Commentary on Isaiah 2.2.3–2.2.9

“Merodach is handed over, because a nation has come up against her from the north; it will make her land a desolation, and there will be none dwelling in her, from man to beast. In those days and at that time the sons of Israel and the sons of Judah will come together; going and weeping they will go, seeking their God; they will ask the way to Zion, for here they will set their face, and they will come and flee for refuge to the Lord; for an everlasting covenant will not be forgotten.” And again: “Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I take vengeance on the king of Babylon and on his land, as … I will set Israel back in his pasture, and he will graze on Carmel and on mount Ephraim and in Gilead, and his soul will be filled.”

“On a mountain of the plain raise a sign; lift up the voice for yourselves, do not fear; exhort with the hand; open, you rulers. I give the order and I lead them. They are sanctified, and I lead them. Giants are coming to fulfil my wrath, rejoicing and insulting together.”

The blessed prophet, his mind filled with the Holy Spirit and seeing the events in visions as if they were being painted, all but leaps up, calling out to the Persians and Medes as though they had already conquered the land of the Babylonians, to lift on high the symbol of victory (for this, I think, is the “sign”), and to raise the war-cry over the army of the Chaldeans as already fallen and having handed over to them the boastful and far-famed city, which the prophet Jeremiah also called the hammer of the earth, saying of the city of the Babylonians: “How has the hammer of the whole earth been taken and broken?” For every city and land was broken, being beaten down in the manner of … He calls “a mountain of the plain”, I think, one that is as it were low, a hillock as it were. For they do not climb up the high mountains to set up their signals, or the trophies, that is, the sign, but on hills not raised very high, so that it may at once avoid being placed too high and yet be very well known to the whole army. Raise then, he says, a sign; as already … “the voice”, that is, raise the war-cry against the phalanx of the enemy; “do not fear”. For admittedly the hand of the Babylonians was terrible and unrivalled for people everywhere, and no one could blame those who feared it. But now do not fear, he says, since God is bringing out his own wrath against their arrogance. “Exhort with the hand.” And what is this? It is perhaps the custom of those who lead troops to … with the hand, and to rouse them to attacks …, since the voice is too weak to do this, as in a great uproar. He orders, then, those in charge of affairs to make their exhortations by hands and nods to the armies under their hand, and to whet them to an irresistible eagerness. He adds again the cry: “Open, you rulers.” For either … to open the gates and to hand over the once boastful and insolent city; or perhaps … to holy powers, by the command of God, … passable by horses, though very difficult. And to show that the hand of the fighters is invincible, he adds and says: “I give the order and I lead them.” He says almost something like this: it is not that a multitude of the Median army has come over to you of its own accord, nor did the people of the Persians rush on by their own judgement alone; rather I myself have even sanctified them for this. “I have sanctified” here means “I have set apart”, and as it were “I have chosen”, for carrying out what I have resolved against you. They come, then, he says, the ones I lead, like giants, to fulfil my wrath, rejoicing and insulting together: rejoicing, because they are confident that they will conquer; and insulting, that is, spitting on them as very feeble and worth nothing. For the barbarian mind is always somehow of this kind, quick to hope that it can conquer, and always belittling its opponents. For anger above all leads them on to this and breeds in them the desire to show courage, … every danger and … “A voice of many nations on the mountains, like that …

… of many nations, a voice of kings and of nations … to come from a far land, from the uttermost foundation of heaven, the Lord and his armed warriors, to destroy the whole world.”

As though the Medes were already raising the war-cry and lifting up the shout that suits wars, as of a horse …, while others were already turning to flight, a great and confused noise being scattered abroad: “A voice,” he says, “of many nations on the mountains, like that of many nations.” Not such a voice, he says, that one could guess that those shouting were few and easily counted; rather one would think that the multitude of those crying out was beyond number. The word shows at the same time those … by the terrors. For he insists that it is the voice of nations and of kings. So those crying out would be the vast people of the Babylonians, and with them those [taking] the city, namely the Persians and Medes, raising the war-cry over the captured. These, I think, he also calls armed warriors, and a nation coming from a far land, “from the uttermost foundation of heaven”, that is, from the very limits of Media and the innermost parts of the most northern land. And since they were planning the attack according to God's will, he calls them armed warriors of the Lord, and says that they have been brought to destroy the whole world, and certainly not the whole of ours. For we will not find that this was done by Cyrus and those with him. He calls “world” the land of the Chaldeans, because it was very large and immeasurably broad, and as it were rivalled the inhabited world because of the multitude of its inhabitants.

