Commentary on Isaiah 1 part 52/65

For Cyrus rose up against her, bringing the Persians and the Medes upon them;

and only by suffering the capture did she scarcely come to know that there was another, and one mightier than she, namely the country and land of the Persians and Medes, by which she was made a widow and childless, though she had never expected to suffer this.

For she was widowed when he who reigned in her was brought down to death, and made childless when the multitude of her warriors was consumed by the swords of those who took her.

There came upon her, then, both widowhood and childlessness.

And these things shall befall you, he says, in your sorcery, and in the great strength of your enchanters, in the hope of your wickedness.

For since you set your evil hope, he says, upon your own sorceries and your enchantments, for this very reason you have become both childless and a widow.

For lifting your eyebrow on high, and having your mind full of arrogance, you supposed yourself to be better and mightier than all others.

For you said that there is no other.

Know then that the understanding of these things, and your harlotry, shall be a shame to you.

I said before that they called the magi wise, that is, prudent.

Know then, O Babylon, he says, that the wisdom of the magi—that is, of the false prophets and enchanters—and, along with these, your harlotry, shall be a shame to you. For you have fallen under the hand of your enemies, having put your confidence in these things, from which no benefit could be gained, except only that you should be put to shame, as one who set upon them a vain hope.

By harlotry here he means that of the Babylonians—not at all necessarily the bodily kind, but rather the unbridled and uncurbed apostasy away from God.

For she was a land of graven images, and, so to speak, was carried away with all sails set by the deceits of the demons.

I am, and there is no other.

Destruction shall come upon you, and you shall not know it.

There is a pit, and you shall fall into it.

And misery shall come upon you, and you shall not be able to become clean.

And destruction shall come upon you suddenly, and you shall not know it. Again she is charged with arrogance, and with having wholly turned her own heart away from knowing how to love, as though nothing among men were fixed and firm, but whether or not those upon the earth exist at all depends, perchance, upon the divine intimations.

But those who cannot bear to know this attribute to their own heads the power to accomplish all things; and whatever things can be brought to fulfilment for their prosperity, such people marvel at, and, having set up for themselves as it were a reed for a staff, they are taken captive, for they fall unexpectedly and lament a ruin that came against all their hope.

Therefore, since you said in your heart:

I am, and there is no other, the bitter end of so terrible an arrogance shall overtake you.

For destruction shall come upon you, and you shall not know it—that is, your divination too shall be of no profit to you for this.

For it shall bring upon you things you did not know, and a bitter and unlooked-for calamity shall befall you.

A pit shall come, and you shall fall into it.

It is as if he were to say: a terrible evil, hard to escape.

For those who have once been cast down into a pit, if it be deep, are sometimes among those for whom escape is impossible.

And misery too shall come, and you shall not be able to become clean.

Destruction too shall come, and you shall not know it.

For it was not possible for the magi simply to know what was to come.

But divining things according to men's pleasure, and speaking from their own heart, as it is written, they saw the end of the things hoped for come to pass in a manner incompatible with their predictions.

Stand now in your enchantments and in your great sorcery, which you learned from your youth, if you shall be able to be profited.

You have grown weary in your counsels.

Let the astrologers of heaven stand and save you; let those who behold the stars declare to you what is about to come upon you.

Behold, all of them shall be burned up like stubble in the fire, and they shall not deliver their soul from the flame; for you have coals of fire—to sit upon them.

These shall be a help to you; you have labored in the change from your youth.

For when the warriors have been gathered together, he says, and Cyrus being against you, and the phalanx of the enemy overpowering the archery among you, the shields shall be feeble, and the might of the archery shall profit nothing, when, like the heavy-armed infantry and the foot-soldiers, the riders of the horses also fall.

Stand in your enchantments and in your great sorcery, which you learned from your youth, if you may be able to be profited.

Raise up, he says, against those who besiege you the magi, those well versed in the tactical arts of the enchanters, the cold babblings.

You have grown weary in your counsels.

For the seemingly wise deliberations of the magi profited you nothing at all.

But if you think that my word of truth has failed, let the astrologers of heaven stand and save you; let those who behold the stars declare to you what is about to come upon you.

This is another order of buffoons—I mean, after the magi and the enchanters.

For some among them pretended to know the risings and settings of the stars, and to measure the motion of each—where they are at any time, and whence they come—and they maintained that through this false precision in the matter they received knowledge of things to come.

Therefore, if they are not liars, and if the stars that have been allotted the firmament fulfil for them the rank of prophets, let them tell what things shall come to pass.

