Commentary on Isaiah

Contents

Reading pages: 1.0.1–1.1.6 · 1.1.7–1.1.14 · 1.1.15–1.1.22 · 1.2.1–1.2.8 · 1.2.9–1.2.15 · 1.2.16–1.3.5 · 1.3.6–1.3.12 · 1.3.13–1.3.20 · 1.3.21–1.4.6 · 1.4.7–1.4.14 · 1.4.15–1.4.22 · 1.5.1–1.5.8 · 1.5.9–1.5.16 · 1.5.17–1.6.1 · 1.6.2–1.6.9 · 1.6.10–1.6.17 · 1.6.18–2.1.4 · 2.1.5–2.1.12 · 2.1.13–2.2.2 · 2.2.3–2.2.9 · 2.2.10–2.2.18 · 2.2.19–2.3.4 · 2.3.5–2.3.12 · 2.3.13–2.3.21 · 2.3.22–2.4.5 · 2.4.6–2.4.13 · 2.4.14–2.4.21 · 2.4.22–2.5.6 · 2.5.7–2.5.14 · 2.5.15–2.5.23 · 2.5.24–3.1.6 · 3.1.7–3.1.13 · 3.1.14–3.1.21 · 3.1.22–3.1.29 · 3.1.30–3.2.7 · 3.2.8–3.2.15 · 3.2.16–3.2.23 · 3.2.24–3.2.32 · 3.3.1–3.3.8 · 3.3.9–3.3.17 · 3.3.18–3.3.25 · 3.3.26–3.4.5 · 3.4.6–3.4.13 · 3.4.14–3.4.20 · 3.4.21–3.5.5 · 3.5.6–3.5.13 · 3.5.14–3.5.21 · 4.1.1–4.1.8 · 4.1.9–4.1.15 · 4.1.16–4.1.22 · 4.1.23–4.2.5 · 4.2.6–4.2.13 · 4.2.14–4.2.21 · 4.2.22–4.3.2 · 4.3.3–4.3.10 · 4.3.11–4.3.18 · 4.3.19–4.4.1 · 4.4.2–4.4.8 · 4.4.9–4.4.16 · 4.4.17–4.4.23 · 4.4.24–4.5.7 · 4.5.8–4.5.14 · 4.5.15–4.5.21 · 4.5.22 · 5.1.1–5.1.8 · 5.1.9–5.1.15 · 5.1.16–5.2.2 · 5.2.3–5.2.10 · 5.2.11–5.2.18 · 5.2.19–5.3.4 · 5.3.5–5.3.12 · 5.3.13–5.3.20 · 5.3.21–5.4.7 · 5.4.8–5.4.14 · 5.4.15–5.4.22 · 5.4.23–5.5.5 · 5.5.6–5.5.13 · 5.5.14–5.5.20 · 5.5.21–5.6.4 · 5.6.5–5.6.11 · 5.6.12–5.6.19 · 5.6.20–5.6.22

1. 1.0.1Cyril opens by explaining that prophecy is obscure and needs both historical and spiritual exposition, and begins to describe the kings in whose reigns Isaiah prophesied, Ozias and Jotham.
2. 1.0.2Cyril describes the wickedness of Ahaz and the reforms of Hezekiah, and explains that Isaiah’s prophecy mixes threats with promises and everywhere speaks of the redemption through Christ.
3. 1.1.1On Isa 1:1–3 Cyril explains that the prophets sometimes saw future events, and that Isaiah calls heaven and earth to witness and ascribes his words to God so that his hearers might know them to be true.
4. 1.1.2Cyril gives several reasons why heaven and earth are called to witness against Israel: they had served God in the plagues of Egypt, they had been made objects of idolatry, and they stand for the fathers in heaven and on earth.
5. 1.1.3Cyril explains that God reared Israel like a son with manna and the law, yet Israel, less grateful than the ox and the donkey, turned to idols and did not understand Christ when he came.
6. 1.1.4Cyril reads the woe of Isa 1:4 as the prophet’s lament over Israel, an evil seed of evil fathers which filled up the measure of its sins by rejecting Christ.
7. 1.1.5On Isa 1:5–6 Cyril reads head, heart and feet as the king, the Levitical priesthood and the common people, all struck by enemies, and the incurable wound as the ruin of the Jews by the Romans after their rejection of Christ.
8. 1.1.6On Isa 1:7–8 Cyril reads the desolate land as Judea’s final ruin under Vespasian and Titus after the cross, and the abandoned booth in the vineyard as Zion forsaken by God, with a warning to the soul not to provoke God.
9. 1.1.7Cyril applies God’s abandonment of Jerusalem also to the sinful soul, and reads the “seed” left in Isa 1:9 as the remnant of Israel saved through Christ, with the promise that Israel will turn to God at the end.
10. 1.1.8Cyril says that only God’s goodness kept a remnant of Israel from Sodom’s fate, and introduces Isa 1:10–14, blaming Israel’s leaders for leading the people away from Christ.
11. 1.1.9Cyril explains why Jerusalem is called Sodom and Gomorrah, for its lack of righteous men like Sodom, and reads “hear the law of God” as a call to recognise Christ, the prophet foretold by Moses, since God needs no sacrifices.
12. 1.1.10Cyril explains that God never wished for sacrifices but gave them as types until Christ, so that now Jewish rites are useless and Christians offer spiritual sacrifices; he begins on Isa 1:14–15.
13. 1.1.11On Isa 1:14–16 Cyril says the shadow of the law cannot forgive those who refuse Christ, reads the bloody hands as the killing of the prophets and of Christ, and reads “wash yourselves” as a call to baptism, foreshadowed by the purification of the Levites.
14. 1.1.12Cyril reads “wash yourselves” as baptism in the Spirit and fire, foreshadowed by the ark, to which Peter called the Jews, and urges the baptized to keep their souls pure before God and not only before men.
15. 1.1.13Cyril recalls the plots against Christ, then explains that “learn to do good” (Isa 1:17–18) points from the law to the gospel, which does not abolish the law but leads beyond it from forbidding sin to positive virtue.
16. 1.1.14Cyril explains “seek judgment” as right judgment, both against the bribery of Jerusalem’s leaders and within the mind choosing between good and evil, and reads Isa 1:18 as the promise of full forgiveness through faith.
17. 1.1.15On Isa 1:19–20 Cyril argues that God has given each person the power to choose good or evil, so that evil is not natural and fate does not rule, and on Isa 1:21 he begins to lament the fall of the faithful city.
18. 1.1.16Cyril explains how the faithful city became a harlot: before Christ by idolatry, which Jeremiah describes with the image of an unfaithful wife, and after his coming by following its leaders instead of him and calling down his blood upon itself.
19. 1.1.17Cyril reads the counterfeit silver and watered wine of Isa 1:22 as the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees, who adulterated the law with their own traditions, as Christ charged them.
20. 1.1.18Cyril describes the Jewish leaders as disobedient to Christ, companions of the thief Judas, bribed judges and killers of the innocent, and reads Isa 1:24 as God’s judgment chiefly on them, who led the people away from faith.
21. 1.1.19Cyril says the leaders bear the heaviest judgment, and reads Isa 1:25–28 as God refining Jerusalem in the fire of judgment, keeping the believers and destroying the rest, as foretold by Malachi and John the Baptist.
22. 1.1.20Cyril reads the removal of the disobedient in Isa 1:25–26 as the removal of the chief priests and Pharisees, and the restored judges and counsellors as the apostles, through whom Zion, the Church, is again called the city of righteousness.
23. 1.1.21Cyril says the refining judgment separated the believing remnant from the rest, and reads Isa 1:29–30 of Israel’s twofold guilt, idolatry and the rejection of Christ, and of its shame when its idols could not save it.
24. 1.1.22Cyril says the Jews, having rejected Christ, have lost even the shadow of the law and are like a leafless tree, and reads Isa 1:31 as idolaters burned by their own works.
25. 1.2.1On Isa 2:1–3 Cyril distinguishes the earthly Judea and Jerusalem from the spiritual Jerusalem, the Church, and says the new vision speaks of the last days, when the Word was born of a woman and idolatry was overthrown everywhere.
26. 1.2.2Cyril reads the mountain of the Lord as the Church, lofty in its knowledge of God above the creation-worship of the Greek philosophers, and the nations streaming to it as the Gentiles drawn by grace to faith in Christ.
27. 1.2.3Cyril reads “out of Zion will go forth the law” both as the nations learning from the Church and as the word departing from unbelieving Jerusalem to the Gentiles, and begins to explain Isa 2:4 by the wars of the world before Rome.
28. 1.2.4Cyril reads the swords turned into ploughshares as the peace of the Roman Empire, under which the nations were called, and Christ who is peace; he then reads Isa 2:5 as a call to Israel to walk in the light of Christ and the gospel.
29. 1.2.5On Isa 2:6 Cyril says God abandoned Israel because, having been freed from Egypt and its gods and given the law forbidding idols and divination, it went back to its former impiety.
30. 1.2.6Cyril explains that Israel, against the law forbidding divination and marriage with the nations, consulted diviners and took foreign wives whose children grew up in idolatry, so it could no longer be called God’s people.
31. 1.2.7On Isa 2:7 Cyril condemns Israel’s love of money and arrogance, the silver, gold and horses that the law forbade the king to multiply, laying the blame chiefly on its rulers.
32. 1.2.8On Isa 2:8–9 Cyril says idolatry insults both God and human nature, which God made with his own hand in his image, and warns also against the idols Satan forms in the mind.
33. 1.2.9On Isa 2:10–11 Cyril describes the terror of the Jews before the Babylonian invasion, hiding in caves, and says that God’s lofty counsels cannot be resisted, so we must trust in him rather than our own strength.
34. 1.2.10Cyril explains the “day of the Lord” of Isa 2:12–16 as the time of wrath on the proud rich of Judea, likened to cedars, oaks, mountains and towers, and the ships as either Israel’s allies Tyre and Egypt or its wealth from trade.
35. 1.2.11On Isa 2:18–21 Cyril mocks the Jews who hid their idols from the invaders, showing that the idols needed saving rather than saved, while the true God delivered Israel at the Red Sea and Jerusalem from Rabshakeh.
36. 1.2.12Cyril recalls the angel’s rout of the Assyrians, warns against idols of the mind, and on Isa 3:1–2 says that after rejecting Christ the Jews lost not only their country but the spiritual strength, bread and water given by God.
37. 1.2.13Cyril reads the “strength of bread and water” as the understanding of Scripture, and mystically as Christ’s life-giving body and the water of baptism, which the Jews have lost; and the giant, warrior and judge as the spiritual strength of believers against evil powers.
38. 1.2.14On Isa 3:2–3 Cyril says the Jews, having offended against the Lawgiver, have lost right judgment and the gift of prophecy, and explains the conjecturer, elder and captain of fifty as gifts of discernment, mature understanding and leadership.
39. 1.2.15Cyril says that since the killing of Christ the Jews have been scattered without leaders or prophets, and explains the wise master builder and intelligent hearer as those who build the Church on Christ and discern true from false teaching.
40. 1.2.16On Isa 3:5–7 Cyril describes the disorder of the Jews without God’s law and the loss of the glory of Judah’s kings and Levi’s priests, so that a man begs a poor kinsman with a cloak to be his leader.
41. 1.2.17Cyril reads Isa 3:7–9 of the poverty and fall of the Jews after they rejected Christ, the foundation, and likens their cry “Crucify him” before Pilate to the shameless demand of the men of Sodom.
42. 1.2.18On Isa 3:9–11 Cyril reads “Let us bind the righteous one” of the Jews’ plot against Christ, who rose as God, and says they reaped what they sowed when they were handed over to the Romans.
43. 1.3.1On Isa 3:12 Cyril says the people should not follow leaders who do not teach what is profitable, and reads the exactors as the scribes and Pharisees, greedy for tithes and offerings.
44. 1.3.2Cyril contrasts the greedy Jewish leaders with Peter’s charge to bishops, applies the exactors also to evil powers demanding sin from the soul, and reads the flatterers of Isa 3:12 as the Pharisees.
45. 1.3.3Cyril says the Jewish leaders turned the people from Christ to protect their gains, warns that Satan also flatters the virtuous into pride, and on Isa 3:13–14 explains that God will judge the leaders who ruined his vineyard, Israel.
46. 1.3.4Cyril explains how the Jewish leaders set God’s vineyard on fire: by their own wicked lives and by failing to teach the people the law and lead them to Christ, its end, and by favouring the rich over the poor.
47. 1.3.5On Isa 3:16–17 Cyril connects the vanity of the women of Zion with the wealth of the Jewish leaders, who rejected Christ to keep their income and so lost wives, homes and riches to the Roman armies.
48. 1.3.6Cyril condemns the immodest display of the daughters of Zion as the conduct of harlots, foretells their stripping in captivity, and contrasts modest women praised for good deeds; he recalls Ezekiel’s picture of God adorning Israel as a bride.
49. 1.3.7Cyril applies the stripping of the women of Zion also to souls that lose their spiritual adornment, and on Isa 3:24–26 describes the women’s captivity, the slaughter of their sons, and their desolate homes.
50. 1.3.8Cyril warns that God strips careless souls of their spiritual beauty, and reads Isa 4:1 of the scarcity of men after the war, when women, dreading the reproach of barrenness under the law, would ask only for a man’s name.
51. 1.3.9Cyril rejects an allegory of the seven women as the seven spirits, preferring to read them as souls who take hold of Christ and become fruitful in virtues, and reads Isa 4:2–3 of the incarnate Word’s glory and the saved remnant of Israel, first of all the apostles.
52. 1.3.10On Isa 4:4 Cyril says that Christ’s grace offered forgiveness even to those who shed his blood, as Peter preached, and explains the spirit of judgment as God’s verdict against Satan and the spirit of burning as the grace of baptism in the Spirit and fire.
53. 1.3.11Cyril contrasts believers refined by Christ with unbelieving Israel, rejected silver, and reads the cloud and fire over Zion in Isa 4:5–6 as Christ protecting the Church from temptations and enlightening it, as the pillar of cloud and fire foreshadowed.
54. 1.3.12Cyril introduces the song of the vineyard (Isa 5:1–2) as sung to Christ, the beloved, about Israel, God’s vineyard, and explains “on a horn” as the power of God by which Israel won the fertile land.
55. 1.3.13Cyril explains the hedge, fence, choice vine, tower and winepress of Isa 5:2 as the angels’ protection, the law that lifts Israel’s mind from earthly things, and the temple with its altar and treasury, and the thorns as Israel’s sins.
56. 1.3.14On Isa 5:3–6 Cyril says Israel had every help and so is without excuse for its fruitlessness, and that God therefore removes his hedge and wall, leaving the soul he abandons open to the unclean spirits.
57. 1.3.15Cyril says the vineyard left without rain means Israel without prophets, which never happened before Christ, since even in exile Jeremiah was with them, but has happened since they rejected him; the new vineyard is the Church, joined to Christ the true vine.
58. 1.3.16Cyril urges believers to abide in Christ the true vine, and on Isa 5:7 explains Israel’s “cry” instead of righteousness as a life of anger and tumult and as the cry “Crucify him”; he begins on the greed of Isa 5:8.
59. 1.3.17On Isa 5:8–10 Cyril condemns the insatiable greed of the rich who add house to house and field to field, warns that God hears the defrauded, and says such houses will stand empty and such fields barren.
60. 1.3.18Cyril says God made the greedy rich labour in vain, urges believers to cultivate righteousness in the soul, and on Isa 5:11–12 condemns the drunken revelry of the rich, which ends in eternal fire.
61. 1.3.19Cyril says luxury blinds the mind to God’s works in creation and to the coming judgment, and reads Isa 5:13–16 of the captivity and the mass of dead from famine, Hades’ “enlarged soul” being a figure of speech.
62. 1.3.20Cyril explains Hades as the prison of souls, recalls Josephus’ account of the famine in the siege of Jerusalem, and says the leaders, who led the people into ruin, will be the first to go down.
63. 1.3.21Cyril urges refusing luxury in view of judgment, and reads Isa 5:17 of the neighbouring nations, once plundered by Israel, gleaning what the Romans left, and spiritually of evil powers grazing on careless hearts.
64. 1.4.1Cyril reads Isa 5:18–19 of Israelites who mocked the prophets' threats and so drew God's punishment upon themselves, and urges prompt repentance.
65. 1.4.2On Isa 5:20–23 Cyril condemns those who preferred punishment to repentance, the self-wise leaders who rejected Christ, and judges who took bribes.
66. 1.4.3On Isa 5:22–24 Cyril says that leaders who knew God's will are punished more heavily, and explains the unchecked flame of God's wrath as a reason to seek discipline without anger.
67. 1.4.4Cyril reads Isa 5:24–25 of the Jews' rejection of the law and of Christ, punished by the Romans (the 'mountains'), and also of hostile spiritual powers, then gives the lemma of Isa 5:25–27.
68. 1.4.5Cyril explains Isa 5:27–30 as the Romans, summoned from far off like soldiers to a standard or bees to a beekeeper's whistle, bringing ruin and terror on Judea, and says the warning is meant to move us to repentance.
69. 1.4.6Introducing Isaiah's vision (Isa 6:1–3), Cyril tells from Kings and Chronicles how King Uzziah usurped the priesthood and became a leper, and says God kept silent while the unclean king lived in Jerusalem.
70. 1.4.7Cyril explains that God's silence ended at Uzziah's death, and reads the vision of Isa 6:1 as Isaiah's sight of the Son in the Father's glory, enthroned above all creation.
71. 1.4.8Cyril reads the seraphim's six wings as a sign that God has neither beginning nor end, their threefold 'Holy' as the one Godhead in three hypostases, and the earth full of glory as the incarnation and the calling of the nations.
72. 1.4.9Cyril reads the lifted lintel and the smoke of Isa 6:4 as the abandonment and burning of the temple once the earth was filled with Christ's glory, and spiritually as the blinding of the Jews' mind.
73. 1.4.10On Isa 6:5 Cyril explains Isaiah's fear by the law's rule that the unclean keep away from the holy, with Gospel examples, and reads the prophet's 'unclean lips' as modesty and solidarity with his sinful people.
