Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram, Vol. 11: Prolegomena (prefaces and canons)
On the Major Prophets
After the Pentateuch I approach the Prophets, who are the most noble and most useful part of the whole Old Testament, and likewise the most difficult and obscure. The Hebrews, and among them St. Jerome, make the Old Testament threefold: Thora, or the law or Pentateuch; Nebiim, that is the Prophets; Ketubim, that is the hagiographa. The Prophets therefore are nearest associated with the law; as Christ and the Apostles also associated them, Matt. vii, 12: “For this is the law and the prophets;” and chap. xi, ver. 13: “For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John,” and chap. xxii, ver. 40: “On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets;” and Luke xxiv, 44: “All things must needs be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.” What Christ has joined, therefore, I will not put asunder. After the Pentateuch, then, I give the Prophets, and associate these with it; especially since my health for thirty years has been weak and doubtful, and my failing strength is gradually worn away and diminished; so that, if I am unable to complete in commentary the other books of Holy Scripture, which are easier and have been explained by many, I may at least offer and consign the Prophets, as a third work, in the third place and order, to the Most Holy Trinity, their author; nay, render to him to whom it wholly belongs, since from him I received all I am; so that as I lately offered the gold of Paul and the frankincense of Leviticus, so now with the three Magi I may offer the myrrh of the Prophets, which is truly myrrh, since by threats and burdens it draws tears, and calls all to penance. I may be allowed to say here what St. Jerome once felt and said in this same cause and argument, in the proem to bk. xiv of his Commentary on Isaias: “The Lord, who looketh upon the earth and maketh it tremble; who toucheth the mountains and they smoke; who saith in Deuteronomy: I will kill and I will make to live: I will strike and I will heal: by frequent sicknesses hath made my earth also tremble, to which it was said: Earth thou art, and into earth thou shalt go: and often reminds me, forgetful of the human condition, that I know myself to be a man, and old, and already about to die. Of which it is written: Why is earth and ashes proud? Wherefore he who had struck me with sudden weakness healed me with incredible swiftness, to terrify rather than afflict, and to amend rather than scourge. Knowing therefore whose is all that I live, and that perhaps for this reason my falling asleep is deferred, that I may complete the work begun on the Prophets, I give myself wholly to this study, and as if set on a watch-tower, I behold the whirlwinds and shipwrecks of this world, not without groaning and grief; thinking not at all of present things but of future, nor of the fame and little rumors of men, but trembling at the judgment of God.”
The Prophets therefore I will treat, not in my own strength but in God’s, who chooses the weak things of the world, that his divine power may be made perfect in our weakness: the Prophets, I mean the greater, Isaias, Jeremias, Ezechiel and Daniel, the four Evangelists of the Synagogue, the chariot and four-horse team of the Cherubim, on which Ezechiel saw the majesty of God seated and driving.
These ancient princes and doctors of the Church illumined the world, carried a torch before Christ and the Church: these instruments of the Holy Spirit in wondrous harmony sang beforehand to us the wisdom of God and the mysteries of the faith. This is what we perpetually profess in the Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, who with the Father and the Son together is adored and glorified, who spoke by the Prophets.” In these St. Paul, taught at the feet of Gamaliel, was studious, and from them drew all his wisdom and spirit. The same commends Timothy his disciple, pastor, Bishop and Apostle, that from infancy he had learned the Sacred Letters, of the Old Testament, namely, which alone then existed; and chiefly the Prophets, who far surpass all the books of the Old Testament in sublimity, variety, depth of wisdom, as well as in pathos and efficacy of speaking and moving, and are as the bezel and emerald in a golden ring: and he exhorts him to go on as he began. “Till I come,” he says, 1 Timothy iv, 13. “Attend unto reading, to exhortation and to doctrine. Take heed to thyself and to doctrine: be earnest in them. For in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee,” and 2 Tim. ii, 15: “Carefully study to present thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth,” namely the words of the Holy Spirit, the words of the Prophets. Wherefore long since condemned and buried in oblivion is the blasphemy and heresy of Ebion, who, as Epiphanius testifies, Heresy 30, after Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses, admitted no other Prophets, except Christ alone. He said that he alone was the Prophet of truth; but that Isaias, Jeremias, Daniel and Ezechiel were “Prophets of understanding, not of truth.”
