以賽亞書註釋 第 1 章 第 40/65 段

And those select ones of the Greeks, as many as have made mention of Persian matters in their own writings, say that they even bridged the very Hellespont;

and if, they say, a river was found in the midst of them as they passed through either a land or a city, the tyrant would give command, saying:

Then after this he shows that it was not so much they themselves who had power to accomplish the things over which they had thought such overweening thoughts;

but rather the verdict brought forth by Him against the transgressors produced in them the reputation of being able.

Hast thou not heard of old these things which I did? From ancient days I ordained them, but now I have commanded to lay utterly waste nations in strongholds, and those dwelling in fortified cities.

I let go my hands, and they were dried up, and they became as a dry flower upon housetops, and as grass. All these things, then, he says, which thou thinkest thou hast accomplished, attributing them to thine own powers — art thou not ashamed? But, O thou who hast an eyebrow raised over nothing, hast thou not heard of old these things which I did? For if indeed thou wouldst, he says, busy thyself with the words of my prophets, I have already said before that these things would come to pass.

For I from ancient days ordained it — that is, I determined and assented;

and now, when the season called for it, I brought to fulfilment the things foretold, so as to lay utterly waste nations in fortified cities — that is, not weak and easily captured ones.

I let go my hands, and they were dried up.

For I who of old still held them together in being and subsisting by my long-suffering, withdrew the hand that defended them, and equally they were withered up like grasses, and after the manner of grass they wilted away, and like some dry weed were given as food to the fire.

This too He says elsewhere to him;

for since the impious one, having carried through to accomplishment the things determined by God to come to pass, thought great things about himself, again he heard God saying:

Shall the axe be glorified without him that hews with it? Or shall the saw be exalted without him that draws it? For just as such tools do not of themselves move to any work, but rather await the hand of him that wields them;

so also thou, he says, hast become an instrument of the divine wrath, yet thou didst not thyself work by thine own powers, but wast rather as it were an axe and a saw, appointed to serve the will of him that moves thee.

But now thy rest and thy going out I know;

and thy fury with which thou wast enraged, and thy bitterness, has come up to me. Thou boastest arrogantly, then, he says, having become a minister of the divine judgments, and thinkest perhaps within thyself that thou alone didst grow great enough to prevail over so many nations and lands, so as to burn them up and to take them.

But I know thy rest, and thy going out, and thy coming in.

By 'going out' and 'coming in' he names the way to any and every thing whatsoever that is to be done.

For nothing at all escapes the mind that knows all things.

And adding, Thy fury with which thou wast enraged, and thy bitterness has come up to me, he all but says: Thou shalt not go unpunished for having blasphemed.

For I shall by no means overlook the malice and bitterness of thine unholy devices, but, as one stirred to grief, I shall lay upon thy furies the penalty befitting them.

And I will put a muzzle in thy nostril, and a bit in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way in which thou camest. Since the Assyrian, having the irrationality most befitting a beast, was reviling God, and as it were, having leapt up into unbridled savagery, was hurling out blasphemous words against the glory of God, for this reason, and very fittingly, as though speaking of a beast, He says: I will put a muzzle in thy nostril, and a bit in thy lips — all but reining him in by the visitation of the blows, and by the magnitude of the calamities checking, as by a bridle, such outlandish undertakings.

He says, moreover, that the Assyrian will also retreat back to his own land.

For he turned back, having heard that Tharatha king of the Ethiopians had come out against him.

And yet, one might say, why on earth, when his whole army had fallen, was he alone not merely preserved, but even made his way back to his own land? For surely, surely, once he had been stripped bare of the multitude under his command, it was fitting by divine dispensation that he too should flee the hand of the destroying angel, so that he might bewail his own calamity and come to know against whom he had blasphemed, and might report the astonishing event to all the rest.

Eat this year what you have sown, and in the second year the remainder; but in the third year sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.

And those who are left behind in Judea shall become an escaped remnant;

they shall put forth root downward, and bear seed upward.

For out of Jerusalem shall come those who are left, and those who are saved out of Mount Zion.

The zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall do these things. Foretelling that the Assyrian would turn back to his own land and depart from the country of the Jews, he fixes the time at which this shall come to pass, and says:

Eat this year what you have sown, and what follows thereafter.

It is not yet clear to everyone whether the sign was in fact given to Sennacherib, or rather to Hezekiah and those about him.

Nevertheless, we shall state the meaning of what is written.

Then it must be applied either to the former or to the latter.