74. 1.4.11Cyril reads the seraph's coal from the altar (Isa 6:6–7) as Christ, who offered himself as a sacrifice and in whom, as fire fills the wood of a coal, the fullness of the Godhead dwells by union.
75. 1.4.12Cyril explains that Christ, the coal, touches our lips when we confess faith in him, received through the law and the prophets; then on Isa 6:8 he reads God's question as a reproach of Israel's stubbornness and Isaiah's answer as the readiness of the cleansed.
76. 1.4.13Cyril contrasts the apostles' readiness for mission with the hesitation of Moses and Jeremiah, then reads Isa 6:9–10 as foretelling the Jews' hardening against Christ despite his teaching and miracles.
77. 1.4.14Cyril adds that the Jews caused their own ruin by refusing to hear Christ, and reads Isa 6:11–12 as the Roman desolation of Judea after the cross, with a believing remnant of Israel multiplied.
78. 1.4.15Cyril reads Isa 6:11–12 also of the end and the resurrection, and Isa 6:13 of later devastations of the surviving tenth of the Jews, likened to a leafless terebinth and an acorn fallen from its husk.
79. 1.4.16Cyril summarizes the history of the kings from Uzziah to the fall of Samaria and explains Isa 7:1–2: Ahaz and his people tremble at the alliance of Aram and Ephraim after Pekah's earlier slaughter of Judah.
80. 1.4.17Cyril reads God's offer of help to the idolater Ahaz (Isa 7:3–4) as divine mercy, the son Jashub as the saved remnant, and the pool of the upper road as a type of baptism.
81. 1.4.18Cyril explains the 'smoking firebrands' as kings near their end, God's promise to heal after his anger, and the oracle that the plot of Rezin and Pekah (Isa 7:5–7) will fail, then gives the lemma of Isa 7:8–9.
82. 1.4.19Cyril tells from Kings how Tiglath-pileser destroyed Damascus and Rezin and Shalmaneser took Samaria, and explains the obscure wording of Isa 7:7–8 accordingly.
83. 1.4.20Cyril explains Isa 7:9 (no understanding without faith) and reads Ahaz's refusal to ask a sign (Isa 7:10–12) as impiety disguised as obedience, since he preferred diviners and demons.
84. 1.4.21Cyril reads the sign of Isa 7:13–16 as the virgin birth of the only-begotten Son by the Holy Spirit, rejecting the Jewish reading 'young woman' and its reference to Hezekiah, and explains Emmanuel as God appearing in human form.
85. 1.4.22Cyril explains that the butter and honey show Christ's true humanity and his 'refusing wickedness' his divine holiness, and reads the land left free of the two kings as the Church, safe through Emmanuel.
86. 1.5.1Cyril turns from the Emmanuel sign for the house of David to the threat against Ahaz (Isa 7:17): days worse than any since the division of the kingdom, fulfilled when Nebuchadnezzar took Judea and burned the temple.
87. 1.5.2Cyril recounts from 2 Kings the deaths of Josiah, the Egyptian domination and Nebuchadnezzar's capture of Jerusalem, and explains the flies and the bee of Isa 7:18–19 as the Egyptian and Assyrian armies that will search out the whole land.
88. 1.5.3Cyril explains the 'drunken razor' of Isa 7:20 as the Assyrian sword and the shaving of head, feet and beard as the mourning and dishonour of Judea, whose leaders, wise men and common people were all carried off.
89. 1.5.4Cyril reads Isa 7:21–24 as the poverty and depopulation of Judea after the Babylonian sword, when a few animals could feed all the survivors and fine vineyards turned to thorns, and applies it to those who turn from God.
90. 1.5.5Cyril applies the thorns to wickedness that ends in fire, then explains Isa 7:25: the frightened survivors will farm the mountains while the rich land of Judea is left as pasture.
91. 1.5.6On Isa 8:1–2 Cyril reads the new, large volume as the new covenant revealing the mystery of Christ, and the 'man's pen' as human words fit to tell the incarnation, while the eternal begetting of the Son needs a pen beyond man.
92. 1.5.7Cyril reads the witnesses Uriah and Zechariah (Isa 8:2) as priesthood and prophecy testifying to Christ, as Moses and Elijah did at the transfiguration, and the prophetess of Isa 8:3 as the Virgin, whose conception by the Spirit is figured as a union.
93. 1.5.8Cyril explains the second name of the child, 'Quickly despoil, Swiftly plunder' (Isa 8:3–4), as Christ's despoiling of Satan, and the taking of Damascus and Samaria before he could speak as his victory over the demons worshipped by the nations.
94. 1.5.9Cyril shows Christ's despoiling of Satan in the magi's worship, then introduces Isa 8:5–8 as foretelling the Jews' rejection of the humble Christ, the 'gently flowing' kingdom of God, in favour of Caesar.
95. 1.5.10Cyril reads the gently flowing Siloam ('sent') as Christ and the kingdom of God, rejected by the Jews, who were overwhelmed by the Babylonian flood and spiritually by Satan; Isa 8:9–10 voices the apostles' joy that God is with us.
96. 1.5.11Cyril reads Isa 8:9–10 as calling the nations to yield to the apostles and warning the Jews, who seemed to prevail at the cross, that they would be defeated; on Isa 8:11–12 he explains God's 'strong hand' as the Son, whom Israel disobeyed.
97. 1.5.12Cyril reads Isa 8:12–14 as encouraging the apostles not to fear the Jews who rejected the Gospel way of life, but to sanctify Christ, who makes believers partakers of the divine nature while unbelievers stumble on him.
98. 1.5.13Cyril reads Isa 8:14–16 as the fall of the Jews who rejected Christ and lost God's protection, and 'those who are sealed' as believers sealed by the Holy Spirit and restored to God's image.
99. 1.5.14Cyril affirms reading the law without living by it in the Jewish way, then reads Isa 8:17 as the apostles' promise to wait on God, who turned his face from Jacob, warning that believers who fall away fare worse than unbelievers.
100. 1.5.15Cyril reads Isa 8:18 as spoken by Emmanuel of believers made his brothers and the Father's children through the Spirit, and the signs and wonders as Christ's miracles, which the Jews blasphemed; then he gives the lemma of Isa 8:19–20.
101. 1.5.16Cyril reads Isa 8:19–20 as Christ's warning to believers against necromancers and ventriloquists, contrasting their bought falsehoods with the Gospel law given freely for help, and gives the lemma of Isa 8:21–22.
102. 1.5.17Cyril reads the famine of Isa 8:21–22 as the Jews' lack of God's word after rejecting Christ, and their curse on 'the ruler and the ancestral things' as blame of the leaders and traditions that incited them; Isa 9:1–3 introduces the Galilean apostles, the first to believe.
103. 1.5.18Cyril shows from Matthew and John that Isa 9:1–2 was fulfilled when Jesus settled in Capernaum and called the Galilean fishermen and Philip and Nathanael, and that the light reaches the nations as well.
104. 1.5.19Cyril reads Isa 9:2–3 of the nations freed from the darkness of ignorance, rejoicing as at harvest and the dividing of spoils, and Isa 9:4 of Christ breaking Satan's yoke and rod, recalling Gideon's victory over Midian.
105. 1.5.20Cyril recounts Gideon's deliverance from Midian as a figure of Christ's freeing the nations from the demons who exact sins as tribute, and also of freeing Israel from the yoke of the law and the greed of its leaders; then he gives the lemma of Isa 9:5–7.
106. 1.5.21Cyril reads Isa 9:5–6 of the Jewish leaders' rage at the birth of the Son, refutes the Manichaean denial of Christ's real flesh from 'a child was born,' and explains 'rule upon his shoulder' as the cross or, preferably, as his strength.
107. 1.5.22Cyril explains Christ as the Father's arm and 'Angel of great counsel,' receiving peace as the nations are brought to him and 'health' as his self-wrought resurrection, ruling an endless kingdom; the 'zeal of the Lord' is God's jealousy against the devil's seizure of mankind and Israel's provocation.
108. 1.6.1Cyril returns from the Emmanuel prophecy to the threat against Samaria and begins to tell the history of the kings of Israel and Judah down to the Assyrian siege.
109. 1.6.2Cyril quotes the account of Samaria's fall from 2 Kings and Isaiah 36, and explains the boast of rebuilding with stone and cedar as folly that refuses repentance.
110. 1.6.3Cyril reads the promise against Syria and the Greeks as the return from Babylon and the defeat of Israel's neighbours and of Antiochus Epiphanes, and also as a warning against pagan Greek learning.
111. 1.6.4On Isa 9:12–13 Cyril explains that God's hand stayed raised because Israel did not repent, culminating in the rejection of Christ and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, and urges his hearers to repent.
112. 1.6.5Cyril applies Isa 9:14–16 to the priestly rulers and the teachers of unwritten traditions among the Jews, who were taken away in the Roman war.
113. 1.6.6On Isa 9:17 Cyril reads the young men, orphans and widows spiritually: those strong in keeping the law were approved before Christ but not after the gospel replaced the shadow of the law.
114. 1.6.7Cyril charges the Jews with lawlessness for the death of Christ and reads the burning of Isa 9:18–21 as the civil strife in the cities of Judea during the Roman war, as Josephus relates.
115. 1.6.8Cyril explains the images of Isa 9:18–21 as the factional violence that destroyed the Jews from within, and warns his hearers that disobedience and fleshly desire burn the soul in the same way.
116. 1.6.9After a warning to walk by the Spirit, Cyril applies the woe of Isa 9:21–10:3 to the scribes who corrupted the law's judgments for gain and were visited by God in the war.
117. 1.6.10Cyril says the affliction “from afar” means the Assyrian or rather the Roman invasion, which no bravery could avert, and begins Isa 10:5–9, where God uses the Assyrian as the rod of his anger.
118. 1.6.11Cyril explains that the Assyrian, God's instrument against Judea, became proud as if he had conquered by his own strength and against God's will, as Rabshakeh's boasts show, and so incurred the woe.
119. 1.6.12On Isa 10:10–12 Cyril explains that idolatry in Samaria and Jerusalem was the reason God let the Assyrian prevail, and warns that idols set up in the mind also draw God's anger.
120. 1.6.13On Isa 10:12–14 Cyril shows that God humbles the Assyrian's boast that by his own strength and wisdom he would seize the whole world like a nest.
121. 1.6.14Cyril applies the Assyrian's boast also to Satan, defeated by Christ, and on Isa 10:15–16 explains that the Assyrian was only God's tool, like an axe in the hand of the one who cuts.
122. 1.6.15Cyril explains Isa 10:17–19 by the destruction of Sennacherib's army: the fire that consumed the Assyrians showed that God had dedicated Israel to himself.
123. 1.6.16Cyril reads Isa 10:18–21 as the destruction of the Assyrian army, from which, by Hebrew tradition, only ten survived, and as the moment when the remnant of Israel learned to trust God rather than idols and foreign allies.
124. 1.6.17Cyril explains that Israel's false gods and paid allies wronged them, and on Isa 10:22–23 shows from Ezekiel 9 that God spares the faithful remnant while punishing the impious.
125. 1.6.18Cyril applies the saved remnant of Isa 10:22–23 to Hezekiah's time and to those Jews who believed in Christ, and on Isa 10:24–25 explains the Assyrian threat as a lesson against seeking help from Egypt.
126. 1.6.19On Isa 10:26 Cyril compares the Assyrian defeat to Gideon's rout of Midian, and explains that God turned the Assyrian's anger toward Egypt, whose help Hoshea had sought.
127. 1.6.20On Isa 10:27–31 Cyril explains that the Assyrian's yoke was broken when his army perished, and reads the list of towns as the route of his terrified flight, citing Hebrew tradition.
128. 1.6.21Cyril reads Isa 10:32 as a call to the prophets or priests to urge Zion to remain in trust in God, and closes the discourse with a doxology.
129. 2.1.1Opening the second book, Cyril recalls the Assyrian's defeat, reads it as a type of Satan's defeat by Christ's cross, and begins Isa 10:33–34 as the overturning of the old law by the mystery of Christ.
130. 2.1.2Cyril applies Isa 10:33–34 to the Jewish leaders who opposed Christ and perished in the Roman war, and to Satan and the demons, then introduces the prophecy of the rod from the root of Jesse (Isa 11:1–3).
131. 2.1.3Cyril explains that Isaiah now goes back to the incarnation, and interprets the rod from Jesse's root as Christ the king, the support of weak human nature, the shepherd, the judge, and the budding rod of Aaron.
132. 2.1.4Cyril explains Christ as the flower of human nature renewed, and argues that the Spirit resting on him (Isa 11:2) does not make him a Spirit-bearing man: the Word, full by nature, received the Spirit as man for us, so that the Spirit lost by Adam might rest again on humankind.
133. 2.1.5Cyril says the Spirit was in Christ not as a partial grace but as the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in his ensouled flesh, explains the one Spirit's many operations, and begins Isa 11:3–5 as a portrait of the Word made man.
134. 2.1.6Cyril explains Isa 11:3–4 as Christ's impartial judgment, shown when he rebuked the flattering Herodians, and says that he neither favours the rich nor excuses the poor who do wrong.
135. 2.1.7Cyril reads Isa 11:4–5 as signs of Christ's divine power: he strikes the cursed earth and abandoned Jerusalem, destroys demons by his word, and is girded with the righteousness and truth of the gospel; then he quotes Isa 11:6–9.
136. 2.1.8Cyril interprets the peaceable animals of Isa 11:6 as the reconciliation in Christ of Israel, tamed by the law, with the savage idolatrous nations, who became gentle through faith.
137. 2.1.9Cyril reads the calf, bull, and lion grazing together and eating straw (Isa 11:6–7) as believers of different maturity, and Israel and the nations, sharing the gospel teaching in Christ.
138. 2.1.10Cyril reads the child leading the beasts and the infant at the asps' den (Isa 11:6–9) as the guileless believers who overcome demons and heretics in the Church, and begins Isa 11:10: the root of Jesse as the hope of the nations.
139. 2.1.11Cyril gives two readings of “his rest will be honour” (Isa 11:10): Christ's willing death, which ended in glory, and his dwelling in the souls of believers; then he begins Isa 11:11 on the Lord's hand shown at Christ's coming.
140. 2.1.12Cyril explains that Christ's miracles were meant to provoke Israel to faith, but after their refusal the gospel passed to the nations; on Isa 11:12–13 he reads the end of the rivalry of Ephraim and Judah after the exile as a figure of the unity of all peoples in the Church under the cross.
141. 2.1.13Cyril reads Zerubbabel and Jeshua as types of Christ the king and high priest who, by the cross, gathers all nations into one, and begins Isa 11:14 as the apostles' sea voyages to the nations.
142. 2.1.14On Isa 11:14 Cyril reads the apostles' voyages to the West and the conversion of Israel's old enemies, and on Isa 11:15–16 the opening of idolatrous Egypt to the gospel preached by Mark, made possible by the Roman peace.
143. 2.1.15Cyril says God dried the Nile's mouths so that Augustus could conquer Egypt, opening it to the gospel, and contrasts the plagues of the Exodus with the blessings Egypt received through the apostles and baptism.
144. 2.1.16On Isa 12:1–3 Cyril presents the converted nations, freed from idolatry, thanking God who was angry but showed mercy, and trusting him alone; God answers with springs of saving water.
145. 2.1.17Cyril reads the springs of salvation as the apostles and their writings, founded on Christ the cornerstone, and on Isa 12:4–6 calls the converted to proclaim among the nations the works that show Christ to be God by nature.
146. 2.2.1Cyril introduces the oracle against Babylon (Isa 13:1): Israel's idolatry brought it under its neighbours and finally under Babylon, and God now promises release and the overthrow of the conquerors.
147. 2.2.2Before expounding Isa 13:2 Cyril tells how God gave Babylon, full of idols and cruel to Israel, into the hands of Cyrus, who freed the captives.
148. 2.2.3Cyril quotes Jeremiah on the fall of Babylon and Israel's return, then reads Isa 13:2–3 as God's summons to the Medes and Persians, whom he has set apart to carry out his wrath on Babylon.
149. 2.2.4Isa 13:4–8: the shout of the Medes and Persians, the Lord's armed warriors, falls on Babylon, which Isaiah calls “the world”; no hand can resist God's decree, and Babylon's “envoys” will be struck with terror.
150. 2.2.5Babylon's idol-priests, who promised the city safety, will despair; the darkened stars of Isa 13:9–11 describe the terror of the Babylonians, and “Orion” is only the customary name of a star, as in Job.
151. 2.2.6Isa 13:12–16: survivors in Babylon will be as rare as precious stones; creation itself joins God's anger, as in the plagues of Egypt; the few left will flee like gazelles and see their children killed.
152. 2.2.7Babylon's fall was the just historical punishment of idolaters who enslaved Israel; spiritually it figures Satan's overthrow by Christ and the saints, whose war is against spiritual powers; then Isa 13:17 begins.
153. 2.2.8Isa 13:17–22: the Medes, not to be bought off and pitiless, will make Babylon as desolate as Sodom, shunned even by roaming Arabs (the Saracens), a haunt of wild beasts and echoes.
154. 2.2.9After the desolation of Babylon, Isa 14:1–3 promises Israel's return under Cyrus; the “sojourner” is the Babylonian proselyte who goes up with them, and the former captors become servants of the law.
155. 2.2.10Spiritually, Christ the Redeemer with his apostles sacked the devil's realm and brought the deceived into the Church; Isa 14:4–6, the lament over the king of Babylon, shows the end of the tyrant who taxed the whole earth.
156. 2.2.11Spiritually, believers shout over Satan, the bitter taskmaster whose yoke Christ broke when he drove out the demons; historically the trees of Lebanon (Isa 14:7–8) are the powerful, and in Scripture Lebanon often stands for Judaea, as in Zechariah.
157. 2.2.12Isa 14:9–11 personifies Hades meeting the king of Babylon, as Scripture elsewhere gives voices to the sea or to Jerusalem; the kings he slew greet him as one of themselves.
