Commentary on Isaiah 1.0.1–1.1.6

The word of the holy prophets is always obscure, but it is filled with hidden meanings and is in labour with the foretelling of the divine mysteries to us. For “Christ is the end of the law” and of the prophets, as it is written. I say, then, that those who wish to make plain things so subtle and enigmatic must hasten to survey the breadth of the contemplations with the eye of the mind, and to do so with great good sense: rendering on the one hand the exactness of the history, and on the other the spiritual contemplation, so that the benefit may come to readers from every side, and the explanation of the sense of the text may appear lacking in nothing. I know, indeed, that some have written on these things before me and have composed long discourses about them; and this, I think, is enough to give others no ignoble pretext for hesitating, and to persuade them to choose silence rather than to add nothing new to what others have said, repeating the same things instead and going through the same contemplations. But since, even if this should happen, no harm at all would follow, and since through the agreement of the many the hearers are confirmed in the truth, I persuade myself even now to rise above hesitation, believing that sweat and labour in good studies is better than the idleness of sleep, and not wholly giving up the hope that God will sometimes grant … a path in the contemplations. For it is written, “Your commandment is exceedingly broad.”

The blessed Isaiah, then, prophesies in the times of the reigns of Ozias, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Come, let us recall the times of each … For from this we shall know that the word of the prophecy fits, and is most appropriate to, what was done in each time. Ozias, also called Ochozias, was a pious man, and he advanced in glory and strength so far as to master the nations bordering Judea, to impose tribute on many and bring them under his own sceptre as by necessity, to build cities, and to take others and join them to the borders of the land of the Jews. Then he suffered something human. From too much luxury, and overcome by the eminence of his fame, he grew somewhat high-minded, and, seized by the disease of arrogance, rose up even against the divine law itself. For he thought he ought to crown himself also with the honours of the divine priesthood. He tried to force his way into the divine temple and himself to burn incense to God and perform unlawfully what the law prescribes. For this reason he was at once struck with leprosy and was utterly dishonoured; for under the law one overcome by the disease of leprosy is unclean. Then Jotham, his son, succeeded to the kingdom of Ozias, a God-loving man, except that “he did not remove,” it says, “the high places,” but those of Israel still sacrificed to the works of their own hands, overshadowing mountains and hills, as Hosea says, “because shade is good.”

When Jotham died, Ahaz succeeded to the sceptre, a most abominable and God-hated man, full of a wickedness that had reached its extreme. He even shut the divine temple, and did not allow the God of all to be honoured with the sacrifices of the law; he stopped the customary feasts of the Jews, set up altars in every place in Jerusalem, and commanded that handmade things be worshipped and the host of heaven served; and he even passed his own children through fire, that is, burned them as a sacrifice to the unclean demons; and, to put it in a word, there was no form of impiety he left untried. Then after him Hezekiah reigned, a pious and God-loving man, a champion of righteousness, zealous for every good thing, and a doer of the divine will. He commanded that everything contrary to the transgressions of Ahaz be done and prevail. For he opened the doors of the temple, then ordered sacrifices and libations to be offered to God, and God to be honoured with the rites of the law; and he is seen also to have renewed the law of the Passover after a long time. He pulled down the sacred precincts and the altars and the handmade images, and he ordered the false prophets and the bands of enchanters to be still; and he was a good man in the eyes of God. Since, then, in the times of the reigns of the kings just named, the God of all was at times provoked to anger when Israel worshipped idols, and at times softened toward gentleness when it was reshaped toward piety by the reasonableness of its ruler, the word of the prophecy is mixed accordingly. Sometimes it utters very great threats, since Israel was acting impiously, but it also brings in a word of promise of good things. Everywhere it remembers the redemption through Christ, and says that in due time Israel will be sent away from its close relation with God, while the multitude of the nations will be received, justified through faith in Christ. So it seems to me to crown the blessed prophet Isaiah very well, not with the grace of prophecy alone, but also with the honours of the apostles. For he is at one and the same time a prophet and an apostle, and he will compose the words of his writing as one not without a share in the brightness of the gospel preaching.

“Vision which Isaiah son of Amos saw, which he saw against Judea and against Jerusalem in the reign of Ozias and Jotham and Ahaz and [Hezekiah].”

I do not think anyone would be mistaken in saying of the holy prophets that they not only received knowledge of things to come, as the Holy Spirit made the matter bright within them and sounded it into their minds, but also sometimes became spectators of the events themselves. The blessed prophet Isaiah, then, seems to have beheld with the eyes of the mind the sufferings that would come upon Judea in due time: on the one hand the phalanxes of the enemy ravaging the land, on the other the cities made desolate and houses set on fire, and all that enemies do by the laws of war. Therefore it is written at the head of the prophecy: “Vision which Isaiah son of Amos saw, against Judea and against Jerusalem.” And he usefully notes the times of the kings, so that God may be seen to speak through the prophet what suits the ways of each.

“Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken: Sons I have begotten and raised up, but they have rejected me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey the manger of its lord; but Israel has not known me, and my people has not understood me.”

What the matter is, what the reason, and what it may mean, we must look into. The blessed prophet calls heaven and earth to witness, as it were, and in doing this he does not act without God; yet he says the words are not his own but rather God’s, making plain by this to the hearers that they will by all means come to fulfilment. For it is impossible for God to speak falsely. At the same time there is this too, as I think. Since he was about to foretell to Judea and … sufferings beyond everything and incurable calamities, he knew that those to whom the word was addressed would by all means be stirred to anger. So he says that the Lord spoke such things to them, very skilfully deflecting the rage of the impious and as it were shaming their unjust anger. For if he was taken as a mediator and servant and ferried across the words from above and from God, how could anyone justly be angry with him? Or rather, how would the impious deeds done in anger not be against God who had spoken? Very fittingly, then, he calls heaven and earth to witness. For since he was about to bring accusations against Israel, he wants the angels in heaven to know, and the whole earth, the ways of its impiety,

so that no one may think that he was moved in vain, or rashly, over small and quite trivial matters …, to cast off the beloved people, the people set apart as his portion and long ago rescued with very great strength from the greed of the Egyptians. For he had pity on it as wronged beyond what was reasonable and beyond what befitted the fathers … and they were bitterly afflicted, as God hurled every kind of torment upon them. As, then, the taking up of those of Israel became most conspicuous, so he wants the manner of their casting off not to be unknown. And if some should wish the elements themselves to be called by the voice of the prophet, the force of the meaning would not miss the fitting sense, for those who consider the following. Israel was redeemed, as I said, from the impiety of the Egyptians through Moses. But when Pharaoh, impiously opposing the commands of God, said, “I do not know the Lord, and I will not send Israel away,” creation armed itself together with its own Master against those who hated him. From above, out of heaven, came very many conspicuous signs, and very many likewise, and not unmarvellous, on the earth itself. Heaven sent down the hail, and the earth cast up frogs, as it is written; and the dust, scattering and darkening the air, [brought] sores … So, as if the very elements had laboured almost in vain for those who were redeemed, he says: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken.”

Let us approach the sense of the text in another way as well. Those of Israel, dishonouring the instruction given through the law and making light of the saving teachings, abandoned the one God, who alone is God by nature, and offered their worship to the unclean demons on mountains and hills; in the well-wooded ravines they burned incense and bowed down to the works of their own hands. The God of all was indignant at this, and very rightly, and he said to one of the holy prophets: “Let the hills hear your voice. Hear, O hills, the judgment of the Lord, and you ravines, foundations of the earth, for the Lord has a judgment with his people, and he will contend with Israel.” We do not say that the Lord’s judgment through the prophet’s voice was against the mountains and hills; rather, he was contending against the very impiety of Israel committed on the mountains and hills and in the glens. For it was being convicted of having been impious beyond measure and of having built altars and precincts there to the unclean demons. Since, then, those of Israel, disregarding reverence for God, worshipped the host of heaven (I mean the sun and the moon), and, taking material from the earth (I mean wood and stones), made idols for themselves as each thought fit, he very skilfully brings heaven and earth into the midst, as it were for the conviction and proof of their impiety in these things, saying: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken.”

In yet another way: we say that there are many fathers in heaven, the spiritual ones, of course, and many likewise on earth, some according to the flesh and some spiritual. To all these fathers, above and below, honours are offered by the children under their hand. Those so honoured rejoice greatly, and there is none among them who does not find it altogether hard to bear when his children are ungrateful. The God of all, having suffered just this, calls to witness the fathers in heaven and on earth, saying: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken: Sons I have begotten and raised up, but they have rejected me.” For Israel, received through grace and counted worthy of the forbearance fitting for sons, is said to have been begotten by God, although the true and spiritual regeneration has been brought to completion for us, clearly through faith in Christ. For we have been born of water and spirit; and to those of old a spirit of slavery was given, even if it was firstborn and was named a people.

