Commentary on Isaiah 4.4.2–4.4.8

But when he lowered himself into self-emptying, coming to be in the likeness of man and found in form as a man, he receives the common name, that is, Christ and Jesus, or “God with us,” the “with us” signifying “in our condition.” For it is written: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.” And the blessed Gabriel, telling the mystery to the holy virgin, the Theotokos, says: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God; and behold, you will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus; for he will save his people from their sins.” Have the blessed angel and the prophet, then, spoken words that do not agree with each other? Not at all. The divine prophet, speaking mysteries in the Spirit, announced beforehand God who has come to be with us, naming him so from his nature and from the economy with the flesh; but the blessed angel gave him the name from his working, for he saved his own people. That is why he is called Saviour. And indeed, when he underwent birth according to the flesh for our sake, the armies of angels announced the birth to the shepherds as good news, saying: “Do not be afraid; for behold, we bring you good news today of great joy, which shall be for all the people: for today a Saviour has been born, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David.” He is Emmanuel, then, because, being God by nature, he came to be with us, that is, a man; and Jesus, because it was necessary that the whole earth under heaven be saved, he being God and having become man. When, therefore, he came forth from his own mother’s womb (for he was born of her according to the flesh), then his name too was called. The name Christ, I say, is not fitting for God the Word before the birth according to the flesh. For since he was not yet anointed, how could he be called Christ? When he came forth as man from his mother’s womb, then he receives the title, concurrent with the birth according to the flesh.

He says that his mouth was made like a sharp sword. This too is true. For it is written somewhere about him, or rather the prophet Isaiah himself says: “And he shall be girded with righteousness about the waist and clothed with truth about the sides, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the ungodly.” For the divine and heavenly preaching, that is, the gospel preaching spoken through the mouth of Christ, became a sword sharp and most cutting against the tyranny of the devil, slaying the world-rulers of this darkness and the spiritual forces of wickedness. For it scattered the mist of deceit and … made everyone lovers of [his] divine teachings; it cut down the sin of the world, justifying the ungodly by faith, filling with the Holy Spirit those who come to it and making them sons of God, putting into them a strong and most warlike mind, and giving them the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, so that, rising up against those who once held power over them, … That the instruction and initiation through Christ became destructive of the devil’s tyranny for those on the earth, the prophet Isaiah will make clear when he says: “In that day God will bring the holy sword, the great one, upon the dragon, the crooked serpent, and he will slay the dragon.”

He adds: “And under the shelter of his hand he hid me.” He speaks in a way suited to a man; yet for those of sound mind it is not hard to see even through these words that the Son is inseparable from God the Father … he says, of his right hand, so as to suggest that the unassailable and invincible character of his own nature is preserved to him even though he came to be in our condition. For no one will prevail over the all-mighty right hand; and the Word, as I said, has been set apart within the measures of humanity. For the Word from God the Father is still all-powerful, and he himself is the Lord of hosts. Since he became man, the Father, not dishonouring the power of the mystery, takes his place alongside the economy and says to him through the lyre of the psalmist: “The enemy shall get no advantage over him, and the son of lawlessness shall not again harm him; and I will cut down his enemies before his face, and I will put to flight those who hate him. And my truth and my mercy shall be with him.” Look, then, look: through the prophet’s voice too, the one who became like us for our sake speaks in a manner suited to a man: “Under the shelter of his hand he hid me.”

“He made me,” he says, “like a choice arrow, and in his quiver he sheltered me.” God’s arrows have been very many, hidden at their times as in a quiver, in his foreknowledge, and brought forth at the time suited to each; but the choice arrow, above them all, is Christ, hidden, as I said, as in a quiver, in the Father’s foreknowledge. For he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, and was brought forward into the midst when it was necessary to visit the whole earth, which had fallen into ruin and destruction through worshipping the creature rather than the Creator, being subject to unclean spirits and bound with the cords of sin. This choice arrow slays, as I said, Satan himself and the evil powers with him. It likewise slays the enemies of the truth, who have impiously set themselves against his sacred preaching. But it also wounds in another way, for benefit and salvation. For so the bride, struck, says in the Song of Songs: “I am wounded by love.”

