Commentaria in Isaiam
Verse 12. A man shall be more precious than gold; as if to say: The Median soldier, by the nod and impulse of the avenging God, will spare no Babylonian, even if he offer the greatest ransom and price of gold; because, glorious and fierce, he prefers glory and lives to riches, as is said at verse 17. So Vatablus and Sanchez.
Otherwise Adam: as if to say: What is precious, that is, rare, will hardly remain; for very many will be slain by the Chaldeans.
The finest gold. The Hebrew and the Chaldee have gold of Ophir, that is, the best. See what was said at Jeremias 10:9.
Verse 13. The earth shall be moved. It is hyperbole and hypallage; for to the utterly afflicted earth and heaven seem to be moved, to whirl and be confounded. So we commonly say: “Heaven is mixed with earth, or the sky with the sea,” that is, all things are mingled and confounded.
Verse 14. And it shall be as a doe fleeing away; as if to say: The army of the Chaldeans will flee at Cyrus’s coming, as a doe and a defenceless, unwarlike sheep flees at the roar of a lion or wolf.
Every one shall turn to his own people. He speaks of foreign and auxiliary troops, which from other subject or allied provinces had come to the help of Babylon against the Persians; for these, seeing the camp of Cyrus, fled and returned to their own.
Verse 16. Their infants (of the Babylonians) shall be dashed in pieces. This is a sign of extreme hatred and cruelty, and it was done by the just judgment of God, who avenged the crimes of the parents even on their innocent infants. The same was foretold in Psalm 136:9: “Blessed shall he be that shall hold and dash thy little ones (O Babylon) against the rock.”
Verse 19. Famous pride of the Chaldeans. So St. Jerome reads in his Commentary, and the Complutensian, Plantin and other editions everywhere; the Hebrew is, the glory of the pride (that is, of the magnificence) of the Chaldeans, that is, that in which the Chaldeans are wont to glory and be proud, says Vatablus; so also Pagninus. The Zurich version: the ornament of the splendour of the Chaldeans; Babylon is the famous, proud and magnificent city of the Chaldeans. Nevertheless the Roman reading seems as much more forceful as it is more genuine. For Babylon is called a famous pride, that is, the famous glory and magnificence of the Chaldeans, in which, as in a most proud and most magnificent city, they are wont to be proud and to glory among all nations; that is, it was “the dwelling of pride, and the seat of luxury,” as Cicero says, On the Laws, book 2. So also Virgil says, Aeneid 2: “The doorposts, proud with barbaric gold and spoils, fell down.” So cities are called proud, fields proud, a marriage proud, beauty proud, fortune proud, honour proud, sceptres proud, and “the proud badge of war,” Aeneid 8. “Babylon, of all the cities the sun has looked upon the greatest,” says St. Jerome, “has now nothing left but walls.”
Verse 20. Neither shall the Arabian pitch his tents there, who is wont to dwell in tents and wander over pasture lands (such as are now many in Africa, who migrate from place to place, and are called Scenite or Nomad Arabs), for the sake of the cattle and flocks they feed; and this because, on account of the ruins of Babylon, there will be many caves and dens in which lions and other beasts hostile to flocks; and because burnt Babylon will become a dry mound, and will bear neither herbs nor grass. He mentions the Arabs before others, both because the Arabs are shepherds of cattle, as I said, and because Desert Arabia is neighbour to Chaldea. This prophecy even now endures, and experience makes it plain. A learned and religious man, who had lately travelled over those places, told me at Rome that the ruins of Babylon can still be seen, and that they are huge and vast, and extend to three days’ journey, and are wholly desert and desolate. He inquired the cause, he said, and especially why Arabs and shepherds did not at least pasture their flocks in places so empty and so open to pasture. They at once answered me that those places were full of spectres of wild beasts and demons, which Isaias here lists, and that therefore no one dares to approach them. Demons possess Babylon, therefore, as owed to them for so many names and vices, and given to them by a most just judgment, so that they strike terror into men, and have made it also their dwelling-place, and a mockery and food in Gehenna, according to that of Psalm 48:15: “They are laid in hell like sheep: death shall feed upon them.”
