Commentary on Isaiah 5.1.16–5.2.2

For having suffered countless things at the time of his arrest, having endured insults and spittings and the slaps of the unholy attendants, and other things besides that might well put the sufferer in a bad state, he was brought to Pilate. From being ill-treated, he says, he does not open his mouth; but he was led like a sheep to slaughter, and like a lamb … And he, because he was ill-treated, does not open … our [sins], and made weak because of [our] lawless deeds. … he makes this clearer by what follows: “The chastisement,” he says, “of our peace was upon him; by his bruise we were healed.” For being enemies of God, since we had offended, we owed chastisement and punishment; but we did not experience it: our Savior himself endured it. It was fitting for him to heal like by like, and through a sheep to call back the straying of the sheep. He becomes a sheep, not changed into a sheep, nor undergoing alteration, nor departing from his own essence, but wisely putting on the nature of the sheep. As a sheep, then, and a sacrificial victim he became, and was offered as a sacrifice for the whole race. Not idly did the prophet mention slaughter and shearing together; but since he was God and man, and when the body was slaughtered the divine nature remained impassible, the divine Isaiah of necessity showed us both the slaughter of the sheep and the shearing of the lamb. For not only, he says, was he slaughtered, but he was also shorn. For the human element underwent death; but as God, living and remaining impassible, he gave the fleece of the body to the wicked. “… before the one who shears it, dumb.” For sheep are taken at certain times to be cleaned, and the shepherds bring shearing knives upon them. And they, although suffering (for the knife sometimes grazes the skin and hurts), bear it and are silent, and do not leap at those who do it. So too Christ, when reviled, did not revile in return; when suffering, he did not threaten, but entrusted himself to him who judges justly.

It is true, then, that “In his humiliation his judgment was taken away.” For since he seemed to them to be someone cheap and among the very lowly, they brought the vote, that is, the judgment, against him. Some judges do this, who have very little regard for accuracy, that is, for the truth, and judge persons rather than deeds. … they are found to be precise examiners of the facts, perhaps even then fighting against the truth and trying to find ways to help; but when someone obscure is brought before them, then indeed, then they are hot and bold and most unhesitating, and bring down on him the vote for the extreme penalty. “His judgment, then, was taken away in his humiliation,” he says. And since he seemed to some among the Jews, that is, to the judges, to be lowly, the prophet, considering the splendor of the glory that was in him, and that he was God, though seen by those on earth in a form like ours, all but shakes his head and laments those who decreed the judgment against him, and says: “Who will describe his generation?” For it was not against some ordinary person, he says, as you thought, that you became harsh and unjust judges, but rather against this one, whose generation, that is, birth, no word could interpret to us. You will understand this in two ways. For the Word, being God, has been begotten of God the Father, and the manner of the begetting is wholly ineffable and incomprehensible.

For it did not take place bodily, but as befits the intellectual and incorporeal nature. For light shone forth from light, and life sprang from life; and that he was truly begotten of the essence of God the Father we believe without doubting, but how, it is not possible to say or to conceive. Being God by nature, he brought himself down to choose to undergo the self-emptying for our sake. He took the form of a slave and underwent the birth according to … following … laws. For his coming forth was not from a man and a woman, but rather mystical and strange and beyond us, and nearly indescribable. For it was said to the holy Virgin: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore also the holy one who is born will be called Son of God.” And since the mystery of his birth according to the flesh is believed to have been accomplished beyond our nature, the prophet therefore says: “Who will describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” “Is taken away” (αἴρεται), he says, stands for “is lifted up”: his life, that is, his conduct and his life in the flesh, is higher than those on earth. For he alone of all, though seen as a man like us, did no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth, although no one on earth had achieved this; for no one among us is wholly blameless. It is lifted up in another way also: the life, that is, the existence, of the Only-begotten is above all those on earth, when he is understood apart from the flesh and not yet become man like us. He, then, whose birth according to the flesh is wonderful and beyond nature, his life and conduct also surpass the measure of those on earth.

But as though someone said to this: How has he who knew no sin been subjected to the votes of death and been reckoned with the lawless? For he was condemned as a sinner. God the Father all but rises up against this, saying: “Because of the lawless deeds of my people he was led to death.” For either he means this: For the sin of my people he willingly endured the sentence of death; or perhaps that: Since those who belong to my people, he says, have become most lawless, therefore, through their cruelty and bloodguilt, the nooses came upon him as well, and he was led to death. Both the one and the other are wholly true. For he died to abolish the sin of those on earth, and with it to destroy the death that sprang from it. He died in another way also, when the Jews acted lawlessly against him. For although they recognized that he is the heir, they said among themselves: “Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance for ourselves.”

“And I will give the wicked in return for his burial, and the rich in return for his death.”

