Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram, Vol. 11: Prolegomena (prefaces and canons)
CANON XIV. The Prophets often change persons as by dialogue. For now themselves, now God, now the people, now enemies they introduce speaking, yet do not express these persons. Hence great obscurity arises, which is to be solved from the circumstances, so that each be given to its places, causes, times and persons. So Jeremias, to move the feelings, addresses now God, now the people, soon the Chaldeans: and now in his own, now in God’s, now in the people’s, now in the Chaldeans’ person speaking, terrifies and moves the people to penance: as good preachers make apostrophes now to God, now to the soul, now to the Saints, now to Christ crucified, and turn themselves every way and turn the people, to move and prick them. So Jerome on Jeremias chapter 8, and St. Chrysostom on Psalm 136, vol. 1.
CANON XV. Mimesis, that is imitation of words said by another, with the name of the speaker unspoken, is frequent in Scripture. For so the Prophets often speak in the person of the impious, and use their words. So Isaias, chapter 28, verse 13, uses the words of the Jews mocking and deriding the Prophets, and saying: “Command, command again, expect, expect again, a little there, a little there.” So Jeremias, chapter 8, verse 14, uses the words of the Jews afflicted and laid waste by the enemy, and saying: “Why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the fenced city, and let us be silent there: for the Lord our God hath put us to silence, and hath given us water of gall to drink.” So the Psalmist, Psalm 2:3, uses the words of kings struggling against God and Christ, and saying: “Let us break their bonds asunder: and let us cast away their yoke from us.” So St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:32, from Isaias chapter 22, verse 13, uses the words of the Epicureans: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.” So Jeremias, chapter 10, verse 11, imitates the words of those speaking Chaldaic, and speaks Chaldaic: Elahaie discemaia veurka la abadu, tebadu meara umin techot scemaia, that is, “The gods that have not made heaven and earth, let them perish from the earth, and from among those that are under heaven.” In like manner by mimesis holy Scripture alludes to, and cites at times, fables of the Gentiles, as I shall say at the end of Canon 56. Again, to opinions commonly believed, although fabulous, such as those on the virtues of the hyacinth, sapphire, carbuncle, etc., for putting to flight melancholy, diseases, demons, etc., as I showed on Apocalypse 21:19. For Scripture does not assert that these opinions are true of the gems in themselves, but that they are true in the Apostles, who are there individually designated by these gems, as our Alcazar rightly noted there.
CANON XVI. The Prophets use manifold enallage. First, of person, so that though they speak of the same, they pass from the second to the third, and in turn from the third to the second, nay speak of themselves in the third person. Second, of number, so that they pass from singular to plural, and conversely, especially when they deal with a people, or company of men: for this, collectively, as a people, is singular; distributively, as embracing many, plural. Wherefore then a singular noun or verb is taken collectively, and signifies each.
Third, of gender: in speaking they now use the masculine gender, understanding e.g. the people; now the feminine, understanding the vineyard or the Synagogue: for so they often call the people. A clear example is Isaias chapter 3, verses 3, 5, 6. Again to men who are not manly but soft, or timid, or lustful, they ascribe the feminine gender, and call them women. So Isaias says, chapter 3, verse 12: “Women (as he said verse 3) have ruled over them.” Like is what the Poet said:
“O truly Phrygian women, for you are not Phrygian men,”
Fourth, of noun and verb: for they often take a verbal noun for a verb, and so construe it with the case of a verb, as Osee, chapter 1, verse 13, in the Hebrew, “according to the love of God the children of Israel,” that is as God loved the children of Israel. With like enallage and Hebraism St. Paul at times uses, as Romans 2:7: “To them who, according to patience in good work,” that is to them who patiently persevere in good works; and soon: “But to them that are contentious,” that is who are contentious, who strive and quarrel. So chapter 8, verse 5, he says: “For they that are according to the flesh,” that is, who are carnal, who live carnally, “mind the things that are of the flesh: but they that are according to the spirit,” that is, spiritual; who follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and live spiritually, “mind the things that are of the spirit.” With like enallage the Greeks also use.
