Commentary on Isaiah 2.1.5–2.1.12

For so the divine John says somewhere that he saw the Spirit coming down from heaven upon Christ. Just as we became joint heirs of the evils that befell the first-formed man, so we shall be partakers of what was given by the economy to … the second first-fruits of our race, that is, to Christ. That the Spirit did not work in him a partial grace, as with the Spirit that is said to rest on the saints, but that it was the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in his own flesh as in his own temple (and not, of course, a soulless flesh, but one animated by a rational soul), the prophet will make plain by saying: “The spirit of the fear of God will fill him.” And he has given to the one Spirit a manifold operation. For there is not one Spirit of wisdom and another of understanding, or of counsel and strength and the rest; but just as the Word from God the Father is one, yet is named in many ways according to his operation (for he is life and light and power), so you will understand it of the Holy Spirit too: being one, it is conceived in many forms and operates so. Indeed the most wise Paul, enumerating for us the kinds of various gifts, says: “All these the one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each individually as it wills.”

“He will not judge according to reputation, nor convict according to speech; but he will judge the lowly with judgment and convict the lowly of the earth, and he will strike the earth with the word of his mouth, and with breath through his lips he will destroy the impious. And he will be girded with righteousness about his loins, and wrapped in truth about his sides.”

Having said very well beforehand that Emmanuel will be born in due time, he usefully adds also the marks by which he would be known, from the God-befitting virtue that is in him and the brilliance of his works. For it was necessary, truly necessary, to persuade beforehand, through prophetic prediction, those who were to receive faith in him, who he is, of what kind, and with what deeds he will come. Suppose someone wishes to point out one of us to people who do not know him: he paints him in words from what he knows him to be, and says of him that his hair is not thick but moderately thin, that his eye is bright and has a smiling glance, that his nose is slender, and goes through the other parts of the body. In the same way, I think, the blessed prophet too, since his discourse is about the Word who became man for us, enumerates the signs of his God-befitting pre-eminence and authority, and says of him: “He will not judge according to reputation, nor convict according to speech.” This is God-befitting and suited to the highest nature. For not to look to human reputation, and to make the judgment in each case right, undistorted, and wholly blameless, how would that not befit the nature that is queen of all?

For he does not know how to look to the face, nor does he count worthy of honour or regard one adorned with the trappings of wealth or with dignities when he wishes to take advantage of others; rather he condemns altogether and holds accursed the worker of lawlessness. And he will not convict according to speech; and in what way this must be understood, it is necessary to explain too. Very many of us count worthy of honour those who are willing to praise us, even if they are not good in their ways, and as a kind of reward for their flattery we sometimes even court them and hold back the rebukes due to them. But one would not see our Lord and God Jesus Christ doing this. On the contrary, he often brought those who chose to speak fair words, though they were not truly good, by sharp rebukes to choose to live more soberly. For once some of those called Herodians came to him (these were agents of the tax-gatherers), and then, preparing a bitter deceit against him, they said: “Teacher, we know that you teach the way of God in truth, and you do not care about anyone; for you do not look at the face of men. Is it lawful to give taxes to Caesar, or not?” And he answered: “Why do you test me, hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax.” See, then, how he rebukes; and he rebuked, and not according to their speech. For they expected to be praised, perhaps having practised elegant speech; but he unexpectedly called them testers and hypocrites. So “he will not judge according to reputation,” that is, he will not be a judge who shows partiality, “nor will he convict according to speech.” For he will not bear, he says, those who have chosen to think unholy things but put on elegant speech like a mask of deceit and guile. This he says plainly: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” And again: “Many will say to me on that day” (the day of judgment, plainly), “‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and do many mighty works?’ But then,” he says, “I will say to them: ‘Truly, I say to you, I never knew you.’”

What else besides does the impartial judge do? “He will judge the lowly with judgment”; that is, he will not overlook any of the lowly, but will bring forth a right and blameless judgment for him. “And he will likewise convict the lowly of the earth.” For just as he will not blush before the face of the rich man who wishes to take advantage, but will give a just judgment for the lowly, so too, he says, if anyone of those in humble and mean circumstances of life is carried outside the divine laws and is caught giving himself up to charges of injustice, he too will be convicted. For it is written: “You shall not pity a poor man in judgment.” For just as conspicuousness will not free from the charges the one who is in wealth, pre-eminence, and power, … the meanness of humble and lowly circumstances, nor will it free from the need to be punished the one weighed down by poverty, and the

… he adds to these also some others of the most God-befitting dignities, which he says belong to Christ the Saviour of all, since he was not a mere man like us but, as I said, the only-begotten Word of God made flesh and become man. What, then, will he do? “He will strike the earth,” he says, “with the word of his mouth.” And what earth? Above all, the earth he would curse. But what is said would also be true of the whole earth. For he cursed the whole earth, that is, human nature, when he said in Adam: “You are earth, and to earth you will depart.” And no less, besides this, he cursed Judea, when its inhabitants acted outrageously toward him. For he said: “Jerusalem, who kill the prophets and stone those sent to her, how often I wished to gather your children as a bird gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is left to you.” In “your house is left to you” the suffering of the abandonment that befell it is shown. Abandoned by him, it was consumed by war and fire and by the hands of those who destroyed it.