The Prophets therefore were masters of the orthodox faith, doctors of truth, who announced to men the secret counsels of God, and who separated the Church of God from the synagogue of Satan, and by the gift of prophecy, as by the surest mark and sign of the true Church, distinguished it, and showed it to the whole world. This is what the Doctor of the Gentiles and prophet says: “And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and others evangelists, and others pastors and doctors, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: until we all meet into the unity of faith, etc.” Ephes. iv, 11.
Nay, God himself, contending with idols and idolaters about divinity and true religion, with this as it were indubitable and invincible argument takes it from them, and claims it for himself. “Shew,” he says, “the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that you are gods,” Isaias xli, 23. “For the testimony of divinity is the truth of divination,” says Tertullian, Apology, ch. xx, and ch. xviii: “Their voices (of the Prophets), he says, and the powers which they put forth to win belief in the divinity, remain in the treasuries of the writings.” For this reason in every age God has illumined his Church with Prophets, and through them manifested, sealed and confirmed her, that no one amid so many darknesses and labyrinths of errors and heresies might doubt of the truth and the true Church.
In the law of nature the true Church of God had Prophets: First, Adam, who in Gen. ii, 21 and 23, in ecstasy foreknew the wedlock of Christ with the Church, and prefigured it by his marriage with Eve. Prophecy therefore began with the Church, nay with the world. Second, Abel, whose blood and martyrdom still cries out and prophesies, Heb. xi, 4. Third, Henoch, who walked with God, and was taken up into paradise, to give penance to the nations. “And of these,” says Jude in his epistle, ver. 14, “Henoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying: Behold the Lord cometh with thousands of his saints, to execute judgment, etc.” Fourth, Noe, who foretold the flood, and therefore built the ark by which he escaped it. Fifth, Abraham, who received from God many prophecies concerning Isaac and Christ to be born from him, concerning the multiplication of his stock, the possession of Chanaan, and the Gentiles to be blessed through Christ, etc., Gen. xii and following. Isaac and Jacob followed Abraham, whose prophecies are narrated Gen. xxvii, 4, and chap. xxvi, 27, and chap.
In the Mosaic law the Prophets were Moses, Aaron, Josue, Samuel, David, Elias, Eliseus, and these our canonical writers. Nay God willed that in the old Church and temple a perpetual oracle should exist. For the Pontiff, with Urim and Thummim, that is clothed in the pontifical vestments, and consulting God about any matter, heard his voice answering and speaking from the propitiatory, Exodus xxv, 22. Wherefore the Holy of holies, in which was the propitiatory, was called in Hebrew debir, which Aquila and Symmachus render … that is, the oracle, as our version and others translate.
In the new testament the Prophets were Christ, the Apostles of the Law, and their followers. St. Justin Martyr is witness, Dialogue with Trypho, that down to his own times Prophets existed in the Church of God in continual succession. St. Augustine asserts the same of his own age, bk. v On the City of God, ch. xxvi, where among other things he recounts the oracles of St. John the Anchorite, who foretold that illustrious victory over the tyrant Eugenius, in which the missiles of the enemy were turned back by God upon the enemy themselves and repelled, which Claudian, though a Gentile, admiring, thus celebrates in his Panegyric to the Emperor Honorius.
For thee the north wind from the icy mountain
With storms o’erwhelmed the hostile ranks, and turned
The weapons back upon their authors, and with a whirlwind drove back the spears.
Thomas Bozius shows the same of other ages, bk. On the Marks of the Church, sign xix. That in this our age St. Charles Borromeo, St. Francis of Paula, Blessed Louis Bertrand, St. Ignatius, St. Xavier, Gaspar the Belgian, Aloysius Gonzaga, Teresa, and many others shone with the spirit of prophecy, is plain from their lives written by credible men.