But they will not be able to declare it, he says; for they shall be, together with the others, like stubble, the work and food of fire, and none of them shall escape.

Then, in a certain manner smiling upon Babylon as one led astray, he adds and says: You have coals of fire—that is, hot and boiling men, those of whom the discourse speaks—when you sit upon them.

And the sitting would signify rest.

These shall be a help to you.

For if you should choose, he says, to rest upon the falsehoods of the magi and upon the buffooneries of the others, you shall find much succor from thence.

You have labored in the change from your youth.

Again, 'you have labored' is to be taken in place of 'you have grown weak.'

For having departed from God and gone over to decay, through inclining toward the deceits of the demons—and this from your youth—you have become weak and easily overcome.

For you were not rich in the succor that comes from him alone who knows how to save, who indeed is also the Lord of hosts.

And he adds to these things that: A man went astray by himself, but for you there shall be no salvation.

Many of mankind have gone astray in a human way, striking against God with moderate defections, whether by giving way to the things of the flesh, or perchance also by falling sick with some other of the passions.

But you have advanced to such a pitch of impiety that no manner of salvation is left to you.

For upon uncontrolled aberrations follows justice.

Hear these things, O house of Jacob, you who are called by the name of Israel, and you who came forth out of Judah, who swear by the name of the Lord God of Israel, making mention, though not with truth nor with righteousness, and who cleave to the name of the holy city, and lean upon the God of Israel.

The former things I declared long ago, and they went forth from my mouth, and were made to be heard.

For after the death of Hezekiah, Manasseh, who was born of him, governing the thrones of the kingdom, became a most impious man, and was wholly snatched away by the deceits of the demons.

And he advanced to such a degree of wickedness, baseness, and unholy undertakings, that he filled the holy city with altars and images, and even set up in the divine temple itself an abomination—that is, an image made in the place of God.

The God of all, then, in these words blamed Jerusalem, speaking thus:

Why has the beloved wrought abomination in my house? Shall vows and the flesh of holy things take away from you your wickednesses, or shall you escape by these? And once again:

That: According to the number of your cities were your gods, O Judah, and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem you set up altars to burn incense to Baal.

Why do you speak to me? All of you have transgressed, and all of you have acted impiously against me, says the Lord. But when Jeremiah fell down and stretched out supplications on behalf of Israel, God said: And you, do not pray for this people, and do not deem them worthy to be pitied, and do not come to me on their behalf with entreaty and prayer, for I will not hear.

Do you not see what these people do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? Their sons gather wood, and their fathers kindle fire, and their women knead dough to make cakes for the host of heaven.

And they poured out drink offerings to strange gods, that they might provoke me to anger. For as I said before, Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, both served the host of heaven, and was willing to hold worthy of every account the sorcerers and false prophets, the enchanters and augurs, and he sacrificed to the idols even certain of his own children.

Therefore the God of all willed to bring back Israel—who had slipped into such baseness and impiety—by frequent admonitions to the light of the truth.

Hear these things, O house of Jacob, you who are called by the name of Israel, and you who came forth out of Judah.

He makes mention of nobility—that which resides, I mean, in character and manners—for the shaming of those who have gone astray.

For there were, indeed there were, some of them according to the flesh, but nonetheless strangers, and far from the equity of those forefathers, of a different manner and a different mind, having merely the name derived from those forefathers, but being incompatible in mind with those whose nobility they boast of.

And that this is a vain thing as regards profit to them, our Lord Jesus Christ clearly demonstrated.

For the Jews, thinking highly of the illustriousness of their fathers, and making the virtues of those men a boast, said senselessly:

We have Abraham for our father. But he said to them:

If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham. Therefore the name does not suffice as a source of power for glory to those descended from illustrious fathers, unless they become imitators of the splendor that was in them.

He therefore puts them to shame, saying that they are indeed called by the name of Israel and have come forth from Judah — that is, they have sprung up from the seed of Judah — yet in no respect whatever do they resemble those forefathers.

Besides this He charges them with swearing by the name of the Lord the God of Israel, and with duly carrying out the commandment of the Law;

for He says: While accepting the practice of oaths, so as to swear by His name, they do so not upon true and righteous matters, but upon things falsely alleged contrary to the Law;

and furthermore they cling to the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel.

For they wished to raise their brow on high, as inhabitants of a holy city that was named after God.

For they heard the ministering priests chanting in the divine temple concerning Jerusalem;

'nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.'

For they swore by Jerusalem, naming it, as I said, the city of God.

