Commentary on Isaiah 4.4.24–4.5.7

that this too was included to show that the Jordan was dried up completely. The divine David too recalls so splendid and great a wonder, saying at one time: “What ails you, O sea, that you fled, and you, Jordan, that you turned back?” and again at another: “The waters saw you, O God, the waters saw you and were afraid; the depths were troubled, a multitude of the sound of waters.” And of the Jordan again he speaks thus: “You dried up the rivers of Etham,” that is, those in the south. He recalls another wonder too, and says: “I will clothe the heaven with darkness, and make its covering like sackcloth”; and here again “I will clothe” is to be understood instead of “I clothed.” For we remember that the all-wise Moses wrote that a deep darkness of three days was spread over the land of the Egyptians, but did no harm at all to those of Israel; for they had day and light. This too is marvellous and beyond all words. “Since, then, I am that very one,” he says, “even having appeared in the flesh, who of old made the sea desolate, that is, made it dry, and did the same to rivers, and cast darkness about this immense heaven, and made it evident by experience itself that I am Master of all and that nothing at all is beyond my powers, how would he not deserve laughter, or rather undergo an indictment for impiety, who should choose to think and say: My hand is not strong to rescue?”

“The Lord gives me a tongue of instruction, to know when I must speak a word. He set me in the morning; he added to me an ear to hear, and the instruction of the Lord opens my ears.”

It would not be implausible, or rather not out of keeping with right reasoning, to apply these words to the choir of the holy apostles, or to all who have believed in our Lord Jesus Christ, been made wise through the Spirit, and received abundantly into mind and understanding the enlightenment that comes from him; who have also come to share in divine gifts, and have been able to see with the pure eyes of the mind the depth of the divinely inspired Scripture, and have come within the skill of gospel living and holy understanding. These, then, [have received] as a gift a tongue of instruction, that is, the ability to speak in a well-instructed way, to make plain the divine mysteries beyond reproach, and to know when and how one ought to use words of exhortation. This the divine disciples did: they stored up in mind and heart a sound and blameless knowledge of faith in Christ, and to each of those who came to the divine preaching they offered the word that was fitting and suited to him. To those still infants they very fittingly brought, as it were in the rank of milk, the word of simple catechesis; but to those who had attained to the mature man and come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, the solid and most nourishing word. This, then, is the tongue of instruction, and the gift of knowing when one must speak a word. And they say that they were set “in the morning,” that is, there dawned in mind and heart the brightness of day, the shining of divine and spiritual light, the rising of the morning star. And this again we shall know from what the blessed Paul wrote: “Giving thanks to God the Father, who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love in the light.” For the god of this age blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that the enlightenment of the gospel of Christ should not dawn on them. But for us the sun of righteousness has risen, flashing round our mind with divine light, so that we both are and are called sons of light and of the day. Then he says: “He added to me an ear to hear, and the instruction of the Lord opens my ears.” For having accepted faith in Christ and been enriched with the enlightenment that comes from him, we have received an addition of ear, that is, a power of hearing not usual before. For the Jews, reading the law, do not run past the shadow but settle in the types, bare and alone; for the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, as it is written. But we, believing the law to be a tutor, whenever we receive into our ears what was given through Moses, understand it otherwise …, making the shadow an occasion for spiritual contemplation. So we have received an addition of ears. For the instruction given through Christ, that is, the gospel preaching and the initiation into the mysteries through him, persuades us to understand the law spiritually. It widens, as it were, the ears of those who have believed in him, while those of Israel do not have this. At any rate our Lord Jesus Christ said to them: “Search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, and you do not want to come to me that you may have life.” And the all-wise and divine Paul writes about them that “whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart, not being lifted, because it is abolished in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Redeemer.”

“But I do not disobey, nor do I speak against. I gave my back to scourges and my cheeks to blows, and I did not turn away my face from the shame of spittings; and the Lord became my helper. Therefore I was not put to shame, but I set my face like a solid rock, and I knew that I shall not be put to shame, for he who justified me draws near.”