158. 2.2.13The fallen king of Babylon learns too late that he was mortal and lies unburied (Isa 14:10–11); Isa 14:12 compares him, for his pre-eminence, to the Morning Star whose light outshines the other stars.
159. 2.2.14Isa 14:13–17: the king of Babylon, who demanded earth and water of all nations and thought himself equal to God, goes down to Hades, a marvel to all; he did not release the Israelites held under the Lord's wrath.
160. 2.2.15Applied spiritually, Isa 14:12–17 describes the devil, once glorious among the angels like the Morning Star, who fell by seizing honour due to God alone, while Christ releases his captives; then the unburied king of Isa 14:18–19.
161. 2.2.16Isa 14:19–22: Babylon's guilt for Israel's blood is indelible; though God used Babylon to chastise Israel, Babylon, like Pharaoh a vessel of wrath, went beyond its commission in cruelty and is justly punished.
162. 2.2.17Isa 14:21–22 foretold the end of Nebuchadnezzar's line, which perished with Belshazzar after his sacrilege with the temple vessels; the devil too, who led humankind into sin and idolatry, will not be clean and has been destroyed.
163. 2.2.18The demons, cast into Tartarus, can no longer tyrannize believers; Isa 14:23 foretells Babylon turned into marsh, and Isa 14:24–25 God's sure plan to break the Assyrians, fulfilled when Sennacherib's army fell before Jerusalem.
164. 2.2.19Isa 14:26–27: God's counsel against the whole Assyrian land cannot be undone, which should cure Israel's unbelief; Cyril then begins the history behind the oracle on the Philistines (Isa 14:28–29), starting with the pious Uzziah.
165. 2.2.20Cyril sets out the history behind Isa 14:28–29: Uzziah's victories over the Philistines (2 Chr 26), and Ahaz's idolatry and his hiring of Tiglath-pileser (2 Kgs 16); at Ahaz's death the Philistines rejoiced, and Isaiah forbids it.
166. 2.2.21Isa 14:29: God forbids the Philistines' joy at Ahaz's death because they mocked Israel's God; the serpent, the asp's offspring, and the flying serpent are Uzziah, Ahaz and Hezekiah, each a scourge of the Philistines, or else the Assyrian kings.
167. 2.2.22The asp's offspring is also Shalmaneser after Tiglath-pileser; Isa 14:30 promises that God's humble people will be fed while the Philistine remnant perishes, and Isa 14:31's smoke from the north is the Assyrian army.
168. 2.2.23The smoke of Isa 14:31 is the Assyrian army that brings tears and blinding fear; Isa 14:32: when Sennacherib's host fell before Jerusalem, the nations had to confess that the Lord founded Zion and saves the humble who trust in him, like Hezekiah.
169. 2.3.1Cyril turns to the oracle on Moab (Isa 15): Moab, given to idols and magic, was Israel's enemy from Balak and Balaam to the seduction at Baal-peor, and mocked God when Israel suffered, as Jeremiah also says.
170. 2.3.2Isa 15:1–4: Moab will fall by night (Cyril reports a tradition that its wall collapsed in the dark before the Babylonian attack); its altar and place of divination will perish, and its most warlike cities will wail openly.
171. 2.3.3Isa 15:5–9: all Moab groans to its borders, for it was like an unbroken three-year-old heifer frisking against the weak; well-watered Nebrim, proud of its cavalry, will be dried up and taken by the Arabs.
172. 2.3.4The Arabs of Isa 15:7–9 are the Saracens who joined the Babylonians against Moab; the cry spreads to Moab's borders, its waters run with blood, and the survivors go tamely into exile; spiritually, a soul walled by the fear of God is safe, but one that strays is left defenceless.
173. 2.3.5Souls that leave God's fear are given up to their passions, so Christians should remain in it; in Isa 16:1–2 Moab, which mocked Jerusalem as a deserted rock when the Assyrians struck, will itself go captive, a lesson against rejoicing at others' falls; Isa 16:3–4 is hard to construe.
174. 2.3.6Cyril explains Isa 16:3–4 as addressed to Arnon, which sheltered Moab's few survivors but lost its protector, Moab's king; Isa 16:5 promises the restoration of the throne in David's tent after the return from Babylon under Zerubbabel and Jeshua.
175. 2.3.7After the exile Israel was reunited under one rule, and God promises to restore Jerusalem's throne while Moab, which mocked Zion, will suffer; in Isa 16:6–7 God himself has removed Moab's arrogance, which its diviners failed to foresee.
176. 2.3.8Isa 16:8–10: God commands the conquerors to trample Moab's “vines”, its people, yet in mercy lets the few who fled into the desert go unsought; the prophet weeps as Moab's feasts to the demons fall silent and its offspring perish with their parents.
177. 2.3.9Cyril compares the slaughter of mothers and children to Jerusalem's fate in the Roman war; in Isa 16:11–12 the prophet's grief sounds like a lyre over Moab, whose renewed wall fell and whose idols could not save it.
178. 2.3.10Isa 16:13–14: God had long since condemned Moab (Deut 23:3; Baal-peor); within three years, when the Assyrian “hireling” besieged Samaria, Moab's glory was brought low, a warning that it is fearful to fall into the hands of the living God.
179. 2.3.11Introducing the oracle on Damascus (Isa 17:1–2), Cyril explains that idolatrous Damascus also sinned by becoming the refuge on which the northern tribes relied instead of God, so both fell to Assyria, as Isa 7 and 2 Kings record.
180. 2.3.12Isa 17:2–3: Damascus will be so desolate that flocks lie in it; it will cease to shelter Ephraim, which trusted Rezin rather than God, and will have no true kingdom again, later local rulers like Aretas's ethnarch notwithstanding.
181. 2.3.13Isa 17:4–8: the northern tribes, proud of their numbers, will be cut down and their kingdom ended by Shalmaneser, leaving only a few survivors like gleanings of grain or olives, who will then turn from idols to their Maker.
182. 2.3.14God disciplines like a father (Heb 12) and wills all to be saved; when Samaria ignored the prophets, he used the sufferings of war like a bridle to turn the survivors from their idols to the Holy One of Israel (Isa 17:7–8), and we should turn before the blow falls.
183. 2.3.15Isa 17:9–10: Israel's cities will be abandoned like those of the Hivites and Amorites, because it forgot God its Saviour and worshipped the golden calves; Christians who stay with God overcome spiritual enemies, but fall if they neglect him. Isa 17:10–11 introduced.
184. 2.3.16Isa 17:10–11: Israel's trust in its numbers was an unfaithful planting that failed in war and exile; but when it came to the “morning”, the knowledge of the true God after the return, its planting ripened and it could pass on a secure inheritance. Then Isa 17:12–13.
185. 2.3.17God mixes comfort with threat: Isa 17:12–13 foretells Sennacherib's host, which swept over Judaea like a flood, but was destroyed by the angel before Jerusalem and driven home like chaff, where Sennacherib was killed by his sons.
186. 2.3.18Isa 17:14: Jerusalem's evening terror ended before morning when Sennacherib's army perished; so believers besieged by evil powers, temptations or heretical persecution should trust God, who rescues the godly.
187. 2.3.19Isa 18:1–2: after Damascus, Isaiah turns to Egypt, because Israel trusted Damascus and Egypt instead of God and copied their worship; Nebuchadnezzar, after Tyre's people fled his causeway, took Egypt, which had boasted that its gods were stronger than Judah's God.
188. 2.3.20Ezek 29:18–20 confirms that Nebuchadnezzar took Egypt as his wage for Tyre; the land beyond the rivers of Ethiopia (Isa 18:1) is the region of Alexandria, whose shipping trade comes under the woe; to explain the “hostages by sea” Cyril begins the myth of Adonis.
189. 2.3.21Cyril tells the myth of Adonis and Aphrodite, whose festival was kept at Alexandria and was copied by Israel (Ezek 8:14); the “letters on the water” of Isa 18:2 are the sealed jars the Alexandrians set afloat to Byblos announcing Adonis found.
190. 2.3.22Isa 18:2–3: messengers from Judaea warned Egypt, that arrogant, idolatrous “nation without hope”, of the Assyrian attack; God made Egypt's rivers and marshes passable like dry land, and its fall was as conspicuous as a signal on a hill or a trumpet blast.
191. 2.3.23Egypt's fall was conspicuous, a warning that those who imitate people under God's wrath share their punishment; Isa 18:4: God's protection of Jerusalem from Sennacherib was as clear as midday light and as welcome as dew at harvest. Then Isa 18:5–6.
192. 2.3.24Isa 18:5–6 is a figure from vine-dressing: God pruned the Assyrian host before Jerusalem, sparing its king, or pruned Egypt only in part, punishing in measure; Isa 18:7 foretells Egypt's conversion, bringing faith, hope and love to God as gifts through faith in Christ.
193. 2.3.25The once most idolatrous Egyptians now love Christ (Rom 5:20); the “Mount Zion” to which they bring their fruit (Isa 18:7) is the Church, and their conversion began near the river border, as Isa 19:19–20 foretells an altar to the Lord in Egypt.
194. 2.4.1Introducing Isa 19:1, Cyril explains how idolatrous Egypt was won to faith in Christ, and reviews readings of the 'light cloud' (Christ's flesh, or the Virgin) against other prophetic visions of God's glory.
195. 2.4.2Cyril reads the light cloud of Isa 19:1 as a type of baptism, on which Christ rests and reigns, and the shaking of Egypt's idols and the defeat of its heart as the conversion of the most superstitious of nations, once as hard as Pharaoh.
196. 2.4.3Cyril reads the strife of Isa 19:2–4 as the division of Egyptian families between idol-worshippers and converts, foretold by Christ's 'sword,' and begins the history of Vespasian's conquest of Egypt when its waters failed.
197. 2.4.4Cyril reads Isa 19:3–4 as the Egyptians consulting diviners in vain before the Roman conquest, and Isa 19:5–10 as the drying of Egypt's waters that ruined its fishermen, papyrus cutters, flax workers and brewers.
198. 2.4.5Cyril applies the drying of Egypt's waters spiritually to the failure of Greek philosophy, whose teachers net the multitude with subtle but useless words, and reads Isa 19:11 as the folly of Egypt's magi when consulted about the Roman invasion.
199. 2.4.6Cyril reads Isa 19:11–12 as mockery of Egypt's magi, who sell false divination, and cites the law's ban on divination and its promise of the prophet like Moses, fulfilled in Christ, the Master of the prophets.
200. 2.4.7Cyril reads Isa 19:13–15 as the failure of Egypt's priests and magi at Tanis and Memphis, made drunk with a spirit of error by God, and begins Isa 19:16–17: Egypt trembling under Rome, and the land of the Jews as a terror to it.
201. 2.4.8Cyril explains why the fall of Judea to Rome terrified Egypt, gives the alternative reading that converted Egypt reveres Jerusalem as the place of Christ's passion and resurrection, and reads Isa 19:18 of five Syriac-speaking border cities near Rhinocorura, citing a report from Josephus about Onias.
202. 2.4.9Cyril reads the swearing by the Lord's name in Isa 19:18 as proof that the five cities believed, and the altar and pillar of Isa 19:19 as the Christian altars of Egypt and either the Church or the sign of the cross.
203. 2.4.10Cyril reads Isa 19:20–21 as the cry of humanity oppressed by Satan, answered by the man God sends, Christ, who judged and cast out the devil and drew the Egyptians to worship God with spiritual sacrifices.
204. 2.4.11Cyril reads the blow and healing of Isa 19:22 as God's corrective discipline, through which conquered Egypt turned to the Lord, and introduces Isa 19:23 with Christ as the peace that reconciles nations.
205. 2.4.12Cyril reads Isa 19:23 as the peace among nations under Christ and Rome, Isa 19:24–25 as Israel placed third after Egypt and the East for slaying the Lord, to be saved after the nations, and introduces Isa 20:1–4.
206. 2.4.13Cyril explains Isa 20:1–4 as God's warning to Israel, which trusted in Egypt rather than God when Azotus fell to the Assyrian general, that Egypt itself would be conquered and its people led captive.
207. 2.4.14Cyril explains why God made Isaiah walk naked and barefoot like a captive (Isa 20:2–4): a startling sign for Israel, which ignored spoken prophecies, that Egypt and Ethiopia, its hoped-for helpers, would be led captive within three years.
208. 2.4.15Cyril explains Egypt's shame at the defeat of its Ethiopian archers (Isa 20:5–6) as a lesson to trust God rather than man, and introduces the oracle on 'the wilderness' (Isa 21) as concerning Babylon, taken by Cyrus, to turn Israel from false hopes and to comfort the exiles.
209. 2.4.16Cyril explains the shifting persons of the oracle on 'the wilderness' (Isa 21:1–4): the prophet sees the Persians, Medes and Elamites sweeping against Babylon, and the 'Assyrian' (Babylonian) king laments that he wilfully refused to know the true God.
210. 2.4.17Cyril continues the Babylonian king's confession, alluding to Jonah, and reads Isa 21:5 as the prophet's address to Belshazzar's feast with the temple vessels (Dan 5), followed at once by the call to arms.
211. 2.4.18Cyril explains the watchman of Isa 21:6–7 as the prophet's recollected mind on a spiritual lookout, the riders on camel and donkey as the Elamites and the Persian nobles carried on mules, and the 'much listening' of Isa 21:7–8 as the dreadful fall of Babylon to Cyrus.
212. 2.4.19Cyril describes Cyrus's thorough capture of Babylon, cites Micah on Jerusalem's vindication, explains Uriah as a priestly witness, and reads Isa 21:8–10 as the announcement 'Babylon has fallen' given to comfort the afflicted remnant in Judea.
213. 2.4.20Introducing the oracle on Idumea (Isa 21:11), Cyril recounts the kinship and enmity of Esau's descendants, the Idumeans (whom he identifies with the Saracens), with Israel: their refusal of passage to Moses and their cruelty to Jews fleeing the Babylonian conquest.
214. 2.4.21Cyril cites Obadiah's charge against Edom for slaughtering fleeing Israelites, says Babylon took Idumea in passing, and reads Isa 21:11 as God's ironic word to the Idumeans guarding their walls instead of seeking his help.
215. 2.4.22Cyril reads Isa 21:12 as God's call to the Idumeans to seek his help, Isa 21:14–15 as their failure to give bread and water to fleeing Israelites, and Isa 21:16–17 as Kedar's swift ruin; spiritually, pagans and heretics who persecute the Church will be punished.
216. 2.5.1Cyril introduces the oracle on Jerusalem (Isa 22:1–2): God judges his own people by their lives, not by their descent, and Israel's idolatry brought the city's capture.
217. 2.5.2Instead of turning to God in repentance as Joel taught, the besieged people went up to their roofs in vain lament, and their rulers fled, so that salvation from men proved vain (Isa 22:1–5).
218. 2.5.3The prophet's grief shows the blow is from God and beyond remedy; yet God is just, for small and great alike had gone astray after idols on the mountains (Isa 22:4–5).
219. 2.5.4The prophet vividly depicts the enemy cavalry entering Jerusalem and rebukes the leaders for trusting in water supplies and walls rather than in God who made the city (Isa 22:6–11).
220. 2.5.5When God called Jerusalem to mourning and repentance, the people instead feasted in despair, saying “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”; the faithful should instead fast and weep, as Joel teaches (Isa 22:12–14).
221. 2.5.6After the end of Joel's call to repentance, Cyril turns to the oracle against Somnas the steward, a proud keeper of the temple funds who built himself a costly tomb as the city's fall approached (Isa 22:15–18).
222. 2.5.7Somnas lost his office in captivity, and God called Eliakim to replace him as a father to Jerusalem; spiritually, the faithless scribes and Pharisees were removed and Christ called as the great high priest (Isa 22:20–24).
223. 2.5.8Christ receives the glory of David as king of the spiritual Israel, justified by faith, while the Israel that spoke against him became “foreign sons”; Eliakim's name points to God's rising, and the man fixed in a sure place will fall (Isa 22:22–25).
224. 2.5.9Cyril begins the oracle on Tyre (Isa 23:1) by recounting how Tyre mocked God and plundered Judah, and how Nebuchadnezzar took the island city while most of its people fled by ship.
225. 2.5.10Tyre's capture is lamented by Carthage, her colony, and by Sidon, her mother city; Tyre, the “strength of the sea”, stripped of her people, is like a woman who never bore children (Isa 23:1–5).
226. 2.5.11The Tyrians' flight to Carthage is mocked as unmanly, and God answers their earlier insolence, when they said the God of Israel was too weak to save Jerusalem, by showing that he himself planned Tyre's fall (Isa 23:5–8).
227. 2.5.12God planned to humble the proud merchants of Tyre and break its sea power; the Canaanite nations, struck by war, would learn not to insult the daughter of Zion (Isa 23:8–12).
228. 2.5.13Flight will bring Tyre no rest, for Chaldea too was laid waste by Cyrus; Tyre, which mocked fallen Jerusalem, will lie empty seventy years, matching Israel's captivity (Isa 23:12–15).
229. 2.5.14Desolate Tyre will be like a forgotten harlot singing to be remembered; after seventy years God will restore her trade, and when she comes to faith in Christ her gains will be holy to the Lord (Isa 23:15–18).
230. 2.5.15Isaiah 24 sums up the judgments on the nations that mocked God at Jerusalem's fall as a ruin of the “world”; since some read it of the end of the age, Cyril will explain each verse both ways (Isa 24:1).
231. 2.5.16Cyril reads Isaiah 24:1–4 both of the nations' devastation, when war erases every rank, and of the last judgment, when Christ will separate the sheep from the goats and wealth and rank will save no one.
232. 2.5.17The mourning earth is the land laid waste by war, and in the general sense the earth burned at the consummation; it is cursed because its inhabitants broke the law and the everlasting covenant, including the natural law God engraved on humanity (Isa 24:4–6).
233. 2.5.18Humanity, enlightened by Christ and given the law, turned to the flesh, so the earth was cursed and few will be saved, as “many are called but few chosen”; the luxury of Israel, which feasted instead of repenting, ends in desolation (Isa 24:6–12).
