Commentary on Isaiah 1 part 64/65

for the body shall then rise again, just as some grass in a field, withered and closed up during the winter season, when the spring calm smiles, springs up again, and as it were returns to the natural beauty that belongs to it.

'You will send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and you will renew the face of the earth,' that is, of those upon the earth.

Then shall we inherit generations of generations, that is, length of days, since death has manifestly been abolished and corruption utterly done away.

It is said in very many places of the God-inspired Scripture that the spiritual 'bones' of the soul are certain of its practical powers and energies, as in the saying, 'God has scattered the bones of the men-pleasers.' For God does not indeed scatter the bones of the body, but rather shatters the powers of their soul, so that they can accomplish none of the things they aim at, and nothing of what is customary among them is wont to be done for the glory of God, nor even for the benefit of their own soul.

And again the inspired Psalmist said, 'Because I kept silence, my bones grew old, from my crying all the day long,' that is, from giving glory and praying; I fell silent, having lapsed into human faintheartedness.

'My bones grew old,' that is, the powers of the mind, or of the soul, became decayed and rotten.

These, then, being sometimes weakened through sloth, spring up again a little like grass, when God makes them fat by the consolations that come through the Holy Spirit, and strengthens the soul anew, so that through this we are established as heirs of the age-long life;

for this, and nothing else, is what 'unto generations of generations' signifies.

For the form of the discourse is fashioned as of a city once made desolate and shaken to its foundations, so that it was left even without walls.

'For your waste places,' he says, 'shall be built up as everlasting,' that is, you shall not be bare of the good thoughts that dwell in your heart, nor yet shall you remain without walls, or unguarded, and lacking a firm foundation.

For Christ shall become to you a foundation and a perpetual security, and you shall be like a populous city having innumerable inhabitants.

For the souls of the saints are full of words and thoughts, namely those concerning God.

And these are very many, arriving at accuracy even to the finest point, running to and fro over it up and down, and showing it to be full of every good thing.

And besides this you shall also be called a builder of hedges, and you shall cause the paths in the midst to cease;

for the deserted parts of gardens have very many who tread across them.

For when there is no one at all set over it, or fencing it tightly about, there would be nothing to hinder those who wish to walk through the midst.

But if they should somehow come under a careful gardener, then they also cast off being subjected to the feet of the many, since a hedge has manifestly been raised.

For thus the paths through the midst shall cease.

Therefore, he says, you shall be like a diligent gardener, raising hedges and causing the paths through the midst to cease.

For as long as the soul is unguarded, snoring toward slothfulness, and for this reason not untrodden by the extravagant onsets of pleasures, but is like a garden traversed by anyone whatever;

but when, becoming sober, it leaps away from the snares of baseness, and takes hold rather of the will to do good, and raises up security to the mind as it were a hedge—the security, I mean, that comes from the divine fear—and drives away from the understanding the reasonings that of old held it in their power, which went as it were through its midst, keeping it under their feet and setting it for a trampling-ground by their mastery over it, then it shall be called a builder of hedges.

But it must be known that the wicked and adverse powers also sometimes run down upon the wretched soul, bringing forth abominable pleasures, and tyrannically carrying it off wherever they will, and walking as it were through a garden left uncultivated.

But they shall cease from trampling it when the hedge has been raised, which the divine fear sets up within us.

And you may apply such a word also to each of the holy mystagogues.

For they became builders of hedges, securing by exhortations unto virtue the souls of those under instruction, so as to keep the understanding in a manner untrodden by the assaults of pleasures and by buffooneries, and by those who are wont to talk emptily, who peddle the right word of the faith, knowing neither what they say nor concerning what they affirm.

'If you turn back your foot from the Sabbaths, so as not to do your own wills on the holy day, and call the Sabbaths delightful, holy to your God; you shall not lift up your foot for work, nor speak a word in anger out of your mouth, and you shall trust in the Lord, and he will bring you up upon the good things of the earth, and will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob your father.

For the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things.' The inspired Paul, thrusting aside the shadow of the law as ineffectual, transfers the things in it to a spiritual contemplation.

For one would not observe him as accepting either the circumcision according to the flesh or the rest according to the Sabbath, but rather he is seen proclaiming a spiritual circumcision, and likewise a spiritual sabbath-keeping.

For he said, 'For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, in spirit, not in letter, whose praise is not from men but from God.' And concerning the Sabbath: 'There remains therefore a sabbath-keeping for the people of God.'