And they stayed themselves upon Him also, declaring the Lord of hosts to be their strength.

But it was necessary that those who then held such convictions should not profane the city of God with altars and sacrifices and by being entangled in the deceits of demons, nor should they provoke against themselves the very One in whom they had put their trust, but rather should gladden Him with good endeavours and, offering to Him as a kind of sacrifice their steadfastness in piety.

'Nevertheless, hear these things,' He says;

and what are these things? 'The former things I declared beforehand; they went forth from My mouth, and were made to be heard.'

'Suddenly I acted, and it came to pass.'

For since, as I said, in the beginning the God-hated Manasseh, having gathered from every quarter those called soothsayers and augurs, was always busily prying into the future, and, caught up in their buffooneries, supposed perhaps that he even knew it clearly;

on this account the God of all says:

'I declared to you the former things also, and these were not spoken to you by any other of the falsely-named gods, but they went forth from My mouth;

and it was made to be heard by you, and suddenly I acted, and it came to pass' — that is, even though you did not expect that these things would come to their fulfilment, yet you learned through the very deeds and by experience itself that I both acted and it came to pass.

He seems to be speaking of the earlier calamity brought upon them by war, when, carried away from the land that bore them and having received the yoke of bitter servitude, they were taken off into the country of the Persians and Medes.

'I know that you are hard, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your forehead brass.'

For He has a serenity equal in strength to His own glory.

It overflows all measure; so incomparably is He also loving toward mankind.

For observe how, although He knew Israel to be hard, having a proud and unbending neck, so as even to seem an iron sinew — hard, that is, and inflexible — and a forehead of brass, that is, again shameless and unyielding and stripped of all sense of shame, He nevertheless foretold to him the things to come, and made them heard before they came.

And He did this not in vain, but since they had a heart that would not be admonished, He made the announcements of dire things, so that, being somewhat shaken by these terrors, they might depart from that outlandish and most abominable way of life, and be transformed toward seeking the better things as they ought, and, forsaking the accursed and most abominable false worship which they offered to the falsely-named gods, might choose to worship the one who is by nature and truly God.

'With bit and bridle you shall constrain the jaws of those who do not draw near to you. Do not say, The idols made this for me, and do not say, The graven and molten images commanded me.'

'You heard these things, and you did not know them; but I also made you hear new things from now on, things that are about to come to pass.'

'Now it comes to pass, and not of old, and not in former days did you hear them.'

'Do not say that I know them.'

'Neither did you know, nor were you aware, nor from the beginning did I open your ears.'

'For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously, and that you would be called lawless even from the womb.'

'For the sake of My name I will show you My wrath, and I will bring My glorious deeds upon you, that I may not utterly destroy you.'

'Behold, I have sold you, but not for silver;'

'and I delivered you out of the furnace of poverty.'

'For My own sake I will do this to you, because My name is profaned, and I will not give My glory to another.' In the words of the prophet Jeremiah we find that, when those from Babylon had once captured the holy city and had ravaged all Judaea, and had carried off Israel captive, the women who were left behind wished to go down into Egypt together with those who had been rescued from Israel; but as the prophet resisted, urging them himself to remain at home and setting forth the reason plainly, they cried out against him in reply, saying:

'Since we ceased to sacrifice to the queen of heaven, all these evils have come upon us.' For they supposed, even though they had suffered the capture, that it was because they had offended the falsely-named gods and, deprived of their help, had fallen beneath the feet of their enemies.

On this account also the prophet Jeremiah said to God:

'Lord, Your eyes are toward faithfulness;'

'You scourged them, and they felt no pain; You brought them to an end, and they refused to receive correction.' 'When therefore,' He says, 'I had made you hear the things that came to pass before they came, do not again say, The idols did this to me.'

What did they do? Namely, the being captured through the misfortunes of war;

you were not led away captive out of their wrath, nor, when they withdrew the help that came from themselves, did they bring upon you a punishment hard to escape.

For they are graven and molten images.

'Neither say this to yourself,' He says, 'that The idols commanded me' — meaning, threatened, or rather foretold that I would suffer such kinds of evils.

'You heard these things from Me, and you did not know them' — that is, you did not understand, nor did you become wise.

For this we affirm to be understanding according to truth.

For it was a work of understanding, and a fruit of admirable prudence, to turn aside from the things foretold, and not to await the outcome of the dire things, but to come to be outside of all wrath and judgment.

'Therefore I made you hear new things from now on, things that are about to come to pass.'

For before they had happened, and while they had not yet come to pass, the announcements came from God.