“Because he did no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth.”

He seems in these words to wish to show, and to prove true, what we said just now: that because those who belonged to the people of God were exceedingly impious and most lawless, Christ was led to death. For since, he says, they behaved outrageously and unholily toward him, and killed him who is the author of life, acting impiously without restraint even against the Savior himself, for this reason, and most justly, I will give the wicked and the rich, he says, into the hands of enemies, in return for his burial and in return for his death. For the Jews offended in two ways: by killing the Lord and by slandering his burial. And in what way, we shall say. He was buried after undergoing death according to the flesh; but he came back to life on the third day, an earthquake having taken place at the tomb, so that even the soldiers guarding it perceived the event, went to the leaders of the Jews, and reported this and the resurrection itself. But they, as the evangelist says, gave sufficient money to the soldiers, that they should say: “His disciples came by night and stole him.” And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. So … God the Father; he calls them wicked as having killed Jesus on stale charges, and rich because with money they persuaded Pilate's guards to slander the august and great mystery of the resurrection. It is likely that they were also called rich in another way, the word hinting at and striking them, because they plotted against Christ for this reason: to keep for themselves wealth unjustly heaped up from not judging rightly and from defrauding whomever they could. At any rate he said of them through the voice of Isaiah: “Your rulers are disobedient, companions of thieves, loving gifts, pursuing reward, not judging for orphans, and not attending to the widow's cause.” And they made the word of faith unacceptable, considering that when the worship in the law ceased they would lose the profits of the priesthood; for they received firstfruits and tithes, even down to the cheapest … Christ saying: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy and faith.” They are convicted as lovers of wealth for another reason too: for, as I said before, transferring the Master's inheritance to themselves, they plotted against the master of the vineyard. And that by divine sentence God has given the wicked and the rich in return for the death and burial of Christ, he shows plainly by adding at once: “Because he did no lawlessness, nor was deceit found in his mouth.” What word, then, will help the Jews on the day of judgment? For God the Father has clearly testified to the Son's sinlessness: neither was deceit, that is, falsehood, found in his mouth, nor did he do lawlessness. So in deed and word he was wholly blameless and reached the limit of all purity. But they lied against him and bore false witness against him, saying to Pilate at one time, “This man stirs up the people and forbids giving tribute to Caesar,” and again, “If this man were not an evildoer, we would not have handed him over to you.” They act, then, against the Father's testimonies, subjecting the blameless and righteous one to untrue accusations, and for this reason they were handed over to enemies.

“Because the Lord wills to cleanse him from the blow.”

For if those who had raged against him had not paid the penalty, perhaps some might naturally have suspected and said that Christ was condemned by a just vote, as one found liable to the charge brought against him. But when the wrath was brought forth and a punishment proportionate to their impiety toward him was brought on them, he is cleansed of the blow. For God would not have been angry, nor would he have disregarded his own people, nor handed them over to the worst evils, if they had not denied the holy and righteous one, slandering him, nailing him to the tree, and going beyond all inhumanity.

“If you give an offering for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived seed. And the Lord wills to take away from the toil of his soul, to show him light and to form him with understanding, to justify a righteous one who serves many well; and he himself shall bear their sins. Therefore he shall inherit many and shall divide the spoils of the strong, because his soul was handed over to death, and he was reckoned among the lawless, and he himself bore the sins of many, and was handed over because of their sins.”

Having accused those of Israel of having … killed the giver of life and the prince of the salvation of all, he transfers his words to the flocks of the nations, and says as if to them: “If you give an offering for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived seed.” It is as if he said plainly: Christ has laid down his own life for you; he bought you with his own blood; he endured the cross, despising the shame, that he might accomplish your salvation. If, then, you too make him a return, and pay as a debt a ready obedience, and bring your neck under his yokes, then your soul will see a long-lived seed; that is, you will be partners with those kept for a life of long ages, the saints, of course, who have been enriched with the hope of eternal life. For among the Greeks there was no account of the resurrection of the dead, and the mystery is disbelieved to this day. They all but say: “The breath in our nostrils is smoke … will be dispersed like thin air.” But among the nurslings of the church the resurrection of those who have fallen asleep was an unshaken hope, and God promises it to the nations, if they choose to bring the repayment of their own soul to Christ, who chose to suffer because of their sin. And what kind of debt is owed by us, Paul will make clear, saying: “For one died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised.” So we owe him our own life. Therefore he says: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” And he who denies himself will no longer live the life that pleases himself, but rather that which would be understood as Christ's, that is, holy and blameless, as indeed did the divine Paul, who wrote plainly: “For through the law I died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God.” See, then, how he has given for sin, dedicating as it were his own life to the one who suffered for him. For we have heard Christ saying to his own disciples: “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” … For mother and father have become to a man the beginning and occasion of his bodily coming into being; but the God and Father of all, when we were held fast by death and withering like grass, regenerated us to incorruption through Christ in the Spirit, made us stronger than corruption, and crowned us with a long and endless life. Rightly, then, reverence for parents would yield to love for him. And to love Christ with the whole soul and heart, and to

