Commentary on Isaiah 1 part 45/65

'And who is deaf, but my children? and who is blind, but those who rule over them? And the servants of God were blinded.'

'You saw many times, and you did not keep watch;'

'your ears were open, and you did not hear.' He is very rightly calling those who had served the idols deaf and blind.

For as the all-wise Paul writes:

'The god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that the illumination of the Gospel of Christ should not shine upon them.' And the force of the word would apply most of all to those of Israel, to whom indeed it belonged to be enriched in mind with the divine light, the Law imparting to them the radiance of the knowledge of God; yet they senselessly loved to walk in darkness and to be ensnared in the nooses of deception.

for as the all-wise Paul writes:

'His invisible things, from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, are clearly seen;'

'both His eternal power and Godhead.' Into such ignorance did they slip, that they said to the molten images:

'You are our gods.' That the prophet's discourse here is not about the multitude of the Gentiles, but about those of the blood of Israel, he made plain by saying:

'but those who rule over them?' For the subject multitude had been blinded, having fallen into this state through the negligence of their guides.

For these were the very ones who had become the cause of their ignorance, and the leaders in their going astray.

And light-minded were those who ruled over them;

that is, those who had obtained the office of leading.

For although they saw the glory of God and had passed through long experience, they turned aside to apostasy.

For they were unwilling to obey God, who said clearly:

'There shall be no other gods to you besides me.' But since, being versed in my ordinances, they nevertheless went down to apostasy together with those subject to them, He all but stands aghast, saying:

'The servants of God were blinded.' And what was the occasion of the blinding that came upon them? 'Willingly,' He says, 'you were carried aside to this.'

For though it was possible, having very often seen, to guard yourselves, and being able to hear — or rather to understand — the things that were written, you did not guard yourselves against suffering the sentence, nor did you make it your practice to keep sound, opening wide your hearing, as it were, to the sacred laws.

The charges against the Jews, then, admit of no excuse.

For although it was theirs to know the truth, and though they had obtained the Law as a guide by the hand to this end, they became equal to those who have no eyes and whose ears are set in vain upon the head, because they were unwilling to hearken to the sacred laws.

'The Lord God willed that He might be justified, and might magnify praise.' 'I delivered them,' He says, 'from the greed of the Egyptians; I set them free, contrary to what was to be expected, when they were slaving for foreigners;'

'I trained them through the Law towards the knowledge of God;'

'I gave them Moses as an overseer of good order.'

For my purpose, as the Lord of all things, was to make Israel a worker of righteousness and a diligent doer of the best works, that having been brought to a perception of the gifts bestowed upon him by me, he might magnify praise — that is, might unceasingly glorify me, who am plainly the dispenser to them of all prosperity and the giver of the things in which they had been enriched.

This is manifestly what He also said somewhere else concerning them, as concerning a vine:

'I waited for it to produce grapes, but it produced thorns. And I saw, and there came to be a people plundered.'

'For the snare was everywhere in the storehouses, and in the houses together, where they hid them; they became a spoil, and there was none to rescue the prey, and there was none to say:'

'Restore.' He brings them to remembrance of the things that had befallen their fathers, on account, indeed, of their being caught in the snares of accursed polytheism.

And He did this not in vain, but so that He might render them more prudent, since they now feared to suffer the same things as those of old.

For since, he says, they had become blind and deaf, having thrust aside the worship of God, and had attached their reverence to sticks and stones,

This indeed I saw, and the people became plundered and pillaged.

For when God takes note of the charges against those who commit intolerable impiety, then He also brings upon them penalties proportionate to their offences.

And for what cause? For the snare is in the storehouses everywhere, and in the houses at the same time they hid them.

But whom did they hide? The molten gods, clearly.

For the leaders of the Jews, feigning piety and, so far as outward appearance went, bowing the neck to the ordinances of the Law, were hiding the disease of apostasy in mind and heart, worshipping gods that are no gods;

and shutting these up in the storehouses of their own houses, they made their offerings of sacrifices in secret.

It is written, at any rate, in Ezekiel:

And I looked, he says, and behold every likeness of creeping thing and beast, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon it round about.

Son of man, are the things they do a small matter for the house of Israel, each in his secret bedchamber? Consider then how each of them, keeping in his secret bedchamber the snare that had come to be for him — that is, idolatry — was feigning reverence for the laws.

They became a prey, and there was none to deliver the spoil, and there was none to say, Restore it.