If we say that the sign was given to Hezekiah, we understand it thus:

Jerusalem had been besieged, and while the vast Assyrian army was attempting to burn it down and to capture it, there was a very great store of provisions gathered in, and fruits laid up, and the means by which those preserved in Jerusalem might be able to sustain their lives.

You therefore, O Hezekiah, he says, and all the people with you, eat this year what you have sown;

and in the second year, the remainder;

But in the third year sow and reap, and plant vineyards.

When the third year had scarcely begun, he went off as a fugitive, since especially those with Rabshakeh who were encircling Jerusalem and besieging it had been destroyed.

Therefore, he says, in the third year let the land at last be released for cultivation, both what suffices for the husbandmen and what suffices for the tenders of vineyards, if indeed they should choose to plant them;

that is to say, since peace and security were now presiding over her.

And that those saved and left over from the war shall abide in secure cheerfulness, he indicates by saying, as of plants, that they shall both drive their root down below and cast up seed above.

And the fact that they shall dwell securely and firmly established, beyond all fear, is given to be understood by the phrase 'having root deep down.'

And that the matter of their prosperity shall also extend to its full completion for them, he permits us to understand by the phrase 'bearing seed above.'

And he adds that the zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall do these things.

It shall come to pass, he says, when the One who is all-powerful is stirred to zeal.

But if in fact the words 'Eat this year what you have sown, and in the second year the remainder' are directed against Sennacherib, we say that those who are accustomed to make war upon countries or cities, when the siege is sometimes prolonged and the battle drawn out over a length of time, take up farming as well, that they may have food.

And in this very way it will fit for what was said to be understood of him also.

He shall not enter into this city, nor shoot an arrow against it, nor cast a shield against it, nor cast up a rampart against it;

but by the way he came, by that same way shall he return. In a certain manner he sums up the meaning of what has been said, and, cutting it short as it were in few words, sets forth plainly the running-out of the matter to its completion.

For he shall not so much as engage in war, he says, but before the battle, before weapons are brandished, before an arrow is drawn and let fly, before a shield is raised, before a rampart is cast up around her, he shall retrace the same road and hasten homeward, he says.

One must know that by 'rampart' he here means the mass of stakes driven into the trenches, sharpened to a point, so that none of the fallen might be saved.

For it was indeed very likely that they should think and say that they had been honored by God on account of the gentleness of their manner and of the spiritual comeliness of the righteousness within them.

Therefore He preserves them as God, but benefits those who have been preserved by not permitting them to be caught up in the waves of arrogance.

And the angel of the Lord went out and slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand from the camp of the Assyrians;

and when they rose early in the morning, they found all the bodies dead.

And Sennacherib king of the Assyrians turned back and departed, and dwelt in Nineveh;

and while he was worshipping in the house of Asarach his patriarch, Adramelech and Sharezer his sons struck him with swords;

and they escaped into Armenia, and Achordan his son reigned in his place. The end of what was expected has been usefully added to the things promised, so that the God of all might not appear to speak falsely.

The general, then, that is to say Sennacherib, though exceedingly insolent, is struck with astonishment at the marvel, and was scarcely brought back home, and having retreated utterly stripped of the army he had dragged along, dwelt piteously, he says, in Nineveh.

then finally the promises made by God were brought to fulfillment.

For he fell while worshipping in his own house a certain patriarch, clearly one of his fathers or forefathers according to the flesh.

For it is the custom of those who have once gone astray to render this devotion not only to the unclean spirits, but indeed to whatever dead persons they might choose.

For having once fallen away from the straight path, they make their headlong course toward whatever seems to them, without any testing whatsoever.

he says that those who killed him were his own [sons];

for when a divine sentence has been pronounced against certain persons, those who suffer this would be utterly and in every way imperilled, and would fall in with their own kin as with the bitterest enemies.

Having as pledge of their safety neither the kinship of blood, nor the disposition and diligence that children owe to their fathers; but rather, by the very means through which they were likely to be saved when in peril, being cast down by these same means into the pits of destruction.

And these things, so far as pertains to the plain sense of the history, I think have not been inelegantly stated.

For the holy city, that is Zion, or Jerusalem, would be a type of the Church of Christ, of the truer Zion;

and this city the enemies of the truth sometimes, or rather almost always, besiege — that is, the inventors of unholy heresies;

and they besiege it not alone, but hiring, as it were, the worldly powers as well — the spiritual Sennacherib inspiring them to this, clearly Satan, who as it were sends forth those under his hand and those accustomed to serve his perversities, who, when they come to do battle against those who preside over the truth, prating against the glory of God, shall on the whole gain nothing worthy of any account.