Another sign besides, and an effect of the highest power, is “to destroy the impious with breath through his lips.” For he rebuked the unclean spirits; and as far as the human side was concerned, the voice was formed through mouth and lips, but by the ineffable power of the Spirit the multitude of demons was shattered. “And he will be,” he says, “girded with righteousness about his loins, and wrapped in truth about his sides.” It is as if he said: his power and dignity are nothing at all of the things in the world, but rather the God-befitting glory, as though he were girded with righteousness and truth. A girdle is a sign of rule; and to say that he is wrapped about his sides would mean nothing else than this very thing, that he will wear righteousness like a belt, and truth with it. It is likely, too, that he called the new gospel proclamation righteousness and truth, according to what was said to him through the voice of the psalmist: “Your righteousness is righteousness for ever, and your law is truth.” For the law too was a teacher of righteousness; but it did not remain for ever, since the better and more perfect righteousness was brought in, plainly that through Christ. And the ancient law was not so much truth as type and shadow; but Christ and what is his are purely the truth. Therefore he said: “I am the truth.”

“… leopard will rest with the kid, and the calf and the bull and the lion will graze together, and a little child will lead them. And the ox and the bear will graze together, and their young will be together; and the lion and the ox will eat straw together, and an infant child will put his hand on the hole of asps and on the bed of the offspring of asps; and they will not do harm, nor will they be able to destroy anyone on my holy mountain, because the whole earth has been filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as much water covers the seas.”

Besides what has already been said, one might very fittingly grant that this too is a great and exceptional sign and a not unmarvellous effect of our Saviour's coming. For before the only-begotten Word of God became man as we are, before he was made like his brothers in all things, as it is written, the whole race on earth, I mean the human race, was divided into two peoples: that of the Jews, and that of those who served the creature instead of the Creator. God was known in Judea; but a great and immense swarm of idols was worshipped by the others, and whatever seemed good to each was honoured with the glory of God. “For all turned aside, together they became worthless; there was none who did good, not even one.” But the Jews, through the tutelage of the law, were somehow tamed and trained in the ways of righteousness; while the others, that is, those who served soulless idols, not having the law to guide them, were fierce in their dispositions, savage and rapacious, ready for greed, eager for pleasures, even very outlandish ones, and most prone to anything whatever of the most shameful. One of them was like a wolf; another resembled leopards, because his mind was all but spotted with the many and manifold kinds of passions; another, unrestrained in his purpose, accomplishing his greed against whomever he chose without toil, went through life likened to lions. But when those of such savage characters and ways … the purest and holy life, they ceased from the cruelty that was in them, and they too honoured the life that befits human beings, plainly the life in gentleness. For they believed Christ when he said: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Together with faith, then, they gained the putting away of their ancient cruelty, being kind and gentle, and living side by side with the saints. For they too have been called fellow citizens with the saints and members of God's household. This, I think, the prophetic word indicates to us in many ways. “For the wolf,” he says, “with the lamb, and the leopard will rest with the kid”; that is, through Christ the wild will be brought together with the tame, those in no way holy with the sacred and holy. For as far as Israel's being instructed by the law and knowing the ways of gentleness went, he was tame and gentle, and also holy, and like a sheep and a goat …; and both these animals are sacred and clean, and besides they have their tameness from nature itself. But the wolf and the leopard, and indeed the lion, are … by nature and incompatible with the others; but in Christ this too has been accomplished. For Jews and Greeks have been brought together with one another, making as it were a common