234. 2.5.19At the judgment all worldly luxury will end; as harvesters glean every olive, so the enemy left none, and so at the end no impious person will escape the angels' search, as in Christ's parable of the net (Isa 24:11–13).
235. 2.5.20God does not destroy the righteous with the wicked, as Ezekiel's Noah, Daniel and Job and the marked ones show; those spared will rejoice in the glory of the Lord, who is Christ, the glory of the Father (Isa 24:14–15).
236. 2.5.21The troubled sea is the nations, stirred by the apostles' preaching; the islands where God's glory dwells are the churches, kept by Christ amid persecutions, and salvation is by mercy and baptism, not by the law (Isa 24:14–15).
237. 2.5.22The churches, taught by the apostles, praise God and warn those who reject the law, that is, who did not believe in Christ, that no escape awaits them, as befell the Jews after the cross (Isa 24:15–20).
238. 2.5.23God's opened windows mean his inspection of the earth's lawlessness; the hand on the “ornament of heaven” means that Christ's coming ended the worship of sun, moon and stars, which had infected even Israel, and points also to Satan (Isa 24:18–22).
239. 2.5.24The ornament of heaven is Satan, the fallen Morning Star, and the kings of the earth are the hostile powers; Christ shut them in the prison of the abyss and overthrew Satan like a wall, freeing the nations for faith (Isa 24:21–23).
240. 2.5.25Once idolatry and the hostile powers are overthrown, the Lord reigns in Zion, the church, the watchtower and vision of peace, which is Christ, and is glorified before the “elders”, the spiritually mature (Isa 24:23).
241. 3.1.1Opening Book 3, Cyril reads Isaiah's hymn (Isa 25:1–2) as praise for the ancient counsel of the incarnation, and the strong city overthrown for ever as Satan and the hostile powers.
242. 3.1.2The poor and wronged who bless God are the nations, rescued by Christ from the devil, and the faithful of Israel who thirsted for the Saviour, like Simeon and Zechariah; the “wicked men” are the demons and the pagan teachers and poets (Isa 25:3–5).
243. 3.1.3The scribes and Pharisees took away the key of knowledge; on the mountain of the church God gives all nations gladness in hope, the wine of the eucharist and the ointment of the Spirit given in baptism, for the counsel of salvation is for all nations (Isa 25:5–7).
244. 3.1.4God wiping away every tear means the resurrection, confessed at baptism: Christ, firstfruits of the dead, abolished death's reign, so believers do not grieve without hope; Israel's faithful will confess the incarnate Son as their God, and the church is the mountain of rest (Isa 25:8–10).
245. 3.1.5Read spiritually, trampled Moab is idolatry, crushed under the feet of believers when Christ came; Satan, its inventor and wall, is humbled and cast down, and the pagan shrines have in fact fallen (Isa 25:10–12).
246. 3.1.6The song of the strong city is sung by those freed from idolatry: Christ, or hope in him, is the impregnable city with wall and outer wall, and so is the church; the apostles are bidden to open its gates to those who keep the righteousness and truth of the gospel (Isa 26:1–3).
247. 3.1.7Those received by Christ are at peace with God and hope in him for ever; the proud demons and Satan, lofty as strong cities, God has thrown down to be trampled by the meek who imitate Christ (Isa 26:3–8).
248. 3.1.8The straight way of the godly is the gospel life, justified by faith and cleansed in baptism, which replaces sacrifices with righteousness; believers rise from the night of error to the light of Christ's commands (Isa 26:7–9).
249. 3.1.9Christ, the teacher of all nations, bids the whole earth learn the righteousness and truth of the gospel, which the law only foreshadowed; whoever refuses will perish and not see the Lord's glory (Isa 26:9–10).
250. 3.1.10God the Word, the Father's mighty arm, emptied himself and became man, but Israel did not recognize his glory and killed him; they were shamed by his resurrection, and will be at his coming in glory (Isa 26:11).
251. 3.1.11Israel, though heir to the promises, is consumed by envy as the nations are received; the prophet prays for peace, which is Christ himself or reconciliation with God through faith, and confesses God alone (Isa 26:11–15).
252. 3.1.12Apart from God the dead do not live: literally he gives life and medicines, spiritually only grace and the apostles' healing word raise the sinful; Christ raised the dead yet was rejected, so God cut off the leaders of the Jews, the “males”, while saving a remnant (Isa 26:13–14).
253. 3.1.13The “evils” are God's chastisements of the leaders who rejected Christ, sent not in hatred but to turn them by affliction; the faithful are like a woman in labour toward the beloved Son, grieving over those who disobey him (Isa 26:15–17).
254. 3.1.14The spirit of salvation the saints bore is the gospel preaching in the Spirit; though death still reigns for a time, Christ the firstfruits guarantees the resurrection, and the “dew” that heals the dead is the life-giving Spirit (Isa 26:18–19).
255. 3.1.15The dew is the life-giving Spirit, or the Word himself, who will raise the bodies sown in the earth; the people bidden to hide in their chambers are the saints, whose tombs are resting-places until the wrath that brought death passes at the resurrection (Isa 26:19–21).
256. 3.1.16God will avenge the slain saints, the Son executing judgment; the holy sword, the Word, will slay the dragon Satan; then the prophet turns to Israel, the fair vineyard and strong city that God watered in vain (Isa 26:21–27:3).
257. 3.1.17God watered Israel in vain through the law and the gospel; because it would not walk in Christ's light, the city was taken “by night” in the darkness of sin and openly stripped of God's protecting wall, as in the song of the vineyard (Isa 27:3–4).
258. 3.1.18After the cross Judaea was besieged by the Romans and, spiritually, given over to unclean spirits; God, who once guarded it, rejected Jerusalem as hostile because it had become fruitless stubble and refused to be gathered by Christ (Isa 27:4–5).
259. 3.1.19Jerusalem burned up and made useless by God's wrath is the people that departed from God; the nations, coming from darkness to light, make peace with God through faith in Christ, while Israel “buds” in the apostles, whose converts fill the world (Isa 27:4–6).
260. 3.1.20Israel blossoms in the apostles, whose preaching filled the world with fruit; though Israel slew the saints, God, being God and not man, does not repay it in equal measure, but sends it away with rebuke, as Christ did (Isa 27:6–8).
261. 3.1.21Israel slew the prophets with a harsh spirit, yet God will take away Jacob's lawlessness for Abraham's sake; this will happen when the nations, coming to faith, destroy their idols and temples, and then all Israel will be saved (Isa 27:8–9).
262. 3.1.22Israel, once well shepherded, is left like an abandoned flock to be grazed by demons and, historically, by the Roman army; the “women coming from the sight” are the holy women sent to announce the resurrection (Isa 27:10–11).
263. 3.1.23Israel lacks understanding and is hardened; the risen Christ made women the first heralds of the resurrection so that woman, who first brought death, might bring the gospel of life; the land from the Euphrates to Rhinocorura was later laid waste by the Romans (Isa 27:11–12).
264. 3.1.24God's “fencing in” of Judaea is both its distress and the veil over the Jews' minds; the apostles gather the sons of Israel one by one, and the great trumpet is the gospel preaching, calling those lost in Assyria and Egypt to worship (Isa 27:12–13).
265. 3.1.25Unlike Moses' feeble trumpet, the gospel's great trumpet sounds through all the earth, calling idolaters of Assyria and Egypt to worship in the church; the “crown of insolence” is the teachers of the Jews who led the people to reject and crucify Christ (Isa 27:13–28:1).
266. 3.1.26The “crown of insolence” is the priestly leaders of the Jews, who hired Judas (“Ephraim”) to betray Christ and so fell like a withered flower; drunk with fury rather than wine, they will meet God's wrath like hail (Isa 28:1–3).
267. 3.1.27God's wrath, like an irresistible flood, gives the “rest” of the drowning man who stops swimming; no resistance would avail against the Roman army, which seized Israel's leaders like an early fig snatched and swallowed (Isa 28:2–4).
268. 3.1.28After the punishment of the Lord-slayers, the believing remnant of Israel, with the nations, is crowned by the Lord with hope and glory; Christ, the shield of God's good pleasure, judged between humanity and Satan and cast out the murderer (Isa 28:5–6).
269. 3.1.29Through Christ's just judgment the demons and Satan perished and believers are spared; the priests and false prophets drunk with “wine” are those darkened by the devil, an astonishing sight, for whom a curse awaits (Isa 28:6–8).
270. 3.1.30The accursed counsel is the plot of the Jewish leaders against Christ, like the wicked husbandmen who killed the heir from greed; the prophets announced both threats and good news to a people that would not hear (Isa 28:8–9). The tome ends with a doxology.
271. 3.2.1God himself addresses the believers, weaned from the milk of the law to the food of the mature, bidding them endure affliction in hope; the “contempt of lips” is the mockery of the apostles speaking in tongues at Pentecost (Isa 28:9–11).
272. 3.2.2Israel, refusing the bread of life, suffered a famine of God's word, though the apostles called it to repentance; the apostles' message brought them affliction upon affliction but also hope upon hope, the crown of incorruption (Isa 28:11–13).
273. 3.2.3The persecutors' fall comes soon, both in war and in bondage to Satan; the “afflicted” are those burdened by the condemning law, and the leaders of Jerusalem mocked God's patience as if they had a covenant with death (Isa 28:13–15).
274. 3.2.4The leaders scoffed that the threatened judgment would fall only after their death, as if they had a pact with death; against this God lays in Zion the chosen cornerstone, Christ, the foundation of the church, uniting Israel and the nations (Isa 28:15–17).
275. 3.2.5God frees the afflicted from the law's burden by the cornerstone, justification by faith; judgment belongs to the Son, who will show mercy in due measure; the scoffers who thought judgment would come after their death will themselves be trampled, and soon (Isa 28:16–19).
276. 3.2.6God mixes threats with encouragement like a wise physician; to explain the obscure mention of the valley of Gibeon, Cyril retells how Joshua, at the Gibeonites' plea, routed the five kings (Isa 28:19–21).
277. 3.2.7The hail on the kings at Gibeon is a type of the help God would give Israel if it called on Jesus; the prophet bids the Jewish teachers not to rejoice against Christ nor bind the people with the law's bonds, but let them pass to worship in spirit and truth (Isa 28:21–22).
278. 3.2.8David's “Let us burst their bonds” urges Israel from the yoke of the law to grace; the “completed and cut short” things are the gospel, which leads briefly through faith to righteousness for all nations; Christ bids Israel attend to his words (Isa 28:22–23).
279. 3.2.9Christ is written of in the types of the law, rightly understood; the ploughman who does not plough forever is God, who broke up Israel's hard heart by the law only to prepare it for the seed of the gospel (Isa 28:23–25).
280. 3.2.10The law, like small seeds useless on their own, profits only when joined with the gospel; justification comes by faith in the Word, and God will correct Israel's transgressions gently, as cummin is beaten with a rod and not crushed under the wheel (Isa 28:25–29).
281. 3.2.11The cummin eaten with bread shows the law profitable only with the gospel; God's forbearance toward Israel is a wonder; Ariel is Jerusalem, once Jebus, which David besieged when the blind and lame resisted him, a type of what would happen in Christ's time (Isa 28:28–29:4).
282. 3.2.12The lame and blind of Jebus are figures of the scribes and Pharisees who resisted Christ; Ariel, “lion of God”, is Jerusalem; the two years of Christ's teaching were the time to gather spiritual food, shared also with the nations (“with Moab”); the siege after the cross humbled the boasters (Isa 29:1–4).
283. 3.2.13The wealth of those who killed Christ vanished like dust when God visited them with war; their spoilers too gained only the riches of a dream; and those who refused the gospel, though they heard Christ the light, were made drunk with a spirit of stupor (Isa 29:4–10).
284. 3.2.14The stupor sent on the leaders is a hardening of mind, so that those who once saw the law's hidden meaning dimly lost even that; the whole of Scripture, one book of the one Spirit, became sealed to them, learned and unlearned alike, because they did not seek Christ in it (Isa 29:10–13).
285. 3.2.15The Jews honoured God with their lips while following human traditions, as Christ said in quoting this verse; therefore Scripture was sealed to them, and they were removed from being God's portion, their wise men's understanding hidden (Isa 29:13–15).
286. 3.2.16The leaders of the Jews thought their plots against Christ, hiring Judas, crucifying him and bribing the guards after the resurrection, were hidden from God; but God the potter will refashion his people as he wills, as in Jeremiah's potter's house (Isa 29:15–16).
287. 3.2.17Lebanon, land of idolaters, will become like Carmel as the nations come to know God and share the divine nature, while Israel, cast out for its impiety toward Christ, becomes a forest for burning, as Zechariah also foretold; the deaf hearing the book are the nations (Isa 29:17–19).
288. 3.2.18The nations, once without God, rejoice in Christ; the lawless and arrogant who perish are the leaders of the Jews, who scorned Christ, set human traditions above the law and made the prophets' reproofs a stumbling block; yet hope remains for Israel at the end of the age (Isa 29:18–23).
289. 3.2.19At the end of the age Israel too will be called through faith and follow the nations, when the fullness of the nations has come in; seeing the nations believe and idolatry destroyed, they will sanctify God's name, gain understanding, and those who murmured against Christ will learn to confess him (Isa 29:22–24).
290. 3.2.20The “apostate children” are those of Israel who took counsel against Christ, like the council that resolved one man should die and the husbandmen who killed the heir; already of old they turned from God to seek Egypt's help against Assyria (Isa 30:1–5).
291. 3.2.21Israel trusted in Egypt's kings rather than in God and was put to shame; Cyril sets the oracle in the history of the Babylonian conquest, when survivors fled to Egypt against Jeremiah's warning and perished there when Nebuchadnezzar took Egypt (Isa 30:3–5).
292. 3.2.22The lions and flying asps are Judah's rulers and wicked men who carried their wealth to Egypt for help in vain; Isaiah is told to write the oracle down for future generations, for Israel is a lying people that broke its promise at Sinai and silenced the prophets (Isa 30:6–10).
293. 3.2.23Israel silenced the prophets, as when it called Jeremiah a liar, so its sin will shatter it like a wall or an earthen vessel smashed to useless fragments; yet God, who does not will the sinner's death, offers salvation if it turns from idols and groans in repentance (Isa 30:10–15).
294. 3.2.24Israel trusted in horses and Egypt rather than God, so its pursuers would be swifter and its rout conspicuous like a standard on a hill; yet God waits to have mercy, judging justly but kindly, while Israel abandoned its glory of being God's portion (Isa 30:15–18).
295. 3.2.25Those who cling to God are blessed; many of Abraham's seed would repent at Christ's coming and be heard, though most refused the Redeemer; the bread and water of affliction are Christ, the bread of life and river of delight, found only with toil (Isa 30:18–21).
296. 3.2.26The bread of affliction and scant water are life and knowledge in Christ, gained by the narrow way, which free both Jews from their scribes and Greeks from their demonic teachers, so that they cast away idols as unclean; then the rain of the Spirit makes them fruitful (Isa 30:20–24).
297. 3.2.27The rain is the gospel and the Spirit's comfort, making the faithful fruitful, while the works of the unholy come to nothing; the cattle are simple believers fed on Scripture, the oxen the preachers fed on solid teaching, and the mountains running with water are the apostles and bishops (Isa 30:23–25).
298. 3.2.28The fallen towers are the scribes and Pharisees and the haughty powers; the moon shining like the sun means those with only natural knowledge receiving the knowledge of God, and the sevenfold sun is the fuller light of the law understood spiritually in Christ, who heals his people (Isa 30:25–26).
299. 3.2.29After a doxology closing the previous discourse, Cyril reads the coming of the Lord's burning wrath (Isa 30:27–28) historically of judgment on the Assyrians who had mocked God and of Israel's return under Zerubbabel and Jeshua, but truly of God's wrath against Satan, the spiritual Assyrian.
300. 3.2.30Historically God showed mercy after seventy years, when Cyrus fell on Babylon like fire and flood for its boast against God; spiritually the Word, appearing after Satan's long tyranny, cast the boastful dragon and his powers into the abyss (Isa 30:27–29).
301. 3.2.31The Assyrian may not exult for ever over God's people and temple; so too Satan, who long reveled in crushing the saints, has been thrust down by Christ; as Cyrus overthrew Babylon, the preaching of Christ turned the demons' own worshippers against them (Isa 30:29–32).
302. 3.2.32God bore long with the Assyrian before requiring his penalty, waiting for repentance until his sin was full, as with the Amorites; the Assyrian, and Satan above all, will not reign for ever but inherit fire, while Christ alone reigns eternally (Isa 30:33).
303. 3.3.1Cyril explains Isa 31:1–3 of the Judeans who, against God's command through Jeremiah, fled to Egypt for help and perished there, trusting in horses, which are mere flesh, rather than in God.
304. 3.3.2God will defend Jerusalem like a roaring lion and like a bird guarding its nest, as he did when the exiles returned under Zerubbabel and Jesus son of Josedek; so Christ overcame Satan and gathered believers, the spiritual Zion, under his wings (Isa 31:4–5).
305. 3.3.3Cyril reads Isa 31:6–9 as a call to turn from human help to God and as a prophecy that, when Christ came, idolatry was overthrown and Satan, the spiritual Assyrian, was shut up in Hades; the lemma of Isa 31:9–32:2 follows.
306. 3.3.4The blessed of Isa 32:1–2 are the members of the church, the spiritual Zion; Christ is the righteous king, a man and brother yet truly God, who spoke in parables, escaped those who plotted against him, and is the glorious river that waters the nations.
307. 3.3.5Isa 32:3–8 applies both to the nations, once deceived by their sages, and to Israel, once led by teachers who rejected Christ: both will now hear the Saviour, learn to speak peace, which is Christ, and no longer submit to fools who silence objections, as Pythagoras's disciples did with “He himself said it.”
308. 3.3.6The worldly wise attack the teaching of the apostles, but the counsel of the godly endures (Isa 32:6–8); in Isa 32:9–10 Christ speaks to the cities of Judea as rich women, bidding them remember the year of his preaching, the acceptable year of the Lord.
