Commentary on Isaiah 1 part 9/24

And by 'law' and 'ordinances' he means not only that of Moses, but also that which was written from the beginning in nature.

For the nature of men is self-taught in the distinction between good and evil things;

and we bear witness to it, wishing to enjoy good things, but shunning to suffer evil.

This also the divine Apostle taught us:

This too we see happening even now;

for the onset of the locust, and the drops of blight, and the slingstones of hail, and both the excess and the deficiency of rains, are brought upon both plants and crops because of our lawlessness.

This too the prophetic word declared:

They were put to shame and drank no wine, the strong drink became bitter to those who drink it.

Every city has been laid waste, the houses shall be shut up so that none may enter.

For since the nature of men had run aground upon luxury, it is healed by contrary remedies;

abundance is answered by want, the leapings that come of plentiful harvests by the barrenness of the land, and by the desolation of the cities the disorder of their inhabitants.

Then again he exhorts those who measure happiness by the belly to lament the scarcity of wine, the ceasing of merriment, the desolation of the cities, and the uninhabited state of their dwellers.

Thereupon he sets before them an image of those who are being destroyed.

'As when one gleans an olive tree, so shall they glean them.'

'And when the vintage has ceased, these shall cry aloud; but those who are left upon the earth shall rejoice together, singing praises to the glory of the Lord.'

Symmachus rendered these words thus:

'As the gleaning of an olive tree, as the after-gathered grapes when the vintage is finished.'

And here he shows that some are being destroyed, while others remain, enjoying salvation and singing praises to God their benefactor.

One might also find this to be the case at the time of the consummation:

'... of a bed, one is taken and one is left; two women grinding at the mill, one is taken and one is left'; and again:

'These shall go away into life eternal, and those into everlasting punishment and shame.' 'For at the glory of the Lord the water of the sea shall be troubled.'

He calls the churches that have been built up in the midst of this sea 'islands,' which receive the waves of the sea yet are kept unharmed according to the Lord's promise;

in these the divine name is hymned by the godly.

Having learned these things through the grace of the Spirit, the prophet says to the Master:

'O Lord the God of Israel, from the wings of the earth we have heard wonders.'

By 'wings of the earth' he named faith and the knowledge of God;

for by means of these the earthly ones soar aloft and behold the things of God.

And by 'wonders' he means both the things foretold concerning the consummation and the things prophesied concerning the churches.

Then he shows the profit of what has been said:

For he who lives lawfully and godly, learning of the recompenses of the age to come, nobly bears the toils of virtue, since hope sustains him.

But what is this hope, O divinely-inspired prophet? 'I received,' he says, 'the hope of good things, but the forms of these I have not clearly learned.'

'My secret is for me and for my own.'

'Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love him;'

'but to us God has revealed them through his Spirit.' So here too God speaks through the prophet:

'My secret is for me and for my own.'

Having thus initiated the godly into the mysteries, he turns his discourse against the transgressors:

'Woe to those who set at nought, those who set at nought — the faithlessness of those who set at nought the law.'

Those who live contrary to its purpose set the law at nought.

And here again by 'law' he means not only the Mosaic law but also the natural law;

for the discourse is about all men.

'Fear and the pit and the snare are upon you who dwell upon the earth.'

'And it shall come to pass that he who flees from the fear shall fall into the pit, and he who comes up out of the pit shall be caught by the snare.'

He speaks of evils following one upon another, the latter more grievous than the former;

for he who escapes the lesser, he says, shall fall into the more grievous.

'For the windows from heaven have been opened, and the foundations of the earth shall be shaken.'

By these words he has made plain the oversight of the God of all things.

'The Lord looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there was any that understood or sought after God.' Then again he tells of the things that shall come to pass from the divine oversight, the confusion of all, the perplexity as to what should be done;

for they all, he says, wander to and fro here and there like drunken men.

'And the earth shall be shaken like a watchman's hut, and it shall fall and shall not be able to rise again;'

for lawlessness has prevailed against it.

The watchman's hut is a temporary tent.

So too the fashion of this life is bounded by a certain span of time;

and this the blessed Paul said passes away.

'And God shall bring his hand upon the host of heaven on high in that day, and upon the kingdoms of the earth upon the earth.'

'And they shall gather her gathering into a prison and shall shut them up in a stronghold.'

And these things too indicate the consummation of the whole;

for then, according to the word of the Lord, 'The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light'; and again:

For they enjoyed, he says, great and long-continued forbearance.

'And the brick shall be melted' — that is, the earthly mind-set.

'And the wall shall fall' — that is, the security that the powerful imagine themselves to possess.