For since God did not defend them, who delivered them from a calamity so grievous and irremediable? And since He did not rebuke those who plundered, who could say to them, Restore it? For God no longer sought them as His own inheritance, but rather let them go as having become alien to Him through their inclining toward gods that are no gods.

By these words He seems to intimate the time of the captivity, which those of Israel who fell under the hand of their enemies endured.

For until the seventieth year there was none to deliver them, nor any who said to those who had plundered them, Restore it.

And very fittingly, according to the divine plan, after speaking of the calling of the Gentiles, the reasons for which those of Israel were cast out from intimacy with God are clearly stated, so that God may appear everywhere to have used a righteous verdict.

For it was necessary, indeed necessary, that those who honoured impiety toward God should be placed outside His forbearance and love;

For this too is somewhere found spoken through the all-wise Moses:

They provoked Me to jealousy with what is no god, they angered Me with their graven images.

And I will provoke them to jealousy with what is no nation;

with a foolish nation I will anger them.

And the inspired Psalmist too said somewhere, that They embittered Him with their graven images, and with their practices they provoked Him to jealousy.

and the Lord God saw, and He despised, and He utterly set at nought Israel. But if one must also bring some spiritual contemplation to bear upon what has been said, we guard ourselves against harbouring in mind and heart a diabolical snare, and the wicked idols formed in the imaginations of our thoughts, which call us to licentiousness and to unnatural pleasures, lest we become a prey to Satan and a spoil to the demons.

For it is written, that If the spirit of him who has power rise up against you, do not leave your place, for healing will put to rest great sins. Who among you will give ear to these things? Hearken to what is coming. It is the custom of the God-inspired Scripture to say give ear when it means that one should receive the word concerning necessary matters not carelessly or negligently, but rather soberly, so as to hold what has been announced laid up in mind and heart.

Such is the saying spoken through the voice of the Psalmist:

In my heart I have hidden Your oracles, that I might not sin against You. For it is also written in the forty-eighth psalm:

Hear these things, all you nations; give ear, all you who inhabit the world. For to hear is common to all who have once received a voice into their ear, or any other sound;

but to give ear is, as I said, to settle into the mind something of what has been divinely ordained.

The prophetic word in these passages seems, then, to seek out those who listen more fairly, that is, more sensibly, so as to recount the things that befell men of old for the safeguarding of things to come.

For as Paul says, that:

Such matters happened to them as types.

Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to those who plundered him? Was it not God, against whom they sinned, and in whose ways they were not willing to walk, nor to hearken to His law? And He brought upon them the anger of His wrath, and war prevailed against them, and those who burned them up round about;

yet they knew it not, neither did they lay it to heart. Most emphatically indeed He seems in these words to name both Jacob and Israel.

And what may be understood by us as the force of this emphasis, we will state in brief.

For those of Israel served the Egyptians for a season;

but they were redeemed by God, with Moses mediating, only with a mighty hand and a lofty arm, as it is written.

For with countless and intolerable plagues He chastised those who oppressed them.

And when they had run out of the land of the Egyptians, crossed the sea on foot, eaten the bread of angels, drunk water from the rock, been brought into the land of promise, contended against kingdoms, prevailed over enemies, they possessed a dread and irresistible hand, and glory renowned on this account.

And their weapon was the God of all, who stayed the course of sun and moon against Gibeon, who let loose hailstones upon the foreigners from heaven, and raised His own people up to the summit of all renown.

Who then, he says, gave the renowned Israel, the enviable Jacob, the one uncapturable by enemies, the strong and most warlike, and accustomed ever to conquer, for plunder and to those who despoiled him? How did he who knew not defeat grow weak? How was he brought low, and became beneath the feet of his adversaries — he who lifted up on high before all his unbroken horn? But since it was necessary that we who come after them should not be ignorant of the causes of the handing over of a people so illustrious and set apart, He added of necessity:

Was it not God, against whom they sinned, and in whose ways they were not willing to walk, nor to hearken to His law? The question concerning things in dispute contains a clear confession of the matter.

For it was assuredly in every way God who gave him over, and who suspended over him the wrath befitting his offences.

It was for this reason, then, that war prevailed against them.

But this was unusual for those of Israel, for they had always conquered while God shielded them.

But since they had committed outrage against His divine laws, they became bereft of the boasts of old.