'Do not, then, say that not of old and not in former days did you hear them, for I foretold them from the beginning.'

'I know them' — through the false prophets, that is, and the false-speakers.

'For neither did you know them, nor were you aware, nor from the beginning did I open your ears;'

that is, not before My words came to pass did I make this known to you through another;

and I brought about the outcome of the things foretold.

'For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously, and that you would be called lawless even from the womb.'

But it behoved those who had chosen to deal treacherously and to act lawlessly — and that too from the belly;

for from infancy they were taught to serve strange gods —

that the punishments fitting for them should be hung over them.

'I showed you My wrath, for the sake of My name, and I will bring My glorious deeds upon you, that I may not utterly destroy you.'

For it was necessary, since Israel had despised Him and had driven himself to the utmost limit of all baseness and deemed the honour due to God to be of no account whatever, that His wrath should be displayed; but, so that the greatness of the loving-kindness that is in Him might again be seen, that the marvellous things too should be brought upon those grievous conditions, so that they might not be utterly destroyed.

For He saved them from the hand of their enemies, and when they had fallen into the snare of judgment He again delivered them, and loosed them from the nooses of captivity, that He might not utterly destroy Israel altogether.

'Behold, then, I have sold you,' He says, 'but not for silver' — that is, not for the sake of money.

For I did not seek any such thing from you, nor was I in need of any earthly thing, or of the slaughter of calves, or of sheep, or of goats;

but since you were sinning, and were negligent concerning the honour and glory owed to Me by you.

'Yet even so I delivered you,' He says, 'out of the furnace of poverty;'

for he had been enslaved to the Babylonians.

And there follows in every case, upon the evils of slavery, also the lying in want of every good thing.

'For My own sake I will do this to you, because My name is profaned.'

For those who had captured them supposed that, even though God willed to save them and stood as their champion, they had still prevailed, and had, without His consent, overpowered the one whom He was aiding.

'My name, then, is profaned,' He says, 'when they hold such opinions about Me.'

'Hear Me, Jacob, and Israel whom I call. I am the first, and I am unto eternity;'

'and My hand founded the earth, and My right hand established the heaven.' Once more He brings them to remembrance of the honour and glory given to them, and moreover of His forbearance and love.

For they were counted worthy of the highest privileges, they who alone out of all the nations were called to intimacy with Him, and became His portion and His inheritance.

And indeed the inspired Moses once addressed those of Israel, speaking thus:

Behold, the heaven of heaven belongs to the Lord your God; yet the Lord chose you out of all the nations to be His own people. And again: When the Most High divided the nations, and as He scattered abroad the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God; and the Lord's portion became His people Jacob, Israel the measured line of His inheritance. It was fitting, then, indeed fitting, that men so honored, who had obtained a glorious and select name, who were appointed as God's inheritance and grew rich in being among the elect, should not turn aside at all to what is unlawful, nor by frail insurrections choose to abandon their Benefactor, the Giver to them of every honor, and the Provider of blessings so choice and thrice-desired.

But those wretched men, taking none of these things to heart, sank into the mire of idolatry, and forsaking the true God, gave their service to the elements of the world.

Yet even so He again takes pity on them;

for He calls them to well-being with the words, Hearken to Me, crying aloud; and what it would have been better to choose to fulfill from the beginning—that they might have unshaken prosperity—this at least, though late, He commands them to accomplish, so that they might set their foot outside of judgment and be loosed from the bonds of the servitude laid upon them.

As they kindled reverence, He again initiates them into the mysteries.

For as the blessed Paul said:

Though by reason of the time they ought to be teachers, they again had need of one to teach them what are the rudiments of the beginning of the oracles of God, and they became such as have need of milk, and not of solid food. That He therefore is the One who is, and is before all things, and possesses being that has no end, being God by nature, He clearly shows, saying:

I am the first, and I am for ever.

And who could be conceived as prior to the first? For just as no beginning could be conceived prior to that which is truly and firstly the beginning,

so no other could be conceived as first before the First.

Therefore the God of all is always, and before all things, and unto boundless ages.

For He who has no beginning, at what sort of end could He ever cease? And such are the things pertaining to the divine glory in these matters.

But the swarm of the falsely-named gods, that is, the elements of the world, could neither be conceived as first, nor are they able to remain the same and unchanged unto eternity.

For the stars, the sun and the moon, and besides these the heaven itself, were brought into being; and having received a beginning and origin, they will at some time run also to the end of their existence;

and one could observe nothing in them which does not in every way and altogether fall short of the glory of the divine and undefiled nature.