'And the moon shall be put to shame, and the sun shall be ashamed' — that is, the polytheistic error of the ungodly.

For since they deified the whole creation, from the most brilliant portions of the creation he indicated the complete abolition of the error.

For he does not say that the very elements — being lifeless and irrational — shall be put to shame, but rather those who deified them.

'For the Lord shall reign in Zion and in Jerusalem, and shall be glorified before his elders.'

By 'Zion' and 'Jerusalem' he means the heavenly ones.

For the divine apostle says, 'You have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.' In that city, therefore, when the kingdom of God is made manifest, those who served the creature rather than the Creator shall be put to shame.

Having been taught these things beforehand of old, the prophet weaves a hymn to God who does these things, and says:

'O Lord my God, I will glorify you, I will hymn your name, for you have done wondrous things, a counsel ancient and true.'

For from above you predetermined these things, and now you have made them manifest through deeds.

So too the divine apostle:

'The mystery,' he says, 'which has been hidden from the ages and from the generations in God who created all things'; and again:

'We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predetermined before the ages unto our glory'; and once more:

'For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son'; and the Lord in the sacred Gospels:

'For you have done wondrous things, a counsel ancient and true.'

'For you have made cities a heap, fortified cities, that their foundations should fall.'

You have exposed, he says, the transitory nature of human affairs, and have shown your own might.

'The city of the ungodly shall never be built up for ever.'

The word has been spoken in a general sense, but it seems to me also to hint at Jerusalem, according to the word of the Lord which says:

By 'a poor people' he calls the godly, the one who is of a modest disposition;

'Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' 'For you have been a helper to every lowly city, and a shelter to those who are disheartened through want; you shall deliver them from wicked men;'

A shelter for those who thirst, and a spirit for men who are wronged.

To all He offers what is fitting:

to those who are wronged, help; to the despondent, comfort; and to all who are in need, the very thing they require.

As faint-hearted men thirsting in Zion because of the wicked men to whom You have handed us over.

It is as though he speaks these things in the person of the apostolic choir.

As scorching heat in the shelter of a cloud, He will bring low the branch of the mighty.

These words are appended with asterisks.

But the sense is joined to the saying that precedes it.

We are faint-hearted, he says, and we thirst for the heavenly Zion,

so as to consume the moisture of our faith.

To these words resemble those spoken by the most divine Apostle:

There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to buffet me, lest I should be exalted overmuch;

and concerning this I besought the Lord three times, that it might depart from me;

for My power is made perfect in weakness. And again:

I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning the affliction that befell us in Asia, that we were weighed down beyond measure, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life. From this point again the prophet foretells the mystical gift bestowed upon the nations:

And the Lord God of Hosts will make for all the nations upon this mountain a feast of rich fare, a feast of wine on the lees;

And they shall be handed over on this mountain by tradition, and it shall be swallowed up on this mountain.

By 'mountain' he calls the height of the knowledge of God;

for this too we have shown in what has been said before.

And the aforementioned things are symbols of the mysteries of the knowledge of God.

And joined to these is gladness;

for he foretells that all the nations shall partake of these God-given draughts.

And it agrees with the words spoken by the Master to the holy apostles:

Go, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. These nations he says shall also be handed over to the mountain, that is, to the teaching of the knowledge of God.

And what follows agrees with these things as well:

Deliver all these things to the nations;

for this counsel is upon all the nations.

For it was not, as He gave the Law to the Jews alone, that He likewise bestowed the New Covenant upon them alone; rather, He set forth for all the nations the salvation that springs up from it.

Then, since it comes to pass that those ignorant of the mystery of the dispensation, seeing death still prevailing even after they have enjoyed divine baptism, disbelieve the power of grace, he went on to add:

Death, prevailing, swallowed them up.

We, he says, have given death its power through sin.

And again: God has taken away every tear from every face;

the reproach of His people He has removed from all the earth;

for the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things.

But the Master, governing our affairs in His goodness, has abolished death, has stayed the tears shed over those who die, having granted the hope of the resurrection, and has stripped away the reproaches of sin.

And these things, he says, I did not utter of myself, but the Lord of all Himself spoke them through me.

And they shall say in that day:

Behold, our God, on whom we set our hope and rejoiced; and He will save us. This is the Lord; we waited for Him,

and we shall be glad and rejoice in our salvation.

God will give rest upon this mountain.

Those who have attained salvation, beholding the fulfillment of the good things hoped for, offer this hymn to Him who has saved them.

This, he says, is the fruit of patient endurance:

gladness and delight of soul that has no end.

These fruits we have plucked from this mountain, that is, from piety.

