Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram, Vol. 11: Prolegomena (prefaces and canons)
Canons Which Carry a Torch Before the Prophets
CANON I. The Prophets were sometimes instructed about future things by voices, sometimes by visions set before the eyes, or rather the imagination, as by symbols. So Daniel, chapter 7, verse 3, saw four beasts portending the four Monarchies.
Ezechiel, chapter 1, saw the chariot of the Cherubim, portending the magnificence of God, and great victory and vengeance, both upon the Jews and other nations through the Chaldeans, and upon sin and the demon through Christ. All the prophetic visions our Antony Fernandius has lately collected and explained in one tome. Yet very often and commonly prophecy and the prophetic light was a revelation, and a voice or divine locution, set before and sent into the imagination and mind of the Prophet by God. Whence it is more often called “word” than “vision:” where, however, take and observe this canon:
When the Prophets speak of God’s speaking, they often attribute to things what belongs to words, and to words what belongs to things, so that they say they have seen the word, heard the vision; nay, they assert that they have now seen, now heard the same word or vision, as is plain in Isaias 1, verse 1, and chapter 13, verse 1, though only a vision seems to be seen, only a word to be heard. The reason of this phrase is that God spoke to the Prophets not with tongue nor with voice, as men do; but by things and facts, through species of things or of voices, which were significative of things, set before their imagination or mind: wherefore the words of God are not so much voices themselves as the facts themselves and things done. Now it is more proper to things and deeds, when they are done, to be seen than to be heard. The Prophets therefore heard God thus speaking as if they beheld the things themselves done before them. In like manner St. John in the Gospel often says that the Son sees and hears all things from the Father: because in the most simple Godhead to see and to hear are the same. “God,” says Cicero in the Dream of Scipio, “is the Mind that sees, that perceives, that remembers, that rules and moderates.” The same the human mind shares in its measure, in Christ as in us, when it receives revelation. For as the mind of God eminently contains sight, hearing, and every sense and sensation: so also in its own measure does the created mind of man and angel. For it is the image of the divine mind, made after its exemplar and likeness. Our mind therefore, when it perceives and clearly knows anything, is said to see and hear it. This is therefore the cause why prophecy, or divine locution and revelation, namely the thing revealed by God, is now called “word,” now “vision.” So St. Basil on Isaias chapter 1, verse 4, on which matter I shall say more in that place. Second, prophecies are called “word:” because everywhere the Prophets heard not visions but the words of God speaking; and because hearing, whose office is to perceive the master’s word, is the sense of discipline, as Aristotle says. The same are called “vision:” because to see, and sight, since it is the noblest and most certain of all the senses, is often taken for hearing, taste, touch, and every sense and sensation, as I showed on Exodus 20:18, so that to see is the same as to perceive and know with certainty, whether by seeing or by hearing. So St. John in the Apocalypse, chapter 5 and following, says he saw a book sealed with seven seals, and when it was opened by the Lamb, he narrates, chapter 12 and following, that he saw, and not that he heard and read, the visions described in this book: because among the Prophets vision, reading and hearing are the same, and signify only revelation and spiritual cognition of the mind, as he taught in that place.
CANON II. The Prophets had the prophetic spirit not as a permanent habit, but by way of a certain divine motion, afflatus and illumination, briefly passing, seizing and enlightening them at intervals. Wherefore St. Chrysostom on the Gospel of St. Mark, homily 3, asks why the Prophets so often say and repeat “Thus saith the Lord,” and answers: Because, he says, the Holy Spirit, who had departed from them before, then returned to them. For of Christ alone is it said: “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining.” In the Prophets therefore that of St. Augustine is true: “God is king of minds.” Hence the prophecies of God to them, although consequently written in the same book, were yet made and spoken at different times, nay under different kings, as is plain from Isaias, chapter 1, verse 1. So St. Jerome in that place. Hence again it is no wonder that they repeat and inculcate the same thing again and oftener; for this good preachers are wont to do, the Holy Spirit suggesting. Hence third, not rarely they pass in the same chapter to another prophecy and matter. Hence fourth, later Prophets sometimes repeat and confirm the words of earlier. So Micheas, chapter 4, verse 1, the saying of Isaias, chapter 2, verse 2. So the burdens of Babylon, Egypt, Moab, Ammon, Idumea, Tyre, etc., which Isaias, chapter 13 and following, assigns, Jeremias repeats and confirms in chapter 46 and following.
