Commentary on Isaiah 4.3.11–4.3.18

we say are the truer Israel.

“Come down, sit on the ground, virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground; there is no throne. Enter into the darkness, daughter of … uncover your covering, … rivers. Your shame shall be uncovered; your reproaches shall appear. What is just I will take from you …”

Having said, “I have given salvation to Israel for glory,” and having promised them redemption from captivity, he next recalls and narrates clearly how Babylon was taken and sacked, and depicts as on a tablet the plight of the captured. For just as, in the case of the land of the Jews, he described the removal brought by the war of the Babylonians, going through each detail and saying: “Because the daughters of Zion were exalted and walked with outstretched neck and with winkings of the eyes, and with the gait of their feet, trailing their tunics and playing with their feet, God will humble the ruling daughters of Zion, and the Lord will uncover their form in that day, and the Lord will take away the glory of their clothing, and their ornaments, and the braids, and the tassels,” and what follows; and then adding to these: “And instead of a sweet smell there will be dust, and instead of a sash you will gird yourself with a rope, and instead of the ornament of gold on your head you will have baldness because of your works, and instead of the tunic with a purple border you will gird on sackcloth”; so now too he shows what the daughters of the Babylonians, that is, the women who live there, will suffer when the Persians and Medes drag them off, saying … “be humbled,” though she had long been terribly sick with arrogance. “Come down,” then, from the mountain and from lofty thoughts to humiliation, from glory to dishonour, from luxury to misery, from immeasurable wealth to the utmost poverty, from freedom to slavery, and, in a word, from all that is sweetest to what is worse and most wretched. “Sit in the darkness,” plainly the darkness that comes from incurable calamity. For bitter grief poured over the soul enslaves the mind, as does the onset of unexpected pains and fear falling on one like a burden. That the time of her ancient prosperity has passed he shows by saying: “You shall no longer be called tender and delicate.” For the women of the Chaldeans, not unnaturally, made no small account of … striving to excel in … adornment, even in the very battles. “You will no longer be called delicate,” then, he says, “but you will undergo instead, and unwillingly, the misery of servitude: you will grind meal; you will be seen bare of the coverings of your head,” plainly with your hair hanging loose and uncared for everywhere, though formerly it was bound up in elaborate fashion. “Uncover your grey hairs”: and this would be a clear sign that the captors came to such cruelty as not even … “your reproaches shall appear.” For women who have once fallen into deportation and are carried away from the land that bore them into that of the conquerors, and on the way … with bare foot, plainly with their garments pulled up, and no longer bearing in their eyes the modesty fitting for women, but under compulsion baring even the secret parts of the body to many…. One might also say that her shame was seen in another way, and her reproaches appeared, since she was once taken and came into what one prays to be spared, though formerly she lived in luxury and prided herself on prosperity to the utmost. Then he says: “What is just I will take from you,” that is, what you must suffer, that I will exact from you. And what this is he foretold through another of the holy prophets, saying: “As she has done, I will do to her.” And again: “As you have done, so shall it be to you; your recompense shall be returned on your head.” And it is said somewhere elsewhere about everyone accustomed to offend: “Woe to the lawless one; evils according to the works of his …

“… who redeemed you, the Lord of hosts; the Holy One is his name.”

He has inserted another word in between, addressed to Israel, and God promises that it will at no time fall under the hand of enemies, for he will have mercy on them as on those who have paid the penalty, or rather have been punished even beyond it. For he says somewhere about it: “Priests, speak to the heart of Jerusalem, comfort her, for her humiliation is fulfilled, her sin is loosed, for she has received from the hand of the Lord her sins.” So “He who redeemed you,” he says, “the Lord of hosts, whose name is also Holy One of Israel, has spoken.” … God was angry and left Israel bereft of sparing and love, seeing them turned to apostasy and going without restraint to do what the divine [laws forbid] ….

“Sit pierced with grief, enter into the darkness, daughter of the Chaldeans; you shall no longer be called Strength of … my inheritance. I gave them into your hands, but you did not give them mercy; … of the elder you made the yoke very heavy, and you said: For ever I shall be ruler. You did not consider these things in your heart, nor did you remember your last things.”