“Howl, for the day of the Lord is near, and destruction from God will come. Therefore every hand … And the envoys will be troubled, and pangs will seize them, as of a woman giving birth; and they will lament one to another, and be amazed, and their face like …”

As though all hope had been taken away, as though nothing were left to the Babylonians except only the need to lament, he says: “Howl.” He has commanded them as it were to despair of safety, and not to set their hand to useless things by planning resistance, since divine wrath has been armed against them and destruction has been brought on them by a decree from above. And the thing is wholly irresistible: “For who will turn back the high hand?” as it is written. And again: “If he shuts against a man, who will open?” What strength, or whose at all, will fight against God? Therefore he says that every hand will be weakened and every soul of man will be cowardly; for when the all-powerful God shakes the souls of men into cowardice, who will put courage into them, or make them stout-hearted and fit to resist? He says that the envoys will be troubled and will fall into pangs as of a woman giving birth, that they will lament one to another, and also that they will be amazed, and their face … “I think,” he says, the priests of the idols, those who … …

… to the Babylonians, the servants of the demons, who, as was likely when the attack was being planned and the Medes were expected to arrive together with Cyrus and the Persians, prophesied favourable things, and … from the demons, bringing on the customary things, rites, plainly, and profane sacrifices, and promising to intercede for the whole land. These, then, he says, the servants and suppliants of the demons, who perform the sacrifices on behalf of all, when they see matters turned against their hope, will be troubled and will be in bitter pangs, and will lament one to another, that is, they will cry out to one another the words of unmixed calamity, “woe”, plainly, and the like. And as by a flame they will change their face. For the face of the despondent tends somehow to darken, so as to seem nothing else than ash, the remains of burnt-out ashes.

“For behold, the incurable day of the Lord is coming, of anger and wrath, to make the whole world desolate and to destroy the sinners out of it. For the stars of heaven and Orion and all the ornament of heaven will not give their light, and it will be darkened when the sun rises, and the moon will not give its light. And I will command evils for the whole world, and for the ungodly their sins; and I will destroy the insolence of the lawless, and …”

In these words he tries to teach openly what the reason is why the rulers lament to one another and change their face as from a flame. For since they had prophesied, as I said, what they wished for themselves and for all the Babylonians, but have been disappointed of their hope, for this reason, he says, they will be full of dejection. For an incurable day has come upon them, the Lord of all bringing it. Again he calls “day” the time at which the divine and unrelenting wrath came, so that the land of the Chaldeans was made desolate and the sinners destroyed out of it. And he does not say that the sinners will be destroyed as though there were some there who are set outside the wrath because they are good; rather the name would fittingly suit all who inhabited the land of the Chaldeans, because all were wicked and idolaters. And since the greatness of calamities sometimes all but fills the human mind with darkness and mist, so that even in daytime the light of the sun seems absent, and the ornament of heaven idle, and even the very disk of the moon, for this reason he says: “For the stars of heaven and Orion and all the ornament of heaven will not give their light”; and that the Babylonians will be darkened, that is, the mind of the Babylonians, even while the sun rises and the moon shines, although the heavenly bodies had not withdrawn their light, but because they, as in great terror and [struck] by the divine wraths, had night and darkness in their mind. “I will command,” he says, “evils for the whole world.” “I will command” … “I will bring”, so as to bring down the insolence of the lawless and to humble the arrogant, the boasters themselves, plainly. For the Assyrian nation was always contemptuous and most degenerate, and besides this hateful to God. For nothing of what is best was honoured among them, but rather everything that is apt to grieve the God of all. It should be known that those who translated the divine Scripture made mention of Orion, signifying by it the most notable of the stars; and they say such things not at all because they followed the trifling tales of the Greeks, but rather they used the customary name, just as it is written in Job too: “Who makes the Pleiad and Hesperus and Arcturus and the chambers of the south.”

“And those who are left will be more honoured …

… than unrefined gold, and man will be more honoured than the stone from Sophir.”

Here “honoured” is what needs to be investigated. He says, then, that the land of the Babylonians, and the whole land of the Assyrians, will be so emptied of men that the living in it will be hard to find, and the scarcity of the survivors will be as great as that of Indian stones and the most approved gold. For such things seem to some to be precious because they are very hard to obtain, and indeed because they are few and found with difficulty. As hard to obtain, then, he says, as the things admired by men, precious stones and unrefined gold, that is, the most approved, so few and so rare will be those who escape …

“For the heaven will be angry, and the earth will be shaken from its foundations, because of the fury of the wrath of the Lord Sabaoth, in the day when his fury comes upon it.”