'For he who has entered into his rest, he also has rested from his own works, as God did from his own.'

Therefore if anyone should cease from his own works, that is, giving over to the sacred oracles the mastery over his own wills, thus he keeps the Sabbath spiritually, and truly celebrates a holy day.

This too the word of the prophecy at hand shows us.

'For if you turn back,' he says, 'your foot from the Sabbaths, so as not to do your own wills on the holy day.'

And the phrase, 'you shall turn back your foot from the Sabbaths,' would be nothing else, as I think, than that one ought not to do whatever one might wish, and to go the paths of one's own desires.

For that the aim of human wills looks toward the love of pleasure, the all-wise Paul confirms in writing:

And he calls those Sabbaths delightful which have nothing of what proceeds from self-will.

For a hard and harsh will is to be unwilling to submit to whatever God may wish;

and he reproved Israel as being such, saying, 'I know that you are hard, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your forehead brass.' Therefore obedience, and docility, and a yielding disposition render delightful to God the rest according to the Sabbath, that is, the spiritual sabbath-keeping, which those who wish to accomplish blamelessly do not lift up their foot for work, that is, they do not walk in the way of practice, but rather celebrate the holy and profitable rest—the rest, I mean, from the most shameful and abominable things, and from the things hateful to God.

And he wishes such persons also to be seen rising superior to wrath and anger, and to have a door and a bar upon their tongue.

'For you shall not speak a word in anger out of your mouth,' he says.

For one of the holy apostles said, 'If anyone does not stumble in word, this is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also.' But he who is superior to anger is surely also seemly, if indeed the converse is also true;

the wrathful man is unseemly. Therefore God wishes those who keep the Sabbath spiritually, and holily, and delightfully, to be gentle and to possess as great a virtue as possible, and he commands them to trust, not rather in wealth or worldly powers, nor in bodily strength, nor in any other of such things, which like the grasses in the fields are transient and quickly withered, but rather in the Lord, the giver and dispenser of all good cheer.

And what things belong to those accustomed thus to live, of what sort they may be, he makes manifest, crowning men, saying, 'He will bring you up upon the good things of the earth, and will feed you upon the inheritance of Jacob your father.' For the God of all promised to the fathers of the Jews the land of promise, and indeed they were brought into it under the generalship of Joshua after the hierophant Moses;

then how, by the foregoing verses, does he promise to give it to them as to those who have not yet received the lot promised to the patriarch Jacob? Therefore the promise of God to the inspired Jacob—or rather to Abraham and Isaac—was not concerning the perceptible land, that is, the one allotted to them, but rather concerning that which the Saviour himself indicated to us, saying:

'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.' And that in every way and altogether the things promised shall come to their fulfilment, he confirms, saying:

'For the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things;'

and it is impossible for the divine words to fall to the ground;

'Is my hand not strong to save? or has his ear grown heavy so as not to hear? But your sins make a division between you and God; because of your sins he has turned away his face from you, so as not to have mercy.

For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with sins.

And your lips have spoken lawlessness, and your tongue meditates injustice;

no one speaks just things, nor is there true judgment;

and they speak vain things.' In the foregoing, a little before, the face of God was brought in, saying to the inspired prophet:

Cry aloud with strength, and spare not; lift up your voice like a trumpet, and declare to my people their transgressions, and to the house of Israel their sins.

They seek me day by day, and desire to know my ways, as a people that had wrought righteousness and had not forsaken the judgement of their God.

They ask of me now a righteous judgement, and desire to draw near to God, saying, 'Why have we fasted, and you did not see? Why have we afflicted our souls, and you took no notice?' For in the days of your fasts you find your own pleasures, and you goad all those under your hand; you fast for strife and contentions.

'It was not this fast that I chose,' says the Lord. But we were saying, expounding the force of the prophecy as best we can, that they, setting themselves against the ordinances given through the all-wise Moses, and deeming a right manner of life to be of scarcely any account at all, while they went on doing their accustomed deeds, cultivating a mode of conduct hateful to God and given over to sin; and then, when war was proclaimed round about, they would at times consider abstaining from food through bare and mere fasting, that is, abstinence, supposing that thereby they would render the Judge favourable toward themselves.

Then, having sinned against hope, they began to murmur, and indeed they said:

'Why have we fasted, and you did not see? Why have we afflicted our souls, and you took no notice?' Behold, then, behold the inspired prophet, how out of great love for God he rebukes them and says, 'Is not the hand of the Lord strong to save? Or has his ear grown heavy, that it should not hear?' For, he says, the all-powerful right hand of the Lord has not grown weak, nor is his ear made heavy and turned away, so as not to hear.