And Moab shall be trodden down in her place, as men tread down a threshing-floor with wagons;

and he shall spread out his hands, as the one who bathes spreads them out to swim.

Through these words he hinted at the error of polytheism and its teacher;

for this the grace of the Spirit had also foretold through Balaam:

A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a man shall be raised up out of Israel, and he shall crush the leaders of Moab and shall despoil all the sons of Seth. Now the leaders of Moab are Chemosh and Baal-Peor and the other idols;

through these things, then, he made plain the cessation of the error of idols;

and through the sons of Seth, the salvation of all mankind;

for from Seth Noah traces his lineage, and when all other men had been given over to the utter destruction of the flood, from him the whole nature of mankind blossomed again.

The teacher of error, then, he said would be trodden down, according to the word of the Lord:

all the power of the enemy. And by the wagon that pulverizes the threshing-floor the same prophet has taught us more clearly the sense in another passage:

For behold, he says, I have made you like the wheels of a wagon, new and threshing, saw-shaped. And the one who swims accomplishes nothing else, but provides for his own preservation;

so then likewise the teacher of error and those who have received his teaching, being handed over to punishment in the life to come, no longer hunt after their deceit in any other way, but bewail their own destruction.

In the same manner as he himself humbled in order to destroy, so shall he be humbled, and the height of him shall be brought low, upon which he laid his hands;

and the height of the refuge of your wall He will bring low, and they shall be brought down even to the ground, even to the dust.

He humbled their nature by drawing it away from its Maker and by pointing out to it the paths of error.

And he who exalts himself shall be humbled, and shall be convicted of being a wicked demon and not a god.

upon which he laid his hands;

for he seized the name that did not belong to him.

And by the refuge of his wall he calls those who have been led astray by him;

for they too shall be handed over to punishment, according to the word of the Lord:

Depart, He says, you cursed, into the outer darkness prepared for the devil and his angels. In that day they shall sing this song in the land of Judah, saying:

Behold, a strong city; and He will make our salvation a wall and a rampart.

Open the gates, let a righteous people enter, one that keeps righteousness and keeps truth, laying hold of truth and keeping perfect peace, because upon You, O Lord, we have set our hope for ever.

That the divine Apostle knows not only the Jew who is outward but also the one who is inward, we have clearly learned.

O God, the great, the eternal, who, having humbled, brought down those who dwelt in high places;

You will cast down strong cities and bring them down even to the ground, and the feet of the meek and the footsteps of the lowly shall trample them.

This also the holy Virgin sang in her hymn, saying:

'He hath put down the mighty from their thrones, and hath exalted them of low degree.' This is He who, having overthrown the God-fighting arrogance of the cities that raged against true religion, subjected them to the apostolic footsteps and to those who had received the teaching of those men.

'The way of the godly is straight, the path of the godly is straight'; the way of the godly became straight and prepared;

for 'the way of the Lord is judgement.'

From of old God pointed out this way to men.

This also the divine word hinted at:

'Straight is the way of the godly and made ready.'

For which reason He teaches it also through the Law:

'Thou shalt walk by the royal road; thou shalt not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.' This road the nurslings of true religion travelled.

'We have hoped in Thy name and in the remembrance which our soul desires with the desire of the soul.'

More worthy of love to us than every good remembrance is the remembrance of the Name.

'My soul refused to be comforted; I remembered God and was gladdened,' and again:

'Let the heart of them that seek the Lord be glad.' Now since these things were to come to pass many ages afterwards, the prophet teaches whence he learned them:

'From the night my spirit rises early unto Thee, O God, because Thy commandments are a light upon the earth.'

By 'night' he calls the time before the Lord's incarnation, and by 'dawn' the prophetic foreknowledge.

For 'day' is the rising of the knowledge of God.

For the Lord Himself has been named 'the true light' and 'the sun of righteousness.'

'I behold the dawn, for I do not yet see the very things themselves but their images.'

'Many prophets and righteous kings desired to see the things which ye behold, and saw them not.' And these very commandments of Thine, he says, after the manner of light, point out the straight way.

And teaching the ease of learning it, he added:

'For the ungodly one has ceased; he will by no means learn righteousness upon the earth, he will by no means do truth.'

For, the tyranny of the devil having been dissolved through the Master's manifestation, the achievement of virtue has become easier.

But that one gained nothing thereby;

for he could not endure to learn righteousness.

'For he shall not see,' he says, 'the undefiled light that is prepared for the saints.'

'O Lord, Thine arm is exalted, yet they knew it not; but when they have come to know it, let them be ashamed.'

This also the Lord said in the sacred Gospels:

'Zeal shall seize an untaught people.'