For the besieged shall keep silence, and for what reason, the blessed Paul will teach us, saying:

Not to wrangle about words to no profit; and again, A man that is a heretic, after a first and second admonition, reject, knowing that such a one is perverted. For to those who have once wholly turned aside to deception and imposture, and are held fast by falsehood, the word even of those accustomed to be of benefit is perhaps superfluous.

Whenever, then, the enemies of the truth either promise honors and repose, like the accursed Rabshakeh, or threaten dangers and battles, one must draw near to God and lay hold of the help from above alone.

For the right hand from above, all-prevailing, will suffice both to save those accustomed to walk uprightly, and for the destruction of those who set themselves in opposition.

For He will drive them off, employing certain ineffable mighty powers, and will deliver from war Zion the holy and thus spotless, that is, the Church.

For the gates of Hades shall not prevail against her.

And it came to pass in that time that Hezekiah was sick unto death.

And Isaiah the prophet, son of Amoz, came to him and said to him:

Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.

And Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord, saying:

Remember, O Lord, how I have walked before You in truth, with a true heart, and have done what is pleasing in Your sight.

And Hezekiah wept with a great weeping. Now Hezekiah was among those most conspicuous for love of God, and who had gained a renowned glory on this account.

For he pulled down altars, demolished sacred precincts, indeed burned what was in the shrines, cut down the groves, and never ceased serving God with sacrifices according to the law.

And he prevailed over the barbarians neighboring Judea, so as to bring many of them under tribute and taxes.

And he built cities as well, and, in a word, having become filled to overflowing with the highest renown, was deservedly admired.

But, as the children of the Hebrews say, he was carried a little beyond what was fitting, and thought great things concerning himself, and fell into the snares of arrogance.

For this cause God stretched out over him the rod that springs from love;

For whom the Lord loves, He says, He disciplines, and scourges every son whom He receives. For He strikes as a father who loves his child, transferring him to better things, and drawing away from baser things those who have been caught in them.

For just as those physicians who are especially keen and most skilled either melt away the putrefied parts of bodies with fire or cut them with the knife, not being accustomed to do this out of hatred toward the sufferer, but rather being overcome by mercy toward him;

so the God of all shears away the harm of the diseases within us with measured chastisements, that we may not be condemned together with the world, according to what is written.

The king Hezekiah, then, fell into sickness, and indeed one that had come to the utmost limit of all evil;

for he was in the gravest peril, as by the voice of the prophet;

For he shall die, He says, and it is fitting that he set his own house in order.

Now this was said not by One who was ignorant that he would live and would escape the peril of his sickness by the mercy that comes from Him, but rather by One who was calling and spurring him on to prayer;

so that, having asked, he might receive mercy from Him.

For He has compassion on those who are loved, and to His true ones He graciously grants the finding of what they long for, and He receives the words of their supplications.

For Hezekiah prayed, saying:

Remember, O Lord, how I walked before You in truth, with a true heart, and did what was pleasing in Your sight.

Fair is the boldness of the righteous;

for they all but ask a recompense for what they have done, and the fruits of their true devotion.

For the God of all rejoices in those who have lived according to His law, and He readily assents to those who preserve an excellent manner of life, whenever He sees them in tears and weaving toil together with their prayer.

And the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying:

Go and say to Hezekiah:

I have heard the voice of your prayer, and I have seen your tears;

behold, I add to your span fifteen years, and I will save you from the hand of the king of the Assyrians, and I will shield this city.

And this shall be the sign to you from the Lord, that God will do this thing which He has spoken.

Behold, I turn back the shadow of the steps by which the sun had gone down, the ten steps.

And the sun went back up the ten steps by which the shadow had gone down. No long time passed in between, but at once God assented and received the entreaties of the righteous man.

For as it is written in the books of Kings, before the blessed prophet had gone out of the king's court, the word of God came to him.

So then, returning at once, he made the words spoken by Him manifest and clear.

For he said that He had heard his voice—that is, that He had accepted his prayer and looked upon his tear;

and He grants him at once the power to leap over the terror of death, and He marks out the measure of the added life, so that, looking to the end—and disposed to know that in every way and altogether he shall die—he might render inadmissible to his mind the disease of pride.

And He promises that, just as He had earlier announced, He will render him mightier than the hand of the Assyrians, and will shield Jerusalem.

And He was doing these things, putting away from their midst every kind of despondency, and restoring by the good things that flow from His gentleness the one who had grieved exceedingly.

For He who has smitten will bind you up.

For the God of all is kind and full of pity.

And He confirms it unto faith, that the things promised will come to their fulfillment, by the sign concerning the sun, according to the turning-back of the shadow that then occurred upon the ten steps.