The blessed prophets speak hyperbolically: receiving in their mind the divine and unspeakable power and glory, they raise their voices on high and devise extraordinary magnitudes for their accounts. And somehow the servant creation is always whetted to anger together with God when he is angry, the one who gives commands to all surely rousing it to this. Indeed he was angry with the Egyptians, and creation could not bear to be idle: the water was changed into blood, the earth brought up frogs, as it is written, and the heaven sent down hail; and moreover a deep, three-day darkness spread over their whole land. So, he says, even the heaven itself will be angry, and the earth will be shaken as from its base, because of the fury of the wrath of the Lord. For creation joins in the war against the foolish, and when its Master is grieved it all but takes the same stand itself. For all things concur with the supreme will, and there is nothing among the things that exist that does not [yield] to the divine nods, and unwillingly …

“And those who are left will be like a fleeing gazelle … who gathers, so that a man turns back to his people and a man flees to his own land. For whoever is caught will be defeated, and those who have been gathered will fall by the sword, and they will dash their children before them, and will plunder their houses, and will have their wives.”

He says that those who are left will be very few, and those too unmanly and most unwarlike, and so broken down by cowardice that they choose to do nothing else but only to flee, like a gazelle, and to save themselves without honour, and to give up entirely even rising up against the assaults of the enemy. And that they are without a leader … few, he indicates by saying that they will be like a wandering sheep, deprived of the shepherd's kindly care and going somewhere outside the pasture, so as to choose to be far from its accustomed folds. For there will be, he says, no one who gathers, so that a man turns back to his people and a man flees to his own land. He says “flee” in the sense of “hasten”; and yet everyone loves his country, and nothing is better than the dwellings of one's fathers. But even the loss of things so very dear to them is sweet, he says, because everyone who is caught is destroyed at once. The prophetic word affirms that something else too will happen, of the things most apt to grieve. “For their children,” he says, “they will dash before them, and will plunder their houses, and will have their wives.” What could be heavier for parents than the slaughter of their children?

Or how is it not more unbearable than any torment to see houses plundered, and the dignity of women wronged and subjected to the licentiousness of the conquerors? The blessed psalmist too mentions something of this kind. For in his words about the city of the Babylonians he says: “Blessed is he who will seize your infants and dash them against the rock.” These things, then, befell historically the land of the Assyrians and the cities and districts in it, because they were all idolaters and boastful beyond bearing, terribly fighting against God, and skilled in the magic art. And they also sacked the holy city, … Israel, having made them part of their spoil of war, they put on them the yoke of slavery to which they were unaccustomed. And the account of these things will not stop at what concerns the history alone and what happened visibly; rather, those who wish may understand it also spiritually, if they skilfully transfer the force of what happened to the very inventor of all wickedness, the God-hated and most cruel one, I mean Satan; especially since the word of prophecy, having set forth the mystery of Christ and having made the proclamation about him very well, has brought in the vision against Babylon next to it, all but whetting the minds of its hearers to the need to understand spiritually too what happened historically, both against Babylon itself and against the whole land of the Assyrians. … the apostate dragon … he presses on very vigorously, always overturning toward what seems good to him, and very often he carries off, as one who has taken captives, and … with the din of the passions, laying on them as it were a terrible and inescapable yoke of slavery, … just as the kings of the Assyrians at various times exulted over those of Israel, because, having been put outside their own land and the holy city, they were slaves to foreigners. But not for ever … For the sign of the Saviour has been raised: that is, we have offered songs of victory to him who conquered for our sake and on our behalf, and we have made the confession of the right faith. For this, I think, is “Lift up the voice for yourselves.” And the Lord has given command to an armed nation to come, plainly the nation of the saints, whose fight and war is not against blood and flesh, but rather against rulers and authorities and the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. They have stood in battle and conquered, and they prevail even to this day, and they besiege the throng of the opposing powers, and, as some idolatrous city, … They overpower their opponents, with Christ as it were in command and the holy angels sharing the shield-wall, so that those who still worship the powers of those [demons] are very few indeed, and are pitiable, unmanly and fearful, and have wholly given up resistance, I mean resistance to those who serve Christ. Running through the vision and what follows in the text, let everyone who is … gather the knowledge of some such spiritual contemplation.

“Behold, I raise up against you the Medes, who do not reckon silver, nor have they need of gold.

… of you they will not pity, nor will their eyes spare your children. And Babylon, which is called glorious by the king of the Chaldeans, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah; it will not be inhabited for all time, nor will they enter into it through … it.

