Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram, Vol. 11: Prolegomena (prefaces and canons)
LXIV. Chap. lxi, ver. 5. “And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks: and the sons of strangers shall be your husbandmen and vinedressers. But you shall be called the priests of the Lord: to you it shall be said: Ye ministers of our God.” The shepherds, husbandmen and vinedressers are the Bishops and pastors of the Gentiles: the priests are the apostles and hierarchs.
LXV. Chap. lxiii, ver. 1. “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra? this beautiful one in his robe, walking in the greatness of his strength?” The Angels propose this enigma concerning Christ contending and vanquishing the demons, and all the princes and peoples of the Gentiles subject to them through idolatry and crimes; Christ answers, resolving it. “I that speak justice …” The Angels stand: “Why then is thy apparel red, and thy garments like theirs that tread in the winepress?”
Christ answers: “I have trodden the winepress alone, etc., I have trampled them in my wrath: and their blood is sprinkled upon my garments,” as if to say: I am reddened both with my own blood, shed in my passion; and rather with the blood of enemies, whom by my passion and death I have vanquished.
LXVI. Ver. 16. “For Abraham hath not known us, and Israel hath been ignorant of us: thou, O Lord, art our father, our redeemer, from everlasting is thy name,” as if to say: Abraham cannot care for and save us; hence he seems not to know and be ignorant of us: but thou, Christ, carest for us and savest us: thou therefore art our father and redeemer.
LXVII. Chap. lxiv, ver. 1. “O that thou wouldst rend the heavens, and wouldst come down: the mountains would melt away at thy presence.” It is an enigma of the coming of Christ, most desired. He alludes to the coming of God on Sinai, when he gave the law to Moses: for then, contrary to custom, fires and lightnings were mingled with violent rains … as if to say: O that in like manner now, O Christ, thou wouldst come down to us in the flesh, and melt the frost of our heart with the fire of thy divine love, and turn the waters of our sloth and vices into flames of fervor and zeal.
LXVIII. Chap. lxv, ver. 10. “The plains shall be turned into folds of flocks, and the valley of Achor into a place for herds to lie down in, for my people that have sought me.” For “plains” the Hebrew has “Saron,” which was a place of Juda most praised for its pastures. The valley of Achor was similar. Both places are an enigma and symbol of the Church. To her therefore God here promises that like Saron and the valley of Achor she will be a common pasture; because in her the faithful will be fed with the word of God, the Sacraments, and other gifts of God. The herds are the pious who are stronger in faith, who are fit to teach and rule: the flocks are the weaker and subjects.
LXIX. Ver. 16. “He that is blessed upon the earth shall be blessed in God, amen; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by God, amen,” as if to say: In the Church of Christ the faithful will swear by and worship God amen, that is the true, not the false, namely the idols which they formerly worshipped, and therefore will likewise be blessed truly by God amen, that is the true.
LXX. Ver. 20. “There shall no more be an infant of days there, nor an old man that shall not fill up his days,” as if to say: True Christians will be perfect in faith and virtues; “for the child of a hundred years shall die and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.”
LXXI. Ver. 22. “As the days of the tree” of life, “shall the days of my people be,” as if to say: Christians shall live …
LXXII. Chap. lxvi, ver. 24. “They shall go out, and see the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me:
their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched: and they shall be a loathsome sight to all flesh.” It is an enigma of hell and the damned; for their bodies will be like carcasses of the slain, food for fire and worm, a spectacle and eternal reproach before God, the Angels, and …
I. Chap. ii, ver. 23. “A swift runner, tracing out her ways.” The swift and quick runner is an enigma of the she-camel, which from her swift running is called a dromedary, as if to say: As a she-camel, when she is driven and furious with the heat of lust, runs to the male, so thou, O Jerusalem, driven by mad superstition, hast run to idols.
“In the desire of her soul she snuffed up the wind of her love: none shall turn her away: all that seek her shall not fail, in her monthly courses they shall find her,” as if to say: As the wild ass in heat, burning with lust, snuffs up the air to cool her heat, and in heat runs to the male ass, so thou with whole mind and course runnest to idols. If any seek thee, he will find thee there in thy courses and filth of fornication, that is of idolatry.
III. Ver. 31. “Am I become a wilderness to Israel, or a lateward springing land?” as if to say: Have I been useless and barren to Israel as a wilderness is, or a land that produces nothing beyond itself, or late? as if to say: By no means: for I gave them a land flowing with milk and honey. “Why then hath my people said: We have departed, we will come no more to thee?”
IV. Ver. 34. “In thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor and innocent: I found them not in ditches, but in all the places which I have mentioned above.” It is an enigma of the hawk, which, when it kills its prey, stains its wings with its blood, as if to say: Thou, O Israel, like a hawk swooping on the poor and innocent, hast stained thy garments with their blood; and that “not in ditches” after the manner of thieves and robbers, but in the groves and woods of idols, to which thou hast sacrificed them as victims.
V. Chap. iv, ver. 3. “Break up anew your fallow ground, and sow not upon thorns,” as if to say: As in a field, to be capable of seed, the thorns must first be plucked up and the field ploughed so that it becomes fallow: so do you purge the field of your heart from the thorns of vices, and plough it with humility and contrition; that it may become fallow ground capable of divine seed, namely of grace and virtues. Hence he adds in explanation: “Be circumcised to the Lord, and take away the foreskins,” not of the flesh, but “of your hearts.”
VI. Ver. 7. “The lion is come up out of his den, and the destroyer of the Gentiles hath roused himself.” This destroyer and lion is Nabuchodonosor, and any tyrant; his den is Chaldea.
VII. Ver. 23. “I beheld the earth, and behold it was void, and nothing; and the heavens, and there was no light in them.
and behold it was empty I saw the mountains, and behold they trembled,” as if to say: So great shall be the fear and consternation in the destruction of the Jews that heaven and earth will seem to them to be shaken, to perish and be destroyed.
VIII. Chap. v, ver. 1. “Go through the ways of Jerusalem, etc., and seek in the streets thereof, if you can find a man that executeth judgment, and seeketh faith: and I will be merciful unto it,” namely to Jerusalem for the sake of one man. A man who is a man of solid virtue, God seeks: not women: women are soft and unstable in virtue. Diogenes sought such a man at Athens.
IX. Ver. 6. “Therefore a lion out of the wood hath slain them, a wolf in the evening hath spoiled them, a leopard watching over their cities.” Here is a threefold enigma, of Nabuchodonosor. For he is called, first, a lion, … vigilance.
… he esteems this more than a hundred …
X. Ver. 14. “Behold I make my words in thy mouth as fire, and this people as wood, and it shall devour them,” as if to say: I will make thy oracles and threats effectual and actually fulfilled, so that like fire they burn the Jews as dry wood.
XI. Ver. 16. “His quiver (of the nation of the Chaldeans) is as an open sepulchre,” as if to say: The Chaldeans, piercing the Jews with their strong arrows, will send all to death and the grave.
XII. Chap. ix, ver. 21. “Death is come up through our windows, it is entered into our houses, to destroy the children from without, and young men from the streets:”
Death is an enigma of the Chaldeans, and tropologically of demons and allurements, who breathe nothing but slaughter and death.