'But your sins make a separation between you and him.'

Therefore, if anyone would remove this division, and set aside that which walls off the knowledge of God, that is to say, sin, then he who saves is not far off, but he will by all means receive their supplications.

For in him is both all-power and the goodness that graciously admits the prayers of those who labour.

He introduces what lies between God and those of the blood of Israel, saying:

'For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with sins.'

'And your lips have spoken lawlessness, and your tongue meditates on injustice.' For they slew the holy prophets who were sent from God, and indeed they spoke against him also.

Jeremiah said, then, 'My strength has failed because of those who curse me.'

But passing over such matters, he now seems to be bringing a charge concerning the impiety against Christ, saying that their hands were defiled with blood.

They became slayers of the Lord, and their lips also spoke lawlessness, and their tongue meditated on injustice;

for they did not cease striving and reproaching and speaking against Christ, at times tearing apart the divine signs and lying against his God-befitting mighty works, and at times accusing him and saying:

'Away, away, crucify him!' And at times, on account of this cause, as though Christ had endured an unjust verdict, the prophet cries out with holy boldness, 'No one spoke justly, nor is there true judgement.'

'They trust in vain things, and call upon empty things.'

And what was their vain trust? For they supposed that, having made away with the heir, they would take possession of his inheritance;

and these things the wretched men, prating vainly to one another, blasphemed against him.

So then, the prophetic word either charges those of the blood of Israel with the impiety against Christ, or else that they would in no way be found to be equitable men, seeing that they have hands defiled with blood, and lips and a tongue that know how to meditate on nothing else but the things that look toward impiety and lawlessness and injustice, and that besides this they have become unjust judges, taking bribes, that is, and overcome by shameful gains.

For it is said elsewhere, 'How has the faithful city become a harlot! Zion, once full of judgement, in which righteousness lodged, but now murderers dwell there. Your silver is worthless; your tavern-keepers mix the wine with water; your rulers are disobedient, companions of thieves, loving gifts, pursuing recompense, not judging for orphans, and not attending to the cause of the widow. For they conceive travail, and bring forth lawlessness.'

'They have hatched the eggs of asps, and they weave the web of a spider; and he who is about to eat of their eggs, when he has crushed a wind-egg, has found in it also a basilisk.'

'Their web shall not become a garment, nor shall they clothe themselves from the works of their hands.' It is the custom of the God-inspired Scripture always, in a way, to call envy 'travail' or 'toil.'

And the word has much of the likely and fitting about it;

for it melts away and withers the hearts of those who receive it.

Something of this sort the Psalmist too says concerning someone, or rather concerning the people of the Jews, 'He conceived travail, and brought forth lawlessness.' For, having first travailed with envy against Christ, they brought forth their impiety against him, that is, their lawlessness;

for they would all but be found saying, by their very undertakings, that prophetic word.

For they said concerning Christ the Saviour of us all:

'What are we doing, seeing that this man does many signs? If we let him go on thus, the Romans will come and take away both our nation and our land.'

And a certain one of them, Caiaphas, this man became the inventor of the impiety against Christ;

for he said again, 'You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.' Most clearly, then, one may see from what has been said that, having conceived travail, that is, having first travailed with the pain against him, they melted forth their lawlessness.

What, then, does the prophetic word signify to us in these things? 'They have hatched the eggs of asps, and he who is about to eat of their eggs, when he has crushed a wind-egg, has found...'

For the Jews supposed that their designs against Christ would come out to a prosperous end for them, and would be for the benefit of the whole nation.

For when they have crushed it, they will find nothing else but a basilisk within it;

and this is the offspring of a serpent, most grievous, and moreover a wind-egg.

Therefore the end of their audacious deeds against Christ was unprofitable to the Jews, or rather even the author of destruction.

For a serpent, as it were, came forth to them, and a confessed birth, one that conveys them to the springboard of Hades;

and that the machination against Christ came to be wholly unprofitable, he straightway shows also through another example;

for he says, 'They weave the web of a spider.'

For the spider, this creature I mean that is small and utterly worthless, weaves its webs in the more disused parts of the dwelling, cunningly wrought with slender threads; yet these, though produced with the greatest toil, benefit them not at all;

for they will not be a covering for the one who made them, but they are easily torn as to a covering, and readily undone even by the very craft that made them.