They fell into feebleness, they were brought down into weakness;

those who burned them up came round about them, and as though with some fire consuming them by the greatness of the calamities brought upon them, that is, setting their cities ablaze, according to what is clearly said elsewhere: Your cities are burned with fire.

Yet they knew it not, he says, each of them, neither did they lay it to heart;

in these words they incur the charge of insensibility.

For those would be sound of understanding who decline to give offence to God, and keep their foot far from suffering anything that comes of His wrath, by tenderly submitting their neck to Him.

But those who, having already come into the very suffering through human slips, do not perceive the things brought upon them — such men would be far from all good hope.

And that those of Israel became liable to such charges as well, one may perceive from Jeremiah saying to the God of all:

O Lord, Your eyes are toward faithfulness; You scourged them, and they would not receive correction. We remember that after Jerusalem was taken, and Israel too was carried off captive, the prophet Jeremiah spoke to those left behind the words of God, saying that they should not go down into Egypt.

Then in reply to them the women shamelessly declared — or rather, not even brought to any perception of the wrath — that, The Lord did not send you.

And they added to these words the fruits of unmixed madness of mind.

For since, they said, we left off sacrificing to the queen of heaven, all these evils have come upon us.

True then, indeed, is what was said, that They knew it not, each of them, neither did they lay it to heart, when war prevailed against them, and those who encircled them round about utterly consumed them with fire.

And now thus says the Lord God, who made you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel:

Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name.

And if you pass through water, I am with you, and rivers shall not overwhelm you;

and if you go through fire, you shall not be burned;

God, the Holy One, of Israel, who saves you. It is necessary now too to marvel at the compassionate God.

For consider how He comes, as it were, to forgetfulness of their transgressions, and promises with pardons befitting God to blot out their offences, setting before them, as it were, another beginning of a season that lifts them up to good cheer.

And indeed we say that such is that which is spoken in the book of Psalms:

Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation. For just as there the Today defines a beginning of other seasons,

so also here the Now provides a basis for the pardon of the things already foretold.

And He raises them up to the beginning of a way, and of other matters that shall come to pass from God.

Therefore He does not permit them to waste away in cheerfulness forever, nor yet does He make the turning-away unending, but He removes them also from all fear, and grants them to take courage, that one will attain every good thing, since God transfers the nature of their affairs to what is incomparably better than their present state.

For I have redeemed you, He says;

and in what manner, the all-wise Paul will make clear, saying concerning Christ the Saviour of us all, that God and the Father was well pleased to sum up all things in Him, both the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth.

For in Him is the redemption of all, and the forgiveness and pardon of things past, and the mode of spiritual appropriation—I mean the appropriation to Him—accomplished through sanctification, which raises us up into communion with God the Father.

And of what kind? This is it: 'You are Mine.'

For we are said to be Christ's, and this is the good name which has been called upon us.

But one should know that it is also found in another Scripture:

'I have called you by My name.'

Yet by setting down and saying 'You are Mine,' He dissolved the estrangement which those held fast in sins are wont to endure.

For those are not God's, although He holds authority over all things; rather, the disposition toward wicked things removes a man from intimacy with Him.

For this very reason we say that those who are in defilements are not God's.

Therefore the phrase 'You are Mine' would be an indication of spiritual appropriation.

And He also promises him invincible succour, so that he becomes unconquerable by every trial.

For rivers and water and flames signify the manifold assaults of trials.

And it is written that 'All who wish to live godly in Christ Jesus shall be persecuted.' And Christ Himself said somewhere to those who believed in Him:

'But if you pass through water,' He says, 'I am with you.'

For when Christ is present, nothing could harm those who are His.

But they will run to this with spiritual strength, so as to take no account of him who is strong to storm against them.

But even if persecution should sometimes come upon them like the flowing of a river, and even should it have the intensity of fire and flame, thus too they conquer—provided they know that it is God who saves.

For it is the custom of the divine Scripture to liken the assaults of trials to rivers and waters.

'Everyone therefore who hears these My words and does them shall be likened to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock; and the rain came down, and the rivers came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it did not fall.'

'For it had been founded upon the rock'; and the rock is Christ. 'I gave Egypt as your ransom, and Ethiopia and Syene in your stead, from the time that you became honoured before Me.'

'You were glorified, and I loved you, and I will give many men in your stead, and rulers in exchange for your head.'