He shows himself everywhere using a just verdict and bringing on those who offend penalties of equal weight. For very many were the charges against the Babylonians: he indicts them for very great cruelty and inhumanity, and he shows Babylon boastful and senselessly confident in her own powers, so that she thought she would never in any way undergo a change for the worse. “So when,” he says, “you undergo the affliction, then sit pierced with grief.” “Pierced with grief” he says instead of “having understood,” even if late, and above all in yourself; and receive the dizziness of darkness. For he said that incurable evils pour a kind of darkness over the mind and fall like dust upon souls. “No longer, then,” he says, “will you be called Strength of a kingdom.” For Babylon was so named, since it had a multitude beyond number and a most warlike hand, sufficient for resistance, if any should resist and oppose those who held power among them. Then, what was the occasion for bringing on the Babylonians the effects of divine wrath? “[I was angry with my peo]ple; you defiled my inheritance. I gave them into your hands, but you did not give them mercy.” He appears to say something of the kind through the voice of Zechariah too: “I have been jealous for Jerusalem and Zion with great jealousy, and with great anger I am angry with the nations that join in the attack, because I was angry a little, but they joined in the attack for evil.” For God sometimes disciplines out of love, and those who have become unteachable and have raised a proud neck against him he brings through hardships to docility, either bringing the hands of enemies upon them or sending other griefs upon them. For just as fire or iron often heals wounds that are hard to cure, since they do not respond to the moderate measure of medicines, in the same way, I think, our virtue-loving God, when he sees a soul rushing with unrestrained impulses over cliffs and clinging tightly to the ways of wickedness, heals it with bitter hardships. But those who have been taken into the rank of punishers indulge terrible and unmixed fury and are carried beyond what is reasonable, burdening unbearably those who have come under them.

A very grievous thing it is, then, and God is provoked at those who are accustomed to do it. We must keep away from this evil; and if some are perhaps made to pay a penalty while God disciplines them, let us look to gentleness, knowing well that the one who disciplines is greatly provoked if the punishment is brought on them by us beyond measure. “You did not have mercy, then,” he says, “on the old man; and you took them, not by your own strength, but rather because I gave them. But you became harsh and savage-tempered, and, what is still more grievous, you went so far in boasting as to think and say …; you thought fit to keep … unshaken in your mind, nor did you take into your memory the last things.” And what were these? Plainly the things of the captivity and of the misery brought on her by God.

“But now hear these things, you delicate one, who sit, who are confident, who say in your heart: I am, and there is no other; I shall not sit as a widow, nor shall I know bereavement. But now these two things shall come upon you suddenly in one day: widowhood and childlessness shall come upon you suddenly, in your sorcery, in the great strength of your enchanters, in the hope of your wickedness. For you said: I am, and there is no other. Know that the understanding … and the harlotry of these shall be shame and disgrace to you.”

He speaks to her as to a profane and lewd woman. … We say this: there were very many magi among the Chaldeans, whom they also called wise men; and by their counsels and lying divinations they claimed to have knowledge of all future things. To those who ruled the land they prophesied nothing gloomy, but rather things in which the hearers would naturally take delight. We must suppose, then, that when Cyrus was threatening them with his attack and was already bringing on the incursions of the enemy, these men surely came forward, speaking lies and saying that very soon they would get the better of him and prevail over them utterly …. But that is what they said. “But now hear, you delicate one.” By these words he mocks the luxury of the Babylonians. For they were luxurious, anointing themselves with the most fragrant perfumes, wearing embroidered robes, and prizing the splendour that comes from adornment, so that the art of cosmetics was held in esteem among them, and there was a rivalry in beauty. That is why she was called “delicate.” And he calls her “sitting” instead of “reigning,” plainly over her neighbours, or rather even over nations still far off. And she was “confident,” that is, emboldened by the immeasurable multitude of her fighters, so as even to say: “I am, and there is no other.” For she thought that there would be no other at all like her. But she was mistaken; for Cyrus came, bringing Persians and Medes against them; and only when she suffered capture did she learn that there was another, stronger than she, plainly the country and land of the Persians and Medes, by which she became widowed and childless, though she never expected to suffer it. For she was widowed when the king who reigned in her was brought down to death, and she was made childless when the multitude of her fighters was consumed by the swords of the captors. So widowhood and childlessness came upon her. “And these things will befall you,” he says, “in your sorcery, and in the great strength of your enchanters, in the hope of your wickedness.” “For since,” he says, “you had a wicked hope in your sorceries … childless and widowed; for raising your brow … and having your mind full of boasting, you thought yourself better and mightier than all other countries; for you said that there is no other.” “Know, then, that the understanding of these things and your harlotry will be shame to you.” I said before that they called the magi wise men, or men of understanding. “Know, then, O Babylon,” he says, “that the wisdom of the magi, that is, of the false diviners and enchanters, and your harlotry besides, will be shame to you. For you have fallen under the hand of your enemies, as one who trusted in these things, from which nothing can be gained except to be put to shame, as having placed a vain hope in them.” By harlotry here he means that of the Babylonians, not at all bodily harlotry, but rather the unrestrained and unbridled apostasy from