309. 3.3.7Isa 32:10–14 foretells the desolation of Judea by the Romans after it rejected Christ; spiritually, Israel, the vineyard that bore thorns, lost its fruitfulness, and God gives up a soul that bears no fruit of good works.
310. 3.3.8Isa 32:15–18: after the Spirit came at Pentecost, Jerusalem and Judea (Carmel) became like wild woodland, while judgment and righteousness came to dwell in the desert, the nations, made fruitful by Christ.
311. 3.3.9Christ, who is righteousness, dwells among believing Jews and Gentiles alike and gives them peace and rest in the church (Isa 32:16–18); the hail of divine wrath that fell on the Jews will not touch believers, and all land becomes fruitful through Christ (Isa 32:19).
312. 3.3.10Those who sow beside every water (Isa 32:20) are believers watered by the word; the ox and the ass are the Jews and the Gentiles, made one in Christ; persecutors make only themselves wretched, for those who suffer with Christ will reign with him (Isa 33:1).
313. 3.3.11Persecutors bring the last penalty on themselves, while the saints, as Paul learned, are strong in weakness (Isa 33:1–2); Isa 33:3–4 foretells the terror and plunder that befell Israel for rejecting Christ, as Christ foretold of Jerusalem.
314. 3.3.12Israel was scattered and plundered like gathered locusts, and spiritually handed over to Satan (Isa 33:3–4); the church, the truer Zion, is full of judgment and righteousness, while Israel, clinging to the law against Christ, was handed over “in the law,” and for believing Gentiles the law became a treasure (Isa 33:5–6).
315. 3.3.13The law, read through its shadows, is a treasure for those who find Christ in it (Isa 33:6); Isa 33:7–8 foretells that the Jews who once terrified the apostles would be overcome and seek peace, the covenant with them being taken away in favour of the children of the promise.
316. 3.3.14In Isa 33:9 Lebanon and Sharon, once rich, are the synagogue and land of the Jews laid waste by the Romans, while Galilee and Carmel are the nations and the church made manifest; the lemma of Isa 33:10–12 follows, introduced by the self-emptying of the Word (Phil 2:6–8).
317. 3.3.15After the cross Christ rose as God and brought judgment on those who killed him, while calling the nations to the light (Isa 33:10–12); Isa 33:13–14 means that the nations far off heard of his works, while the scribes and Pharisees who slandered him as possessed lost their share in him.
318. 3.3.16The nations far off and the believing part of Israel near at hand came to know Christ's strength, while the lawless in Zion face the eternal fire (Isa 33:13–14); the righteous man of Isa 33:15–16 dwells safely on the rock, the church founded on Peter's confession.
319. 3.3.17Believers receive Christ the bread of life and the sure water of baptism, and look from afar to the promised land (Isa 33:16–18); in Isa 33:18–19 the prophet reproaches the scribes and priests who failed to recognize the Word made flesh, incited the people against him, and so lost their hope.
320. 3.3.18Cyril applies the obscure Isa 33:18–19 to the scribes, priests, and Pharisees who stirred up the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to crucify the sinless Christ, the “deep-voiced” one who spoke in parables; the lemma of Isa 33:20–21 on Zion, the unshaken tent, follows.
321. 3.3.19Zion, the rich city with unbreakable cords, is the church on earth and in heaven, founded firmly, where Christ is worshipped as God; its rivers are the evangelists, apostles, and church leaders, fed by Christ the river; Satan, who once plundered the world, can no longer pass through it (Isa 33:20–22).
322. 3.3.20Believers, once ruled by Satan, now have the Son as judge, ruler, and king, as Isa 35:8–9 also teaches (Isa 33:22); in Isa 33:23 the synagogue of the Jews is a tent with broken cords and a disabled ship that will raise no trophy but be plundered by Satan.
323. 3.3.21The lame who take plunder (Isa 33:23–24) are the nations, once astray, who conquer Satan and receive forgiveness and rest in Christ; Isa 34:1–5a calls the nations to draw near through the Spirit and warns of wrath on those who keep their sin.
324. 3.3.22The rolling up of heaven in Isa 34:4 points to the renewal of creation at the end, and the sword drunk in heaven to the punishment of the evil spirits; in Isa 34:5–6 “Idumea,” the earthy, is Judea, punished for its impiety toward Christ.
325. 3.3.23The sword fell with just judgment on the unbelieving leaders of the Jews, fattened like rams and bulls, while the believing remnant was saved (Isa 34:6–7); Bosor's meanings fit besieged Judea, and Isa 34:8–11 describes its burning and lasting desolation.
326. 3.3.24Spiritually, minds empty of God become haunts of evil beasts (Isa 34:11); the rulers of Isa 34:12 are the leaders of the Jews, who perished with those they led astray; Isa 34:13–14 pictures desolate cities given over to thorns, night birds, demons, and onocentaurs.
327. 3.3.25The land's saved children in Isa 34:15–17 are the believing remnant of Israel; the deer are the apostles, snake-killers who drink from spiritual springs, gathered by the Spirit and sent by lot to the nations, Peter to the circumcision, Barnabas and Saul to the Gentiles.
328. 3.3.26The thirsty desert of Isa 35:1–2 is the church of the nations, once barren, made fruitful and fragrant by Christ, receiving the Jordan's stream in baptism and the glory once given to Jerusalem and the temple; Isa 35:3–4 bids the teachers strengthen those still weak from error.
329. 3.3.27When the Saviour came he condemned the ruler of this age; the formerly blind nations learned to see the Creator through creation, and the lame leapt like deer, while Christ also healed bodily (Isa 35:4–6); the water in the desert is the Jordan or Christ himself, the spring around which the faithful gather (Isa 35:6–7).
330. 3.3.28The pure and holy way of Isa 35:8–10 is the gospel life and the cleansing of the Spirit, open only to the baptized; Satan, the lion, has been driven from it, and the redeemed walk on it to the church on earth and in heaven, free of grief.
331. 3.4.1Cyril recounts the background of Isa 36: Ahaz's submission to Assyria, Hezekiah's refusal of tribute, and Sennacherib's campaign; the Rabshakeh, sent to Jerusalem, mocks Hezekiah's trust in counsel and in Egypt, the broken reed (Isa 36:1–6).
332. 3.4.2The Rabshakeh mocks Judah's lack of horsemen and its trust in Egypt, claims to come with the Lord's mandate, and, asked to speak Aramaic, insists on addressing the people on the wall in their own language to terrify them (Isa 36:6–12).
333. 3.4.3The Rabshakeh, speaking in the people's language, calls Hezekiah a deceiver, promises deserters a land like their own, and boasts that no god of the nations saved its land; Cyril answers that those gods were wood and stone, while the God of Judea is the living Creator (Isa 36:13–21).
334. 3.4.4Samaria fell because it worshipped golden calves, not because God was weak; Hezekiah's officials keep silence as David did before the wicked, and Hezekiah tears his garments and goes to the temple (Isa 36:22–37:1); Cyril compares the high priest's tearing of his robes at Jesus' trial.
335. 3.4.5Hezekiah sends the priests in sackcloth to Isaiah, likening Jerusalem to a woman unable to give birth, and asks for his prayers (Isa 37:2–4); God answers at once that Sennacherib, driven by a spirit of fear, will return home and fall by the sword (Isa 37:6–7).
336. 3.4.6Sennacherib, alarmed by Tharaca's advance, withdraws but sends a letter blaspheming the God of Israel (Isa 37:8–13); Hezekiah spreads it before the Lord and prays to the Lord of hosts enthroned on the cherubim, the only God and Creator (Isa 37:14–17).
337. 3.4.7Hezekiah confesses God as the only true King and Creator, and asks him to save Jerusalem so that all kingdoms may know he alone is God, unlike the idols the Assyrians burned (Isa 37:18–20); God at once answers through Isaiah, accepting Hezekiah's zeal, and pronounces his word against Sennacherib (Isa 37:21–24).
338. 3.4.8Zion, virgin and daughter, mocks the defeated Assyrian, who should have recognized the greatness of the Creator from his works (Isa 37:22–23); Isa 37:24–25 sets out his boast of cutting down Lebanon's cedars, that is, conquering Samaria and Judea, and of bridging and drying up rivers.
339. 3.4.9The Persian kings boasted of bridging the Hellespont and drinking rivers dry, but God declares that he foretold and arranged Assyria's victories long before; the Assyrian was only an instrument, like an axe in the hand of the woodcutter, and God knows his ways and will punish his rage (Isa 37:25–29).
340. 3.4.10God bridles the beastlike Assyrian and lets him escape home so that he may proclaim the marvel (Isa 37:29); the sign of Isa 37:30–32 is explained either of Hezekiah's people, who would eat what grew of itself for two years and sow in the third, or of Sennacherib's army living off the land during a long siege.
341. 3.4.11God promises that Sennacherib will not even attack Jerusalem, which he shields for his own sake and David's, not for its people's merits (Isa 37:33–35); the angel destroys 185,000 Assyrians, and Sennacherib is killed by his own sons while worshipping an ancestor (Isa 37:36–38).
342. 3.4.12Sennacherib was killed by his own sons; spiritually, Jerusalem besieged is a type of the church besieged by heretics backed by worldly powers, which should not dispute with them endlessly but rely on God's help; the account of Hezekiah's illness and prayer follows (Isa 38:1–3).
343. 3.4.13According to a Jewish tradition Hezekiah had grown proud, so God disciplined him with sickness as a loving father and a physician do, and warned him of death to spur him to prayer; God answered at once, adding fifteen years and the sign of the shadow on the steps (Isa 38:1–8).
344. 3.4.14God's answer freed Hezekiah from fear of death while fixing the length of his added life, to guard him against pride; the shadow went back on the steps of Ahaz's sundial (Isa 38:5–8); in Hezekiah's song (Isa 38:9–13) Cyril defends the Septuagint's “in the height of my days” against the other translators' “in the half of my days.”
345. 3.4.15Hezekiah's lament (Isa 38:11–13) and his thanksgiving: rescued by looking to God, he confesses that God cast away his sins, since no one is pure of sin; only the living can praise God, and his promise of children who would declare God's righteousness was frustrated by Manasseh (Isa 38:14–20); the fig poultice and the sign follow (Isa 38:21–22).
346. 3.4.16God healed Hezekiah's sore through a fig poultice, a remedy that should have harmed it, and Hezekiah took it as a sign (Isa 38:21–22); Merodach's envoys came, amazed by the sun's turning back and the Assyrian disaster, but Hezekiah, instead of telling them of God's works, showed them his treasures (Isa 39:1–2).
347. 3.4.17Isaiah rebukes Hezekiah for showing the Babylonian envoys his treasures instead of telling them God's wonders, and foretells the Babylonian plunder and captivity (Isa 39:3–7); Hezekiah's wish for peace in his own days shows the weakness of even a godly mind (Isa 39:8); the lemma of Isa 40:1–2 follows.
348. 3.4.18Cyril explains why the prophecy of Christ (Isa 40:1–2) follows the account of Hezekiah: after foretelling the final captivity under Nebuchadnezzar, the prophet announces the comfort that came through Christ, first to Israel; the ministers of the gospel speak to the heart, as the Spirit writes the new covenant on hearts, not tablets of stone.
349. 3.4.19Jerusalem's receiving “double for her sins” (Isa 40:2) does not mean God punished beyond desert, but speaks as a loving father who feels even a moderate punishment to be excessive; the voice in the wilderness (Isa 40:3–5) is John the Baptist, the lamp before Christ, the true light.
350. 3.4.20The levelling of the road (Isa 40:4) is the work of the incarnate Christ, who abolished sin in the flesh and overthrew the hostile powers, making the way of godliness easy; the glory seen is that of the only-begotten Word, equal to the Father, shown in his works, and the salvation offered to all flesh is God's purpose, even if some refuse it (Isa 40:5).
351. 3.4.21Those who would see God's salvation must count human glory as grass and keep in their hearts the Word of God, which remains for ever (Isa 40:6–8); the heralds on the mountain are the apostles, who preach boldly the coming of the Redeemer, who comes not as a prophet praying but with his own authority (Isa 40:9–10).
352. 3.4.22Christ acts not as a suppliant but as the Son with his own authority; his reward is the fruit of his death, the nations who worship him, and the flock he gathers, the Gentiles as lambs and believing Israel as those with young (Isa 40:10–11); Isa 40:12–14 shows that God's wisdom, like the mystery of Christ, is beyond comprehension.
353. 3.4.23As Isa 55:8–9 says, God's ways are above ours; God, who is wisdom itself, needs no counsellor (Isa 40:13–14), so the unbelievers who ask why the Word had to become flesh rather than save by a mere nod are rebuked; some read Isa 40:12 as describing God's knowledge and mastery of all creation.
354. 3.5.1After proclaiming Christ's saving dispensation, the prophet turns to the idolatrous nations: before God all nations are a drop and a speck, no sacrifice is worthy of him, and nothing can be likened to him, least of all idols that a craftsman must prop up so they do not fall (Isa 40:15–21).
355. 3.5.2The nations had long been taught, through patriarchs, law, and prophets, that God alone is God and idols are wood and stone; Isa 40:22 shows the Creator who holds the earth and spreads out the heavens, before whom humankind is like locusts, as the wise can see from the beauty of creation.
356. 3.5.3Rulers and the whole earth are nothing before God, who gives power and can blot out the memory of the great (Isa 40:23–24), so deifying famous men is worship of the dead; in Isa 40:25–26 God asks to whom he can be compared, since, as Paul says, creation makes him known and idolaters are without excuse.
357. 3.5.4God, who calls the stars by name and numbers the drops of rain, is like nothing created (Isa 40:25–26); in Isa 40:27 Israel, having stumbled over Christ and seen the shadow of the law set aside for worship in spirit and truth, complains that God has ignored its way and taken away its “judgment,” that is, the law.
358. 3.5.5To Israel's complaint that God has abolished its law (Isa 40:27), God answers that he is eternal and needs no sacrifices, and that his wisdom cannot be searched out (Isa 40:28): the law, which foreshadowed Christ, was given to expose sin, so that the grace of Christ might then justify sinners by faith.
359. 3.5.6God gives strength to the spiritually hungry and grief to the insensible, whether as the godly grief that leads to repentance or as the calamities brought on those who crucified Jesus (Isa 40:29); the hunger of the young in Isa 40:30 is the famine of God's word that fell on Israel when it rejected Christ, the bread of life.
360. 3.5.7Those who wait for God receive Christ's strength, renewed like eagles and enduring in virtue (Isa 40:31); the islands called to be renewed (Isa 41:1) are the Gentile cities or the churches, founded on the rock and made pure, and the new rulers are the apostles, who speak with one voice the gospel “judgment” that replaces the law.
361. 3.5.8The righteousness raised from the east (Isa 41:2) is Christ, the sun of righteousness, who walks in the Father's footsteps, doing his works and his will as one equal to him in power; Isa 41:2–4 describes his victory over the powers that enslaved the nations, whom he justified and enlightened by the Spirit.
362. 3.5.9Christ, the righteousness raised like the sun, was given to the nations; the evil powers were routed and plundered, so that he accomplished salvation unhindered (Isa 41:2–3); this mystery was foreordained before the world, even before Adam's fall, as believers too were foreordained to be conformed to the Son (Isa 41:4).
363. 3.5.10God is the first and only God, without beginning (Isa 41:4); the nations who saw Christ's glory drew near in one faith and, having tasted the Lord's goodness, helped one another (Isa 41:5–6), mocking the craftsmen who nail idols together so that they will not fall (Isa 41:6–7).
364. 3.5.11Israel, Jacob, and the seed of Abraham in Isa 41:8–10 are the Israelites who believed in Christ, the apostles, whom God encourages by recalling Abraham's call from Chaldea and Israel's election as firstborn, strengthened by God's right hand, the Son; the lemma of Isa 41:11 follows.
365. 3.5.12The adversaries of the apostles, though many, came to nothing like the ungodly in Ps 37 (Isa 41:11–12); God holds the right hand of the apostles, “small Israel,” few against many but redeemed by God (Isa 41:13–14); the lemma of Isa 41:15–16, the threshing sledge, follows, with a description of threshing.
366. 3.5.13The mountains and hills threshed by Israel (Isa 41:15–16) are the evil powers and the proud who resisted the apostles; Israel, the apostles, will rejoice over the many made holy, the children of the promise, and the poor who thirsted, the nations whose philosophers sought truth but lacked the life-giving water (Isa 41:16–17).
367. 3.5.14God pitied the thirsting nations (Isa 41:17) and opened rivers on the mountains, holy men who pour out the divine word, and watercourses, the teachers of the churches; the fragrant, incorruptible trees are the saints, and all this is the work of God's hand, the Son, not of idols or of the god of this age (Isa 41:18–20).
368. 3.5.15The judgment of the idol-makers, who taught the world to worship wood and stone, has come near, as the true God, King of Jacob, scatters their error (Isa 41:21); only God knows the beginning and the end, as he revealed creation through Moses and the last things through Christ, while idols can neither foretell nor do good or harm (Isa 41:22–24).
369. 3.5.16Idols, made from earth, could not even foresee their own burning (Isa 41:24); God, who wills all to be saved, raised up the nations from the north and the east, called by Christ's name as Christians, or, as some read, Christ himself, the “Rising” (Isa 41:25); the lemma of Isa 41:25b–26 follows.
370. 3.5.17The idols were destined to be burned and trampled, and the rulers of Isa 41:25–26 are the apostles, who armed believers against them; the oracles fell silent when the Word shone forth; in Isa 41:27–29 God gives Zion, the church, its ruler, Christ, who as God is King by nature but receives rule by the dispensation in the flesh.
371. 3.5.18Idols cannot answer or guide anyone (Isa 41:28–29); the servant of Isa 42:1–4, called Jacob and Israel because of his descent in the flesh, is Christ, King eternally as the Word but receiving rule and the Spirit at his baptism as man, not as God; he brings just judgment to the nations by condemning Satan.