But to us God has granted both the name and the Spirit of adoption. “Because you are sons,” he says, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” “For I have begotten sons,” he says; and not this only, but also “I have raised them up,” that is, I have reared them. For Israel was not without help after this, nor bereft of love from God. It was reared like a son by a truly child-loving and most affectionate father. “For he gave them the bread of heaven,” it says; “man ate the bread of angels.” It was nourished in another way too, to spiritual health, through the wisdom of the law and the teachings of the prophets, which led it skilfully to the knowledge of the truth, that is, of Christ. Paul at any rate writes, “so that the law has become our tutor to Christ.” What, then, would be the manner of the rejection? It turned to wanting to serve those who are not gods by nature; and it was sick in another way too, with much unruliness, and, going still further in absurdity, it did not imitate even the goodwill of the irrational animals, which they have toward their masters. Therefore he says: “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey the manger of its lord; but Israel has not known me, and my people has not understood me.” For if a man buys an ox, he will certainly have it most useful for the work of the farm, now to plough the land if he chooses, now to thresh on the floor and separate the chaff from the wheat. And if someone buys a donkey, it too is called to obedience by natural impulses, and it makes its submission a kind of return for what is laid in its manger. It carries burdens willingly and shares its master’s labour. So much for these. But wise Israel, schooled in the law to know what is profitable, having fully learned the glory of God through many admirable signs, falls behind the donkey and the ox, and, worsted by the good sense of the irrational beasts, has not known its master. Very well does he say “has not known” and “has not understood.” For although it had learned, as I said, the glory of God, by turning aside into an unbridled departure it became like one who had never known. For if this were not truly so, it would not have said to the wood, “You are my God,” and to the stone, “You begot me.” Hence “heaven was astonished at this,” he says, “and shuddered exceedingly, says the Lord. For my people has done two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug for themselves broken cisterns, which will not be able to hold water.” It would also fit Christ himself to say of them, “But Israel has not known, and my people has not understood me.” For the redemption of old also came about through him, and the law was laid down “until the time of correction,” as it is written. But since it was impossible for the shadow to justify us, the only-begotten Word of God appeared to us with flesh, to justify by faith those who come to him and to set them free from death and sin. But Israel did not understand him, though he said plainly: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”

“Woe, sinful nation, people full of sins, evil seed, lawless sons! You have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel.”

Having described very well the manner of the rejection, and having shown the greatness of the folly within them, he at once changes his speech, partly to lamentation over them and partly to rebuke. It would most of all suit the person of the prophet, I think, almost to wail over them, and out of great love for God to rise up against them and say: “Woe, sinful nation, people full of sins, evil seed, lawless sons.” For it follows by all means that those who choose to reject the God who gives us all good things have a sin that cannot be washed away and are loaded with terrible charges from which there is no escape. For rejection always somehow suffers from apostasy, the change to anything whatever … Therefore he at once added, “You have forsaken the Lord.” He calls them an “evil seed” not as being, or made, such by nature, but because evil sons came from evil fathers, as in the saying of John; for to the scribes and Pharisees themselves, coming to the baptism of repentance, he said, “Brood of vipers.” For the first fathers, those of the beginning, were confessedly holy, but those after them were utterly abominable. To those, then, who were reared in the customs of their fathers and emulated an ancestral impiety, [he says] “evil seed” … the Lord, and they did not cease provoking the Holy One of Israel, that is, Christ. For they did not understand the mystery concerning him. Therefore they have remained in the fullness of their own sins. And Christ said this to them: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.” Israel, then, is full of sins, and has come at last to such wickedness that it is fitting for it to be punished. For they too have filled up the measure of their own fathers, according to the Saviour’s saying. For up to a certain time and measure God bears the contempt of offenders; but when the sin has come to the fullness known to him, he brings on the penalties and punishes the disobedient in proportion to their offences. And so the prophet Zechariah, having seen a measure, asked the blessed angel what this measure was that was going out; and he said to him, “This is their iniquity in all the earth.” Israel, then, has remained with its sin not wiped away, and it did not want to receive the cleansing through Christ, but … having forsaken him besides, by not accepting faith in him, and by saying further, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him,” and, “We have no king but Caesar.”

“Why should you be struck any more, adding lawlessness? Every

head is in pain, and every heart in grief. From the feet to the head there is no soundness in them, neither wound, nor bruise, nor festering blow; there is no plaster to apply, nor oil, nor bandages.”