And they say that Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah, by some contrivance and craft had caused certain steps to be made in his own house, such as would tell the hours and were wont to measure out the course of the sun by the running-down of the shadow that fell upon them.

So then, that Hezekiah was about to return to life, God made manifest by the sun's shadow going backward and by the day being stretched out to an unaccustomed measure of hours.

When he had fallen sick, and had risen up from his sickness. I said in the height of my days, I shall go in the gates of Hades;

I shall leave behind the remaining years.

No longer shall I see the salvation of God upon the earth, no longer shall I see a man from among my kindred.

I have left behind the remainder of my life;

it went out and departed from me, like one who strikes his tent after pitching it; my spirit came to be within me, like a weaver's web when she draws near to cut it off.

On that day I was given over, until the morning, as to a lion; thus He crushed my bones;

for from the day until the night I was given over to him. It is necessary to say that thing before all else;

for the Seventy have set down in this passage the phrase 'in the height of my days,' whereas certain others of the translators have rendered it 'in the middle of my days.'

But for my own part I think that the words of the Seventy have been set down very sensibly indeed.

For the holy city had been besieged, when Rabshakeh and those with him had set round about it the multitude of the Assyrians, greater than could be numbered.

But God promised through the voice of Isaiah that He would do marvelous things, and would deliver those in peril, and would drive the tyrant away from Judea, and that he would die on reaching his own home.

So then, when all these things had come to their fulfillment, at the very time which the God of all had named, the vauntings of Hezekiah's kingship were about to be lifted up to a height.

'I therefore said within myself,' he says, 'that in the time of my glory—that is, in the very lifting-up of my days—I shall be in the gates of Hades, and I shall leave behind the remaining years.'

Then to these things he further adds the things by which it comes about that those who are gripped by sickness, and who behold death not far off, must converse with the ultimate terrors.

And these are the words: 'No longer shall I see the salvation that is from God, nor indeed shall I see a man from among my kindred;

I have let go the remainder of my life, it has departed from me;

and I have become like a tent being taken down, and like the web of a weaving woman—that is, of one working, or rather weaving, and now drawing near to cut it off.'

Then he says that 'through the whole night and day my bones were given over as it were to a lion crushing them.'

And who is the lion? Either the burden of the sickness, and death all but roaring as in the likeness of a beast, and threatening its onset—that is, the unrelenting terror of expecting to die.

For fear together with despondency crushes the soul, and shatters all its strength.

Like a swallow, so shall I cry, and like a dove, so shall I meditate.

For my eyes have failed with looking to the height of heaven toward the Lord, who delivered me, and took away the anguish of my soul.

O Lord, concerning her also it was declared to You, and You stirred up my breath, and being comforted I lived.

For You chose my soul, that it should not perish, and You cast behind me all my sins. Lifting up his songs of thanksgiving, he pledges to imitate what the little birds are wont to sing sweetly, and to make his hymns without ceasing.

And he says that, having lifted up the eyes of his mind toward God, he has been saved, and has escaped both the anguish of his soul and death itself.

'For You raised up,' he says, 'my life, and I lived, and You preserved mine, that it should not perish, and You cast behind me all my sins.'

Now this is not the mark of one sick with arrogance, but of one who has already recognized his own nature, and knows accurately that we are all liable to many sins, and that, unless God should be willing to save by His mercy, no one shall boast that he has a pure heart, nor indeed shall anyone speak with confidence that he is clean from sin.

Therefore in the good things which may come to us from God, let there be glory rendered by us to Him as to One who has been unmindful of the things for which it were fitting that we be holily chastised.

'For wise,' he says, 'are those who acknowledge their own condition.' For those in Hades shall not praise You, nor shall the dead bless You, nor shall those in Hades hope for Your mercy.

The living shall bless You, in the manner that I also do;

of my salvation, and I shall not cease blessing You with the psaltery all the days of my life. The words spoken through the voice of the one who sings would carry the same meaning as those set forth above;

What profit is there in my blood, in my going down to corruption? Shall the dust confess to You, or declare Your wondrous works? For those who have once died, and have become captives at the gates of Hades, shall perhaps thereafter cease even from glorifying.

And they would add nothing at all to what they had wrought, but rather they will remain in the state in which they were left, and will await the time of the universal judgment.

'Therefore the living,' he says, 'having also the power to do this good thing, whenever they enjoy well-being, shall bless You in the manner that I also do.'

And he promises to beget children, who shall declare the righteousness of God.

And some say that he is announcing a choir, and that he will establish in the divine temple the sweetest-voiced psalm-singers.