CANON III. In the Prophets, and especially in Jeremias and Ezechiel (as will appear in the Chronotaxis which I shall prefix to them), the order of kings and times is often not kept; but a prophecy is set forth which happened later, and the contrary. St. Jerome assigns the reason in chapter 25 of Jeremias toward the beginning: “For the Prophets,” he says, “had no care to preserve times, which the laws of history require, but to write however what they knew would be useful to hearers and readers. Whence also in the Psalter some wrongly seek the order of the psalms according to the text of history, which in the Hebrew song is not observed.” Add that some prophecies seem to have been spoken at different times, and written by the Prophets on different sheets, and afterwards compiled and arranged by someone else in the order we now have, with neglect however of order: so in Jeremias Baruch seems to have done. And hence seem to have come those last fragments of Daniel, namely the history of Susanna, chapter 13, and of Bel and the dragon, chapter 14. So that the Proverbs of Solomon were arranged not by himself but by his men is plain from Proverbs 25.
Here note that the Prophets ordinarily first proclaimed and promulgated by living voice, like heralds or preachers, to the people the revelations which they received from God. Whence so often God says to them: “Say to this people: Thou shalt say to them,” etc. Again: “Cry, cease not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their wicked doings,” Isaias 58:1. Then after the sermon, they wrote down this same or its sum, and, as some think, fixed the writing on the doors of the temple, that to all, even those who had not heard it, it might be open; and might refresh the memory in those who had heard, and spur them to obey. When it had been open for some days, it was taken down by the ministers of the temple, and put back in the chambers of the temple, that a perpetual monument of it might remain. Hence it is likely the books of the Prophets were made. Habacuc intimates this in chapter 2, verse 2, saying: “And the Lord answered me, and said: Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he that readeth it may run over it.” And Isaias, chapter 8, verse 16, saying: “Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.” By God’s singular providence it came about that by the work of the priests, whose office was to keep these writings and transmit them to posterity, they have come down to us. For these were often most hostile to the Prophets, because by the Prophets their crimes were exposed and sharply rebuked. God therefore impelled and directed them to do this. For grant that the Prophets kept the same writings at home too, yet the pontiffs could have snatched them away and destroyed them. Moreover those would have lacked authority with posterity, unless they had been fortified by the testimony and vote of the pontiffs and Synagogue; just as now the hagiographic books need the testimony of the Church. For whence should we know these to be the very oracles of Isaias, unless the Synagogue had handed it to us?
CANON IV. Because the Prophets had ample light, they extend their oracles to more persons, and to more things at different times to come: for they desire to profit many; for which cause also their oracles, which at first they pronounced as preachers by voice, they afterwards wrote down, either themselves or through others, that they might preach and prophesy to all ages. Wherefore Isaias, Jeremias, and others, when they sharply rebuke the Jews, rebuke also the Jews who should come after, especially in the time of Christ, imitating their forefathers, as is plain from Isaias 1:7. Hence when they threaten them with the Babylonian captivity, under it they threaten their posterity with a like captivity of the Romans under Titus and Vespasian: for each captivity was like, both because inflicted on the same nation, and because for like sins, and because in like manner, cruelty and devastation. Again, in the destruction of the city of Jerusalem they give the appearance and type of the destruction of the world at the end of the world: whence Christ, Matthew 24, under that depicts this, and from that passes to this at verse 29. In like manner they pass from the Assyrian captivity of the ten tribes to the Babylonian captivity of the two tribes, namely Juda and Benjamin, and all this they do most swiftly, leaping from the former to the latter and at once leaping back to the former: often they do this after a long discourse, and as if by parenthesis. Finally the Prophets often pass from history and sermon to Christ; for they have Him as the scope of their time. Moreover they do this for three reasons.