He speaks of the ranks of the Jews, small and great, I mean, and those understood to be in between, as of one body. He seems to call “head” the one adorned with the honours of kingship; and “heart” the sacred and chosen tribe, that is, the Levitical, as being instructed in the law and having care of the whole body. “For the lips of a priest,” it says, “shall guard knowledge, and they shall seek the law from his mouth.” And he says the “feet” are those in the last place, who have, as it were, been allotted the lowest rank among the people. Since, then, the land of the Jews had already endured intolerable misery, ravaged now by the Babylonians and now by the neighbouring nations, and was about to be burned by Roman hands because of its impiety toward Christ, and their kingdom was to be overturned (for foreigners ruled them), and the works of the priesthood were to cease among them, the sacrifices overturned, the temple pulled down, and there being no altars, “neither priesthood nor manifestations,” as the prophet’s saying has it, therefore he says: “Why should you be struck any more, adding lawlessness?” You have paid harsh and successive penalties from God in blows and torment, and yet you are no less despisers and companions of lawlessness. Why, then, should you be struck any more? What measure of torment will suffice for your correction? What terrible thing at all will be brought upon you that has not already happened? “Every head is in pain, and every heart in grief, from the feet to the head.” For those who had received royal honour suffered not a little, unable to withstand the enemies’ [forces, while the priests could no longer offer], as I said, the sacrifices. And the feet too were struck, that is, those last and lowest: on the one hand consumed by the swords of the enemy, on the other worn down by famines and failures of crops, and brought to the experience of unmixed misery. Therefore he says, “there is no plaster to apply, nor oil, nor bandages.” For when blows that are moderate fall upon the human body, and the injury reaches one limb, then the discoveries of the skill of those who know how to heal are useful, such as a plaster, bandages, and anointing with oil that relaxes what is strained. But when the whole body is sick and is being destroyed in itself, what manner of treatment helps it? For the greatness of the disease altogether overcomes the power of the remedies of art. Incurable, therefore, the multitude of the Jews, having fallen into wounds and suffering unbearably the effects of wrath, perished utterly, no means of help availing them. Therefore the divinely inspired [prophets] also said: “[We treated Babylon,] and she was not healed; let us forsake her.” For [Jerusalem] is likened to the Babylon of the nations, although it was named the holy city, chiefly because of its impiety toward Christ; or else because [it did not fall short of Babylon in] handmade [idols], so as in no way to yield to Babylon, which was even named “a land of carved images.”

“Your land is desolate, your cities burned with fire; your country, strangers devour it before you, and it has been made desolate, overthrown by foreign peoples.”

He makes clear what seemed to have been said more obscurely than it should. For what would “there is no plaster to apply, nor oil, nor bandages” mean … saying that their [land is desolate], and that the cities and [villages] are burned, so that almost all of it has been overturned from its foundations. Judea, then, was captured very many times, by Assyrians and Egyptians, Syrians and Moabites, Idumeans and [others]; but having suffered little, and sometimes having fallen into moderate calamities, it recovered again with God’s help, the one who struck it also healing it. But it perished utterly after the Saviour’s cross, when Vespasian and Titus ravaged it. For then it happened that the cities were burned, the whole country was emptied of its inhabitants and fell under the hand of the conquerors; and most wretched of all was the “before you,” that is, while they looked on and grieved, the land was under others, being devoured and consumed in a way. For to hear of it only, while absent, might perhaps have made their grief bearable; but to see it while present, and to be unable to help at all, being subdued as it were to calamities they could not escape, holds an unbearable and very great pain. We must not, then, provoke the Holy One of Israel, lest we fall among visible and invisible enemies, who bring us down to the passions of dishonour and overthrow every stronghold of the mind that is in us, so as to graze down the wretched soul, as it were, and consume all its fruits, that it may be dry and dishonoured and be found a land that bears thorns, “whose end is burning,” in the words of the blessed Paul.

“The daughter of Zion will be left like a booth in a vineyard, and like a watchman’s hut in a cucumber field, [like a besieged city].”

… the matter is terrible; for how is it not worthy of lament and wailing? She who was of old a daughter and honoured with such a name, living as under a most affectionate father, God, drunk with the forbearance and love that came from him, crowned by him with glories …, and mastering those round about her, the all-blessed and renowned Zion, that is, Jerusalem, “will be left,” he says. That is, she will be desolate. She will remain bare both of the strength of the one who saves her and of those who live in her. She will be left “like a booth in a vineyard, and like a watchman’s hut in a cucumber field, and like a besieged city.” For those who guard the grapes, while they are still [on the vine], take every possible precaution, frighten off the robbers who want to cut them, and drive away the kinds of wild beasts. It is the custom of the watchmen or owners of cucumber fields to do this too. But when the grapes have been gathered and trodden, and the cucumbers taken out of the fields, the watchmen’s care relaxes, and they give free entry to any who wish to glean what is left. The prophetic word teaches us that something of this kind happened to wretched Zion as well. While she still had the fruits of righteousness, God counted her worthy of safety and guarding and all forbearance. For he said, “I will be to her, says the Lord, a wall of fire round about, and I will be for glory in her midst.” And the blessed David sings, “Behold, he who guards Israel will not slumber nor sleep.” But since Israel, though it had become the vineyard of the Lord Sabaoth, [was planted] and counted worthy of a hedge, bore thorns, it was handed over by God to those who are used to doing wrong. “For I will take away its hedge,” he says, “and it shall be for plunder; and I will pull down its wall, and it shall be for trampling; and I will abandon my vineyard, and it shall not be pruned nor dug.” Therefore “the boar from the forest ravaged it, and the wild donkey grazed upon it.” And that God abandoned the vineyard, and that it has been forsaken by him, the Saviour teaches when he says: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I wanted to gather your children together as a bird gathers her young under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left to you desolate.”