Babylon herself and indeed against the whole land of the Assyrians.

For the apostate dragon has by no means yet ceased plotting in manifold ways against those who serve God; rather he presses on most vigorously, forever bending things to his own liking, and very often carries off men as though he had taken them captive, and casts them into the pits of the passions; and setting upon them, as it were, the harsh and inescapable yoke of slavery, he exults over those he has seized and vaunts himself—just as, indeed, the kings who reigned over the Assyrians in their day rejoiced over the sons of Israel, because, having been cast out from their own land and from the holy city, they had become slaves to men of alien race.

But the tyranny of the devil did not prevail over the plundered to the very end.

For the sign of the Savior has been raised up—that is, we have offered up songs of victory to the One who conquered for our sake and on our behalf.

And we have also made the confession of the right faith.

For this, I think, is the meaning of, Lift up your voice for yourselves.

And the Lord has also commanded a warlike nation to come—clearly the saints, whose battle and warfare is not against blood and flesh, but rather against principalities and powers, and the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

These have both drawn up in battle array and have conquered; and they prevail even to this day, and they beleaguer the host of the opposing powers, and like some city they have sacked idolatry, once so formidable and unsubdued.

And they triumph mightily over their adversaries, with Christ as it were commanding the army and the holy angels shielding them together, so that those who still revere the dominions of those powers are altogether few in number, and are wretched and unmanly and cowering, and have utterly given up all resistance—resistance, I mean, against those who serve Christ.

But as he runs through the vision and the sequel of what has been set forth, let everyone who is intelligent gather up the knowledge of some such spiritual contemplation, being able to understand a parable and a dark saying, the sayings of the wise and their riddles.

Behold, I stir up against you the Medes, who take no account of silver, nor have any need of gold.

They shall shatter the bows of the young men, and they shall have no mercy on your children, nor shall their eyes spare your offspring.

And Babylon, which is called Glorious by the kings of the Chaldeans, shall be, in the manner in which God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah: it shall not be inhabited for all time to come;

neither shall men enter into her through many generations, neither shall the Arabs pass through her, nor shepherds; they shall not rest in her. In these words he now makes most manifest the foretelling of the war, and, stripping away the obscurity that lay upon his words like a kind of shadow-veil, he sets forth the calamity that is all but at hand, naked and open and as it were before the eyes.

For the Medes shall surely come, he says—not overcome by riches nor swayed by any bribery from you, but rather being men who arise at the right moment, and among those things which are of the utmost importance to them being set with all zeal, so that they may shatter the bows of the young men.

For if anyone should consider the incursions of the barbarians, whatever befalls countries or cities, he will find them undertaken for no other reason than solely for the sake of plunder, and to make whatever gathering of wealth may present itself.

But, he says, the Medes will be superior even to plunder, and will be sparing of gains, that they may bring down the haughtiness of the Babylonians.

For they always have, in a way, a great puffing-up over their archery, and they reckon much of their good fortune in these things.

But they shall be inferior to their enemies.

And so hard and pitiless are the victors that they take no compassion even on the pitiable time of life, nor do they, out of any gentleness, let fall a tear over the infants perishing so piteously.

...like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were burned with fire;

and she shall be so shunned even by her neighbors—by a distant nation that ranges about her—that not even the shepherds from among the Arabs will pasture any of their own flocks in her,

because of her being utterly desolate.

One must know that he names as Arabs the nations of the Saracens, who extend right up to that of the Assyrians and dwell in the innermost desert.

For they have the land of the Arabs as their neighbor.

And it is likely too that those very Saracens from Arabia roam intermingled about the deserts of the Assyrians.

And there wild beasts shall rest, and the houses shall be filled with noise.

And there sirens shall rest, and demons shall dance there.

And there onocentaurs shall dwell, and hedgehogs shall make their nests in their houses.

It comes swiftly, and shall not tarry. It is somehow ever pleasing to the untamed beasts to make their haunt in the desolate places of the countryside, and a city fallen into ruin provides them with very many—indeed broad—lairs, self-roofed and improvised, and as it were discovered of their own accord from the very circumstance.

And in desert and silent places some faint echo, as if arising out of the deep stillness—I know not how—springs up and finds its way into the ears of those who are at rest.

Therefore wild beasts shall rest, he says, but the houses shall be filled with noise;

that is, having no inhabitant at all, they shall acquire the echo befitting desolate places.

And there, he says, demons too shall dance.