'So,' he says, 'are also the devices of the Jews,' clearly the devices against Christ;

for weaving deceits and plaiting false accusations, they supposed, as I said, that having wrapped him about with death of the flesh, they would accomplish something of profit to themselves, and would grow rich in a shelter from their own undertakings; but the end of what they hoped for came out to nothing for them.

For they were made naked of the favour from above, and they cast away the protector, that is, Christ;

for to those who wish to accomplish good works there will come a shelter from those very works, God bestowing this too upon them;

but to the workers of evil deeds their own works will not be for a covering, but rather they shall be bereft of the shelter that is from God.

'For their works are works of lawlessness, and their feet run toward wickedness, swift to shed blood, and their reasonings are reasonings of murders;

destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known.'

'There is no judgement in their ways.'

'For their paths are crooked, which they traverse, and they do not know peace.'

For he says that all their works are works of lawlessness, and in these things, taken all together, there came to be a true condemnation of their whole life;

and thus too he runs over each of the charges, saying that their feet run toward wickedness and are swift to shed blood, and that they have held reasonings that are set upon murders.

Consider again for me, that although their transgressions were very many, he first makes mention of their readiness for this, I mean, for choosing to murder.

For he said that their feet run toward this, and are keen, that is, swift, to receive reasonings that are set upon blood and murders;

and he maintains that destruction and misery are in their ways, and that they do not know peace, that is, the way of peace.

For the things which they did unholily, and gave loose to beyond all audacity, became the cause of destruction and misery to them, or rather, from them to others.

And they were surely by all means fond of meddling, pettifoggers, and much diseased with contentiousness;

and the pretext of this was a craving for gains and for the taking of bribes.

For this reason too, very fittingly, he says, 'There is no judgement in their ways.'

And by 'judgement' he here means righteousness, that is, the most lawful and blameless manner of life.

for those who have chosen to accomplish these things aright.

But the Jews are outside all spiritual skill, and, as it were, there has flown away from their understanding the very capacity to know how at all to carry through aright anything that is pleasing to God.

'When they waited, light became darkness to them; having awaited brightness, they walked in untimely gloom.'

'They shall grope like a blind man for a wall, and as if there were no eyes they shall grope, and they shall fall at midday as at midnight.'

'As dying men they shall groan; like a bear and a dove they shall walk together.' Having declared their life accursed and utterly lawless;

for he said what their works are, works of lawlessness, and having enumerated these in detail, saying both what they are and through how many manners they come to pass, he necessarily brings in and sets forth also the loss thereby ground into them, and the requital of their unrestrained baseness, that is, the fruits of the impiety that is in them.

For the Jews were expecting the enlightenment that is with Christ.

They heard the holy prophets crying aloud openly, 'Be enlightened, be enlightened, O Jerusalem, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. And then shall the eyes of the blind be opened'; and as far as it went in the foretelling of the holy prophets, the wretched men were not outside good hope.

For he said, 'We know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ.'

'When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us as good news.' They were expecting, then, as I said, the illumination that comes from Christ; but for them the substance of their hope has turned out entirely to the contrary.

For they did not receive the true light; rather, having settled in their own minds, as self-invited guests, a darkness of their own, they became blind, and 'blind guides of the blind,' according to the word of the Saviour.

So then, when they had waited for light—that is, when they had hoped for or expected it—darkness came upon them; and while waiting for radiance they walked in the gloom of untimely night.

The prophet again sets forth this same thing in another way—that is, concerning the same matter—making yet clearer the sense of what has been said.

For those who had expected radiance walked in deep darkness.

For this is what the word 'untimely night' signifies.

Then, to display the magnitude of the blindness that had come upon them, he said that they would grope the wall like a blind man.

For this is sometimes the way in which those whose eyes are stricken with disablement are accustomed to walk.

'And though it is midday,' he says, 'they shall fall as at midnight.'

By 'midday' he customarily names the very middle of the day, when the sun's orb, culminating at the zenith over those on earth, sends down its most vigorous ray, and, as it were, illumines all things round about with the richest brilliance;

and by 'midnight,' the very middle of the night, when deep darkness is poured out upon all things under heaven.

'At midday, therefore,' he says—that is, while a most abundant light, and clearly one that is divine and spiritual, is shining upon all that is under heaven through Christ the Saviour of us all—the Jews shall fall like blind men, not even knowing whither they are going;

for they were unwilling to obey Christ, who said, 'While you have the light, walk in the light, that the darkness may not overtake you.' They were therefore overtaken by the darkness, since they would not endure to walk in the light;

and they shall suffer yet something else besides.