“And he said to me,” he says (plainly the Father), “You are my servant, Israel, and in you I will be glorified.” O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, as it is written! For the Son was and is free, since he sprang ineffably from the essence that reigns over all. Yet he heard the Father say: “You are my servant.” So the free one … of the economy in the flesh, that is, the one understood as according to the flesh, so that you may again think of his birth in time from a woman according to the flesh. And he names him Israel because according to the flesh he was born of Israel’s blood; but he says: “And in you I will be glorified.”

For the God of all was glorified through the holy prophets too, but not in them; in Christ, however, in a strange and unaccustomed way. For he was glorified in him; and when Christ is glorified, the Father is glorified in him. We see him shining out in him through the dignities befitting God and through … power and working, holiness and righteousness, … and gentleness in everything. For in this way the Divine is given form to the mind. And indeed Christ said: “He who has seen me has seen my Father.” And the all-wise Paul too said that the one who begot him is glorified in the face of Christ. So he says: “In you I will be glorified.” For to the Son, even when he has appeared in the flesh, every knee shall bow, as it is written, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

“And I said: I have laboured in vain, and for nothing, and to no purpose I have given my strength. Therefore my judgment is with the Lord, and my toil before my God.”

The Saviour of all appeared in order to set free the whole earth under heaven from the … of the devil, and from death and sin, and to make those who come to him through faith resplendent with sacred gifts. To this those of the blood of Israel were called even before the others; and they were so far preferred to the nations that Jesus said: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But they who had been allotted so glorious and exceptional an honour became unbelieving and bold apostates, terrible and arrogant breakers from the flock. And though they ought to have come most gladly to grace and to have gained faith and the good things that come from it, this they did not do (how could they?); instead they rose up against him who called them to salvation, reviling him without restraint, abusing him unchecked (for what dreadful thing did they not utter shamelessly?), and at last they crucified him. So as far as the harshness of the disobedient and the outlandish contradiction they practised against him were concerned, the Saviour laboured in vain and to no purpose, and gave his strength for nothing. For the stricken Israel, as I said just now, did not bear with his sacred preaching; it did not honour his toil. For it was toil for the Word to become like us and to endure the meanness of human life. “But my judgment,” he says, is the Father, [who knows] the toils I have spent for their salvation. Therefore the judgment too was pronounced by him. And what was the judgment? They were cast out of their close relation to him; they were thrust out from being the people of God; they had no share in the salvation that comes from him; they remained without a taste of the hope of the saints; and in their place the multitude of the nations has been called in. And in place of their shepherds others have been appointed, righteous and dear to God, able … lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, as the all-wise Paul says. If you wish to see the Father’s judgment, that is, the verdict on them, hear the Saviour saying to the leaders of the Jews: “There was a man, a householder, who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower, and let it out to tenants and went abroad.” Then he says: “He sent servants to receive the fruits, and they all were put in danger. Since … last he sent his son; and when they saw him,” he says, “they said among themselves: This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance for ourselves. And indeed they killed him.” When this parable had been spoken to them, the Lord again speaks, saying: “When, then, the lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? They said to him: He will miserably destroy those wretches, and let out the vineyard to others who will give him the fruits in their seasons.” And to this Christ says: “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of heaven will be taken from you and given to another nation producing its fruits.” This has indeed come to fulfilment. For others have been appointed … that is, the divine disciples. Upon these the clouds …

… the clouds sent down rains upon us; and from these, unlike the Jewish vineyard, Christ has gathered in not thorns but grapes. For we have been taught to say: “The Lord will give goodness, and our land will yield its fruit.” But one might also say in another way that the Son’s toil came to be before the Father’s eyes, and that the judgment came out right. And look again, please, at the force of the passage, considering the economy which the all-wise Paul himself makes plain to us when he says that the Son, being in the form and equality of the Father, did not count being equal to God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself and became obedient to the Father unto death, even death on a cross; and for this cause he is highly exalted and has been granted the name above every name, so that at his name every knee should bow. For he was and is God the Word. But since he came to be called man, and this truly came about, he went up into his own glory with the flesh. For it became known that he is God, and that he did not toil in vain. For the manner of the economy turned out to his glory, not assigning him to anything foolish or strange, but showing him to be the Saviour and Redeemer of the whole earth under heaven; and once this was known, it led heaven and earth, and what is lower still, to fall down before him.