For it is said that these too somehow especially haunt the quiet places, and make there, as it were, a leisurely lodging.

By sirens, I think, he means the birds skilled in sweet song, or, according to the Hebrew rendering, the owl.

And the wild asses he named onocentaurs;

and indeed the hedgehogs, which bristle as it were against the mice with sharp spines.

And all these things would fittingly befit cities or houses that have been utterly laid desolate.

And he adds to these things, that it comes swiftly, and shall not tarry.

Either casting a more bitter care upon the Assyrians, or rather making the matter no small consolation to those of the blood of Israel.

For since they were in captivity, yet were expecting to be set at liberty once Cyrus, together with the Persians and Medes, had campaigned against the land of the Babylonians, he promises them a swift release from their sorrows, and that the things they prayed for would not be long delayed, but would as it were run close upon the heels of the word.

And the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and they shall rest upon their own land, and the sojourner shall be added to them.

And he shall be added to the house of Jacob;

and nations shall take them, and bring them into their place.

And they shall inherit and be multiplied upon the land of God, for menservants and maidservants;

and those who took them captive shall become captives, and those who lorded it over them shall be ruled over.

And it shall be in that day, God shall give you rest from your pain and your wrath, and from the hard bondage with which you were made to serve them. He restores to a good hope those of the blood of Israel who had toiled, and with good promises he braces them again to good cheer, weighed down as they were unbearably by the greed of those who had seized them.

For that they shall come up out of captivity, and shall be freed from the yoke of the unaccustomed slavery, once Babylon and the whole land of the Assyrians has been sacked, he plainly foretold.

For Israel will not be cast off utterly, he says;

nor shall he undergo endless penalties for his transgressions;

but the chosen one shall be shown mercy and shall find breathing-space in due season;

and since he has been set as firstborn among the children, he shall obtain visitation and favor from God.

And that they shall return to the land that bore them, he says, and that the sojourner shall go up together with them.

By 'sojourner' he means the native-born and indigenous one—that is, the Babylonian;

for very many of the Babylonians followed the sons of Israel, partly because they had contracted kinship with them, partly because they had inclined toward the worship according to the Law.

Having spent times in captivity, it is likely indeed that no small multitude of the native inhabitants had attached themselves to them.

Therefore the sojourner shall be added to them, he says—that is, the native shall follow and accompany them as well.

And nations shall take them, and bring them into their place.

For when Cyrus released Israel, he commanded the rulers of the regions to escort them, unharmed and free from any plotting.

And he who succeeded him to the scepters of the Assyrians did this too;

and it is possible for those who wish to examine such matters accurately to come upon them in the books of Ezra, and to gain the most unerring knowledge concerning all that has been said.

For they were going up out of the land of the Assyrians into Judea, while Zerubbabel the son of Salathiel, who was of the tribe of Judah, governed the kingdom, and Jesus the son of Josedek, the great priest, presided over the sacred order.

The nations, he says, shall therefore escort them and bring them into their own land, and they shall possess the inheritance apportioned to them from above.

And what is yet more marvellous: those who once were worshippers of idols, who inscribed to themselves gods many and innumerable, shall be multiplied in the land of God, becoming menservants and maidservants; and those who once led them captive shall themselves become captives.

For those who had taken Israel captive, being brought back together with them—

For either this, he says, or perhaps that is what it means to signify: that those who of old prevailed and carried Israel away from Judea, and subjected them to their own yokes, shall themselves be lorded over and led captive—namely by Cyrus, when the Persians and the Medes had taken them.

For in that day—that is, at that time—you shall be given rest from your pain and from your wrath;

that is, from the wrath hanging over you—the divine wrath, that is to say;

for you shall escape the bitter bondage and be given rest from your toils.

But come now again: reshaping, as far as we may, the grossness of the historical sense into spiritual contemplation, let us behold some such thing that has come to pass.

For they were captives, given over to the services of idols and reverencing the might of the very one who had oppressed them;

he who also sacked, as it were some arrogant and insolent city, with his men-at-arms shielding him together—that is, the holy apostles;

who, having laid waste as it were the whole territory of the devil, brought back together with themselves into the holy city, the spiritual Jerusalem—I mean the Church—those who had been deceived and enmeshed in the yoke of bondage, who also were multiplied in the land of God and became menservants and maidservants.

But those who formerly held them under their hand and as captives—that is, the worshippers of demons, who taught the customs of those demons and dragged men as with a net into perdition—these have become captives; that is, they have been conquered by the preaching of the holy apostles, and have been sold under Christ;

for he gained the mastery over them, when they had of course embraced the faith.