In these words he now makes a very clear prediction of the war, and, having taken away the obscurity like a shadow cast over the words, he sets the calamity that will soon be present bare and open and as it were before the eyes. For the Medes will come, will come, he says, not overcome by money, nor … bribes from you … a dark saying, words of the wise and riddles. “… Arabs, nor shepherds, will rest in it …” … better rather, as having come at the right time, … and of the things they had set most eagerly before themselves, so that they will shatter the arrows of young men. For if one considers the attacks of barbarians, whenever they are made against lands or cities, he will find them done for no other reason than only for plunder, to make a collection of whatever money comes their way. But the Medes, he says, will be above gains and will disregard profits in order to pull down the brow of the Babylonians. For they always had great pride in their archery and set great store by success in it. But they will be weaker than their enemies. And the conquerors will be so hard and pitiless that they will spare not even the pitiable age, nor shed a tear of gentleness over infants perishing piteously. And Babylon, which is called glorious by the king of the Chaldeans, will, he says, be so inhabited by desolation that it will differ in no way from burned Sodom and Gomorrah; it will be uninhabited, and so shunned even by its neighbours, even by those of a far-ranging nation who roam about it, that not even shepherds of the Arabs will [rest] any of their flocks in it, because it has been wholly laid waste. It should be known that he [calls Arabs] the Saracen nations, which reach even to the [land] of the Assyrians; for they have the land of the Arabs as neighbour. And it is likely that the Saracens from Arabia themselves roam the deserts of the Assyrians, mingled together.

“And wild beasts will rest there, and the houses will be filled with echo. And sirens will rest there, and demons will dance there. And … hedgehogs in their houses. It comes quickly and will not delay.”

Wild animals always somehow like to make their dwelling in deserted places and in a ruined city, very many dens for themselves, makeshift indeed, and found as it were by chance of themselves; and in deserts and in silent places a thin echo, as it were from the very great silence, rises I know not how, and steals into the ears of those who are at rest. Wild beasts, then, he says, will rest there, and the houses will be filled with echo: that is, having no inhabitant at all, they will come to possess the echo that suits deserts.

“And demons,” he says, “will dance there.” For they say that these too somehow have a peculiar … in quiet places … By sirens, I think, he means the birds that know how to sing sweetly, or, according to the Hebrew edition, the owl. The wild asses he named onocentaurs, and hedgehogs those of the mice that bristle as it were with sharp spines. All these would fittingly suit cities or houses that have been wholly laid waste. He adds to these that it comes quickly and will not delay, either putting a more bitter anxiety into the Assyrians, or making the matter no small comfort to those of the blood of Israel. For since they were in captivity, [and it was foretold] that they would be released [through] Cyrus with the Persians and Medes, quickly … and he promises release from their sorrows, and that what they prayed for will not be put off for long, but will run as it were on the heels of the word.

“And the Lord will have mercy on Jacob and will yet choose Israel, and they will rest on their land, and the sojourner will be added to them, and will be added to the house of Jacob. And nations will take them and bring them into their place; and they will inherit and be multiplied on the land of God as male and female slaves; and those who took them captive will be captives, and those who ruled over them [will be ruled]; and it will be in that day … God will give you rest from your pain and from your wrath and from the hard slavery …”

He lifts up to good hope those of the blood of Israel who had suffered, and refreshes them with good promises … the greed of those who had taken them. For he foretold clearly that they would come up out of captivity and throw off the yoke of their unaccustomed slavery, when Babylon and the whole land of the Assyrians had been sacked. For Israel, he says, will not be wholly cast off, nor will he pay endless penalties for his offences; but the chosen one will be pitied and will breathe again in due time; and since he was set as firstborn among children, he will obtain the oversight and kindness that come from God. He says that they will return to the land that bore them, and that the sojourner will go up with them. By “sojourner” he means the native-born, sprung from the soil, that is, the Babylonian. For very many of the Babylonians followed those from Israel, some because they had become kin to them, others because they had inclined to the worship according to the law. For since they spent long periods in captivity, it is surely likely that no small multitude of the native-born had been joined to them. The sojourner, then, he says, will be added to them: that is, the native too will follow and accompany them. “And nations will take them and bring them into their place.” For when Cyrus released Israel, he ordered the rulers of the lands to escort them unharmed and free from plots. And the one who received the sceptre of the Assyrians after him did this too: this was Xerxes. Those who wish to examine such things precisely may consult the books of Ezra and gain the most unerring knowledge of all that has been said. For they went up from the land of the Assyrians to Judaea while Zerubbabel son of Salathiel, who was of the tribe of Judah, administered the kingdom, and Jesus son of Josedek, the great priest, led the priestly order. Nations, then, he says, will escort them and bring them into their land, and they will hold the lot assigned to them from above. And what is still more paradoxical, those who were once servants of idols … plainly the faith. For they also rested from … they will be multiplied on the land of God as male and female slaves, and those who took them captive will be captives. For those who had taken Israel captive, having been brought back together with him and having arrived, he says, in Judaea, will put their neck under the yokes of the law, and, as if enduring a good and saving captivity, will inscribe as Lord