Verse 21. The hairy ones. Fauns and Satyrs, of whom Pliny, book 7, chapter 2; that is, as the Chaldee and the Septuagint have it, demons, namely those who in woods and desert places appear hairy, in the shape of goats, as gods of the groves, of whom more at chapter 34, verse 14. This is what St. John says, alluding to this, Apocalypse 18: “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen; and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every unclean spirit.”
Shall dance. He alludes to the sport in which wanton kids, sent out in military fashion from different stations, meet with fronts opposed.
Verse 22. And owls shall answer one another there. The owl is a night bird, so called because it always groans and howls.
Thus it came to pass; for, as St. Jerome says: “We learned from a certain hermit brother, who, coming out of those parts, now spends his life at Jerusalem among the monks, that the hunts of the king are in Babylon, and that wild beasts of every kind are confined only within the circuit of its walls.” Mystically, Babylon is the world, the owls are the worldly and secular, who on account of the cares of the world, its disgusts, quarrels and a thousand troubles groan and howl constantly, yet nevertheless, like the owl in Babylon, will not go out from their caves: indeed, if you drag them out, they resist: so the worldly will not be taken from the miseries of the world which they love to their ruin, to pass to a quiet and religious life, but desire to live and stay in them. This is the curse of Babylon, that is, of the world.
Sirens: the Chaldee has dragons, the Septuagint hedgehogs; the Hebrew is tannim, that is, as St. Jerome says, demons or monsters or great crested and flying dragons; for these truly are in desert places, and demons often assume their shape. Our version renders it by the genus siren. For a siren is a kind of aquatic and marine monster, a maiden down to the mouth and pubes, below a fish; such a one was taken in our age in Friesland, lived among many men for years, and learned to spin. In this shape also the demon deludes men.
Note: By this phrase the Prophet signifies the extreme devastation of the place, that it shall be so desolated as to become the dwelling of demons and monsters, so that no one dares to go there.
Tropologically, a Siren, says St. Basil, is a demon who allures and deceives the soul by pleasure. Concerning the fable of the Sirens of Ulysses, its mystical mythology, and the victory over it by the cross, see St. Ambrose, book 4 on Luke, at the beginning.
In the temples of pleasure. Vatablus: in the voluptuous palaces. For Babylon was built and prepared for every pleasure and pomp; but after its destruction there shall be in it dragons for delights, owls and horned owls for lutenists, for servants and followers horrible Fauns and Satyrs.
Mystically, St. Bernard, treatise On the Eleven Burdens of Isaias, sermon 1: “The first,” he says, “is the burden of Babylon, which must needs be taken from our shoulders. Babylon signifies the world, whose love is cupidity; it is therefore a heavy burden, pressing many and bending them to lower things. In three ways it burdens the wretched, by labour, fear and sorrow. With labour a man attains what he desires, with fear he possesses it, with sorrow he loses it. Come, brothers, which of kings does not acquire with labour what he desires? which of kings is so secure as to fear no one? who does not lose something with sorrow? But let us turn this parable upon ourselves. Does not one of us sigh under the weight of this burden? Have not worldly delights settled in us? What of the fact that those who have left their own do not fear to seek others’, for which they are wearied with labours, tormented with sorrows, worn down with fears? Is even he free from this burden who, though he brought little or nothing into the monastery, yet, to give to others, has not ceased to take away from the monastery whatever he can; who asks most importunately; who is angry if he does not receive; grieves if he is reproved; rages if he is proclaimed? What of those who are so bound to their parents by affection that they do not hesitate to undergo loss to religion, and the greatest labours for them, and on that account pass days idle and nights sleepless? What shall I say of those who seek honours? what burden do they not bear? now flattering, now detracting, now mad for others’ promotion; now, frustrated in their hope, rising with curses even against their own fathers. So, brothers, all these are conformed to this world. Hence they are reckoned under the name of Babylon, to be miserably oppressed by that burden of punishments which the Prophet describes upon Babylon.” To these, then, adapt the several sentences and threats against Babylon in this chapter and the next, and above all that in chapter 14, verse 11: “Thy pride is brought down to hell, thy carcass is fallen down: under thee shall the moth be strewed, and worms shall be thy covering. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning?”