372. 3.5.19Christ condemned Satan and saved the deceived (Isa 42:1); he came quietly, harming not even the weakest (Isa 42:2–3), and turned the “judgment” of the law, its shadows, into the truth of the gospel; though the Jews put him to death he rose and was not broken, and the gospel now fills the earth, so that the nations hope in his name (Isa 42:3–4); the lemma of Isa 42:5–7 follows.
373. 3.5.20Because of the many false prophets, even true ones and Christ himself were disbelieved, so the Father bears witness through Isa 42:5–7 that he called Christ in righteousness; “I will hold your hand” is said of Christ as man, since as God he is the Father's own right hand, and the next words show him God by nature, light from light.
374. 3.5.21Christ, born of Israel according to the flesh, gave the new covenant and became a light to the nations, showing himself God by nature; he preached to the spirits in Hades and freed the imprisoned (Isa 42:6–7); God gives his glory to no creature, yet gives it to the Son, consubstantial with him, one nature in three hypostases (Isa 42:8); his promises of the life to come will be fulfilled as the old ones were (Isa 42:9). Doxology.
375. 4.1.1Opening the fourth book, Cyril presents Christ as the covenant of Israel and the light of the nations, and introduces Isaiah's call to sing a new hymn (Isa 42:10).
376. 4.1.2The new hymn fits the new realities of salvation in Christ, sung worldwide by those who cross the sea, which Cyril takes historically of the apostles' missions and spiritually of the churches as islands in the sea of life.
377. 4.1.3Isaiah's call to the desert towns of Kedar and Petra to rejoice foretells the conversion of the idolatrous Arab peoples, while those shouting from the mountains are the apostles proclaiming Christ's divinity and miracles.
378. 4.1.4God himself goes out to war for the apostles and martyrs against their human and demonic enemies, and stirs up zeal like Paul's in those who serve him (Isa 42:13–14).
379. 4.1.5God waited patiently until the incarnation of his Word to rescue the nations from Satan; drying up rivers and marshes (Isa 42:15) means silencing the Greek poets and orators who spread polytheism.
380. 4.1.6The rivers dried into islands are the silenced Greek sages, and the marshes are Satan's former pastures; Christ now leads the formerly blind nations by ways they did not know, turning their darkness into light (Isa 42:16).
381. 4.1.7God's promise to make the way of the godly smooth is set against Israel's return to idols (Isa 42:17), which Cyril likens to the unclean spirit returning sevenfold.
382. 4.1.8The blind and deaf servants of Isa 42:18–20 are Israel and its leaders, who had the law's light and saw God's glory yet chose idolatry, so their blindness was wilful.
383. 4.1.9God freed and taught Israel so that it might praise him, but Israel served idols in secret, so he let it be plundered in the captivity (Isa 42:22), justly turning to the nations.
384. 4.1.10Cyril applies the hidden idols spiritually to sinful imaginations, explains “give ear” as attentive hearing, and shows that Israel, once invincible, was handed over to plunder because it sinned against God (Isa 42:23–25).
385. 4.1.11Israel did not perceive the meaning of its punishment, as the refugees in Egypt showed; yet God's “now” in Isa 43:1–3 opens a new time of mercy and amnesty.
386. 4.1.12God's redemption of Israel is fulfilled in Christ, in whom believers become God's own (“you are mine”) and are kept safe through the waters and fires of persecution (Isa 43:1–4).
387. 4.1.13Cyril reads Isa 43:3–5 of the nations, Egypt and Ethiopia above all, received in exchange for Israel after it rejected Christ, and of Israel's own future honour when it too believes and is given teachers.
388. 4.1.14The gathering of God's sons and daughters from east, west, north and south (Isa 43:5–6) is the gathering of Jews and Gentiles into one by the incarnate Word, as Caiaphas unknowingly prophesied.
389. 4.1.15The people called by God's name is the new creation formed in Christ, the Father's glory, and the blind people brought out into light are believers renewed in his image (Isa 43:7–9).
390. 4.1.16The prophecy that the nations will be gathered is certain though not yet fulfilled; only God, not the demons or idols of the Greeks, foretold the coming of the nations to the truth (Isa 43:9).
391. 4.1.17No one bears witness that the demons foreknow; God calls the prophets, and himself with his Servant, the Son, as witnesses that he alone is the eternal God and the only Saviour (Isa 43:10–13).
392. 4.1.18God alone saves and no one can snatch his own from his hand (Isa 43:12–13; John 10:27–29); turning to Israel, he recalls the exodus and foretells his sending against Babylon (Isa 43:14).
393. 4.1.19God sent Cyrus against Babylon for Israel's sake, a type of Christ freeing humanity from the demons into the church; the God who promises this is the Holy One who showed forth Israel's king, whom Cyril takes as Christ (Isa 43:14–15).
394. 4.1.20Beyond the partial redemption from Babylon stands the universal redemption through the self-emptying of the Only-begotten; the exodus through the sea and the drowning of Pharaoh's army (Isa 43:16–17) recall God's power to a forgetful Israel.
395. 4.1.21As Israel was led through the sea and the desert, God leads believers through this life to share in Christ; the “new things” of Isa 43:18–21 so surpass the exodus that the old may be forgotten.
396. 4.1.22The way in the desert is the gospel, or Christ himself, and the rivers are the evangelists and teachers who water the formerly barren nations; Isa 43:22–24 shows God did not redeem Israel for the sake of sacrifices.
397. 4.1.23God redeemed Israel while it was still sinful, not as a reward for sacrifices; true service is obedience, and the prophets everywhere reject the worship of shadows in favour of spiritual worship in Christ (Isa 43:22–24).
398. 4.1.24Sacrifices cannot remove sin; God justifies by mercy through faith in Christ, but asks that sinners confess their sins, as David did and the proud Pharisee of the parable did not (Isa 43:25–26).
399. 4.1.25The tax collector was justified by confessing; and Israel's punishment, despite God's promise of amnesty, is explained by the sins of its fathers and rulers, its priests and teachers, against God himself (Isa 43:27–28).
400. 4.1.26Idolatry offends God himself, as Israel's priests and rulers did by defiling the temple; yet God's “now” in Isa 44:1 sets a new time and recalls Israel to the obedience of his chosen servant.
401. 4.2.1Opening the second discourse, Cyril shows that God, Israel's maker and father, does not abandon sinful Israel to despair but promises help to those who return and give him the honour owed to a creator (Isa 44:2).
402. 4.2.2Cyril reads Isa 44:2–5 of the apostles, chosen from Israel and strengthened against persecution by the water of the Holy Spirit, whose spiritual children, those they begot through the gospel, receive the Spirit's gifts.
403. 4.2.3The Spirit-watered nations will confess they belong to God and be called by Jacob's name; to an idolatrous Israel God then recalls his kingship, his deliverance from Egypt, and that he alone is God (Isa 44:4–7).
404. 4.2.4Recalling the plagues, the sea, the manna, the rock and the Jordan, God declares himself the first and the last, the one God without beginning, the creator who alone foreknows, to whom no false god compares (Isa 44:6–8).
405. 4.2.5God alone foretold, through Moses and the prophets, the mystery of Christ; Israel itself, delivered by the plagues of Egypt and victorious over the gods of the Amorites, is witness that there is no God besides him (Isa 44:8).
406. 4.2.6Israel, though it knew the one God by experience and had the law's ban on images, made gods of wood and stone and became as deaf as its idols; the idol-maker, a mortal who hungers and thirsts, worships only his own craft (Isa 44:8–12).
407. 4.2.7A mortal craftsman cannot make immortal gods; Isaiah's satire of the man who cooks with half a log and worships the rest (Isa 44:13–20) is meant to shame idolaters into the truth.
408. 4.2.8Worshipping a man-shaped idol is worshipping a lesser copy of oneself; and no lie is in God's right hand, the Son, who is truly God, Lord and Creator, God from God and true light from true light (Isa 44:13–20).
409. 4.2.9Israel, formed as God's servant under the law and forgiven, must remember him; Cyril distinguishes formation by birth, by the law into servants, and by the Spirit in Christ into sons of God (Isa 44:21–22).
410. 4.2.10Forgetting God means apostasy; his “I have blotted out” promises forgiveness fulfilled in Christ, at whose coming heaven and earth rejoice, as the angels sang at his birth (Isa 44:22–23).
411. 4.2.11The foundations of the earth summoned to sound the trumpet (Isa 44:23) are the apostles and evangelists, the nearer foundations of the church built on Christ, whose gospel brings gladness; the hills and trees are lesser teachers and those who believe through them.
412. 4.2.12The Creator who alone stretched out the heavens, not to the exclusion of the Word but of the false gods, promises in Isa 44:24–26 to scatter the oracles of the demons, which Christ, the true light, did.
413. 4.2.13The ventriloquists are the pagan oracles, silenced by the gospel, and the wise turned back are the Greek magi and orators; the words of God's Servant, Christ, and the counsel of the apostles stand; the promise that Jerusalem will be rebuilt implies its earlier fall (Isa 44:25–26).
414. 4.2.14Spiritually, the rebuilt Judea is the church, once a desert and now full of saints like trees; historically, God sent Cyrus to take Babylon, the “abyss” with its tributary nations, and to free the Jews and rebuild the temple (Isa 44:26–28).
415. 4.2.15Cyrus fulfilled God's wishes in taking Babylon, freeing Israel and founding the temple, though an idolater; he is called “anointed” only as a king raised up by God (Isa 44:28–45:7).
416. 4.2.16God opened Babylon and its hidden treasures to Cyrus, not as a reward for piety, since Cyrus did not know him, but for Israel's sake and so that all nations might know there is no other God (Isa 45:1–7).
417. 4.2.17God's wrath against Babylon, voiced by Zechariah, Jeremiah and Isaiah, was carried out by Cyrus; Scripture then rises from this history to Emmanuel, who frees captives from the devil, reconciles them to the Father, and builds the church (Isa 45:7–8).
418. 4.2.18Heaven's angels rejoice at the salvation of the world; the clouds raining righteousness are the heavenly powers or the apostles, withheld from the Jews who rejected Christ, and the righteousness springing from the earth is Christ himself, born of a woman (Isa 45:8).
419. 4.2.19The Creator's “I am” explains the Son's self-emptying: humanity, though earth, bears God's image and is his pride; and the ploughing that must give way to sowing pictures the law yielding to the gospel, which the Jews resisted (Isa 45:8–10).
420. 4.2.20As ploughing serves sowing, the law prepared hearts for the Son's gospel; the clay that questions the potter (Isa 45:9–10) pictures the Jews who disputed the new birth through water and Spirit offered in Christ.
421. 4.2.21Like Nicodemus questioning the new birth, those who question God's ways are clay disputing with the potter; Isa 45:11–12 ironically invites them to command the Creator, whose ways are unsearchable.
422. 4.2.22God's works surpass understanding, as the new birth did for Nicodemus; we must yield to him as clay to the potter, since he who made earth, man and heaven, by his hand the Son, can remake human hearts (Isa 45:11–12).
423. 4.2.23The king raised up in righteousness (Isa 45:13) is not finally Cyrus but Christ, righteousness itself, who built the church on himself and freed his people not with silver but with his own blood.
424. 4.2.24Isa 45:14 foretells the conversion of the most superstitious nations, Egypt, Ethiopia (the Thebaid) and the Sabaeans or Indians, after Israel rejected Christ; Egypt is now full of churches, monks and virgins.
425. 4.2.25The converted nations, bound by love of Christ, confess that God is in him and there is no God besides him (Isa 45:14–16); Cyril explains this of the Son's oneness with the Father and of the one incarnate Son, not divided into two.
426. 4.2.26Those who fight against Christ will be put to shame, but the churches throughout the world, islands of safety in life's sea, are renewed to God as a new creation (Isa 45:16–17).
427. 4.2.27Jewish and Gentile believers are renewed in worship, leaving types and idols for spiritual worship; God promises the true Israel, by flesh and by promise, an eternal salvation free of sin, Satan and death (Isa 45:17).
428. 4.3.1The Lord who made heaven and earth for habitation is the only God by nature, and at Sinai he openly forbade Israel to seek idols.
429. 4.3.2God alone is Lord; Christ gathers the nations scattered by Satan, calling them to wise faith, while idol-makers are as senseless as their idols.
430. 4.3.3The demons' oracles foretold nothing of Christ; only God foretold it, and he is righteous and the Saviour of the whole earth through Christ.
431. 4.3.4God's oath that every knee will bow to him foretells the turning of all nations; the true seed of Israel, not Israel according to the flesh, will be glorified in him.
432. 4.3.5Unbelieving Jews who rejected Christ are shamed while believers are justified; the fall of Bel, linked to bloodthirsty Kronos, foretells the defeat of the demons.
433. 4.3.6The fall of Bel and the crushing of Dagon, as before the ark, signify the end of idolatry; idols carried in procession cannot save themselves from captivity.
434. 4.3.7Idols cannot save even themselves; God, who alone is eternal, punished Israel with war but promises to take up and save the remnant.
435. 4.3.8Likening God to men and beasts is beyond excuse; idol-makers pay for gods younger than themselves and pray to matter they carry on their shoulders.
436. 4.3.9God calls the wanderers to repent from the heart, proves himself God by fulfilling all he plans, and names the Babylonian king the bird from the east, as in Ezekiel's parable of the eagle.
437. 4.3.10God brought the Babylonian against faithless Israel, yet promises salvation: partly the return from Babylon, fully salvation through Christ in the Church, the spiritual Zion and Israel.
438. 4.3.11Babylon, like the proud daughters of Zion before her, will be humbled, enslaved, and shamed in captivity, receiving the just recompense of her deeds.
439. 4.3.12God, who disciplines Israel in love, will punish Babylon for her pride and for showing no mercy to his people beyond what he intended.
440. 4.3.13Babylon, proud of her luxury, her armies, and her magi, will suddenly be widowed and made childless by Cyrus, and her harlotry, her apostasy from God, will shame her.
441. 4.3.14Babylon's boast will end in sudden ruin; her magi and enchanters, who could not foresee it, will be useless against Cyrus's army.
442. 4.3.15The astrologers will burn like brushwood and cannot save Babylon; the prophet then turns to rebuke Israel, whose king Manasseh filled Jerusalem and the temple with idols.
443. 4.3.16God's rebukes of Judah's idolatry under Manasseh show that descent from the fathers profits nothing without their character, as Christ told those who boasted of Abraham.
444. 4.3.17Israel bore the fathers' names and swore by God and boasted of Jerusalem, yet profaned the city with idols; God had foretold the captivity that came upon them.
445. 4.3.18God mercifully foretold Israel's punishment to frighten a stubborn people into repentance; they must not credit the captivity to idols, as the women of Judah did with the queen of heaven.
446. 4.3.19Israel, faithless from the womb, was punished, yet God rescued it from Babylon for his name's sake, since the captors thought they had defeated him.
447. 4.3.20Israel, chosen as God's portion, served the elements of the world; but God alone is first and eternal, and created heaven and earth by his hand and right hand, the Son.
448. 4.3.21No idol or diviner foretold the captivity; God foretold it, and out of love for Israel he brought Cyrus against Babylon, as he had openly announced through the prophets.
449. 4.3.22God, not Cyrus's own hand, overthrew Babylon; Cyrus himself confessed in his decree that the Lord of Israel had raised him up and sent him.
450. 4.3.23God alone truly exists; Israel's misery came from leaving the way of the law, which would have given peace like a river and descendants like sand, yet a remnant is kept.
451. 4.3.24God's command to leave Babylon is a royal decree of release to be proclaimed everywhere; the same God who freed Israel from Egypt acts now, and the ungodly, including Babylon, have no joy.
452. 4.4.1Cyril reads the islands addressed in Isa 49:1 as the churches of the nations and begins to explain how the Word, who had divine names before the incarnation, was “called from his mother’s womb.”
453. 4.4.2Cyril explains how the Word received the names Emmanuel, Jesus, and Christ at his birth in the flesh, and reads the “sharp sword” of Isa 49:2 as the gospel that overthrows the devil’s tyranny.
454. 4.4.3Cyril reads the hand that shelters and the quiver that hides the “choice arrow” of Isa 49:2 as the Father’s protection and foreknowledge of the incarnate Son, who is called “servant” and “Israel” because of the economy in the flesh.
455. 4.4.4Cyril explains how the Father is glorified in the incarnate Son, and reads the Servant’s complaint of labouring in vain (Isa 49:4) as Christ’s rejection by Israel, illustrated by the parable of the wicked tenants.
456. 4.4.5Cyril reads the Servant “formed from the womb” (Isa 49:5) as the free Son who willingly took the form of a servant at his birth in the flesh, illustrated by the didrachma episode.
457. 4.4.6Cyril explains that the Word became a servant to gather Israel and Jacob, meaning the Jews or, equally well, all who are saved through faith and have circumcision of the heart.
458. 4.4.7Cyril explains that being called “servant” was a small thing for the Word yet brought him glory from all, and reads the “light of nations” (Isa 49:6) as God’s turning to the Gentiles when the Jews rejected Christ.
459. 4.4.8Cyril reads Isa 49:7 as the Father’s command to honour as holy the incarnate Word who “held his life cheap” by dying for sinners, while suffering nothing in his own divine nature.
460. 4.4.9Cyril explains “sanctify him” (Isa 49:7) as honouring as holy the one who suffered mockery and death in the flesh, whom kings will worship, and calls the time of the incarnation the “day of salvation” (Isa 49:8).
461. 4.4.10Cyril rejects the view of earlier interpreters that Isa 49:8 answers Christ’s unheard prayer in Gethsemane, explaining the prayer instead as an act of the economy and a pattern for Christians in temptation.
462. 4.4.11Cyril reads Isa 49:8–10 as Christ’s establishing of the nations as his inheritance, releasing them from sin and darkness and feeding them in the paths of the Scriptures.
463. 4.4.12Cyril reads the springs, shelter, and levelled mountains of Isa 49:10–12 as the living water of Christ, the teaching of prophets and apostles, and the easy path of virtue opened to believers gathered from every quarter of the earth.
464. 4.4.13Cyril reads the call to heaven, earth, and mountains to rejoice (Isa 49:13) as summoning angels, believers such as Simeon, and the ministers of the gospel to celebrate God’s mercy on the humble.