“And you said in your heart: I am, and there is no

other. And destruction shall come upon you, and you shall not know it: a pit, and you shall fall into it. And misery shall come upon you, and you shall not be able to become clean; and destruction shall come upon you suddenly, and you shall not know it.”

He again indicts her for boasting, and for having turned her heart wholly away from knowing what she ought to love to know: that among men nothing is firm, and that whether one prospers on the earth or not depends on the divine assent. But those who cannot bear to know this ascribe to their own heads the power to accomplish all things and whatever can bring them to prosperity; such people would be caught …; for they fall unexpectedly and lament a ruin beyond their hope. So, since you said in your heart, “I am, and there is no other,” the bitter end of such terrible boasting will overtake you. For “destruction will come upon you, and you will not know it,” that is, even your divination will be useless to you for this. For you will suffer what you did not know, and a bitter and unexpected calamity will befall you. “A pit will come, and you will fall into it”: as if he said, a terrible evil, hard to escape. For when people have once been brought down into a pit, if it is deep, escape is sometimes impossible. “And misery will come, and you will not be able to become clean; and destruction will come, and you will not know it.” For the magi could not simply know what was to be; but divining to please and speaking out of their own hearts, …

“Stand now in your enchantments and your many sorceries, which you learned from your youth, …. Let them stand and save you, the astrologers of heaven; let those who look at the stars declare to you what is about to come upon you. Behold, all of them shall be burned up like brushwood on a fire, and they shall not deliver their soul from the flame; because you have coals of fire, sit on them; these shall be a help to you. … and you have laboured in your trading from your youth; a man has gone astray by himself, but for you there will be no salvation.”

… God. For the land was full of carved images, and to the … of the demons … they saw the end of what they had hoped come to pass. … of superstition, the empty plaything, and indeed he shows the practice to be wholly useless. “For when the fighters are gathered,” he says, “and Cyrus is against you, and the phalanx of the enemy … shields, the power of archery too will help nothing, when … hoplites and foot-soldiers alike ….” “Stand in your enchantments and your many sorceries, which you learned from your youth, if you will be able to be helped.” “Raise up,” he says, “against the besiegers, against men who know tactics well, the magi, the frigid talk of the enchanters. But you will not be able,” he says. “You have laboured in your counsels.”

For the seemingly wise counsels of the magi profited you nothing at all. But if you think that my word has missed the truth, “let them stand and save you, the astrologers of heaven, … upon you.” This is another set of charlatans, I mean after the magi and the enchanters. For some among them pretended to know the risings and settings of the stars and to measure the motion of each, where they go and whence they come; and they insisted that by their false precision in this they received knowledge of things to come. So if they are not liars, and if the stars that have their place in the firmament fill the rank of prophets for them, let them say what will happen. “But they would not be able to tell,” he says; “for they will be, together with the others, like brushwood, the work and food of fire, and none of them will escape.” Then he speaks in a kind of irony and says: “You have coals of fire,” that is, the men under discussion are hot and seething, when you sit on them. Sitting would signify rest. “These will be a help to you”: “for if you choose,” he says, “to rest on the lies of the magi and the ribaldries of the others, …” to her: “You have laboured in your trading from youth.” For, having departed from God and passed over to ruin by inclining to the deceits of the demons, and that from your youth, you became weak and easy to capture. For you were not rich in the help that comes only from him who knows how to save, who is indeed the Lord of powers. And he adds to this: “A man has gone astray by himself, but for you there will be no salvation”; as if he were saying: many men stumble in a human way, either by coming down to the things of the flesh, or perhaps by being sick with some other passion; but you advanced to such unholiness that no way of salvation is left to you; for unrestrained turnings aside will surely be followed by a penalty of equal force and weight.