And that the discourse on this point would not err from the truth, He straightway made clear, saying:

My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and My right hand established the heaven.

Then how shall that which is made contend on equal terms with its maker, and vie in glory with Him who fashioned it? He therefore declares it most absurd—rather, holding an indictment of all impiety—to choose to worship the creation alongside the Creator, and, forsaking Him who is ever and first, to assign to things made in time the name and reality of true Deity, and to bestow this upon their own artistry.

For they worshipped the things which their own fingers made, according to that which is written.

But by 'hand' and 'His own right hand' God and the Father names the Son.

For thus in very many places we shall find Him so called by the God-inspired Scripture.

And indeed the inspired Moses said:

Let Your hand be made strong, let Your right hand be exalted. I will call them, and they shall stand together, and all shall be gathered, and shall hear.

Who announced these things to them? For I wished, He says, to put a question to them when they had been gathered together, and indeed clearly to inquire, whom they suppose to have become, in truth, the foreknower or foreteller of the things unexpectedly brought upon them—plainly, of the calamity arising from the war.

For not one of the false prophets is seen to have announced it beforehand.

For they pretended to invoke God, and to be certain laborious ones possessed by demons;

yet there is no foreknowledge of things to come in unclean spirits, nor indeed in lifeless matter shaped into gods.

Therefore of the reputed gods there is absolutely none who announced it beforehand.

But I have made known each thing in detail through the holy prophets;

then, when it was possible to slip away from the evil and to be carried outside the snare, you slumbered, awaiting the experience of the evils that bore witness to My words as true.

What need, then, have you of the sorcerers? What profit of the false prophets? And what could the workshops of those accustomed to divine by omens know?—men who, occupying the precincts of the idols and settling themselves at the unclean altars, sell for the cheapest coins the lie from their own heart as though it were from God, and, belching forth to those who come to them whatever seems good for the sake of a handful of barley and a piece of bread, according to what was spoken by the voice of Ezekiel:

Loving you, I did your will against Babylon, to take away the seed of the Chaldeans.

I have spoken, I have called, I have brought him, and I have prospered his way.

Draw near to Me, and hear these things:

I have not spoken from the beginning in secret.

He does not permit them again to be carried away toward untrue suppositions.

For it was indeed very likely that men who had an untutored mind, and one exceedingly prone to be led astray to apostasy and easily caught in the snares of deceit, should both suppose and say that the sufferings which befell them from the war came upon them perhaps from the wrath of the falsely-named gods, since the worship due and owed to those gods had been neglected and their sacrifices were no longer offered; and that these gods again took pity and measured out wrath upon those who had inflicted those sufferings—and the argument holds nothing improbable.

For we have shown beforehand that, when Jerusalem had been sacked and burned together with the temple and all Judaea, the women who were left declared that these things had befallen them because they had ceased sacrificing to the queen of heaven.

In order, therefore, that they might know their Redeemer, and might render the thanks for their salvation not to other gods but rather to Him, He says most plainly that, moved by His sparing love toward them, that which was thrice-desired and greatly longed for by them, this He caused to come to pass—namely, the removal of the seed of the Chaldeans, inasmuch as they had captured them and displayed every manner of inhumanity, and had encompassed them with evils that brought them to an utter end.

By love toward you, then, I was impelled to bring to fulfillment what seemed good to you concerning the Babylonians, so as to take away also the seed of the Chaldeans.

Then He speaks concerning Cyrus, that by His own nods he was led and called for the purpose of laying waste the land and taking it by force.

I brought him, and I prospered his way.

And I have spoken these things from the beginning, He says, and not in secret; I have announced them plainly beforehand through the holy prophets:

Thus says the Lord to My anointed Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, that nations should hearken before him, and I will break the strength of kings.

Therefore I have made my discourse concerning him neither hidden nor in a corner, but I brought him, and called him, and prospered his way;

and I have not only spoken, but indeed I was also present alongside him as he did the things dear to you, and I was with him according to his prayer, overturning the strength of the Chaldeans, and rendering him who laid them waste all-powerful and irresistible;

so that the deeds done were not so much of Cyrus's hand as of My all-mighty right hand, which brought penalties upon them for the sake of the outrage done to you—or rather, for their measureless misanthropy and unbridled cruelty.

For He said: I gave them into your hands, but you did not show them mercy.

Then, in the midst of such discourses, He sets down the very words of Cyrus, confessing that it was God who whetted him and made him most hard to fight and stronger than the might of the Babylonians.