Through the passages already read, or rather already examined, he has made a very great outcry against the disobedience of the Jews. For he said: “I came, and there was no man; I called, and there was none who obeyed.” And having inserted in between the person of the … “[The Lord gives] me a tongue of instruction, to know when I must speak a word,” and what followed it, … the person of Christ, [setting] his own obedience [against the disobedience of the] Jews, so as to convict them as wholly God-hating, lifting a proud and harsh neck against him who calls them to salvation. “For I called,” he says, “and there was none who obeyed.” They were sluggish toward ready obedience, slow and wholly without understanding as to what they ought to grasp of what would serve their benefit, and of the means by which they could probably have escaped, and very easily, both the tyranny of sin and the plots of the devil’s malice. “But they disobeyed, while I did not …, so as to sum up all things in myself, both those in heaven and those on earth; I lowered myself to self-emptying and came down into the measures of human poverty, appearing as man so as to become obedient even unto death, even death on a cross. So I gave my back to scourges and my cheeks to blows, and I did not turn away my face from the shame of spittings.” For it befell him to suffer these things when the boorishness of the Jews behaved outrageously toward him, and Pilate tore him with scourges, and one of the unholy attendants struck him; and the one aim of him who suffered was to carry the good will of the Father through to its completion. And indeed Christ said somewhere: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given me I should lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.” So, for the sake of achieving life for those who believe in him, he did not refuse insults, scourges, or the experience of being spat upon, though he was God by nature and true Lord. Then he says as a man: “And the Lord became my helper; therefore I was not put to shame, but I set my face like a solid rock, and I knew that I shall not be put to shame, for he who justified me draws near.” He speaks, then, in a human way,

as I said, and in no way out of keeping with the measures of the self-emptying. But by these words he seems to hint at the punishment that fell on them for their impiety toward him. “For the Lord,” he says, “became my helper.” It is as if he were saying: “When I had given my back to scourges and my cheeks to blows, and had suffered also the sufferings on the cross, the Father became my helper.” For he defended him, and did not allow his own Son to be put to shame altogether, nor indeed to be disgraced. “For they have been punished … [who] offended against me.” And by adding “He who justified me draws near,” he again neatly suggested that the punishment of those who behaved outrageously toward him will not run far off nor be put off, but will come near, as it were, and on their heels … [the Father justified the] Son in a manner of this kind. Since they dared to kill him though he was righteous and in no way liable for faults, they have been punished, as I said; and the chastisement of those who suffered it has borne witness to the complete innocence of him whom they unholily outraged. God the Father said something of this kind: “And I will give the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death.” He names as rich and wicked the leaders of the Jews; for, sick with an extreme love of money, they were carried away by it into their wickedness against him. For although they recognized him, they said: “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance for ourselves.”

“Who is it that contends with me? Let him stand against me at once. Who is it that contends with me? Let him draw near to me.”

That he was righteous and wholly innocent (for he committed no sin) when he underwent the outrages of the Jews the divine prophet himself will confirm, saying about him: “See how the righteous one has perished, and no one takes it to heart.” And again, as from the person of the Jews about him: “Let us bind the righteous one, for he is troublesome to us.” And the thing itself would proclaim it aloud. For how could the divine and pure nature of the Word come under sin or the blame of any fault? At any rate it was said of Christ, the Saviour of us all: “He committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth.” Since, then, he says that he underwent the plots of the synagogue of the Jews though he was innocent and righteous, he necessarily addresses those who did not know his entire purity, or perhaps even supposed that he had done something out of place and suffered justly what he suffered on the cross, and says: “Who is it that contends with me? Let him stand against me at once.”

Like this is what Christ himself said plainly to the scribes and Pharisees: “Which of you convicts me of sin? If I speak the truth, why do you not believe me?” For although the only-begotten Word of God became like us and took on likeness in every respect, it is believed that in this one respect alone he was beyond our nature. For every man is subject to faults and offences, and no one [is clean of stain even if his] life [be but one day]; he alone, even when he became man, kept for himself the dignity befitting God. For the nature of God may fittingly be understood to be beyond offending. Therefore he also said: “The ruler of this world is coming, and he will find nothing in me.” For how could he who became like us in order to rescue us from the nooses of sin be caught along with us himself? Or how did he come under blame and indictment who frees from indictment and blame all who believe in him? “For it is God who justifies; who is to condemn?”

“Behold, the Lord helps me; who will harm me? Behold, all of you will grow old like a garment, and as a moth will devour you.”

He wishes to teach at once two useful and necessary things to those who were sick with impious and unjust envy against him: first, that their scheme against him and their murderous attempt would come to nothing in every way; then, that bitter and unbearable penalties will be exacted from those who have offended against him. For they thought they could surround with death the Lord, who is the author of life. But, as the psalmist says: “They devised a counsel which they will not be able to establish.” For it was impossible that he, being life, should be held by death. So he was raised by the power of God the Father, as it is written; not because he himself, insofar as he is understood as Word and God, lacked strength to drive away corruption from his own flesh, but because he became man, and seems to receive this too from the Father; for to a man all things are given by God. That God the Father abolished the power of death through him, by his resurrection from the dead, would be clear from his saying to the crowds of the Jews: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” But since it is his custom to attribute rather to the person of the Father what is beyond human hand and nature, so here too he says in a human way: “Behold, the Lord helps me; who will harm me?” “For when God the Father defends me,” he says, “and does away with all your abuse and establishes my glory, who among you will be great enough to set himself against his invincible counsel and to be able to harm him who is helped by him?”