… proclamation, and having come under the one chief shepherd of all, who knows how to pasture them, as the prophet says, “in good pasture and in a rich place.” “But the calf too,” he says, “and the bull and the lion will graze together.” He seems to call the calf the newly grown and young people of believers, that is, the one that is still an infant in Christ; and the bull perhaps Israel, as older in time. Or by the calf he indicates … the one who is above in knowledge and virtue. Of the same kind is the saying that the small will be blessed by the Lord with the great, and the elders with the younger, according to the voice of the psalmist. And the most wise John too knows such an age of mind and soul: he writes to fathers and to little children, and besides to young men, likening, I think, the measure of each one's mind, that is, of his understanding and knowledge of God, to the ages of bodies. They will graze, then, he says, together and in the same place, calf and bull and lion. And he usefully weaves the lion in again with the calf and the bull, so that you may again understand in a riddle that those who have been justified in faith and have come under the sceptre of Christ the Saviour of us all are not from the clean and sacred alone, that is, from the tame and gentle (those tamed through the law), but also from the wild, plainly the nations, since Christ the Saviour of us all joins them into one soul and passes on the good that comes of it to children's children, that is, to those born of them. For the peace of Christ extends to this day among us too, and the good of being of one soul and one faith. This, I think, he shows by adding that “their young will be together.” “And the lion and the ox will eat straw together,” he says. Notice that he did not say that the tame will change over to the food habitual to the wild, but the wild to that of the tame. For the bear and the lion are admittedly flesh-eaters, but the ox and the calf, or the kid, are not; such animals are rather grass-eaters. But the wild, he says, will depart from its habits and will rather change over to the food of the tame; for they too will eat straw. And the food may be a type of teachings. One may understand, then, that before faith in Christ the nations had wicked teachings, persuading them to honour the works of corruption and destruction. But when they were called to the knowledge of the God who truly is, together with their ancient error they also got rid of the teachings they had been brought up with, and honoured, together with those of Israel, the fresh and easily broken food of the gospel instruction.

“But also a little child,” he says, “will lead them”; that is, they will be under teachers and tutors who do not have a bitter and evil-loving mind, but are simple, “infants in malice but wise in mind.” Such are all who in Christ … having a heart free of perversity and wickedness, and falling in no way short of newborn children. For the Saviour himself says that such are worthy of the kingdom of heaven: “Let the children come,” he says, “and do not hinder them from coming to me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” And that, having very great guilelessness of mind, they will be unconquerable and not to be caught, and superior to all terrors, he hints by saying: “And an infant child will put his hand on the hole of asps, and on the bed of the offspring of asps, and they will not do harm, nor will they be able to destroy anyone on my holy mountain.” By the holes and beds of asps I think he means either the wicked bands of demons, or the … of the unholy heretics, their houses, as it were, and lairs, so that we may not call them churches. Laying their hand on these again and again, those who are infants in Christ easily prevail, wronged in no way; for Christ is the one who defends them, makes the bites of those perverse men vanish, and renders their venom ineffective. “For they will not be able,” he says, “to destroy anyone on my holy mountain.” He calls the Church the holy mountain, because it is set on high as regards glory, and because of the loftiness of the doctrines in it. For nothing among us is low. We do not make the Maker equal to the creature, nor shall we bring God the Word, the creator of all, down from the glory that befits him by counting him among creatures. And he says that the whole earth has been filled with the knowledge of the Lord, and is as full of piety toward him as the broad and spacious sea is full of its own waters. One may see that this too is true. For where at all, or among whom, is Christ not named? Or what race of men has not submitted to him? For “every knee will bow to him, and every tongue will confess to him,” as it is written, “that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

“And there will be in that day the root of Jesse, and the one who rises to rule nations; in him nations will hope, and his rest will be honour.”

Little by little the meaning of what was said obscurely shines out, and what he said through riddles he makes very clear to those who love to listen. In what way the wolf will graze with the lamb, the leopard rest with the kid, and calf and ox and lion eat straw together; when at all these things will be; who those are who were once savage and harsh but afterward will be tame and gentle; and how they will be mixed with the tame and sacred under one shepherd: this he shows by saying, “And there will be the root of Jesse.” And to what end, and over whom? So as to rule over the nations, he says, and to become a hope for those who have no hope, plainly the nations themselves, to whom the most wise Paul writes, saying: “Therefore remember that you, the nations, called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision in the flesh made by hands, that you were at that time without Christ, alienated from the … having no hope and without God in the world. But now you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ.” But even if they were without hope and did not have God in the world (for they worshipped the works of their own hands), yet, called