“And now thus says the Lord, who formed me from the womb as his own servant, to gather … I shall be gathered and glorified before the Lord, and my God shall be my strength. And he said to me: It is a great thing for you to be called my servant, to establish the tribes of Jacob and to turn back the dispersion …”

None the less we say that here too it is the Lord Jesus Christ himself who uses such words suited to a man, though he makes the manner of the self-emptying especially plain. For see how he says that the one who is by nature and truly his own [Son] formed him as his own servant, but “from the womb.” For he does not say that he was brought into the formation of servitude while he was still the naked and fleshless Word …, by the good pleasure of God the Father, but rather “from the womb,” that is, when he was born according to the flesh from a woman. For it was then that he who is God by nature, and free, as being from a God and Father who is free, receives the form of a servant, that is, a formation. No one with any sense would say that what is a servant by nature is rather formed into servitude; it is he who is beyond servitude and the yoke, and who is adorned with the glories of natural freedom, who would fittingly receive the formation of a servant, that is, his form. That the Son, being free, lowered himself to this willingly, how could anyone doubt, when Paul says that he was in the form of God and did not count being equal to God a thing to be grasped, but from his equality and likeness in every respect came down, not unwillingly, into the form of a servant and came to be in the likeness of men? For he was God together with this. And he showed us no less his being free by nature and in truth, and his being a servant not against his will, in the matter of the didrachma. For the tax collectors asked the divine Peter whether Christ paid the didrachma along with the others, or treated the payment as something to be refused. Then the Lord said to him: “From whom do the kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their own sons, or from strangers?” And when the disciple stated the truth, that kings collect what is assessed from strangers, he says: “Then the sons are free. But so that we may not cause them to stumble, go to the sea, cast a hook, and take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth you will find a stater; take that and give it to them for me and for you.” The one who is free by nature, then, is formed into a servant in the way of the economy, when he was also born from the womb of his mother according to the flesh.

For this is the time that suits the [measures] of the self-emptying … saying, “to gather Jacob and Israel.” For the Word, being God, came down into our condition for no other reason than to save Israel and gather Jacob. The inventor of all wickedness had scattered all who are on the earth into manifold, polytheistic … and many-formed sin. Some he turned away entirely from the Creator, making them subject to himself and to the unclean demons, throwing on them the yoke of sin, hard to escape, and turning them away completely even from knowing who is by nature the God and Lord of all. Those who had the law of Moses as the arbiter of what they should do he made careless and slack, carrying them off to every kind of outlandish thing, so that they took very little account of the law and acted rather as each saw fit, and taught as doctrines the commandments of men. But when Christ appeared to the world, [they] were gathered through faith into one right and unshaken … those who had long ago strayed from love toward God ran to him, and, throwing behind them the sin that makes enmity, [made] the good their pursuit, [and] peace … Isaiah at any rate says: “Let us make peace with him, let us make peace, we who are coming.” And the divine disciples too cried out: “So we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were appealing through us; we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” We make our reconciliation with God when we come to Christ through faith. For, as the most sacred Paul himself again says somewhere: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” For in Christ the world is reconciled to God. So he makes the ministry of the incarnation plain by saying that he was formed by the Father from the womb as a servant, so as to gather Israel and Jacob. If someone were to say that the nation of the Jews is meant by these words, he would not miss the mark; for Christ said somewhere: “I was sent only to the lost [sheep] of the house of Israel.” But if he should wish to name all who have been saved through faith Israel and Jacob, that too would be well. If it is true that the Jew is not only the one who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is in the flesh, as it might be called circumcision, but rather the Jew is the one who is one inwardly and has circumcision of the heart in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men but from God; if, then, the Jew is the one who has circumcision in the spirit, nothing at all would prevent any such persons from being named Israel and Jacob. In the middle of the passage a saying is inserted from those called through faith, who declare in their own voice: “I shall be gathered to him and glorified before the Lord, and my God shall be my strength.” For God commands a thing to come about, and at once what is commanded reaches its fulfilment, almost on the heels of the words spoken. For Israel was not saved all at once; some disbelieved because of their own wickedness, the … of the gospel … the multitude of the nations [was added] to the remnant; and they have also been made children of Abraham, so that in every respect, as far as the economy was concerned, it should not fail of the …

… purpose of his sojourn. For whoever is Israel, and indeed Jacob too, was gathered, according to the words we explained just now. So the people called in Christ promises that it will be gathered to God, plainly through faith, and that it will be glorified before God, having become a sharer in the splendour of adoption, made glorious by the Holy Spirit, shown to be a practiser of the best pursuits, and when it counts God its own strength. For so those who long for the salvation and glory that come from him ought to be disposed.