“Hear these things, house of Jacob, you who are called by the name of Israel, and who came out of Judah, who swear by the name of the Lord God of Israel, making mention of it, not with truth nor with righteousness, and who hold to the name of the holy city and … upon the God of …. The former things I declared long ago, and they went out of my mouth, and it was heard; suddenly I did them, and …”

Having finished his word about the Babylonians, he again turns the force of his admonition to those of the blood of Israel, seeing them wholly turned aside and carried off, as it were with loose reins, into apostasy. For after the death of Hezekiah, Manasseh, his son, who held the thrones of the kingdom, became a most impious man and gave himself up wholly to the deceits of the demons …; he advanced to such a pitch of wickedness, baseness, and unholy undertakings that he filled the holy city with altars and statues, and in the divine temple itself set up an abomination, that is, a statue made to stand in the place of God. At any rate the God of all reproached Jerusalem for these things, saying thus: “Why has the beloved done abomination in my house?

Will prayers and holy meat take away your wickedness from you, or will you escape by these?” And at another time: “According to the number of your cities were your gods, Judah, and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem you set up altars to burn incense to Baal. Why do you speak to me? … to me, says the Lord.” And when Jeremiah fell down and offered supplications for Israel, God said: “And you, do not pray for this people, and do not ask that they be shown mercy, and do not come to me for them with petition and prayer, for I will not listen. Do you not see what these are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? Their sons gather wood, and their fathers kindle fire, and their women knead dough to make cakes for the host of heaven; and they poured libations to foreign gods to provoke me to anger.” For, as I said before, Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, worshipped the host of heaven, and he chose to regard sorcerers and … as worthy of all esteem, and … to the idols even one of his own children. So when Israel had come to this pitch of wickedness and impiety, the God of all wished to bring them back to the light of truth by frequent admonitions. That is why he gave them the word of exhortation very frequently, so that, opening wide the eye of their mind and freeing it from the demonic mist, they might be able, even late and with difficulty, to see who is the Maker and Master of all. That is why he says: “Hear these things, house of Jacob, you who are called by the name of Israel, and who came out of Judah.” Very wisely he mentions the nobility of the fathers (I mean in character and ways) to shame those who had turned aside. For they were, they truly were, from them according to the flesh, but … and of another mind, having the bare name from them, but not agreeing in disposition with those whose nobility they boast of. That this is of no use to them for their benefit our Lord Jesus Christ clearly showed. For the Jews, priding themselves greatly on the splendour of their fathers and boasting of their virtues, said senselessly: “We have Abraham as father.” But he said to them: “If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham.” So the name is not enough to give renown to those who are descended from such fathers.

