Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram, Vol. 11: Prolegomena (prefaces and canons)
Isaias
I. Chap. i, ver. 22. “Thy silver is turned into dross: thy wine is mingled with water,” as if to say: The pure religion of God in thee, O Jerusalem, is turned into impure superstitions, and thy justice is mixed with avarice and injustice.
II. Ver. 25. “I will purge away thy dross even to the pure, and I will take away all thy tin,” as if to say: By the fire of tribulations, namely the devastation by the Chaldeans, I will wipe away from thee idolatry, injustice, and all the filth of sins.
III. Chap. ii, ver. 4. “And they shall turn their swords Christians will turn wars into peace, and the instruments of war into instruments of husbandry.
I cannot heal such evils and calamities of the commonwealth.
V. Ver. 9. “The shew of their countenance hath answered them,” as if to say: Their face speaks their crimes, and if it were asked the cause of such great calamities, it would answer that the true cause is the crimes of the Jews.
VI. Chap. v, ver. 14. “Therefore hell hath enlarged her soul, and opened her mouth without any bounds.”
VII. Ver. 18. “Woe to you that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as the rope of a cart,” as if to say: Woe to you that add sin to sin, and weave them together like a rope by which you are dragged to hell.
VIII. Ver. 20. “Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”
IX. Chap. vii, ver. 4. “Fear not (O Achaz), and let not thy heart be afraid of the two tails of these firebrands, smoking with the wrath of the fury of Rasin the king of Syria, and of the son of Romelia.” The two tails of smoking firebrands are called Rasin king of Syria, and Phacee son of Romelia king of Samaria, because they breathed out the smoke of threats and menaced the Jews; but only smoke, not fires, that is, vain wraths without strength. For both were soon to be overthrown by the king of the Assyrians, hence they are called tails.
X. Chap. viii, ver. 16. “Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples,” that is, write down and seal these oracles for my future disciples, namely Christians, who will have faith in them.
XI. Ver. 19. “Should not the people seek of their God, for the living of the dead?” as if to say: What folly is this, that living and wise men should seek and inquire truth and counsel in doubtful matters from dead and lifeless idols?
XII. Ver. 20. “To the law rather, and to the testimony,” as if to say: Consult rather the law of God, and God dwelling in the testimony, that is in the ark and propitiatory.
XIII. “They shall have no morning light,” as if to say: Nothing shall be prosperous to them, nothing joyful, nothing bright; but all dark, sad, adverse.
XIV. Chap. ix, ver. 2. “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, light is risen,” as if to say: To the Gentiles sitting in the darkness of unbelief, in the state of sin and damnation, by the preaching of the Gospel the light of faith, grace and salvation has risen.
XV. Ver. 8. “The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel,” as if to say: What the Lord promised to Jacob, or Israel, he has in fact performed, and brought about.
XVI. Ver. 10. “The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: they have cut down the sycamores, but we will change them into cedars,” as if to say: The enemies have overthrown and burnt our houses of brick and sycamore; we make little of it; for in their place we will build better, namely of stone and cedar.
XVII. Ver. 14. “And the Lord will destroy from Israel the head and the tail, him that bendeth down and him that curbeth,” that is, the prince, the Prophet, the nobles and the common people.
XVIII. Ver. 20. “Every one shall devour the flesh of his own arm,” as if to say: Each will slay and tear his neighbor and kinsman, joined to him in flesh and blood as if he were his arm, with such fury as if he wished to devour him.
XIX. Chap. x, ver. 5. “Woe to the Assyrian, he is the rod and the staff of my anger, and my indignation is in their hands,” as if to say: Woe to the Assyrians, who are the rod and staff of my wrath, through whose hand I put forth and exercise my indignation; for when this indignation is accomplished, I will cast the rod and staff into the fire, that is, I will destroy the Assyrians themselves. Therefore woe to them.
XX. Chap. xi, ver. 5. “Justice shall be the girdle of his loins: and faith the girdle of his reins,” as if to say: Justice and fidelity will so gird and adorn Christ, as if they clung to him like a girdle.
XXI. Chap. xiii, ver. 12. “A man shall be more precious than gold, and a man than the finest gold of Ophir,” as if to say: The Persians will value the life of the Babylonians more than their gold and wealth; hence they will take it from them, and will not accept glorious gold for it; because they would rather slay them than possess their gold.
Ver. 21. “And ostriches shall dwell there (in Babylon, now overthrown and cut off), and the hairy ones shall dance there: and owls shall answer one another in the houses thereof, and sirens in the temples of pleasure,” as if to say: Babylon will be so desolated that, men failing to inhabit it, owls, ostriches, dragons and other wild beasts will dwell in it.
XXII. Chap. xiv, ver. 11. “Under thee shall the moth be strewed, and worms shall be thy covering,” as if to say: Thy corpse shall be covered with worms, which shall gnaw thee and feed upon thee to the bones, O Baltasar king of Babylon.
Ver. 32. “And what shall be answered to the messengers of the nation” inquiring whence so great a victory of the Jews over the Philistines? Surely it shall be answered that the cause of the victory is, “that the Lord hath founded Sion, and the poor of his people shall hope in him.”
XXIII. Chap. xv, ver. 5. “Her bars even to Segor, … the strong ones of Moab shall flee in her destruction as far as Segor, which was once rich, powerful and wanton, like a heifer of three years.
Ver. 7. “They shall lead them to the torrent of the willows.” that is, the Chaldeans will lead the Moabites captive to Babylon.
XXIV. Chap. xvi, ver. 3. “Make thy shade as night in the midst of the noonday,” to refresh the laid waste and afflicted: for the heat of noon is a symbol of affliction, shade and night of refreshment and consolation.
XXV. Ver. 6. “His pride, and his indignation (of Moab), is more than his strength,” as if to say: He boasted that he could do more than he really could.
XXVI. Ver. 11. “Upon this (upon the slaughter of Moab) my bowels shall sound like a harp for Moab,” as if to say: Over the slaughter of Moab I grieve and sympathize deeply, so that with compassion my bowels seem to be stretched and resound like a harp, or rather to be heard.
XXVII. Chap. xvii, ver. 10. “Thou shalt plant a faithful plant, and shalt sow a strange slip.” A faithful plant is one that faithfully satisfies the husbandman, and renders him the expected fruits: a strange slip is deceitful and spurious.
Ver. 11. “In the day of thy planting wild grapes, …” as if to say: When thou shalt have planted a vineyard, thou shalt find not a vine but a wild vine; “and in the morning thy seed shall flourish: the harvest is taken away in the day of inheritance, and thou shalt grieve heavily,” as if to say: Thy vineyard and field shall flourish before the time, and therefore shall be untimely, and shall not ripen.