For they also found rest from the harsh bondage in which they had long since been enslaved, before they came to be under the Lord and his men-at-arms.

And you shall take up this lamentation against the king of Babylon, and shall say in that day:

How has the exactor been given rest, and the taskmaster been given rest? God has broken the yoke of sinners, the yoke of rulers;

—of the reversal, and then to be pained, and by the multitude of the things that had befallen them to come to pity, or rather in another manner to lament those who had fallen—and not indeed altogether taking pity on them, but rather rejoicing over them, and mocking those who had been seized beyond their hope.

And he weaves for them the lamentation, and gives them a song suited to what had befallen.

For you shall say, he declares, 'How has the exactor been given rest?' By 'has been given rest' he speaks euphemistically, in the sense of, 'he has utterly perished and come to his end.'

He names the Babylonian 'exactor' and 'taskmaster,' who out of exceedingly great arrogance laid the yoke of his own greed not only upon his neighbours, but sending tax-gatherers even into cities and lands very far removed, demanded tributes and dues.

They marvel, therefore, how such a one has been made to cease, and how the hand that seized all things has come to an end.

And that they were not ignorant of the causes of his fall, they show, saying:

God has broken the yoke of sinners, the yoke of rulers.

Do you hear how he names them 'rulers,' investing them with the haughty spirit? For they leaped, as I said, upon all men, so to speak, throughout the whole earth, subjecting them to their own yokes.

And to rule was sometimes at once their very aim.

But God, he says, has smitten the arrogant race—or rather nation—having smitten it with an incurable blow.

And he who trusted greatly in himself and was high-minded, and not willingly was he brought to rest—that is, he has gone off to the end most fitting for him, having endured an incurable stroke of wrath, all sparing being removed.

But these very words it would befit us also to speak, and as it were to raise a shout of triumph against Satan, the exactor and taskmaster, and that most bitterly.

For he lies in wait against the mind of each one, turning it aside from the best and good pursuits—I mean those in godliness and righteousness—and as it were carrying it off by force toward that which seems good to him;

and like some bitter tribute-collector, seeking from each one the diligent contribution unto sin.

But the Saviour has broken the yoke of sinners, casting off that one, and rather bringing us under his own yokes, and smiting a nation with an incurable blow.

And what nation, but altogether surely that of the demons, whom he also commanded to depart into the abyss? and indeed he brought upon them the most grievous torments;

and so they cried aloud, saying:

'Ah, what have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come here before the time to destroy us?' 'The whole earth cries out with gladness, and the trees of Lebanon rejoiced over you, and the cedar of Lebanon says: Since you have fallen asleep, no woodcutter has come up against us.' This too is a portion of the lamentation.

And as far as concerns the historical sense, there came to be gladness in all the earth, when the land of the Assyrians had been sacked and the taskmaster had ceased—he who demanded from all that they must be subject to him—whom the prophetic word also names 'trees of Lebanon';

meaning those altogether in positions of authority,

and likening those in the powers of the nations to cedars.

Yet like some woodcutter, Nebuchadnezzar, shaking them down, subjected them to his own yokes.

The cedars therefore, he says, rejoicing over you, say:

Since you have fallen asleep, no woodcutter has come up against us.

But if anyone should wish to fit such a word to those of Israel alone, he will consider it in this way.

Lebanon is a very great mountain in the land of the Phoenicians, thickly covered with cedars and frankincense-trees, dense and well-wooded;

the God-inspired Scripture therefore very often likens it to the land of the Jews, because of the many most illustrious men in it, in both dominion and glory, and because there were also others exalted on high in the boasts of the priesthood and, as it were, most fragrant.

And so the prophet Zechariah, likening Judea to Lebanon,

and those in it to cedars and oaks and pines,

and to an all-devouring fire the army of the Romans, which after the cross of the Saviour burned down their whole land.

And let fire devour your cedars.

Let the pine howl, because the cedar has fallen;

the thick-grown forest has been pulled down. Let the word therefore be, as it were, of the Jews, spoken as by the trees of Lebanon rejoicing and saying to the Babylonian and to those about him:

Since you have fallen asleep, no woodcutter has come up against us.

And most elegantly indeed it has remained consistent with the turn of the discourse.

For since the utterance came as though from the trees of Lebanon, for this very reason they say, 'No woodcutter has come up against us.'

For indeed, after the return of those of Israel from Babylon, no more was the war from the land of the Assyrians stirred up against them.