465. 4.4.14Cyril reads Zion’s complaint of being forgotten (Isa 49:14–15) as the lament of the Jewish mother-city bereft of children through unbelief, and God’s promise as made to the spiritual Zion, the church, which Christ can never forget.
466. 4.4.15Cyril interprets the walls painted on God’s hands (Isa 49:16) as the nail-pierced hands of the crucified Christ, whose passion is the church’s wall, or as believers held safe in the Father’s hand.
467. 4.4.16Cyril reads Zion’s walls as the apostles, says the Jewish disciples rebuilt the Zion that the Jewish leaders had pulled down, and reads Isa 49:18 as the future return of Israel to Christ to form one flock with the church of the nations.
468. 4.4.17Cyril reads the gathering of Zion’s children as the return of the scattered from the demons and passions, adorning the church like a bride, and recalls the desolation of Judaea after the rejection of Christ (Isa 49:18–21; 4:1).
469. 4.4.18Cyril reads Zion’s overflowing children and the hand lifted to the nations (Isa 49:19–23) as the growth of the church chiefly from the Gentiles through faith in Christ and the apostolic preaching.
470. 4.4.19Cyril reads the kings and princesses who nurse Zion’s children as Christian rulers honouring the church, and the question about spoils from a giant (Isa 49:24) as the Saviour’s challenge to the devil’s tyranny over the world.
471. 4.4.20Cyril reads Isa 49:25 with Matt 12:29: Christ, entering the world in the flesh, bound the strong man Satan and took his captives, and gives believers the power to despoil him in turn.
472. 4.4.21Cyril reads Isa 49:25–26 as God’s judgment for the church and its persecuted apostles and martyrs: the martyrs are crowned, while their persecutors suffer what they inflicted.
473. 4.4.22Cyril explains that God’s “certificate of divorce” (Isa 50:1) is spoken in a human way: God did not divorce Jerusalem or sell her children, but she departed of her own accord and her sins delivered her people to Satan.
474. 4.4.23Cyril reads Isa 50:2–3 as Christ’s reproach to Israel for not recognizing him, though he is the God who of old dried up the Red Sea and the Jordan, and so able to rescue the world.
475. 4.4.24Cyril finishes Isa 50:2–3 with the wonders of the Exodus, then applies Isa 50:4 to the apostles and believers, who received a “tongue of instruction” to teach each hearer fittingly and “ears” to read the law spiritually.
476. 4.5.1Cyril reads Isa 50:5–8 as Christ’s own words: obedient where the Jews disobeyed, he willingly gave his back to scourges and his face to spitting to fulfil the Father’s will for the life of believers.
477. 4.5.2Cyril reads “the Lord became my helper” (Isa 50:7–8) as the Father’s vindication of the crucified Son through the punishment of his persecutors, and the challenge “Who contends with me?” as a declaration of Christ’s sinlessness.
478. 4.5.3Cyril affirms Christ’s sinlessness as the one respect in which the incarnate Word was beyond our nature, and reads “the Lord helps me” (Isa 50:9) as the Father raising the Son, though the Word himself had power to raise his own flesh.
479. 4.5.4Cyril reads the threat of the moth (Isa 50:9) as the ruin awaiting Christ’s persecutors, and the call to hear “the voice of his Servant” (Isa 50:10) as an invitation to the believing remnant to accept the gospel, which confirms rather than abolishes the law.
480. 4.5.5Cyril reads Isa 50:10 as Christ mixing comfort with reproof: he convicts the Jews of walking in darkness yet calls them to trust in him as Lord and God, the light of the world.
481. 4.5.6Cyril reads the fire and flame of Isa 50:11 as the punishment that the Jews kindled against themselves by killing the prophets and Christ, fulfilled in the fall of Jerusalem and awaiting those who die without Christ’s redemption.
482. 4.5.7Cyril reads the call of Isa 51:1–2 as addressed to the believing remnant of Israel, who pursue the righteousness of faith, and introduces Abraham and Sarah as proof that so small a beginning can grow into a countless people.
483. 4.5.8Cyril explains the hewn rock and dug pit (Isa 51:1–2) as the miraculous birth of Isaac from aged Abraham and barren Sarah, and reads the comfort of Zion (Isa 51:3) as the spiritual flourishing of the church, whose worship is in spirit and truth.
484. 4.5.9Cyril reads Isa 51:4 as Christ addressing the gathered believers, “taught of God” with the law written on their hearts, and calls the apostles and their successors who lead the peoples the “kings” of the passage.
485. 4.5.10Cyril reads the “law” and “judgment” that go out to the nations (Isa 51:4) as the gospel, which fulfils rather than abolishes the law, and the righteousness that “draws near quickly” (Isa 51:5) as Christ, through whom believers are justified by mercy.
486. 4.5.11Cyril reads the nations’ hope in God’s “arm” (Isa 51:5) as hope in the Son, the Father’s power, who freed the Gentiles from Satan, and introduces Isa 51:6 as God’s lesson that heaven and earth are creatures, not gods.
487. 4.5.12Cyril reads Isa 51:6 as a lesson that heaven and earth, being creatures, will grow old and be renewed, while God’s salvation and righteousness, the eternal Son and Word, will never fail.
488. 4.5.13Cyril reads Isa 51:7–8 as encouragement to mature believers who keep God’s law in their hearts not to fear the reproach of persecutors, since their reward is eternal while their persecutors perish like moth-eaten wool.
489. 4.5.14Cyril reads the call “Awake, Jerusalem” (Isa 51:9) as the future conversion of Israel to Christ after the full number of the nations has come in, when the natural branches will be grafted back into their own olive tree.
490. 4.5.15Cyril reads the drying of the sea (Isa 51:10) as a reminder of the Exodus that assures believers in Christ of victory over temptation and persecution, and calls the Father’s right hand and arm the Lord Jesus Christ.
491. 4.5.16Cyril reads the joyful return to Zion (Isa 51:11) as the gladness of the church, and Isa 51:12–14 as God’s rebuke of Israel for fearing the Jewish leaders, who opposed Christ’s miracles, rather than fearing God.
492. 4.5.17Cyril reads the end of Isa 51:14 as the passing of the persecutors’ fury with the fall of Jerusalem, and Isa 51:15–16 as God, Lord of hosts, stilling the storms of persecution and putting his words in the mouths of his restored people.
493. 4.5.18Cyril reads the promise of God’s words in the mouth and shelter under his hand (Isa 51:16) as given to the righteous who keep God’s law, explains the hand as Christ, and sees in “You are my God” Zion’s future confession of faith in Christ.
494. 4.5.19Cyril reads the call to Jerusalem to awake from the cup of wrath (Isa 51:17–18) as a call to the fallen synagogue to rise through faith, and the cup as the full judgment that fell on Judaea, from which none of its leaders could save it.
495. 4.5.20Cyril reads the “two things” of Isa 51:19–20 (fall and ruin, famine and sword) as the calamities of the Roman capture of Jerusalem under Vespasian and Titus, foretold by Christ, when even the powerful fled to the borders.
496. 4.5.21Cyril reads the removal of the cup of wrath from Jerusalem (Isa 51:21–22) as the end of Israel’s judgment when it is called to faith in Christ in the last days, and explains “cup” in Scripture as the lot allotted to each.
497. 4.5.22Cyril reads the cup of wrath passed to those who wronged Jerusalem (Isa 51:22–23) as the punishment of the synagogue’s leaders and of the evil powers who blinded it to Christ, and the command “bow down” as their trampling of a slack soul.
498. 5.1.1Zion and Jerusalem in Isa 52:1 signify the church; she puts on Christ as strength and glory, and the unclean demonic powers will no longer trample her.
499. 5.1.2Shaking off the dust means casting off the earthy mind; Zion, God's daughter, fell into captivity to sin by her own choice, not through any weakness of her Savior.
500. 5.1.3As Satan seized humanity without price, Christ redeemed it not with silver but by his own power and blood; Israel's past exiles came from idolatry, and the Roman sword has now scattered them.
501. 5.1.4The Roman destruction of Jerusalem came on Israel for killing the prophets and the Lord; God will not allow his name to be blasphemed, and those who believe, from Jews and nations, will know his glory in Christ, God by nature though made flesh.
502. 5.1.5Christ, God made man and one Son, came like spring upon barren mountains and like a herald of peace, reconciling humanity to the Father.
503. 5.1.6Zion is the church of Jews and Gentiles; the gospel has been heard everywhere, God now reigns where Satan once did, and the guards whose voice is lifted up are the apostles and all faithful teachers.
504. 5.1.7The apostles' preaching was readily obeyed, to their joy; believers see Christ, the Word made flesh; Jerusalem's waste places stand for the once-small church of the nations, while earthly Jerusalem was emptied in the Roman war.
505. 5.1.8The church of the nations, once barren and desolate, has been filled with more children than the synagogue, through the revealing of God's arm, the Son.
506. 5.1.9The command to depart and touch nothing unclean tells believers, especially the apostles, to separate from unbelieving Israel, as Paul warned the Galatians against returning to the law; God goes before them.
507. 5.1.10The servant of Isa 52:13 is the Son, who took the form of a slave and wrought salvation with divine wisdom; believers are amazed at him, unbelievers dishonored him, but nations and kings will honor him.
508. 5.1.11The nations who had not heard of Christ will see and understand by faith, while Israel, though told by the prophets, did not believe; Isa 53:1 is the prophets' complaint.
509. 5.1.12The barren earth blossomed when watered by Christ and the Spirit; the Word did not come in overwhelming divine glory, as at Sinai, but emptied himself, so that his form seemed without honor.
510. 5.1.13Christ's lowly station and his downcast face before the Passion, when he was troubled, mocked, and beaten, show that he truly became man; though impassible as God, he let his human nature feel grief.
511. 5.1.14Christ, the true Lamb, bore our sins and suffered for all, since the sacrifices of the law could not remove sin; the Father gave him up out of love, that he might be Lord of the living and the dead.
512. 5.1.15Christ did not suffer for his own sins, as some thought, but bore the chastisement owed by sinners; at his trial he kept almost silent before the Jewish leaders and Pilate, as Isa 53:7 foretold.
513. 5.1.16Christ, slaughtered like a sheep and shorn like a lamb, suffered in his flesh while his divine nature remained impassible; he was condemned because he seemed lowly, though his generation is beyond telling.
514. 5.1.17Christ's generation is twofold and beyond telling, eternal from the Father and virginal in the flesh; his life is lifted above the earth by his sinlessness; he died for the people's sins and at the hands of those who acted lawlessly against him.
515. 5.1.18Cyril reads 'the wicked and the rich' of Isa 53:9 as the Jewish leaders, who killed Christ, bribed the guards to deny the resurrection, and loved gain; their punishment, he says, clears Christ of the charge laid against him.
516. 5.1.19The nations 'give an offering for sin' by repaying Christ, who died for them, with their own lives, preferring him even to parents; in return they share the long-lived seed of the saints and the hope of resurrection.
517. 5.1.20After the Passion Christ's sorrow turned to joy as the nations, once darkness, were enlightened and reshaped into his image; he is the righteous servant who served many, vindicated by Israel's punishment and his reign over the nations.
518. 5.1.21The 'many' whom the servant inherits are the nations; the 'strong' who share the spoils are the apostles and spiritual believers, among whom Christ distributed the converted nations and the gifts of the Spirit.
519. 5.2.1The barren woman of Isa 54:1 is the church of the nations, which, though numerous, had borne no children to God before Christ, lacking knowledge, virtue, and regeneration.
520. 5.2.2Once widowed and barren, the church of the nations received Christ as bridegroom and now has more children than the synagogue; her enlarged tent signifies the spread of great churches through the world, and her leaders will rule peoples.
521. 5.2.3The inheritance of the nations belongs to Christ, who shares it with the leaders of the church; the nations' reproach was their idolatry and sin, which God in mercy has forgiven.
522. 5.2.4Christ came not to condemn but to save; the nations' shame is forgotten and their widowhood ended, as Christ the Lord re-creates them into one new man and reigns over all the earth.
523. 5.2.5The 'forsaken' and 'hated' wife of Isa 54:6 is, for Cyril, the synagogue, which God took in like a wife and put away for idolatry, as Hosea and Ezekiel describe; the church of the nations is not called as such a wife.
524. 5.2.6Unlike the synagogue, hardened and left with only a remnant, the nations were enlightened and saved in great numbers; their forsaking was brief compared with God's eternal mercy, which he swore as he swore after the flood.
525. 5.2.7As God swore after the flood never again to destroy the earth, so at Christ's coming he spared a world that deserved the same punishment, giving a covenant of peace through Christ; he is gracious to the nations because their souls were humbled and unstable.
526. 5.2.8The nations' souls were unstable and drunk with desire, and unlike Israel they had received no comfort from law or prophets, as the parable of the eleventh-hour workers shows; now God promises to build the church of the nations like a city of precious stones.
527. 5.2.9The carbuncle laid as the city's stone is Christ, the cornerstone; the sapphire foundations are the apostles, and the battlements, gates, and enclosure are the church's teachers, who defend believers against heresy and error.
528. 5.2.10Those saved by faith are precious stones built into God's temple; the church's sons are taught by God himself through the incarnate Word, not through a mediator, and so the church stands in peace, unshaken by its enemies.
529. 5.2.11Proselytes are the converts from the nations, or Israel now coming after them, all approaching God through Christ; God's 'creating' Zion means not creation from nothing but renewal by the Holy Spirit.
530. 5.2.12Christ creates believers anew by spiritual regeneration in baptism and gives them strength against persecutors and heretics; those who sin after their calling fall into corruption, while the inheritance belongs to those who serve the Lord.
531. 5.2.13The water, wine, and fat freely offered in Isa 55:1 are the gifts of Christ, the fountain of life and source of the Spirit's grace, which are received not with money but by faith.
532. 5.2.14The wine and fat bought without money may signify the body and blood of Christ; the silver spent in vain is the money paid to Greek teachers of falsehood, whereas the gospel, plain in style, nourishes the soul with true knowledge.
533. 5.2.15The eternal covenant promised in Isa 55:3 is the new covenant in Christ, which replaces the shadow of the law; 'the holy things of David' are the oracles of Christ, David's descendant, which make holy those who receive them.
534. 5.2.16Christ, David's descendant, is given to the nations not merely as a witness like the prophets but as ruler and commander, God speaking with his own authority; the nations call on him as God, glorifying the Son with the Father.
535. 5.2.17The name above every name was given to Christ as man, though as God he had glory before the world; the Father subjects the nations to the Son and calls them to seek God, not in a place but by eager faith, and to forsake sin, for he forgives completely.
536. 5.2.18No sin is too hard for God to wash away by the Spirit's fire; Israel despaired of forgiveness, but God's ways are as far above human ways as heaven is above earth, and he can transform the nations as he promises.
537. 5.2.19As rain from heaven unfailingly makes the earth fruitful, so God's word accomplishes his will; the gospel is the spiritual rain that gives believers life-giving bread and gives teachers seed to sow in others.
538. 5.2.20God promises to make his ways and commandments easy for believers, who at first find the passions hard to escape; with his help they go out in gladness, taught with joy, while the synagogue's way is fenced with thorns.
539. 5.2.21The leaping mountains and hills are the angels or the church's teachers, rejoicing at the conversion of the nations; the trees are the believing peoples; brushwood turned to cypress shows Christ transforming sinners, as with Matthew and Paul; the eternal sign is the cross.
540. 5.3.1Isa 56:1–2 calls Israel to judgment and righteousness rather than pride in descent from Abraham; the salvation near at hand is Christ, and the blessed man is the one who does righteousness, not the one born of Abraham.
541. 5.3.2The true Sabbath is rest from sin, kept by offering ourselves to God as a spiritual sacrifice; Isa 56:3–5 corrects Israel's pride in descent and in many children, a pride rooted in the promise to Abraham and the law against barrenness.
542. 5.3.3Foreigners who cleave to the Lord belong to his people as Abraham's children by faith; eunuchs and the childless need not grieve, since having children is no virtue, and those who live in continence for the kingdom of heaven receive an eternal name in the church.
543. 5.3.4Foreigners who serve the Lord and keep Christ's spiritual Sabbath will be brought into the church, though the law excluded Ammonites and Moabites; their offerings are themselves, the whole life of the dedicated as a burnt offering and the life of the married as a partial sacrifice.
544. 5.3.5God's house of prayer is for all nations, and Israel too, scattered by disobedience, is gathered in mercy; the beasts called to eat are either the nations fed at Christ's table or the enemies who devoured Israel for rejecting Christ, whose leaders were blind.
545. 5.3.6The Jewish leaders were blind, refusing Christ the light, and like dumb, sleepy dogs they failed to guard their flock from false teachers while greedily taking bribes, as Christ and the prophets charged.
546. 5.3.7The leaders of Israel, greedy for gain and without understanding, each followed his own way and together in council plotted against Christ, loving pleasure rather than God.
547. 5.3.8The righteous one who perished is Christ, killed by the Jews as were the apostles and Stephen; 'his burial in peace' shows that none of them opposed the deed, and the 'lawless seed' of Isa 57:3–4 are those who slandered Christ.
548. 5.3.9As Hosea and Jeremiah foretold, the leaders of the synagogue rejected and killed Christ the heir; the 'adulterers' are the scribes who corrupted her teaching and the 'harlot' the synagogue, and their idolatry and child sacrifice show that their hostility to God was ancient.
549. 5.3.10Israel's idolatry under leafy trees, on high places, and carved on its doorposts, and its sacrifice of children, violated the law's command to worship God alone; their portion will be the slaughter they inflicted.
550. 5.3.11Like every vice, idolatry promised Israel more and gave less; led astray by false shepherds, the synagogue fell from the worship of the true God into a manifold 'harlotry' of apostasy, magic, divination, and astrology.
551. 5.3.12Israel's harlotry drove the prophets away or brought in the gods of every nation; its end was humiliation to Hades, and its 'many ways' are the restless turning from god to god, like the mind drunk with pleasures that does not stop.
552. 5.3.13Israel added refusal to repent to its sins and abandoned God for idols out of fear of Babylon, though God receives the penitent and the nations are as nothing before him; their idols could not save them.
