Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram, Vol. 11: Prolegomena (prefaces and canons)
CANON XXI. The name of the figure is given to the thing figured. So the feasts of Christians are called “sabbaths,” Isaias 56:4; the same are called the feast of Tabernacles, Zacharias 14:16, because these Jewish feasts were a type of the Christian feasts. So Christ is called “David,” as Ezechiel 34:23: “I will set up one shepherd over them, my servant David,” that is Christ. Osee 3:5: “After this the children of Israel shall return, and shall seek the Lord their God, and David their king,” that is Christ. So St. Augustine, in the book On Eight Questions of Dulcitius, Question 5. The reason of this is twofold: the first, because David and Zorobabel, leaders of the people, were a type of Christ, leader of the faithful; the second, because Christ was born from them: for the name of the parent is wont to be taken patronymically for his sons and descendants, as when Israel, Jacob, is taken for the Israelites, Jacobites, and descendants of Abraham. Again, they take the name of a man illustrious in some thing for any other excelling in the same. So Samson is taken for the strong, Daniel for the wise, Solomon for the powerful and wealthy, the king of Assur for any monarch and tyrant, as I shall show on Isaias 8:4. So among profane writers “Achilles” is taken for the warlike and robust, “Cicero” for the eloquent, “Caesar” for the emperor and monarch. So Virgil, Aeneid book 6, says: “Another Achilles now born in Latium,” that is Turnus. So Juvenal calls Domitian, whose wife had been corrupted by the mime Paris, “Atrides,” and the adulteress herself “Clytemnestra of a farthing,” that is, a trull, because she was on sale for a quadrans. So in Plautus “a man of three letters” is a thief.
CANON XXII. By a like figure they change the proper names of nations according to morals, or likeness and imitation of morals, so that they call the true Israel faithful and upright men, but the unfaithful and impious they call Chanaanites, Amorrhites, Sodomites, Gomorrhites. So Isaias 1:10, speaking to the Jews, says: “Hear the word of the Lord, ye princes of Sodom; give ear to the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrha.” So Ezechiel 16:45, preaching to the same: “Your mother,” he says, “was a Cethite, and your father an Amorrhite.” So also Daniel, addressing the old man who laid snares for Susanna, chapter 13, verse 56, says: “Thou seed of Chanaan, and not of Juda, beauty hath deceived thee, and lust hath subverted thy heart.” So St. John, Apocalypse 17:2, and St. Peter, Epistle 1, last chapter, verse 13, call Rome “Babylon.” So the world by the Prophets is called now “Egypt,” for the darkness of superstition; now “Edom,” for resemblance of fierceness and malediction. So Eusebius, book 7 of the Evangelical Demonstration, chapter 4, and Tertullian, book 3 Against Marcion, where he adds: “Nor is it new for the Creator to use figuratively the transfer of names from comparison of crimes.” So the names of certain nations have passed into reproach: Lices, Sybarites, etc.
CANON XXIII. “In” is a general preposition, and almost the only frequent one among the Hebrews: for they have this almost always in their mouth. And so they use “in” now for “by,” now for “on account of,” now for other prepositions. So it is said: “The word was made in the hand of Isaias, Aggeus, Zacharias the Prophet,” that is through Isaias, Aggeus, Zacharias the Prophet. For the hand is the organ of organs, says Aristotle: hence it often signifies instrumental cause. For the Prophets were organs and instruments of God.
CANON XXIV. The Hebrews often omit the marks of similitude, “so, as, like:” these therefore are to be supplied, as is plain Isaias 54:9. At times also they put one member only of a similitude, omit the other, as is plain Osee 11:2. So they often omit servile letters, beth, lamed, and others which signify conjunctions, or adverbs, “when, yet, etc.” Again they interchange one with another, “for” for “but yet,” as is plain Jeremias chapter 30, verse 16. So “because” often signifies not cause, but connexion or apposition, and is equivalent to “but indeed, nevertheless,” as Psalm 36:19, when he had said of the just: “They shall not be confounded in the evil time: and in the days of famine they shall be filled;” opposing sinners to them, he adds: “Because (that is, but indeed) the wicked shall perish.” The same, Psalm 13:5, when he had said of the impious: “There have they trembled for fear, where there was no fear;” of the pious he adds: “For (that is, but indeed) the Lord is in the just generation.” Isaias 66:8, when he had said: “Shall the earth bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be brought forth at once?” as if to say “No;” he adds: “Because (that is, but indeed) Sion hath been in labour, and hath brought forth her children.” Moreover “what” and “because” are at times taken for “although,” as Psalm 43:19: “Our heart hath not turned back, etc., because thou hast humbled (that is, although thou hast humbled) us in the place of affliction;” and Psalm 77:20: “Because he struck the rock, and the waters gushed out, etc., can he also give bread?” that is, although God struck the rock, and gave waters from it, can he therefore also give bread in the desert? In like manner “that” often signifies not cause, nor end, but event and consequence. Hence so often in the New Testament it is said: “That (that is, whence it followed that) that might be fulfilled which was said by the Prophets.” So Romans 5:20 it is said: “The law entered in, that sin might abound.” So Psalm 50:6: “To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee: that thou mayest be justified in thy words, and mayest overcome when thou art judged.” John 9:39: “For judgment I am come into this world; that they who see not, may see; and they who see, may become blind.”