splendid, unless they become imitators of the brightness that was in them. He shames them, then, saying that they are called by the name of Israel and came out of Judah, that is, sprang from the seed of Judah, and yet do not resemble them at all in anything. And besides this he charges them with swearing by the name of the Lord God of Israel, and fulfilling the commandment of the law (“by his name,” it says, “you shall swear,” when they accepted the use of oaths), not for what was true and just, but for what was falsely claimed against the law; and then also with holding to the holy city and being supported by the God of Israel. For they wished to raise their brows high as living in a holy city, called God's. For they heard those who served in the divine temple singing about Jerusalem: “Glorious things were spoken of you, city of God.” The Lord himself also recalls this when he says that one must not swear by one's own head, because one cannot make one hair white or black; nor by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great King. For they swore by Jerusalem, calling it, as I said, the city of God. And they were supported upon him, saying that the Lord of powers was their strength. But those who had then taken up such a view needed not to profane the city of God with altars and sacrifices, entangled as they were in the deceits of the demons, nor to provoke against themselves the one in whom …, but … in good things, and to bring him, as a kind of sacrifice, steadfastness in piety. “But hear these things,” he says. And what are these? “The former things I declared long ago; they went out of my mouth, and it was heard. Suddenly I did them, and they came.” For since, as I said, Manasseh, hateful to God, at the beginning gathered from everywhere the so-called diviners and augurs, and was always prying into the future, and, carried away by their charlatanry, perhaps supposed that he knew it clearly, for that reason the God of all says: “I declared to you the first things too, and these things were not spoken to you by any other of the falsely named gods, but went out of my mouth; and it became heard by you; and suddenly I did them, and they came”; that is, even if you did not expect them to come to their end, yet you knew from the events themselves and from experience itself that I both did them and they came. He seems to call “former” the misery brought on them by the war, when, carried away from the land that bore them and taking the yoke of bitter slavery, they were carried off into the land of the Persians and Medes. For second, after that, there befell the Babylonians what was brought on them from the divine wrath, which has already been told us at very great length.

“I know that you are hard, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your forehead bronze. And I declared to you the things of old before they came upon you; I made them heard by you.”

In these words he shows the incomparable gentleness of the supreme nature and how much mercy it shows to men, even to those who are accustomed to grieve it. For his calm is equal to his own glory; and just as by measureless pre-eminence he surpasses the measure of created things, so he is also incomparably loving toward mankind. For see how, though he knew Israel to be hard, with a proud and unbreakable neck, so as even to seem an iron sinew, plainly hard and unbending, and a forehead of bronze, that is, again devoid of shame, he declared to it beforehand the things to come and made them heard before they came. He did this not in vain; but since they had an unteachable heart, he made predictions of the gloomy things, so that perhaps, broken a little by the terrors, they might depart from their outlandish and most abominable way of life, adapt themselves to seeking better things, and, leaving the accursed and most abominable [worship], choose to serve the one who is God by nature and in truth. For those whom reason does not move from outlandish undertakings fear sometimes drives out even against their will. Indeed the divine David seems to suggest something of the kind to us, singing and saying to God, the Saviour of all: “With bit and bridle you will constrain the jaws of those who do not come near you.”

“Do not say: The idols did it for me; and do not say: The carved and molten images …. You have heard these things, and you did not know; and I have made new things heard by you from now on, which are about to happen. And you did not say …. Now they come about, and not long ago, and in former days you did not hear them. Do not say: I know them. You neither knew nor understood, nor from the beginning did I open your ears. For I knew that you would surely deal faithlessly, and you will still be called lawless from the womb. For my name's sake I will show you my wrath, and I will bring my glorious things upon you, so that I may not destroy you utterly. Behold, I have sold you, not for silver; and I have delivered you from the furnace of poverty. For my own sake I will do it for you, because my name is profaned, and my glory I will not give to another.”

In the words of the prophet Jeremiah we find that when those from Babylon had once taken the holy city, laid waste the whole of Judaea, and carried Israel away captive, the … but when the prophet urged them to stay at home and made the cause plain, the women cried out against him in return, saying: “Since we stopped sacrificing to the queen of heaven, all these evils have come upon us.” For they thought, although they had suffered capture, that it was because they had offended the falsely named gods and been deprived of their help that they had fallen under the feet of their enemies. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said to God: “Lord, your eyes are upon faithfulness; you scourged them, and they did not grieve; you consumed them, and they would not receive discipline.” “Since, then, I made what has happened heard by you before it came,” he says, “do not again say: The idols did it for me.” Did what? Plainly the capture through the calamities of war. You were not led away captive by their anger; nor did they, because you withdrew from them, bring an inescapable penalty upon you by withdrawing their own help; for they are carved and molten things. “Nor say this to yourself,” he says, “that the idols commanded me,” instead of “threatened,” that is, announced beforehand that I would suffer such evils. “You heard these things from me, and