Therefore, before Christ shone upon the world—Christ who is the true Light—the whole earth had gone astray, and was darkened by the deep and most violent gloom of ignorance, and there were very many forms of idolatrous worship everywhere, throughout lands and nations.

For they inhabit a land bordering on that of the Egyptians.

But Israel alone was God's chosen inheritance and the Lord's portion, according to what is written.

But since they acted impiously against our Lord Jesus Christ, and became slayers of the Lord, they have in no way remained God's inheritance any longer;

they slipped away from intimacy with Him, and the nations were taken up, and became a substitute for Israel;

even those who of old were more superstitious than all others, and had in this an uncleanness hard to wash away.

And I said that the Egyptians had become terrible and bitter, especially in the invention of idols, and deeply sunk in false worship, and greatly proud of contriving superfluous subtleties concerning both the services of idols and their invocations.

'Therefore for you,' He says, 'the beloved, who was apportioned as an inheritance to Me, I have made Egypt a ransom, and Ethiopia'—that is, again Egypt;

for it is the custom of the divine Scripture to name the Egyptians 'Ethiopians.'

At any rate, He said through one of the holy prophets: 'And you, Ethiopians, are the slain of My sword.'

'Therefore in your stead,' He says, 'I received those who were in dreadful defilements, and who all but had an uncleanness that could not be cast off.'

'Yet from the time that you became honoured, you were glorified before Me.'

For Israel did not remain in perpetual rejection and dishonour.

For he too shall be called through faith in Christ, and shall become a partaker and sharer in the glory of the saints.

'For you were glorified,' He says, 'and I loved you.'

'For acting on your behalf,' He says, 'I will give many men.'

And the head of those who believe is Christ, unto whom every sacred initiation looks, on the part of those who are led at various times to preside over the peoples—by His decree, of course.

Therefore the phrase 'on your behalf' would signify 'for the benefit and profit accruing to you, the learner, of the venerable and great mystery of your Head—that is, of Christ.'

'For you had become an outcast,' He says, 'and banished, and utterly a stranger to friendship and intimacy with Me.'

'For this very reason, as your exchange I received the nations, which had come to the utmost extreme of reproach.'

'But from the time that you became honoured before Me—having believed, that is, and having found the glory that follows thereupon—I loved you.'

'And I loved you so, that even if there should come a time or need for many men and rulers to be given for your head, I would give them.'

For the saying is hypothetical, and while carrying the fullest indication of Israel's having been honoured by God, it nevertheless gives firm assurance of boldness, since God is present in every good thing, wholly and in every way;

and this suffices them for all prosperity;

for when God is present, evil things will be put out of the way, and every mode of good cheer and delight, or rather of joy, is brought in to us in their place.

'From the east I will bring your seed, and from the west I will gather you.'

For that it was also for this cause that Christ became man, it is by no means difficult to perceive through the holy writings of the Gospels.

For Lazarus came back to life marvellously from the dead;

but the multitude of the impious Jews, that is, the God-hated workshop of the Pharisees, sat in council together and said:

'What are we doing? For this man does many signs.'

'If we let Him alone thus, the Romans will come and take away both our nation and our land.'

But a certain one of them, Caiaphas, said to them:

'You know nothing at all, that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.' Then upon these words the inspired evangelist immediately added:

'This he did not say of himself, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but that He might also gather together into one the scattered children of God.' For as far as concerned the making of man in the beginning, and the purpose of Him who brought him into being with respect to him, all were His children.

But Satan, as I said, scattered them all abroad into manifold sin, and led them off, like cattle straying from intimacy with Him, casting them down into error;

yet Christ gathered them all together.

For He came to seek that which was lost.

This indeed is signified through the passage before us.

For He promises to the synagogue—or rather the Church—raised up together out of both nations and Jews, to gather together all from the dawn to the setting, and from the north and the south-west, or south, so that from this you may understand that it is from every region under heaven.

For dawn and setting, north and south—this surely would intimate to us nothing else;

Come now, in the words 'to the north, and to the south-west, Do not hinder,' He gives us somehow to understand that He does not permit the opposition of the wild and wicked spirits to be spiritually set against those who come to Him.

Just as of old, like some cruel and boastful tyrant, the accursed Satan planted himself over those upon the earth, together with his own shield-bearers, not permitting them to look up toward the truth, or rather to go to God by conversion.

But this too has ceased through Christ, who smooths out for those who are called the way unto salvation, and prepares everything lying underfoot, as it were, to be removed out of the midst.