follow his commands, that is, his sacred oracles, is to give for sin, together with choosing to keep faith in him right and blameless. “Your soul, then,” he says, “shall see a long-lived seed. For the Lord wills to take away from the toil of his soul, and to show him light, and to form him with understanding.” For he became very sorrowful, even to death, before the precious cross; for so it is written by the holy evangelists. But when, having trodden down Hades, he came back to life on the third day, and then beheld human nature set in himself in incorruption, and the good pleasure of God the Father already spreading over all the earth, and the multitude of the nations about to be enlightened, to depart from its ancient and familiar error, and to be called to the knowledge of himself and of the Father, he put off the toil of the suffering and gave victory to those of right mind. For as soon as he was raised from the dead, since he is good, rejoicing greatly at the salvation and life of the world, he said to the holy disciples: “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth; go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” So if you give for sin, you too will be partakers of a long-lived seed, that of the saints, of course. For God the Father wills to take away from the toil of his soul, plainly Christ's, that is, to change the grief on the cross into joy, by showing him those who were once darkness, that is, those who once went astray, transformed into light; to whom also the all-wise Paul writes, saying: “You who were once darkness, but now are light in the Lord.” He wills to form him with understanding. And what this is, the all-wise Paul will teach, saying: “For we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord, the Spirit.” For those who are in sins and worship the creation rather than the Creator have, in a way, an ugly heart and a most unlovely mind. At any rate it was said to someone through the voice of Jeremiah: “Behold, your eyes are not, nor is your heart, good.” But when they receive faith in Christ, they are spiritually reshaped to his divine and surpassing beauty. Paul at any rate writes to some: “My little children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.” God the Father wills, then, with understanding, that is, by his own wisdom (befitting God, of course), to form believers toward him and to make them conformed to him through sanctification in the Spirit. “For those whom he foreknew,” it says, “he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son; these he also called.” And God is said also to create the two peoples into one new man.

And God the Father wills, I think, to justify a righteous one who serves many well, and “he himself shall bear their sins.” The righteous one who serves many well would be understood, I think, as no other than our Lord Jesus Christ. For he came not to be served, as he himself says, but rather to serve, according to the economy of the incarnation. For this reason the blessed Paul saw fit to call him a minister. For he said about the law and the New Covenant: “For if the ministry of condemnation was glory (Moses' face had been glorified), much more does the ministry of righteousness excel in glory.” Christ, then, righteous and blameless, serves many well. For the Word, being God, took the form of a slave, not to benefit his own nature, but bestowing this too on us, and as it were fulfilling a ministry toward us, through which we have been saved. He is justified, moreover, in that he repels the suspicion of seeming to be wicked and to have justly suffered death on the tree, both because those of Israel paid the penalty for their impiety toward him, and because he reigns over all the nations under heaven, which have run to him. For that the word of the incarnation has the force of ministry

the word of the incarnation has, he showed by saying: “And he himself shall bear their sins.” For in order to remove sin from the world, by taking it upon himself and dying, one for all, he who is worth as much as all, for this reason he served many. By saying “many” he means the nations; for Israel was one nation. Since he himself bore their sins, he says, therefore he shall inherit many and divide the spoils of the strong. Here again you will understand by “many” those from the nations, for they are ten thousand times more than those of Israel; and by “the strong” either the holy apostles, or simply all who are mighty in Christ and have spiritual courage, to whom, as having conquered Satan, he distributes spoils. For he distributes to the saints with a rich hand the supplies of the spiritual gifts. “For to one is given,” it says, “through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge,” and prophecies and discernings of spirits, and the gifts of healings. Applying the force of the word to the holy apostles, we say this: all the nations were as it were Satan's possession, but he who inherited many divided them among the holy initiators. For some were called through the divine Peter to the knowledge of Christ, the Savior of us all, and others, through the instruction of the divine Paul or of some other of the holy apostles, were caught in the net into the light of the truth. … as spoils of war, the turning and calling of those who once went astray. And that Christ, who died for all, had to be seen as … of all, he persuades us by saying: “Because his soul was handed over to death, and he was reckoned among the lawless, and he himself bore the sins of many, and because of …”

Tome 2.