And we too may fittingly say to Satan—we who of old were sacked by him, but now have gained in Christ a steadfast mind, and an understanding secure and rooted unto godliness, and a most flourishing heart:

Since you have fallen asleep, no woodcutter has come up against us.

Hades from beneath was embittered at meeting you;

all the giants who ruled the earth were roused up together to meet you, they who raised from their thrones all the kings of the nations.

All shall answer and say to you:

You too have been captured, even as we;

your glory has gone down into Hades, your great gladness;

beneath you they shall spread rottenness, and your covering shall be the worm. It is the custom of the God-inspired Scripture at times to personify, and as it were to fit voices to the very things themselves—such as this: 'Be ashamed, O Sidon, said the sea';

and 'the strength of the sea said:

I have not travailed, nor given birth, nor reared young men, nor raised up virgins.' For it attaches the word concerning this to the city of the Tyrians, which had been sacked at various times by the Babylonians;

and we say that the word befits the nature of the things.

So also the prophet Micah has somewhere introduced Jerusalem speaking to Babylon:

Do not rejoice over me, my enemy, for though I have fallen, I shall rise again;

I will bear the wrath of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes justice for me;

and he will execute my judgement, and bring me forth into the light.

I shall behold his righteousness, and my enemy shall see it and be clothed with shame—she who says to me:

'Where is the Lord your God? My eyes shall look upon her.'

'Now she shall be trodden down like mire in the streets on the day of the daubing of brick.'

'That day shall be your blotting out.' Namely, the day on which Cyrus, together with the Medes intermingled with the Persians, took the city of the Babylonians.

And so now no less does the blessed prophet employ personification;

for he says that Hades was provoked, that is, embittered, when it met the one descending into it.

And consider with me the divine dispensation of this saying.

For by this he shows him to be a shedder of blood and full of slaughter, so that almost the whole of Hades—that is, those who are in Hades—became a work of the savagery that was in him.

For the arrogant one did not cease utterly to cut down both nations and kings, and to fill Hades with wretched souls.

'All the giants,' he says—that is, those who had become distinguished in strength and had ruled over many nations, but who were slain by you—shall answer and say, 'You too have been taken captive, even as we were.'

'For you were indeed a man,' they say, 'but you did not deem it worthy to know and to be minded thus;

nor would you ever have supposed that anyone should prove mightier than your

haughty brow and your ill-encountered hand; and if there are those mightier even than death, you had perhaps set them not far outside the reach of hope; yet with difficulty, and against your will, the Median sword persuaded you to learn through experience of it that you yourself also were of our kind.

'And so you were taken captive, even as we also.'

'And your glory has gone down into Hades'—that is to say, it was quenched by death;

and the joyless power of corruption has been brought upon it.

'It shall behold your gladness'—even that which was scarcely established out of its midst.

'Rottenness shall be spread beneath you, and the worm shall be your covering.'

For since human bodies have once suffered death, rottenness and the worm must altogether befall them.

Yet in his case it is well said, as in the manner of bitter reproaches;

inasmuch as, having scarcely learned these things by suffering them, they came to think more modestly of what they ought to have chosen while they yet knew.

'He, then,' he says, 'who reveled in fading and royal luxuries, shall lie together with the rest without covering, deemed worthy of none of the customary rites of the dead.'

'How has Lucifer fallen from heaven, he who rose in the morning? He who sent forth to all the nations has been dashed to the ground.' Lucifer is a star among the very brightest of all;

it rises a little before the dawn, and is as it were a herald of the sun's radiance.

And that it is illumined with abundant light, this very fact—that it appears a little before the dawn—would clearly show.

For while the ethereal body is still darkened, when night is all but shivering and the darkness is at its height, the stars that are in heaven have a more conspicuous brilliance;

but when day is near, and the sun's circle has come, as it were, to its first extremities, the light of each star is somehow drawn in, yielding to that which excels it and being overcome by the greater radiance.

But so encompassing is the light of Lucifer, that it appears even in the dawn's glow, and makes its showing, as it were, a neighbor to the sun's rays.

He therefore likens the Babylonian to Lucifer, on account of his excelling all others, and because none among those in offices and kingdoms was seen to equal him;

and that he was so conspicuous and eminent as Lucifer might be conceived to be among all the other stars.

'But he who was clothed round with such glory,' he says, 'lifted up on high and made splendid with unconquered renown—how has he fallen as from heaven, and been dashed to the earth as one who sent forth to all the nations?' And 'sending forth' stands for 'commanding,' he says, or is to be taken in another manner.