He alludes to the Jews, who under the pretext of zeal nailed the Lord to the cross.

This also the divine Apostle says:

'For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.' 'And now fire shall devour the adversaries.'

For since they did not receive the light, they shall be delivered up to fire and to darkness.

'O Lord our God, give us peace, for Thou hast rendered unto us all our works.'

'O Lord our God, take possession of us; O Lord, besides Thee we know no other, we name Thy name.'

'We have embraced Thy lordship.'

'Let us not fall away from Thy providence;'

for we know no other God.

These words also refute the madness of Arius and Eunomius.

'Besides Thee we know no other'—do we, then, name the Son a created god? But we, proclaiming one essence of the Trinity, speak the truth when we say:

'Besides Thee we know no other.'

'But the dead shall by no means see life.'

By 'the dead' he means those who are deadened to good works.

For thus also the Lord said:

'Let the dead bury their own dead.' These, he says, shall be deprived of true life;

for they shall pass their age in anguish.

'Nor shall physicians raise them up.'

'Thou hast taken away every male of them': Symmachus rendered it 'all remembrance of them,' while Aquila and Theodotion, 'every memorial of them.'

This same thing the Seventy also hinted at by means of 'the male';

for it is rather through the males that the remembrance of the fathers is preserved.

'Add evils unto them, O Lord, add evils unto the glorious ones of the earth.'

The prophet changed the predictive form into the optative, and foretells the destruction of those who persecute the godly.

'O Lord, in affliction we remembered Thee; in small affliction is Thy chastening unto us.'

'And as the woman with child, being near, in travail, draws near to bring forth, and cries out in her travail, so were we become to Thy beloved.'

For affliction, according to the blessed Paul, works patience, and patience proof, and proof hope, and hope does not put to shame. And here too the prophet has pointed to the remembrance of God as the fruit of affliction, and has pointed also to the swift succour:

'For having suffered pangs like a woman giving birth, on account of Thy beloved Son we were delivered from the anguish.'

And continuing with the metaphor, he added:

For since they likened themselves to a woman in travail, they showed the fruit of the pangs.

'For we have brought forth,' he says, 'a spirit of salvation, which Thou hast wrought upon the earth,' that is to say:

For He did not create the Spirit on the earth, but through the Spirit He wrought salvation on the earth.

Those who war against the Spirit—let them say that through the apostles it obtained its creation on the earth;

for this is what the prophetic word taught.

But it is clear that he does not say the Spirit came into being on the earth, but that salvation through the Spirit was granted to men on the earth.

'We shall not fall, even if we be warred against ten thousand times.'

This also the divine Apostle said:

'In everything afflicted, yet not distressed; perplexed, yet not in despair.' 'But they that dwell on the earth shall fall'—those who mind earthly things, who put their confidence in things transient as though they were abiding.

But we await the resurrection of the dead;

'For Thy dead shall rise, and they that are in the tombs shall be raised up; they that rest in the earth shall be awakened and shall rejoice.'

These things also the Lord said, that 'they that are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that have done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life, but they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgement.' Fittingly, moreover, the prophet has put 'they shall be awakened,' showing that death is a sleep.

Then he teaches the manner of the coming back to life:

'For the dew that is from Thee is healing unto them.'

For just as the rain gives life to the seeds that have been buried and, as it were, entombed, so your word, like a kind of dew, raises up the nature of men.

But the land of the ungodly shall fall.

Their earthly way of thinking shall be brought to nothing.

These things, then, the prophet has spoken, weaving a hymn to the God of all.

But the Master Himself enjoins those who have believed in Him to hide themselves, as though in certain storehouses, in the faith of the proclamations and in the hope of things to come, and so to escape the destruction that is brought upon other men.

For 'Go, my people,' He says, 'enter into your chamber, shut your door, hide yourself for a little while, but a very little,'

'until the wrath of the Lord has passed by.'

'For behold, the Lord brings His wrath from the holy place upon those who dwell upon the earth, to visit the lawlessness of the inhabitants of the land against them.'

These same instructions we find the Lord giving to the holy apostles;

for He says, 'When you see Jerusalem encircled by armies, then know that her desolation is near'; and again:

'Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house.' He foretells this to them so that they may escape the destruction brought upon those who disbelieved.

The prophet, moreover, also teaches the cause of the punishment;

'And the earth shall uncover her blood, and shall no longer cover over those who have been slain.'

And concerning Abel, God has said:

'The voice of your brother's blood cries to Me from the ground.' So now too, He says, the earth does not endure to hide the Master's blood, but reveals it, denouncing their madness.