“Rejoice, barren one who does not bear; break forth and shout, you who are not in labor, for more are the children of the desolate than of her who has a husband. For the Lord said: Enlarge the place of your tent and of your curtains; fix them, do not spare; … strengthen …; spread out still to the right and to the left. And your seed shall inherit nations, and cities …”

Having explained very well in what manner the true Lamb, that is, Christ, endured the precious cross for us and the slaughter for the world, and besides this having foretold that he will inherit many, he transfers the words of the prophecy to those who have now been given to him by God as an inheritance, that is, the nations. For this the Son himself also proclaimed beforehand through the psalmist's lyre, saying: “The Lord said to me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” He says that they are many; for those from the nations would be understood as many times more and beyond number compared with those of Israel's blood, who belong to one single nation. He sees fit to liken the multitude of the nations to a woman barren and rejected, that is, desolate; and he says to her: “Rejoice, barren one who does not bear.” But perhaps someone will say this: For what reason does he call barren the multitude of the nations, that is, the church gathered from the nations? Yet the word has previously indicated that those who went astray and worshipped the creation rather than the Creator were far more numerous than those redeemed through Moses, and therefore numbered and taken into God's portion. For “when,” it says, “the Most High divided the nations, when he scattered the sons of Adam, … his people Jacob became the Lord's portion, Israel the measured line of his inheritance.” In what sense, then, is she barren who has so many children and is as it were most fertile? Because among those who did not know the God of all there was no one fit to be counted among the children of God for knowledge and virtue. And in another way also: there was not among them the regeneration through water and the Spirit, but they were still from corruption, corruptible and earthly, and, as the psalmist says, “alienated from the womb” from kinship with God, “and going astray from the belly itself,” being sinners from sinners, idolaters, and “having no hope,” as the all-wise Paul says. The barren one, then, bore to the God over all no one of those who ought, or were able, to be counted among his children and to belong to them through faith and virtue. But behold, she has been commanded to break forth and shout.

This is the custom of women who are now on the birthing stool and giving birth; the midwives, they say, urge them to cry out … the infant, since the womb is widened by the shout. This, I think, is “Break forth and shout.” Begin, then, to bear, he says, and as one in labor raise a great shout; and as one who will be the mother of countless peoples, receive the spiritual gladness. Making clear the sense of the passage before us, the God of all adds: “For more are the children of the desolate than of her who has a husband.” It is the custom of the inspired Scripture to call the widow desolate. And the multitude of the nations was widowed. For it did not possess fellowship with the Word, I mean, the sower of all true knowledge and of all zeal for piety, whom one would not miss the truth in calling the farmer of all rational creation; for through him all spiritual fruitfulness grows, both in the holy angels and in ourselves. So she was a widow before the Savior's coming, and for that reason barren and childless. But when she received through faith the bridegroom from heaven, her children became more than those of her who has a husband, that is, of the synagogue of the Jews, which God brought through the all-wise Moses into spiritual kinship, and made as it were his consort, and showed to be the mother and nurse of many. But she was made childless because of Christ, although, as the prophet Jeremiah says, she had been rich in children. For more numerous, as I said, are the sons of the once barren one, to whom he also says: “Enlarge the place of your tent and of your curtains.” For since, having received the Word from heaven, that is, the bridegroom, she unexpectedly became blessed with children and with many children, she has of necessity been commanded to extend her courts in breadth and length; by this you will understand the growth of the church from the nations. And the lengthening of the cords suggests the incomparable richness of the holy churches in spaciousness, although the ancient tabernacle was wholly small and had very narrow courts. Yet even in that piece of workmanship one might see, written as in a type, the breadth and length of the church from the nations. For about the ten … were arranged in a circle on four sides, as if reaching to each part of the world, a hundred in length and fifty in breadth. Therefore he says: “Spread out still to the right and to the left,” that is, let your cords be stretched out everywhere. For the world under heaven is full of holy churches, and they are large, broad, and long everywhere, and … the God of all, when the temple in Jerusalem was raised up after the first had been burned by the hand of the Assyrians: “Who among you saw this house in its former glory? And how do you see it now, as though it did not exist before you?” “As I live, says the Lord, great shall be the glory of this house, the latter beyond the former, says the Lord Almighty.” For much greater than the temple in Jerusalem, and rich, are the temples raised up throughout the world under heaven, that is, the churches, which have the august altar for the glory of Christ.

“Enlarge, then,” he says, “the place of your tent and of your curtains. For your seed shall inherit nations, and desolate cities …” … the church from the nations has become the mother and nurse of saints and of good men, and has brought forth many rulers and leaders of peoples, so that they lead many nations, since they are able to give the blameless teaching of the mysteries and are not lacking in pastoral skill. To them the Savior himself, as to those who have achieved a glorious and approved life, promises an inheritance, and to lead peoples in the age to come. For in the distribution of the talents, to those who bring what was given doubled, he says: “Be over ten cities,” and to another: “Be over five cities.” So “your seed shall inherit nations.”