CANON XXV. The Prophets, especially Isaias, because he is elegant and rhythmical, after the manner of the Hebrew poets, often say the same, or almost the same, in the latter hemistich and verse which they have said in other words in the former: which likewise is most frequent in the psalms, as songs composed in rhythm and meter. As, “O God, come to my assistance,” is the same as what follows: “O Lord, make haste to help me;” “Wash me yet more from my iniquity,” is the same as what he adds: “And cleanse me from my sin.” So, “For I know my iniquity,” is almost the same as, “And my sin is always before me.” So, “For behold I was conceived in iniquities,” is the same as, “And in sins did my mother conceive me.” The same may be seen in Isaias.
CANON XXVI. Whatever, says St. Jerome on the last chapter of Isaias, pricks, strikes, torments, racks, holy Scripture calls “sword,” by which those who have not done the will of God shall be wounded or slain. The same they understand by fire, tempest, whirlwind, hail, storm, etc.: for these signify by catachresis any torment, or calamity or slaughter.
CANON XXVII. The Prophets often say that God has blinded the Jews and other impious, hardened them, mingled a spirit of giddiness, which is to be understood not positively, directly and causally, as if God properly caused and produced the hardness or blindness in them, as Calvin blasphemes, but permissively.
CANON XXVIII. When the Prophets distinguish the ten Tribes from the two, the two they call “the kingdom of Juda, the house of David, Jerusalem or Sion:” the ten they call first, “Israel,” or “Jacob,” appropriating to them, as the more numerous, the name of the first parent or patriarch Jacob: second, “Samaria,” because this city was the head of the kingdom of Israel; third, “Joseph” or “Ephraim,” because from Ephraim son of Joseph sprang Jeroboam, who first made the schism, and drew away the ten Tribes from the house of David, and attached them to himself, according to the prophecy of Ahias, 3 Kings 12:19.
CANON XXIX. The Prophets at times take mental or vocal words for real. So they take “to be called” for “to be.” As when Christ, Isaias 8:3, is to be called “Make haste to take away the spoils, Make haste to take the prey;” and chapter 9, verse 6, to be called “Wonderful, Counsellor, God, the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace;” it is not signified that He will in fact have such a proper name, and be called by it; but that He shall be such that the things signified by these names suit Him, as if to say “He shall be called Emmanuel,” that is, God shall be with us: He shall be called “Make haste to take away the spoils,” that is, He shall be a swift spoiler of enemies, and their speedy plunderer. So Jeremias 4:12 it is said: “I will speak my judgments with them,” that is, I will inflict on them just punishments. See Fr. Salmeron, Prolegomena 10, Fifty, 3, Canon 6.
On the contrary, real active verbs are more often taken for mental or vocal, e.g. “I do” for “I think, foresee, determine to do.” So Jeremias 1:10 it is said: “Behold I have set thee this day over the nations, and over kingdoms, to root up, and to pull down, and to waste, and to destroy, and to build, and to plant,” that is, that thou mayest foretell and prophesy that these nations and kingdoms are to be rooted up, pulled down, wasted and destroyed; but those to be built and planted. And Daniel, chapter 2, verse 23, says: “Thou hast given me strength (that is, declared).” And often elsewhere the Prophets are said to bring and bring on future calamities or prosperities; who foretold them so certainly, and they came to pass so certainly as they were foretold by them, as if they had been brought and brought on by them. Whence Prophet in Hebrew is called nabi, that is, foreteller, as I said Question 1. Hence also prophecy is called “oracle” or “fate.” Fate however is a sanction or voice of the divine mind, as St. Augustine teaches, book 5 On the City of God, chapter 1, namely, as Statius says, Thebaid 1.