But others, applying their mind to still more hidden things, say that Hezekiah, having thought high thoughts, perhaps supposed that he had a kingdom without end and a life itself unceasing;

whence they say that, although he was in the fourteenth year of his reign, he is not seen to have taken thought that he ought to beget children;

having therefore learned the end of his own life, he takes thought for those who would succeed him, and says 'children,' and adds that 'They shall declare the righteousness of the Lord'; and in this his word fell short of the truth.

For Manasseh proved to be impious and a wretch; yet as far as it concerns the intention of the one who begot him, he too was pious and a herald of the glory of God.

And Isaiah said to Hezekiah:

Take a cake of figs, and pound it, and make a plaster, and lay it on, and you shall be whole.

This shall be the sign, that I shall go up to the house of God. In the fourth book of Kings it is written that the occasion of Hezekiah's sickness was a grievous and intractable ulcer, such as to baffle even the very skills of the physicians.

But since God had once granted life to the righteous man, and had commanded that the disease be shaken off through those means by which it was likely — or rather beyond all doubt certain — that the wound would tend toward an increase of pain, it was through these very means that he was to be delivered.

For the hand of the Almighty is ever a worker of wonders;

and the manner of His help comes through things unlooked for;

and it is plain that this help is from Him.

'Take, then,' He says, 'a cake pressed from figs, apply it as a plaster, and you shall be made whole.'

And from this, as I said, one might have expected to suffer harm, that is, that the wound would be aggravated in some way.

But since it was God who was giving the command, the exceedingly discerning Hezekiah treats the matter as bearing the force of a sign, and says: 'If indeed I am to be healed by a cake of figs, this shall be for me a sure and true sign that I shall go up into the house of God, there to sacrifice to Him, and to pray — the sickness now abating, and every pain, as it were, laid to rest within me.'

'At that time Merodach the son of Baladan, king of Babylonia, sent letters and ambassadors and gifts to Hezekiah;

for he had heard that he had been sick unto death, and had recovered.'

'And Hezekiah rejoiced over them with a great joy;

and he showed them the house of Nechotha, and of the myrrh-oil and the spices, and of the ointment, and of the silver and the gold, and all the storehouses of the vessels of his treasury, and everything that was in his treasures; and there was nothing which Hezekiah did not show them in his house.' Now the sacred Scripture says that, when Sennacherib had been slain by his own sons, Nechordan his son reigned in his stead.

But as it seems, when that one had been removed from among the living, Merodach the son of Baladan had inherited the thrones of the kingdom.

This man is said to have sent to Hezekiah gifts together with letters and ambassadors;

and what the occasion of this was, it is necessary to state.

'For he heard,' it says, 'that he had been sick unto death, and had recovered.'

That Hezekiah had fallen sick, I say, and had again inclined to run back to full health, astonished the Babylonian; yet it was above all that great and truly extraordinary sign —

for by an unspeakable and God-befitting nod the sun was commanded to run backward and to walk in reverse, so that the shadow also went up the ten steps.

And the so-called wise men among the Babylonians and Chaldeans, though exceedingly meagre in true knowledge — even while claiming for themselves expertise concerning the course of the sun and the risings and settings of the stars — did not, in all likelihood, fail to notice the backward return and the unaccustomed length of that day.

And it was indeed most likely that the power of the sign was noised abroad among those throughout the whole earth, and that it had been given for the confirmation of God's promise — the promise, I mean, that had been made to Hezekiah.

And in another way too we say that Merodach marvelled at what had marvellously befallen those who, together with Rabshakeh, had besieged Jerusalem — those whom in a single night the smiting hand of an angel consumed, so that in the morning all their bodies were found dead.

The ambassadors came, therefore, since Merodach had been filled with wonder at Hezekiah's righteousness on account of these very divine signs that surpass all telling.

For it was possible thus to benefit others also by declaring the things they had learned;

yet this he did not do, but was rather carried away into human boastfulness, and ordered his own glory not from the things by which he had been honoured by God, but from the wealth belonging to his kingdom, and to these things he confined the measure of the renown that was in him.

'For he showed them,' it says, 'the house of Nechotha;'

and Nechotha is interpreted as 'of the aromatic spices,' and of the myrrh-oil, and of the ointment, and of the silver and the gold, and 'all the storehouses of the vessels of his treasury' — that is, of his abundance.

For 'gaza' is said to be a Persian word, and it signifies wealth, or abundance.

'And Isaiah the prophet came to king Hezekiah, and said to him:

What do these men say, and from where have they come to you? And Hezekiah said:

They have come to me from a far country, from Babylon.