'For they shall groan as those who are dying,' he says—that is, as those overpowered by a grievous and unbearable disease.

'They shall go along as a bear and a dove together'—not as two separate creatures joined to one another, of whom one might be conceived as a bear and the other as a dove, but each of them at one and the same time, according to his condition and according to the disposition within him, being at once bear and dove.

For since he said that they would groan, he shows very plainly of what kind and how great their groaning will be.

[It is the nature of bears, having been robbed] of their cubs, to lament terribly, and to be filled with unmingled frenzy, to roam about the mountains and glens, and to leap uncontrollably upon those they meet;

and somewhere, through one of the holy prophets, the God of all signifies something of this kind, saying concerning those of the blood of Israel, 'I will meet them as a bereaved bear'—that is, savagely and fiercely.

But doves, nestling in their own nests, murmur continually and send forth, as it were, a mournful cry.

Such, indeed, did the Jews become;

for when their whole land had been ravaged, together with the holy city—I mean Jerusalem—and when the very temple had been burned down, they hold a beast-like mind against those who had captured it.

Yet they lament, like doves, over her who has suffered.

For it is written that 'They shall be upon the mountains like moaning doves.' Or perhaps we shall suppose that the prophetic word in these things is disclosing yet something else.

'For they shall go,' he says, 'as a bear and a dove'—that is, they shall live out their lives in savagery of mind, coupled with senselessness;

and the bear is an image, or pattern, of savagery, while the dove is a pattern of silliness and senselessness.

It has, at any rate, been said concerning Israel through one of the holy prophets, 'And Ephraim was a silly dove, having no heart';

and we shall find that the Jews are in truth a kind of savagely foolish people.

For there is not in them the understanding and gentleness that come from Christ;

for they denied him who is the giver of wisdom and understanding, and who renders gentle and meek those who love him.

At any rate, the prophet Jeremiah said concerning them at one time, 'Every man has become foolish, lacking knowledge,' and at another time again, 'There is no wisdom in them, because they rejected the word of the Lord. We waited for judgement, and there is no salvation; it has departed far from us;

for our transgression is great before you, and our sins have risen up against us;

for our iniquities are within us, and we know our unrighteous deeds.

We have acted impiously, and lied, and turned away from following after our God.

We have spoken unrighteous things, and been disobedient;

we conceived, and pondered from our heart unrighteous words, and turned judgement backward, and righteousness has stood far off.' The word of the holy prophets is ever a lover of truth.

For in them the Spirit of the truth speaks—that is, the Spirit of Christ.

For this reason, whenever they make mention of the casting away of the nation of the Jews and of the wrath brought upon them because of their impiety toward Christ, they usefully call to mind also their coming conversion in the last times of the age, and their calling, which is in Christ through faith.

Most fittingly, therefore, that no one might think the truth to be speaking falsely, he brings them in as repenting, and taking up their persona, all but presents them as saying to God:

'We waited for judgement, and there is none.'

By 'judgement' they mean righteousness—that which is through Christ, of course—which they expected to receive, but it is not among them, for they have become hard and disobedient.

'For our transgression is great before you, and our sins are within us.'

For since they have utterly fallen away from him who justifies in faith, they have also become far from the salvation that comes from him, not having cast off the defilements of sin, not having wiped away the charges of lawlessness, but having, as it were, the filth from thence ingrained within them.

And since they have committed impiety against Christ in many ways, they make confession of these very things.

For they say, 'We know our unrighteous deeds; we acted impiously, and lied, and turned away from following after our God.'

For they committed impiety in no bearable measure, slandering the glory of Christ the Saviour of us all, and departing from willingness to follow after him.

And they confess, 'We spoke unrighteous things, and were disobedient; we conceived, and pondered from our heart unrighteous words.'

For they spoke unrighteous things against Christ;

for at one time, disparaging his glory and slandering his divine signs, they alleged that he was casting out the demons by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons; and at another time, giving birth from their own heart to unrighteous words;

'we conceived, and pondered from our heart words of unrighteousness, and turned judgement backward, and righteousness has stood far off'—that is, we cast righteousness behind us, and, as it were, turned our backs and were averted from it.

These, then, are the words of men repenting and seeking to obtain mercy from Christ.

For repentance is a saving thing, and to make plain confession of one's transgressions.