So if the scribes and Pharisees had been at all sensible, they would have kept away from their schemes and attempts against him, having learned beforehand through the holy prophets that they could not wrong Christ, who is God and Lord and true Son of the Father; rather, they draw upon themselves a terrible and most cutting punishment. And he teaches this by adding: “Behold, all of you will grow old like a garment, and as a moth will devour you,” that is, you will go off into ageing and rotting and disappearance, melted down in many inescapable evils, an incurable calamity consuming you like a moth. The prophet Isaiah says this again elsewhere too: “Why will you still be struck, adding sins? Every head is in pain and every heart in grief; from the feet to the head [there is no soundness in it]; neither wound nor bruise nor festering blow — it is not possible to apply a plaster, nor oil, nor bandages. Your land is desolate, your cities burned with fire; your country, strangers devour it in your presence, and it has been made desolate, overthrown by foreign peoples.” The foretelling of things so much to be prayed against was quite enough to persuade the Jews to keep quiet and to choose in no way to strike against God, since, as I said, their plot was going to come to nothing, while they themselves would pay the penalty for their vain attempts and fall into utter ruin and destruction.

“Who among you fears the Lord? Let him hear the voice of his Servant.”

Having said that those will grow old like a garment who choose to labour in vain and revel in their outrages against him (for he said: “Behold, all of you will grow old like a garment, and as a moth will devour you”), he now holds out his love for mankind to the more reasonable, and [the hope] of salvation to the [remnant] of those of Israel, as also in the Acts of the [Apostles] … remnant, of which the divine disciples became, as it were, the first-fruits and offering. So to those readier for faith he speaks words of gentleness, saying: “Who among you fears the Lord? Let him hear the voice of his Servant.” By calling himself the Servant (pais) of God he lets us understand that, even having become man, he is the true Son of God the Father. And to hear his voice was not a transgression of the law but a confirmation of the law, which through type and shadow described beforehand the truth, which is Christ and his oracles. That is why the all-wise [Paul says]: “[Do we then] abolish [the law] through faith? By no means; rather we establish the law. For it is written: My righteous one shall live by faith.” And the end of the law and the prophets was the mystery of Christ, to justify in faith those held fast in their own offences. So to hear his voice, plainly Christ’s, that is, to accept the saving preaching of the gospel, was a confirmation of the law. And that it is the will of God the Father [that we obey] the [words] of the Son, the force of the gospel writings would show to the more sensible. For Christ was transfigured on the mountain; his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as the light; and Moses and Elijah were seen talking with one another; then there came a voice from God the Father, charging the holy apostles and saying: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” “If, then, there is anyone,” he says, “who has the fear of God in his mind and has hidden it within himself like a treasure, let him hear the voice of his Servant.” And this, as I said, is the divine preaching of the gospel, calling to the redemption that comes through faith in Christ, and to a pure way of life far more excellent than that in the law. For that, as I said, was in shadows, but this has the truth splendid and manifest.

“Those who walk in darkness, there is no light for them: trust in the name of the Lord, and lean upon the Lord.”

[Physicians] mix [sweet things] with their remedies; sometimes they also [soothe] the harsh and fiercer pain [that comes] from … We find that our Lord Jesus Christ has done something of this kind here too. For he convicts them as walking in darkness, held as it were by mist and wholly deprived of light, plainly the divine and spiritual light, and making their tracks toward nothing that leads to salvation or benefit for them, but rather toward those things that would easily thrust them into the pit of destruction. For it is not, it is not possible for those in darkness ever to walk straight; they are carried down, whether there should be a pit somewhere or … “To you, then,” he says, “I hold out admonitions, you who walk in darkness and foolishly do not accept the light that comes from me: trust in the name of the Lord, and lean upon God.” For the Jewish people, out of very great folly, seeing the only-begotten Word of God in a form like ours, that is, become man, did not understand the mystery concerning him; in their lack of understanding they called him a Samaritan and a drunkard, and at times, goaded on by misguided zeal, they were stirred to anger (for they said: “We are not stoning you for a good work, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God”). Necessarily, then, as I said, as one who had only lately become man, he makes plain to them his surpassing glory and power, most befitting God, and draws some away from wishing to think meanly of him, saying: “Trust in the name of the Lord, and lean upon God.” Most clearly, then, he says that he himself is Lord and God, drawing them away, as I said, from wishing to think and speak about him in low and abject terms. And it is the boast of those who have received the faith to trust in him and to make him their staff and support; for he upholds all things so that they may be well. And this, I think, the divine Singer teaches when he says to God the Father of all: “Your rod and your staff, they have comforted me.” For the human mind easily slips toward the things in this world and has inclined much toward outlandish pleasures and love of the flesh; it always needs him who saves and holds out a saving hand, so that those who have come to share in his help say: “He set my feet upon a rock and directed my steps.” That the mind of the Jews had been cast into darkness and mist one can see from the sacred writings. For the all-wise Paul says: “The god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that the enlightenment of the gospel of the glory of Christ should not dawn.” And the divine prophet Isaiah says somewhere of those of the blood of Israel: “While they waited for light, darkness came upon them; waiting for brightness, they walked in untimely gloom.” But Christ himself was calling them to the light, saying: “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” It is settled, then, and it is true, that for those who did not choose to follow him it will follow in every way that, as in …