through faith to the knowledge of Christ, they have been placed under him, have come to have as God him who is God by nature and in truth, and have become partners in the hope of the saints. “And his rest,” he says, “will be honour.” You will understand what is said in two ways. If one chooses to take “rest” here as hinting at Christ's death in the flesh, which he endured willingly for us (not enduring it as death, for he was life by nature, but as it were letting the flesh rest for a short time), the thing is honour and nothing else. For the Saviour of all, our Lord Jesus Christ, was glorified, having endured slaughter for the world and willingly undergone death for the life of all. Indeed he said to the Father in heaven, when he was about to go to the precious cross: “Father, glorify your Son, that your Son also may glorify you.” And again: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” As far as the madness of those who crucified him and their unholy and hateful attempt went, the passion was a reproach and a dishonour to him; for they perhaps supposed that he suffered against his will. But since he came back to life, having despoiled Hades, and showed by the event itself that he is stronger than death, we shall find that the outcome ended in honour and glory for him. In this way, then, he says, “his rest will be honour.” But if anyone wishes to approach the passage's meaning in another way, he will take the force of what is said as follows: Christ will be not only a hope for the nations, but will be manifested in due time, or will rise, not only to rule them, but also to grant them his rest in them for honour and glory. For the mind of the saints is a dwelling dear to him; he lodges in the worthy and rests in the holy souls of those who worship him, and the thing is honour and glory to those who have received it. For what could equal, in renown, having God lodging and dwelling in one's heart? In this way too, then, his rest in us will be honour to those who once choose it. “For if anyone hears my words,” he says, “my Father will love him, and we will come to him and …”

“And it will be in that day, the Lord will further show his hand, to be zealous for the remnant … from the Assyrians, and from Egypt, and Babylonia, and Ethiopia, and from the Elamites, and from the rising of the sun, and from Arabia.”

By “day” here the prophet means the time in which the coming of Christ took place and the mystery of the Only-begotten's economy in the flesh was manifested. Then, then indeed, he says, the Lord will show his hand, that is, there will be a great display of power; and this not in vain, but “to be zealous for the remnant of the people that is left, whatever is left from the Assyrians,” he says, and from the other nations. I think the force of what is said must be explained. In earlier times the nation of the Jews suffered not a little, being ravaged on the one side by Assyrians and Elamites, on the other by those from Egypt and Babylonia, and from the rising of the sun, and from Arabia. But afterward Christ, the all-powerful hand and all-working right hand of God the Father, shone forth and made himself manifest through miracles, and hastened to assure those of Israel

that he was truly God and Son of him who is truly God. For which of the most marvellous things was not accomplished among them? All were God-befitting and extraordinary, giving a clear and most vivid display of the highest power. At that time, then, he says, “the Lord will further show his hand,” to make Israel zealous, so that they would not, as it were, yield Christ to the nations alone, but would themselves choose to have hope in him, and seek to come under him, and make him who became man for this reason their ruler, guide, and teacher. Indeed he said through the voice of David: “But I was established king by him on Zion, his holy mountain, proclaiming the decree of the Lord.” For Christ came saying that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And he preached to them first, and commanded the holy apostles: “Do not go off on the way of the nations, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But since the wretched people, from very great madness, kept … with their disobedience the one who had come for this, he passed over from then on to the nations, and the last became first and the first last. Therefore now too the prophet, since he is a Spirit-bearing man and has been enriched with knowledge of the future through the light from above, first mentions the nations and then, after them, Israel, as cast behind those sanctified through faith, put at the back and among those left over, as it is written.

“And he will raise a sign to the nations and will gather the … of Judah he will gather from the four wings of the earth. And the zeal of Ephraim will be taken away, and the enemies of Judah will perish. Ephraim will not envy Judah, and Judah will not afflict Ephraim.”

Here especially the prophet works out his discourse to us in an extraordinary way. He takes what happened historically as an image of a spiritual matter; and I think this too must be said as clearly as possible. Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, succeeded to Solomon's rule; … the nation of the Jews; and the ten tribes and half the tribe of Ephraim moved to Samaria, while the tribe of Judah and half the tribe of Manasseh remained in Jerusalem. From time to time some of the one and some of the other reigned: in Jerusalem those of the tribe of Judah, and in Samaria those of the tribe of Ephraim; and much rivalry was kindled between the two parts, with frequent wars and risings against one another, as is plainly told in the books of Kingdoms. But when the Chaldeans and those who reigned over Persian Babylon had ravaged, so to speak, all Judea and carried off captive to their own land both Israel and Judah, that is, those in … freed from the captivity, they returned again to their own land and settled no longer divided, but all in Jerusalem; and they ceased anointing kings and rulers for themselves each part separately, afflicting one another, and still envying one another, as before. For at that time they came under one, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, who was of the tribe of Judah, and also Jeshua son of Jozadak, who was pre-eminent in the priesthood. Such is the account of the history here. But the prophet's aim was, from clearer matters and from what befell the people of old, to show the achievements of our Saviour's coming. For when the sign was raised, that is, the precious cross, and became manifest to the nations and peoples throughout the whole world, there came release for those in captivity (plainly the spiritual captivity), a concourse to unity of soul, and an eagerness for concord and common faith among those formerly divided. Yoked to many unholy tyrants (for they served the unclean spirits), they shook off their yoke and ran together very eagerly to the spiritual Zion, or Jerusalem, that is, the Church, and having come under one