Fifth, of verb for adverb, as Jeremias 4:5. The Hebrew has: “Cry, fill,” that is, cry fully and strongly, as our version turns it, fill all things with cries. Isaias 31:6: “Return as you had departed deep, O children of Israel;” in Hebrew it is, as ye have deepened, or made deep, that is, as ye have gone away and descended far and deeply. Osee 9:9: “They have sinned deeply, as in the days of Gabaa.” In Hebrew: They have deepened, are corrupted as in the days of Gabaa. Jonas 4:9: “Dost thou think thou doest well to be angry?” In Hebrew: Dost thou think, he did well, anger came to thee? where he did well is the same as well.
CANON XVII. The Hebrews often omit the subject of the verb, and leave it to the reader to supply as known from the circumstances. So Amos 5:6 says: “Let it quench Bethel,” that is, the fire of Bethel. So John 19:14: “It was the Parasceve of the Pasch,” that is, of the sabbath of the Pasch, or the week of the Pasch. So Isaias, chapter 1, verse 28: “He shall break, namely God, the sinners.”
CANON XVIII. Holy Scripture speaks of provinces and cities as if they were men, or rather women and daughters, for their beauty and luxury. Hence when it reproaches cities with idolatry, it calls them “harlots.” For it is known that the Prophets call idolatry “fornication” or “adultery:” because by it the soul, or city, leaving God her spouse, cleaves to an idol as to an adulterer. Other cities they call “virgins,” and that first for their wealth and beauty. Second, because the city, like a virgin carefully kept at home, never succumbed to the lust of enemies, that is, their power and arms, nor was violated by their sword, cut down, or led into captivity, but kept as it were the flower of its empire and liberty and its comeliness unspotted. So we call virgin honey that which comes straight from the bees and has not been handled, tinctured and dyed by human hand; so earth is called virgin that has not been opened or torn by the ploughshare to receive seed. Third, because as a virgin it has been tenderly and softly held, nourished and guarded by God, or by king or neighbors. For as fathers love to keep their virgin daughters tenderly, treat them delicately, and seek for their adornment through the whole city and often the whole world whatever concerns it: so to those cities which the Prophets call “virgins” was brought whatever was fair, delightful and precious in other places. So Babylon is called “virgin,” Isaias 47:1, because the delights, wealth and merchandise of the world flowed together there; whence soon he adds: “Thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.” So often Jerusalem and mystically the Church is called a virgin, the Church, tenderly loved by God, as a virgin lately betrothed to a noble youth, who is with him in love and delights.
CANON XIX. Prophecies delight in metaphors and allegories, and parabolic phrases, and that both for obscurity, that it may seem to be a prophetic style, not a historical; and for elegance. Hence they call the Gentiles wolves, serpents, lions, dragons, and say they are to be tamed through Christ and as it were turned into lambs. “The wolf,” says Isaias, chapter 11, verse 6, “shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: the calf and the lion and the sheep shall abide together.” Where by the name of lion, wolf and leopard he signifies barbarous and savage nations, which, converted to Christ, having laid aside their former savagery and barbarism, were to conspire with holy zeal into the unity of faith with the simple and humble Christian people; and this is the literal sense of that place.
On the contrary, of animals, plants and inanimate things they at times speak as if they were men, when by prosopopoeia they give them speech, sense, joy, sorrow, etc. As when they say: “Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth exult, the desert shall be glad, and the wilderness shall rejoice,” Isaias 35:1. So to idols and stone images they give a soul: “Their soul shall go into captivity,” says Isaias 46:2.
By like trope they compare men and men’s vices or virtues to the dry desert, and to a field flowering and fruitful with trees, vines, mountains, rivers, cities, dwellers. A clear example is the whole of chapter 35 of Isaias.
CANON XX. Scripture is wont to pass from one metaphor to another, and at times return to the former. So, Osee 2 at the end, the Synagogue is called a woman, then a vineyard. So Isaias 27:1, the devil is called “Leviathan,” that is, the whale, soon “bar,” soon again “dragon or whale.” So, Isaias 45:7, Cyrus is compared to light and sun; and soon chapter 46, verse 11, to a bird and an eagle. They are wont also to turn from the metaphor to the thing itself, and thence again return to the same metaphor. So Joel 2 speaks of the Chaldeans as of locusts, and now uses epithets of locusts, now of men. This St. John imitates in Apocalypse 9:7, where an innumerable army of barbarians to be sent by the devil at the end of the world against the impious, to torment them for five months, he calls locusts, and ascribes to them crowns like gold, that is helmets gleaming like gold; the face of men, hair of women, teeth of lions, breastplates of iron, and the sound of war chariots.