And by naming sons and daughters running from the four regions, He makes manifest the season of Christ's coming, in which the grace of adoption has been given to those upon the earth through sanctification in the Spirit.

And that the calling has become not of one nation only, but common and one for all, He indicated by saying, 'All who are called by My name.'

For we have been named Christians, that is, the people of God.

For thus somewhere Peter also writes to those who are called through faith, and says:

'But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,

a holy nation, a people for possession, that you may proclaim the excellences of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light; who once were not a people, but now are the people of God in the Lord.' 'For in My glory I prepared him, and formed and made him.'

'And I brought forth a blind people, and their eyes likewise are blind, and they have deaf ears.'

All the nations were gathered together at once, and rulers shall be gathered out of them. All things have become new in Christ, and the most holy Paul confirms it in writing when he says:

So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things have passed away. And he writes also to those who have been called into newness—clearly the spiritual newness—that they may prove

what is the good and perfect and acceptable will of God. For we have been renewed in Christ, having through sanctification returned to the ancient beauty of our nature—that is, the beauty according to the image—and having cast off the oldness that comes from sin and from every kind of baseness.

And we have put off the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and have put on the new man, which is renewed according to the image of him who created him.

Yet it is in Christ that this refashioning and what is called the new creation has come about—a creation which we have received not from corruptible seed, but through the word of the living and abiding God.

This people, therefore, gathered together from the four quarters under heaven and called by my name, no other one, but I myself rather, in my glory prepared and formed and made;

and one might say that the Son is the glory of God the Father, for through him and in him the Father is glorified, and this is plainly declared by the Son himself in the words, 'I glorified you upon the earth.'

For we affirm, as I said, that those who have believed in him have been fashioned through him, having by their conformity to him the beauty of the divine nature shining forth in their own souls.

The inspired Psalmist also said something of this kind:

The generation to come shall be told of the Lord, and a people that is being created shall praise the Lord. And adding to these words, 'And I brought forth a blind people,' he makes manifest the surpassing excellence of his own power—an excellence beyond all speech and truly worthy of wonder.

For those who of old held in mind and heart the darkness and deceit that came from the devil's wickedness, he rendered bright and illumined, rising upon them like a morning star and a sun of righteousness, and declaring them to be sons—no longer of the night and of darkness, but rather of light, and indeed of day, according to the word of the most wise Paul.

That he brought forth a blind people, then, is evident to none of those who exist;

but as though someone were rising up against such words and saying:

'And yet even to this day one might see their eyes likewise blind, and indeed that they have deaf ears'—he answers, saying:

All the nations were gathered together at once, and rulers shall be gathered out of them.

For you receive, O these men, all but the very words of prophecy;

the season for the events has not yet come to pass;

yet wholly and altogether shall all the nations be gathered together in due seasons.

For 'were gathered together' stands here in place of 'shall be gathered together,' he says, since such is the custom of the God-inspired Scripture.

For it sometimes sets down as already accomplished the things that shall wholly and altogether come to be.

At any rate it has been said, as in the person of Christ, through the voice of Isaiah:

I have given my back to scourges—that is, 'I shall give.'

And also through the one who sings the Psalm:

Therefore, he says, all the nations shall be gathered together, and not this only, but there shall also be rulers out of them—that is, leaders of peoples and mystagogues; and those who were once wandering astray and lying in deep darkness shall become bestowers of the divine light upon those whom they initiate.

The Melodist said something of this kind concerning the Church from among the nations:

As its darkness, so also its light. For just as it fell sick with a boundless and deep darkness in the season of error, so again it has become exceedingly radiant and marvellously made white.

For it is true that, as the inspired Paul says:

for to know all things from the beginning to the end would befit God alone, who exists by nature;

he is the fountain, and in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, according to what is written.

And if anyone is found to possess knowledge even of things to come, he is seen to have received the gift by revelation from him.

He converses, therefore, as I said, with those from among the nations, and indeed he says:

All the things that shall be for you, and that you shall in due seasons be called to the knowledge of the truth, I have both announced and declared;

but who else shall announce these things to you, or is seen to have declared them? Let them bring forward their witnesses, and let them be justified, and let them speak the truth, and let them hear.

For I, he says, have spoken through the prophets;

I proclaimed beforehand the things that should be in due seasons, through holy men, and I have as witnesses of my foreknowledge of the things to come those who ministered to my utterances.