553. 5.3.14Those who forget God by refusing to obey him are disregarded by him and repaid in kind; their idols cannot save them and will be scattered like dust, while those who cling to God will inherit his holy mountain.
554. 5.3.15Those who cling to God, especially the believing Jews led by the apostles, inherit the heavenly land promised to the meek; the way to be cleared is the smooth way of salvation by faith, in contrast to the law, which no one could keep blamelessly.
555. 5.3.16The law, which convicted of sin, is replaced by the easy way of the gospel; God, the Most High, dwells among the holy, gives patience to the faint-hearted and life to the humble poor in spirit, and will not be angry forever.
556. 5.3.17God has not cut off Israel's hope: a remnant is saved and Israel will be called in the last times; the 'spirits' God makes are creatures, not begotten like the Son nor proceeding from his essence like the Holy Spirit; Israel was struck for killing Christ but will receive the true comfort of grace.
557. 5.3.18Through Christ both Israel, once near, and the nations, once far, have peace with God and one another; Israel will be called, though some will follow the Antichrist and find no rest. Isa 58 then rebukes those who, under threat of war, feigned piety and fasting while sinning.
558. 5.3.19Under threat of war the Jews fasted and prayed, thinking abstinence alone would justify them while they lived in sin; God rejects such fasting, for though fasting, prayer, and humility are precious, he does not accept a fast in which people pursue their own wills.
559. 5.3.20Israel's fasts were spoiled by quarrels, oppression, and injustice; a fast acceptable to God comes from a pure conscience and is joined to good works, whereas fasting without them is beating the air.
560. 5.3.21The true fast is to release the oppressed, cancel unjust debts and contracts, and do works of love by feeding the hungry, sheltering the poor, clothing the naked, and caring for one's kin; avoiding evil is not enough, and the law forbade evil while Christ's commands perfect the good.
561. 5.4.1God answers at once those who fast purely and give to the poor: their light breaks forth early, healing and righteousness go before them, and God says “Here I am” while they are still praying (Isa 58:8–9).
562. 5.4.2Cyril reads the “bond” of Isa 58:9 as scheming against others and the “stretching out of the hand” as bribe-taking or retaliation, both of which God commands his people to put away.
563. 5.4.3Murmuring against God destroyed Israel in the desert; whoever gives to the hungry gains light at midday and God's constant presence, and is filled with the spiritual food of Scripture that unbelieving Israel lost and the gentiles received (Isa 58:9–11).
564. 5.4.4Those filled with God's mysteries become like a well-watered garden and an unfailing spring, as the apostles were; the bones springing up like grass point to the resurrection, and also to the soul's powers renewed by the Holy Spirit (Isa 58:11).
565. 5.4.5The rebuilt deserts and the builder of fences picture a soul filled with thoughts of God, with Christ its foundation, fenced by the fear of God against pleasures and evil powers, as the apostles fenced their hearers; the lemma on the Sabbath follows (Isa 58:12–14).
566. 5.4.6As Paul turns circumcision and the Sabbath into spiritual realities, Cyril reads Isa 58:13 as resting from one's own will and pleasures, submitting gently to God's laws and guarding the tongue against anger.
567. 5.4.7Those who keep the spiritual Sabbath guard their tongue against anger and trust in the Lord, and inherit not Canaan, already given under Joshua, but the land promised to the meek; the lemma Isa 59:1–4 follows, with a look back to Isa 58:1.
568. 5.4.8Israel fasted for show while practising injustice, and its sins, above all the shedding of blood and the condemnation of Christ, stood between it and God, not any weakness in God's hand (Isa 58:2–5; 59:1–6).
569. 5.4.9The Jews conceived envy against Christ and brought forth his death, expecting profit, but like those who break asps' eggs or weave spiders' webs they found only a basilisk and a covering that does not cover (Isa 59:4–6).
570. 5.4.10Isaiah lists the sins of Israel, swift to shed blood and ignorant of peace, which is Christ; expecting light from the Messiah, they refused the true light and became blind guides of the blind (Isa 59:6–11).
571. 5.4.11Expecting light from the Messiah, the Jews fell at noon as at midnight; they will go like a bear and a dove together, savage and foolish, raging at their conquerors yet lamenting the fallen city; the lemma Isa 59:11–14 follows.
572. 5.4.12The prophets always add to the rejection of the Jews their future return in the last times: Isa 59:12–14 is the confession of Israel when it repents of its sins against Christ and seeks his mercy.
573. 5.4.13Truth had perished in Israel and no righteous man was found to intercede, as Jeremiah and the story of Sodom show; God armed himself like a war-leader against them, yet saved a remnant, and the nations will fear his name (Isa 59:14–19).
574. 5.4.14After the wrath, the Deliverer comes for Zion: the Word became man to call Israel first and then the gentiles, and his covenant is the gift of the Spirit and the word of faith confessed with the mouth, which justifies the ungodly (Isa 59:20–21).
575. 5.4.15Isaiah's “Be enlightened, Jerusalem” announces Christ, the glory of the Lord who shone first on Israel and showed himself God and Son of God by nature through his miracles, while the gentiles still sat in darkness (Isa 60:1–3).
576. 5.4.16Kings and gentiles walk by the light of Christ from idolatry to the true God; Isaiah's gathered children are believers of every nation, made one with believing Israel in the church, the new Jerusalem (Isa 60:3–7).
577. 5.4.17The children who come from afar are the gentiles, far from God not in place but in mind; they are carried on shoulders because the apostles led new converts gently, laying no heavy burden on them at first (Isa 60:4).
578. 5.4.18The wealth of the sea and the camels of Midian and Sheba are the coastal and desert peoples converted from idolatry, who bring God the gold and incense of faith and good works, and from whom many teachers of the church have come (Isa 60:4–6).
579. 5.4.19The flocks of Kedar and Nebaioth, acceptable on God's altar though the law excluded foreigners, show that in Christ all peoples are one and the church is a house of spiritual prayer; the converts flying like clouds and doves are believers of every age (Isa 60:7–9).
580. 5.4.20The islands and ships of Tarshish are the distant and desert peoples who submit to Christ's yoke and offer him the gold of faith and virtue; the foreigners who build Zion's walls are the gentile teachers of the church, wise master-builders who lay Christ as the foundation (Isa 60:9–10).
581. 5.4.21The kings who stand by the church are rulers who obey its preaching; its gates stand open day and night because the church receives believers of every rank at every time, while those who refuse Christ perish in their sins (Isa 60:10–12).
582. 5.4.22The glory of Lebanon is the multitude of saints, tall and fragrant like cedars, that the church nurtures from the gentiles; humbled Jerusalem, after rejecting Christ, survives in its believing remnant as the church, mother of the gentiles (Isa 60:13–14).
583. 5.4.23The sons of the kings who persecuted the church now honour it as the city of God; Jerusalem, forsaken for raging against its King, will on turning back be made an everlasting joy, fed with the offerings of the nations (Isa 60:14–16).
584. 5.4.24The exchange of bronze for gold and iron for silver pictures the surpassing of the law's instruction by the gospel, and of the Jewish teachers' brittle teaching by the solid teaching of Christ's ministers, the new rulers and bishops set in peace and righteousness (Isa 60:16–17).
585. 5.5.1With rulers in peace and bishops in righteousness, the injustice of the old leaders of the synagogue ceases; the walls and gates of the church are its holy teachers, and above all Christ, who is the door and the exact image of the Father (Isa 60:18).
586. 5.5.2Some refer the sun and moon that no longer shine to the end of the age, when Christ's glory will light the saints; Cyril accepts this and adds that the light Christ gives the mind through the Holy Spirit never sets, for he is the light of the world (Isa 60:19–20).
587. 5.5.3Mourning ends for the sinner who turns to the Lord and is justified by faith; Christ himself grafted the gentiles into his olive, and the saints, hidden and least now, will be gathered at his coming and given rule over many (Isa 60:20–22).
588. 5.5.4Christ, who as God gives the Spirit, receives it as man, and this is his anointing; he was sent to the poor, the broken-hearted and the blind, the idolatrous gentiles and also Israel, and the acceptable year is the year of his cross (Isa 61:1–2).
589. 5.5.5The acceptable year is the time of Christ's death, resurrection and baptism into the Spirit; the day of recompense is his coming, which promised eternal rewards where the law promised only earthly ones, and brought Satan's defeat (Isa 61:2).
590. 5.5.6The day of recompense is Christ's coming, when Satan was cast out; the godly Jews who mourned over Israel's neglect of the law, like Simeon, Zechariah and Paul, were comforted and, as apostles, made fathers and teachers of the church (Isa 61:2–4).
591. 5.5.7Believers are the generations of righteousness and God's planting, cultivated through the apostles, and the multitude of converts fills the churches; the foreign shepherds and priests of Isa 61:5–6 are gentile ministers who replace the levitical priesthood and the negligent scribes and Pharisees.
592. 5.5.8Gentile teachers appointed by Christ replace the shepherds of Israel as ploughmen and vinedressers of the church, win over the learned of the nations, and, as Jesus was foreshadowed by Joshua, receive the whole earth as their second allotment (Isa 61:5–7).
593. 5.5.9God removed the leaders of the synagogue for their unjust gain, as Scripture says ill-gotten wealth passes to others, and made an everlasting covenant with the gentile ministers; their spiritual offspring, such as monks and virgins, are the seed blessed by God (Isa 61:8–9).
594. 5.5.10The church rejoices in being clothed with Christ, the tunic of gladness, who gives abundant life; the saints are like bridegroom and bride in strength and fruitfulness, and Christ is the flower that springs up before the nations (Isa 61:10–11).
595. 5.5.11Zion is the church, first gathered from Israel; God will not rest until Christ, his righteousness and salvation, shines like a torch on a darkened world and is seen by the nations (Isa 62:1–3).
596. 5.5.12The church, no longer called synagogue, receives a new name and is God's crown of beauty; no longer forsaken, she is desired and peopled by believers from Israel and the nations, and persecutions have only proved the saints (Isa 62:2–4).
597. 5.5.13The apostles, sons of the church formed from Israel, dwell with her as a bridegroom with a virgin, turning her from types to truth; the Word rejoices over the church as over a bride made fruitful (Isa 62:5–6).
598. 5.5.14God's watchmen in the church, the holy teachers, proclaim his wonders and his unmatched kindness; if Jerusalem turns from types to spiritual worship and boasts in Christ, God swears that her labour will no longer be lost, understood spiritually (Isa 62:6–9).
599. 5.5.15The watchmen, the church's teachers, are told to clear the stones from the road: the law's types that trip Jewish converts, pagan habits that trouble Greeks, and the teachings of heretics; the signal raised to the nations is the word of faith or the cross (Isa 62:9–11).
600. 5.5.16The daughter of Zion, the church, is told that her Saviour has come bringing his reward: as God he gives gifts and sees each one's work, as he did for Peter, the apostles and the thief; his people are redeemed by the Lord himself, and the church is sought after, not forsaken (Isa 62:11–12).
601. 5.5.17Christ ascends to the Father still showing the marks of his passion, and the astonished powers ask who comes from Edom in red garments; he answers that he has judged the world and cast out Satan, and that no one from the nations stood with him in his suffering (Isa 63:1–6).
602. 5.5.18Though alone, Christ was not overcome: after his ascension wrath fell on the Jewish people for rejecting him, while those who believed were redeemed; the prophet then reminds Israel that the Lord is a good judge who tempers wrath with mercy (Isa 63:4–7).
603. 5.5.19God, a good judge, tempers wrath with mercy; he counted Israel as children and himself, not an angel, saved them from Egypt out of love, yet they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit, so he turned against them (Isa 63:7–11).
604. 5.5.20The prophet laments that Israel forgot the God who brought up the shepherd of the sheep, a hint of Christ's coming as man, put his Spirit among them, and by Moses' hand made the sea solid and led them through it like cattle on a plain (Isa 63:11–14).
605. 5.5.21Speaking for Israel, the prophet begs God, who is not bound to a place but rests in heaven, to turn back and show again the zeal by which he freed Israel from Egypt and Babylon and the patience with which he bore with them in the wilderness (Isa 63:14–17).
606. 5.5.22Israel calls God a Father beyond Abraham and laments its hardened heart; God allowed the hardness they chose, and those of Israel who believe hold only a small part of the holy mountain, the church, while the rest have returned to a spiritual Egypt (Isa 63:16–19).
607. 5.5.23As the prophets often did, Isaiah prays for Israel that God's wrath fall not on his people but on the adversaries, understood as the proud evil powers, who will melt like mountains before fire (Isa 64:1–5).
608. 5.5.24God, invisible by nature, is known from his wonders and his kindness to the hopeless; no other God shows mercy to those who wait for him and keep his ways, which are his commandments (Isa 64:2–5).
609. 5.6.1Rejecting the reversed reading “we sinned and you were angry”, Cyril argues that under God's wrath people cannot resist sin, since strength for good comes only from God; so Israel, without the light of Christ, is unclean and scattered like leaves (Isa 64:5–8).
610. 5.6.2Confessing that they offended against the Son, Israel's petitioners ask God only to temper his just wrath; they lament the sack of Jerusalem and the burning of the temple after the cross, which God allowed though he could have prevented it (Isa 64:9–12).
611. 5.6.3Christ himself answers Israel's complaint: he came of his own accord, taught, healed and raised the dead, and said “I am”, yet the people would not call on his name but stayed disobedient and called him demon-possessed (Isa 65:1–2).
612. 5.6.4Long before Christ's coming Israel abandoned the law for idols, sacrificing in groves and tombs, consulting dreams, and eating swine's flesh, while thinking themselves pure; all this was the smoke of God's wrath (Isa 65:3–5).
613. 5.6.5When the Jews added the killing of the Author of life to their old idolatry, God's wrath blazed; yet, like a cluster spared for one good grape, he did not destroy them all, but saved every one worthy of salvation in Christ (Isa 65:6–9).
614. 5.6.6The seed of Jacob and Judah that God “brings forth” is the believing remnant, chiefly the apostles, raised high to inherit the holy mountain, the church; the thicket and the accursed valley of Achor are the gentile lands, now folds for Christ's sheep (Isa 65:9–10).
615. 5.6.7As unbelieving Israel was punished while the remnant was saved, so among the nations those who cling to idols face endless fire, while God's servants feast at Christ's life-giving table, eating the bread of life and the divine drink (Isa 65:11–15).
616. 5.6.8Unbelieving Israel lost the name of God's people, which passed to the nations; God's servants receive the new name “Christians”, worship him in spirit and truth, praise him, and swear only by the true God (Isa 65:15–17).
617. 5.6.9The converted nations forget the misery of serving countless cruel gods; the new heaven and earth are new thoughts about creation, no longer worshipped as gods, though some interpreters refer the promise to the renewal of creation after this age, and both readings may be held (Isa 65:16–20).
618. 5.6.10The new Jerusalem is the church of Jews and gentiles, where no one weeps from injustice; the young gentile people and the older people from Israel grow alike to perfection in Christ, symbolized by a hundred years, while perfection under the law without faith and baptism avails nothing (Isa 65:18–20).
619. 5.6.11Since justification comes through faith in Christ, not the law, God's elect will not suffer the losses that struck unbelieving Israel; they enjoy the fruit of their spiritual labour, the life of the tree of life, and a gospel way of life that will never be superseded (Isa 65:21–24).
620. 5.6.12The gospel way of life will never be replaced; unlike the scribes and Pharisees, whose disciples were children of a curse, the apostles bear blessed offspring; and the wolf feeding with the lamb signifies former persecutors united with the saints through Christ (Isa 65:22–25).
621. 5.6.13Former wild beasts, the converted persecutors, now feed with the tame on Christ, the living bread, who nourishes with his flesh and his word; then God turns to Israel, teaching that he who fills heaven and earth cannot be enclosed in a temple made with hands (Isa 65:25–66:3).
622. 5.6.14God looks on the humble who tremble at his word, the gospel, but treats the sacrifices of the law as no better than killing a dog or offering swine's blood; Israel was cast off because it chose its own ways and refused his call (Isa 66:2–4).
623. 5.6.15God repays Israel through the Roman generals who burned Jerusalem; the apostles and the church's leaders after them are told to call even those who hate them brothers, a command that sets aside the law's separation from the nations, since in Christ the two are one (Isa 66:4–6).
624. 5.6.16The cries from city and temple are those of Jerusalem's fall, ordered by God; yet before that labour Zion “bore a male”, the believing remnant gathered by the apostles' preaching after Pentecost, a whole people born at once (Isa 66:6–9).
625. 5.6.17The three thousand reborn in one day were a whole nation born at once; unbelieving Zion would not have been left childless had she believed, so the barren church of the nations rejoices, and those who love and mourn over her are fed with the Spirit's consolation (Isa 66:8–12).
626. 5.6.18The church's breasts are the simple teaching given to new believers, from which they must grow to maturity and delight in Christ, the glory who entered the world by taking flesh; Christ, sent first to Israel, turned like a river of peace to the nations (Isa 66:11–12).
627. 5.6.19God will nurse the immature in the church like a mother, and in the end their bones will flourish in the resurrection by the life-giving Spirit and the power of Christ; but Christ will come with fire and angels to cast the disobedient into eternal fire (Isa 66:12–17).
628. 5.6.20Pagans who purified themselves with fire and water in groves, ate swine's flesh and honoured mice will perish with unbelieving Israel; Christ, summing up the prophecy, gathers all nations to see his glory as God made man, seals them with the Spirit, and sends the apostles to the ends of the earth (Isa 66:17–19).
629. 5.6.21The apostles bring believers from all nations to God as a gift, washed in baptism, along an easy road into the church, the holy city; and from both the apostles and the converted nations God takes priests and Levites, ministers of the gospel (Isa 66:20–23).
630. 5.6.22The church, the seed brought to God by the apostles, will last like the new heaven and earth and keep growing as pagans and, at the end, the Jews come in; the undying worm and fire refer either to the Jews' sufferings under Rome or to the final punishment, from which Christ will deliver us (Isa 66:22–24).