“Behold, all of you kindle fire and strengthen a flame. Walk by the light of your fire and by the flame which you kindled. Because of me these things came upon you; you will lie down in sorrow.”

He shows them something else too, which might well have brought them over without trouble to choosing to think rightly. For the remembrance of punishments [softens] even the disobedient and hardened mind … He says, then, that those who strengthen a flame kindle fire against themselves. For by striking against him through long disobedience, and wishing to have a heart so unteachable, they rouse against themselves the unquenchable flame, plainly that of punishment. What Christ himself, the Saviour of us all, said plainly has the same sense as these words: “He who believes in the Son is not judged; but he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the Son of God.” For what else is being judged than falling into the flame, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and … flame, he lets us understand something both sharp and true. For those who put on a fire materials able to be burned up strengthen it; the flame rages among much material, but somehow weakens when it has not much to feed on. So the Jews kindled a fire against themselves by killing the prophets and stoning … they added to their earlier crimes their outrages against Christ, [and so fed] their own flame. For they added the Son to the household slaves, and as far as it lay in them they killed the author of life, though he came to life again, being God and life. And since they did not accept the instruction given through Christ but remained in the shadows of the law, he very fittingly sends them away from close relation to himself, as people who think they have the light that comes from the law but do not truly have it, saying: “Walk by the light of your fire and by the flame which you kindled.” For it was not light they had; rather, their seeming to know the law, while no longer willing to accept what came through Christ, became for them the cause of fire and flame. That they paid the penalty for their outrage against Christ, besides passing their lives held fast in their sins, he makes plain by adding: “Because of me these things came upon you; you will lie down in sorrow.” What things? Their country was laid waste, the wicked wretches perished wretchedly, the holy city was taken and fell into the hands of enemies, the temple itself was burned, and they lay down in sorrow. For those who die unpurified, not found worthy to gain the redemption that comes through Christ, will lie down not in hope of rewards and in spiritual gladness, but in fear of punishments and in sorrow because of them.

“Hear me, you who pursue what is righteous and seek the Lord: look to the solid rock which you hewed, and to the pit … Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you in travail; for he was one, and I called him, and blessed him, and loved him, and …”

… true, and having made plain the punishment that would befall them unless they chose [to obey] the gospel …, [those who] harshly stretched up the neck of their mind, he turns, at the right time, the words of exhortation to those of the blood of Israel who believed. For the nation of the Jews did not perish entirely; the remnant has been saved, according to the prophet’s words. And indeed, as is written in the Acts of the holy apostles, very many accepted the word about Christ and recognized the appearing of his glory. To these, then, he speaks and says: “Hear me, you who pursue what is righteous and seek the Lord.” “What is righteous” he says instead of “righteousness,” plainly the righteousness through Christ, I mean that which comes through faith in him, which justifies the ungodly, frees the defiled from every stain, and procures the boast of [adoption]. They pursue what is righteous not as driving it away and putting it out of their mind, but as running toward it so as to overtake it. The divine David too said something of this kind: “Seek peace and pursue it.” Or you will also understand it according to what one of the holy prophets said: “With what shall I overtake the Lord, lay hold of my God most high?” So they pursue what is righteous, as I said, so that, having found it, they may seize it. And these would be those who seek the Lord himself, that is, Christ. For they find him through faith, God the Father calling them to this. And indeed Christ said somewhere to the Jewish crowds: “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” But observe this: God speaks not simply to all, but rather to those who pursue what is righteous and seek him, in the ways we have just described. So all who are called through faith in Christ to the knowledge of the truth are taught by God. What the force of the ideas means we shall say as far as we can. The multitude of the Jews was very great, but those of them who believed were very few indeed. But that in time the believers will advance to a multitude beyond number, those from the circumcision being joined by those from the so-called uncircumcision, that is, the nations, as God gathers them, he tries to assure them, taking as an example of the thing, or a confirmation of hope in it, the divine Abraham and with him Sarah. For they became the root of the whole nation, though they were of an old age past its season and no longer had hope of being able to have children. For he was a hundred years old, and she was barren and unable to bear.