He adds to this: “And he said to me: It is a great thing for you to be called my servant, to establish the tribes of Jacob and to turn back the dispersion of Israel.” If one may speak in a human way, the Father does not let the Son shrink from the economy, nor does he let the lowliness of the form of a servant go unrewarded; rather he shows the matter to be fruitful, as it were, and the humiliation not without reward, and the burden of the economy not to be without wonder, and for this reason even the seeming loss of glory glorious. Admittedly it was a small thing for the Word who sprang from God to be called “servant” (pais), that is, a household slave. For the name sometimes means the Son, and sometimes, as I said, the household slave; and the needs of the sense lead us to bring in the one or the other at the time that suits each. Since the passage is about the economy with the flesh, it would fittingly suit … that “pais” be understood as servant. So, even if the dishonour of servitude, as I said, was a small thing for the Son, yet it was otherwise; and indeed it turned out to be no small thing for him. For he is glorified by all, as one who did not count being equal to God a thing to be grasped, who entered into the ways of servitude and came down into self-emptying, who endured the cross and what went with it, and laid down his own life in exchange for the life of all, so as to destroy the devil’s tyranny and drive the hordes of demons from their unbearable greed against us, so as to remove destructive sin from the midst, abolish death, refashion the nature of man to what it was from the beginning, and hand over to God the kingdom that is both the Father’s and his own, no longer tyrannized by anyone but rather casting off the yoke of others’ greed.

“Behold, I have set you for a light of nations, that you may be for salvation to the end of the earth.”

The Father was not ignorant of the hard-necked and unteachable mind of the Jews, turned wholly to unbridled ways. For they did not at all accept the instruction given through Christ, though they ought to have admired the Redeemer for his gentleness and incomparable love for mankind, and to have received his generosity, as it were, with open hands. So that the economy of our Saviour might not seem to have missed its aim, since the people that was preferred kicked against it and did not, as I said, accept his redemption, the Father added that he will show the path of salvation and send the light of the true knowledge of God to those in mist and darkness. For Israel was being called to this, Christ saying plainly: “I am the light of the world”; and: “While you have the light, walk in the light, so that darkness may not overtake you.” But since they loved the darkness rather than the light, they were left behind by him, although the holy prophets had foretold to them the grace that is in Christ. For one said: “Shine, shine, Jerusalem, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

Behold, darkness and gloom shall cover the earth over the nations; but upon you the Lord shall appear, and his glory shall be seen upon you.” And another: “And to you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” But since, as the sacred writing says, they made their ears heavy so as not to hear, and closed their eyes, Christ shone upon the nations, and … of the divine light, from the east to the west and to the ends of the earth, to enjoy his generosity and with the pure eyes of the mind to behold the divine and supreme nature, and those of the spiritual worship, both to it and …

“Thus says the Lord, the God who rescued you, Israel: Sanctify him who holds his life cheap, who is abhorred by the nations, the servants of the rulers. Kings shall see him, and rulers shall arise, and they shall worship him for the Lord’s sake, because the Holy One of Israel is faithful, and I chose you. Thus says the Lord: In an acceptable time I heard you, and in a day of salvation …”

How great a care God the Father thought fit to take of those called through Christ you may learn from this too. For he initiates them into the mysteries and uncovers the deep and great mystery of the incarnation, not letting any be shattered on the stone of stumbling and, through ill counsel, strike against the rock of offence. For that is how the stricken Israel was crushed. What then does he say? “I, the God who rescued you, say this to you: Sanctify him who holds his life cheap,” that is, regard as venerable and holy, and be eager to treat so, him who made his own life cheap, that is, set it at nothing. For God, the only-begotten Word of God, having become man, laid down his own life for us and chose to suffer for our sake death according to the flesh, while undergoing nothing in his own nature. For he himself, being beyond suffering as God, nevertheless, so to speak, threw it away, and that for sinners. This the all-wise Paul marvelled at; for he said: “God shows his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, at the right time he died for the ungodly.” And Christ himself says somewhere: “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” So he laid it down for us; for by his bruise we were healed, and he was weakened because of our lawless deeds, and was handed over because of our sins. “Let him be sanctified,” then, he says, that is, let him be counted holy, or confessed as holy. This would befit God, and him alone, properly and in a special way. For even if there are many holy ones and rational powers …