Commentaria in Isaiam
Chapter 14
He goes on to depict the destruction of Babylon (which will happen for the sake of the Jews, that they might be freed from it), and the pride and ruin of king Balthasar as of another Lucifer, to whom accordingly, verse 10, he introduces other kings in hell insulting. Then, verse 18, he foretells that his name, offspring and memory shall perish. Finally, verse 28, he announces to the Philistines disaster through Ezechias.
1. Her time is near at hand, and her days shall not be prolonged. For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose out of Israel, and will make them rest upon their own ground: and the stranger shall be joined with them, and shall adhere to the house of Jacob. 2. And the people shall take them and bring them into their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall make them captives that had taken them, and shall subdue their oppressors. 3. And in that day when God shall give thee rest from thy labour, and from thy vexation, and from the hard bondage wherewith thou didst serve before, 4. thou shalt take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and shalt say: How hath the oppressor ceased, the tribute hath ceased? 5. The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, the rod of the rulers, 6. that struck the people in wrath with an incurable wound, that brought nations under in fury, that persecuted in cruelty. 7. The whole earth is quiet and still, it is glad and hath shouted for joy: 8. the fir trees also have rejoiced over thee, and the cedars of Libanus: Since thou hast slept, there hath none come up to cut us down. 9. Hell below was in an uproar to meet thee at thy coming, it stirred up the giants for thee. All the princes of the earth are risen up from their thrones, all the princes of nations. 10. All shall answer and say to thee: Thou also art wounded as well as we, thou art become like unto us. 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. 12. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? how art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations? 13. And thou saidst in thy heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mount of the covenant, in the sides of the north. 14. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the most High. 15. But yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, into the depth of the pit. 16. They that shall see thee shall turn to thee, and behold thee. Is this the man that troubled the earth, that shook kingdoms, 17. that made the world a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof, that opened not the prison to his prisoners? 18. All the kings of the nations have all of them slept in glory, every one in his own house. 19. But thou art cast out of thy sepulchre, as an unprofitable branch defiled, and clothed with them that were slain by the sword, and thrown down to the bottom of the pit, as a rotten carcass. 20. Thou shalt not keep company with them, even in burial: for thou hast destroyed thy land, thou hast slain thy people: the seed of the wicked shall not be named for ever. 21. Prepare his children for slaughter for the iniquity of their fathers: they shall not rise up, nor inherit the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities. 22. And I will rise up against them, saith the Lord of hosts: and I will destroy the name of Babylon, and the remnant, and the bud, and the offspring, saith the Lord. 23. And I will make it a possession for the hedgehog, and pools of water: and I will sweep it, and wear it out with a besom, saith the Lord of hosts. 24. The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying: Surely as I have thought, so shall it be: and as I have purposed, 25. so shall it fall out: That I will destroy the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains tread him under foot: and his yoke shall be taken from them, and his burden shall be taken off from their shoulder. 26. This is the counsel that I have devised upon all the earth, and this is the hand that is stretched out over all nations. 27. For the Lord of hosts hath decreed, and who can disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it away? 28. In the year that king Achaz died, this burden was made: 29. Rejoice not thou, whole Philistia, because the rod of him that struck thee is broken: for out of the root of the serpent shall come forth a basilisk, and his seed shall swallow up the flying serpent. 30. And the firstborn of the poor shall be fed, and the poor shall rest with confidence: and I will make thy root perish with famine, and I will kill thy remnant. 31. Howl, O gate, cry, O city: Philistia is cast down altogether: for a smoke shall come from the north, and there is none that shall escape his troops. 32. And what shall be answered to the messengers of the nations? That the Lord hath founded Sion, and the poor of his people shall hope in him.
Verse 1. Her time is near at hand, namely the destruction of Babylon, of which in the preceding chapter (whence the Hebrews join this verse to the preceding chapter), by which destruction God had mercy on the Jews, by loosing their captivity through Cyrus, and by making the Jews, formerly conquered by the victorious Chaldeans, now with fortune changed, insult and rule over the conquered, as follows:
Verse 2. They shall take them: as if to say, the nations will receive the Jews honourably, as Cyrus and Artaxerxes did, as is plain from Esdras, books 1 and 2.
Hence St. Jerome explains it thus: Many from the Gentiles, for example the Medes, Persians, Babylonians and others, invited by the example of the holy life of the Jews returning from Babylon, will come to Jerusalem, leaving their idols. And so the Jews will spiritually subject those to whom they had before been subject; and bodily they will subject those who of their own accord submit to them, or, pressed by poverty, sell themselves to them as servants and handmaids.
Allegorically, and more truly, all nations shall obey the spiritual Israel, that is, the Church of Christ.
Verse 4. Thou shalt take up this parable. “Parable” he calls a figurative, elegant and distinguished poem, song and saying (for this the Hebrew mashal signifies), which is as it were a mournful and pathetic epitaph of Babylon.
How hath the oppressor ceased? It is a fine hypotyposis of the tyrannical rule by which the Chaldean kings burdened and drained the other nations with hard tributes and loads. Hence he adds: “The tribute hath ceased,” in Hebrew madheba, that is, tribute gold, says Vatablus. Others render: the gilded, or golden (city) has ceased, that is, full of gold and proud, or avaricious and greedy of gold. Wherefore others render: the gatherer of gold has ceased.
Verse 8. The fir trees also have rejoiced over thee, and the cedars. He compares metaphorically the princes and kingdoms of the Gentiles to fir trees and cedars; but the king of Babylon to a woodcutter or feller; as if to say: Kings and princes, subdued, afflicted and harassed by the king of the Babylonians, were glad when Babylon was cut down and the king slain, as trees naturally rejoice, as it were, if their woodcutter or feller dies. Wherefore, rejoicing, they said what follows:
Verse 9. Hell below was in an uproar. It is a sarcasm, or hostile mockery of the slain king of the Babylonians, and a poetic fiction, says St. Jerome, by which the Prophet means only to signify that hell, that is, the inhabitants of hell, especially the former princes and tyrants, marvelled at the fall of the king of the Chaldeans, and mocked and derided him. Like this figure are the dialogues of Lucian, in which Alexander, Mausolus and other princes are mocked by the dead. Moreover, by hell understand both hell and the sepulchre: for to the glory of the king he opposes the squalor of burial, to past delights he opposes the corruption and rottenness of the corpse, to his former brightness and elegance he opposes the moths and the coverlets of worms. The sense, therefore, is: As to a prince conquered in war and taken other princes come to meet him, out of novelty, wonder and derision: so to thee, O Nabuchodonosor! or rather to thee, O Balthasar! when thou wast slain by Cyrus, and wentest down to hell, princes and giants, that is, heroes and brave and terrible men already dead and placed in hell, came to meet thee, especially those whom thou hadst before despoiled of kingdom or even of life; they mocked thee, and insulted thee, saying: Behold, thou art wounded and slain, as thou hast wounded and slain us; thou art gone down to hell, as we also: come then, O our prince! take the first, that is the lowest and worst, place in hell: that we yield to thee, that we offer thee, as to our conqueror, nay monarch. For so when the king comes all the princes rise, invite him to sit, and lead him to the first place, as to a royal throne.
But better with St. Jerome we shall say: “By the fir trees and the cedars of Libanus understand the princes of the Gentiles, who were cut down by the blows of Nabuchodonosor, and who themselves, bursting into a voice of gladness, say: Since he was brought down to hell, no other could be found who would cut down the great and powerful.”