For it always seemed, somehow, to the tyrants of the Babylonians that they held every nation of men beneath their own hand, and that all lands came under the yoke of servitude.

'Sending forth,' then, 'to all the nations,' demanding a clod of earth and water in a vessel, as though seeking the whole from a part—I mean land and sea—as being masters of all.

'But you said in your mind:

I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven; I will sit on a lofty mountain, upon the high mountains toward the north; I will ascend above the clouds, I will be like the Most High.'

'Yet now you shall go down into Hades, and into the foundations of the earth.'

'Those who see you shall marvel at you, and shall say:'

'Is this the man who provoked all the earth, who shook kings, who made the whole world a desert, and pulled down its cities?'

'He did not loose those in captivity.' He says that he was overtaken by unlooked-for calamities, and having met with things unexpected and beyond hope, through them he only with difficulty came to learn of his circumstances—that he was a man, and like unto those who had died before him.

For as far as concerns words of insolence, and a mind hateful to God, and one filled with arrogance to the utmost;

'It seemed to you,' he says, 'to yield but little to the heights of the divine pre-eminence; you expected, perhaps, that heaven itself would somehow be accessible to you, and that your seat would vie with the highest thrones;

you supposed, in your ignorance, that you were some being equal to God and above creation;

you thought yourself to be above the clouds, and to be seated upon the very stars.'

'But you were caught, having minded such things in vain.'

'The outcome of events convicted your reckless counsel;

for you shall go down into Hades, and into the foundations of the earth.'

And he says these things in order, perhaps, to signify the lowest region—that is, the outer darkness.

'And you shall be a wonder to those who behold,' he says, and very reasonably so.

For sudden reversals, above all those that are beyond hope, astound the beholders.

And what is the wonder, and how might there be a word spoken concerning it?

For they shall say, 'Is this the man?' Only when he has suffered do they name him a man;

having perhaps of old been afraid to say this.

And what besides this is added? 'He did not loose those in captivity.' But since some of the copies have:

'those in deportation'—if anyone should wish to understand it thus, we shall say that the name of 'deportation' would signify the captivity and the removal of those of Israel.

For they were carried away out of Judea into the land of the Assyrians.

But if the sacred writing should say 'those in captivity,' you shall none the less understand that it means those who are under the leading-away of the Lord's wrath.

For wrath was brought upon them because of much sin.

'Nebuchadnezzar did not loose them'—that is, he did not release them from their misery.

For it was necessary—yes, necessary—that the wicked man be seen not only as arrogant, but indeed as a fighter against God, and as one who had ravaged the earth, hard, pitiless, and in no way knowing how to have mercy on those in the uttermost calamities and faring wretchedly.

And one might very reasonably apply to the head of him who has crushed all—I mean the dragon that is the author of evil—the things spoken in the historical sense.

For he was a demander and an urger-on, in the ways we have already described;

'The cedars of Lebanon which you planted.' And since the wretch has, being wholly condemned, gone down into Hades, there held fast by the all-devouring flame, the evil powers subject to him have marveled, as is likely, that he suffered this, and perhaps have even lamented, saying:

'You too have been taken captive, even as we, and you have been numbered among us,' and what follows thereafter.

For as far as glory was concerned, he was distinguished among the angels and eminent among the powers above, just as, indeed, Lucifer is among the stars.

But he fell and was crushed, having minded things too proud, and having dared to snatch the honor and glory that befit the supreme nature alone—as far as concerned the power of his undertakings and the mind that was in him.

'But as the prophet says:'

'He has gone down into Hades, and into the foundations of the earth—he who of old shook all the earth, who made the world as a desert;'

for he rendered all that is under heaven bereft of the true knowledge of God, and having no worker of virtue at all.

'And he did not loose those in captivity.'

But this the Lord has granted to those who have trusted in him, having said to those in bonds:

'Come forth,' and to those in darkness:

Be laid bare. Indeed, even toward those who had fallen under divine wrath because they had done violence to the divine laws, he, without holding a grudge, dismissed the charges and freed from judgment those who through human weakness had been subject to many faults.

'All the kings of the nations have fallen asleep in honour, each man in his own house; but you shall be cast forth upon the mountains like a loathsome corpse, together with many dead pierced through with swords, going down to Hades.' From what he already possessed, he says, at times he demonstrates how much heavier the man's calamity is.