'In that day God shall bring His holy and great and mighty sword upon the dragon, the fleeing serpent, upon the dragon, the crooked serpent, and He shall slay in that day the dragon that is in the sea.'

By the sword of God he calls the punitive Word, and by the dragon, the crooked, fleeing serpent that dwells in the sea, he means the one who wrought his work through the first serpent.

For this one fled when he learned of the Savior's manifestation, and cried out:

'What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of God? Have You come here before the time to torment us?' This is the one who, turning men away from the straight path, leads them astray into the many-twisting byways of wickedness;

this is the one who of old dwelt in the Sea of Salt, making its waters bitter and undrinkable;

but through the wood of the cross the apostles of our Savior changed these waters into a sweet quality, drove him out, and prevented him from casting in his own venom; rather, they received authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy.

This sword the blessed Paul too makes mention of,

when, arraying the faithful in full armor, he added:

'Above all, taking up the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God'; and again:

'For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit.' Thus the divine prophet, having shown us the time of the consummation, and the destruction of the lawless, and the choirs of the saints, and the utter overthrow of the devil, transferred his discourse to another prophecy:

'A goodly vineyard, His desire, to sing over it.'

Here again he signifies the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Assyrians; and employing personification, he brings in the city herself, saying that 'I am a goodly vineyard, having God as my planter, and I am so flourishing and fair that many covet possession of me.'

'I am a strong city, a city besieged.'

'I have,' she says, 'no security from my walls;'

'for I am encircled on every side by my enemies;'

'for she shall be taken by night, and by day she shall fall;'

'for there is no wall that has taken hold of her.'

'In vain shall I water her' — Symmachus rendered it thus:

'Suddenly shall I water her'; and so too the rest of the translators.

'I shall water her suddenly' — through my repentance and my earnest prayer;

for she does not have the wall of piety guarding her.

For this very reason she is struck down both by night and without human hands, and by day those who have fled shall receive the destruction.

This the prophet taught by what follows;

'Therefore, for this cause the Lord has done all things whatsoever He ordained.'

He is said to have rejected [the covenant] because Hezekiah the king did not pay the customary tribute.

'I am burned up,' those who dwell in her — that is, in the army — shall cry out.

Such a blow shall be brought upon them.

Then they shall exhort one another to propitiate God through repentance;

'Let us make peace with Him; let us who are coming make peace.'

'Let us be reconciled,' he says, 'to the Master; let us put an end to His indignation against us by the change of our life.'

Then the fruit of repentance is shown:

'The children of Jacob shall bud, and Israel shall blossom, and the whole world shall be filled with his fruit.'

'Not only,' he says, 'shall you be delivered from this siege, but you shall also cause the fruit of salvation to bud for the world.'

for through these the world received salvation.

Having thus foretold the affairs of the Jews, he foretells the blow that shall fall upon the Assyrians;

'Shall he be smitten as he himself has smitten? Or shall he be slain as he himself has slain?' 'You,' he says, 'drawing up in battle array and fighting, have slain the neighbors of Jerusalem;'

'but you shall not be struck down by men grappling with you; rather, the battle and the victory shall be unseen.'

'Fighting and reviling, He shall send them away.'

'You fight and array yourself in battle and move your tongue against the God of all, and reproach the Maker of all things with weakness; but I, keeping silent, shall consign you to death.'

'You hoped,' he says, 'to destroy the city together with its inhabitants;'

'but for this very reason I shall deem them worthy of My providential care, not looking upon their transgressions, on account of your blasphemy.'

This too God declares through another prophet;

to the nations. Yet one must know that, properly speaking, the removal of sin is fitting to the manifestation of our Savior, though in a figure it also happened then.

Thus too the words that follow contain a twofold prophecy:

'When they make all the stones of the altars as broken bits, like fine dust;'

'and their idols shall not remain, and their groves shall be cut down like a thicket.'

These things the admirable Hezekiah too accomplished;

and the Second book of Chronicles and the Fourth book of Kingdoms teach this.

But that man did this in Jerusalem alone, whereas the Master Christ freed the whole world from the error of idols.

Having thus foretold the salvation that came to Jerusalem in the time of Sennacherib, he also foretells the captivity that would come in the time of Nebuchadnezzar;

'The inhabited flock shall be let go afar off, and shall be as a flock forsaken;'

'and it shall be for a long time a pasture, and there they shall rest.'

'And after a time there shall be in her nothing green, because of its being dried up.'

'They shall be led away captive,' he says, 'and their land shall be desolate; but again they shall return and dwell in her;'

'yet after a time she shall be barren, and shall not even put forth anything green, because of its being dried up.'