Commentaria in Isaiam
These things do not befit Nabuchodonosor; for Nabuchodonosor lived gloriously, died and was buried, and handed on the kingdom to his posterity. But Balthasar was shamefully conquered and slain by Cyrus, and in him the royal stock failed, and the city and monarchy of the Babylonians was cut off, Daniel 5:30 and 31. Add that many affirm with probability that Nabuchodonosor did not descend to hell, that is, to Gehenna, but was saved, as I said, Daniel 4:34.
From what has been said it is plain that Leo Castrius wrongly, indeed perversely, understands this of Christ crucified, as if he were Lucifer, who in body went down to the sepulchre, in soul to hell, and whom, as dead and overcome by death, the demons mocked. Leo cites Eusebius, Demonstration, book 10, last chapter, but in vain and wrongly, as also many others. For Eusebius there says nothing else than that the demons, and Lucifer, of whom Isaias speaks, met Christ descending into hell: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer? hell below was in an uproar, and so on, thy pride is brought down to hell (to the sepulchre, and also properly to hell),” in Hebrew gaon-echa, that is, thy glory, as the Septuagint and the Chaldee render; others, thy pride, elation, arrogance, as our version and others render.
Verse 11. Thy carcass is fallen down: it is cast away like a dog or a dead ass, which, cast upon a dunghill, there either rots or is devoured by dogs and wild beasts. So it is said of King Joakim, Jeremias 22:19: “He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, rotten and cast forth beyond the gates.” The Interpreter reads, for hemiath, that is, sound, with other points hemit, that is, he slew, namely God or Cyrus, that is, it is slain, it has fallen. Again he reads niblatecha, that is, thy carcass; others read nebalecha, that is, thy harps. Hence Vatablus and others render: the sound of thy harps; or, as the Chaldee, the noise of the praise of thy music; or, as the Septuagint, thy much mirth; as if to say: Thy glory, thy feasts and banquets, O Balthasar, in which thou didst refresh thyself with music and the sounding of harps, have failed, they are taken away at thy dying and going down to hell.
Under thee shall the moth be strewed, and worms shall be thy covering. That is: dead kings are wont to be covered and adorned with a golden carpet and coverlet; again the kings of the Assyrians, as Strabo testifies, book 16, and the kings of the Babylonians, as Herodotus testifies, book 1, are wont after death to be embalmed with ointments and spices, that they may not smell foul and rot, but may long be fragrant; thou shalt have none of these, but among the corpses of the slain thou shalt lie filled with gore and worms, which shall breed from thy putrid body and from those of the other slain; as if to say: Thy corpse will rot, and become food for worms, like the rest.
Let the proud, soft and delicate note this: what else do they do by fattening the body than prepare a sumptuous feast for the worms, who gnaw and devour the fat in which they grow fat? Piously and wisely a young man lately, loathing the usual allurements of the flesh and the world, became a Capuchin, and when afterwards visited by a companion and hearing: Alas! how pale, how lean you have become in the Order! he answered: This I care for, this I aim at, that by abstinence and mortification I may consecrate and drain fat and blood to God: for I do not wish to fatten a body soon to die for the worms to feast in it; I do not wish to prepare fatness for earthworms; I do not wish to be a caterer and cook for toads. So also that secular man whom our Platus mentions, book 3 On the Good of the Religious State, last chapter: when he was leading a soft life in delights and would suffer no word to be said to him about conversion, a certain Religious, visiting him kindly, at the end of his visit, as he was leaving, said: Do you know who will be your bed after death? what coverlets? Isaias will teach you, saying: “Under thee shall the moth be strewed, and worms shall be thy covering”; which verse so pricked him that he could turn nothing else over in his mind than those worms and moths: nay, though he tried to wipe away this troublesome memory with various games and the solaces of his equals, he made so little progress that it was fixed in him more and more. Wherefore, reckoning that if the very thought of that punishment was so intolerable, how much more intolerable the punishment itself would be, he at last gave his hands to God, and devoted himself to him in Religion. Finally, excellently Blessed Peter Damian, book 7, epistle 19 to Blanca, before the end, teaches that flesh delicately nourished in life, when dead stinks more than other; and he confirms it by the example of Sophia the Marchioness, Duchess of Venice, who, then recently dead, gave off an intolerable stench, because she had nourished her body too delicately.
Symbolically, St. Athanasius, sermon On the Passion and Cross of the Lord: “Under Satan,” he says, “rottenness is strewn, so that now, by the Passion of Christ, no one may fear him, as enervated and weakened; but all adore Christ, and through Christ the Father.”
Verse 12. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? For Lucifer the Hebrew has helel: which can be rendered “howl”; hence Aquila rendered, howler, son of the dawn. So also the Syriac. But the Latin interpreters commonly render, Lucifer.
You will ask first, who is this “Lucifer”? First, Leo Castrius, as I said, takes Christ, as if this were the voice of the demons mocking Christ crucified and dead. Second, Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, and everywhere the ancients, whom Leo Castrius cites, understand this literally of the fall of the devil from heaven. Third, St. Cyprian, epistle 56 to Cornelius, takes by Lucifer Antichrist.
Fourth, and truly, St. Jerome, Cyril, Basil, St. Thomas, Haymo, and St. Augustine, book 3 On Christian Doctrine, chapter 37, take by Lucifer the king of the Chaldeans: this is plain from the context: for the whole matter here is the destruction of Babylon and of its king, of whom he treated in chapters 13 and 14.
Although St. Jerome and others take by Lucifer Nabuchodonosor, who as another Lucifer arrogated divinity to himself, and wished to be worshipped as a god in the golden statue which he erected, Daniel 3:1; yet it is truer that by Lucifer Balthasar is here understood, as I said. Petulantly and ignorantly Calvin here taxes the Church for calling the prince of demons Lucifer. For he says: “It was even grosser ignorance that they feigned Lucifer to be the king of devils, and this name to have been given him by the Prophet. But since these fictions have no colour at all, let us pass them over as idle fables.”
For all the Fathers and Interpreters teach that by Lucifer here is understood the prince of demons; but that by catachresis the king of the Chaldeans is called Lucifer, for a reason I shall soon give. For to whom do the things said here of Lucifer apply but to the prince of demons? as: “Thou that saidst in thy heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will be like the most High,” and so on. Isaias therefore gives this name Lucifer properly to the prince of demons, metaphorically to Balthasar.
You will ask, second, why Balthasar is called Lucifer: because he was like the star Venus, which is called Lucifer and Hesperus? or because he was like the devil, who is called Lucifer? I answer first that he is called Lucifer because he was like the star Venus. For the Prophet says: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning?” In Hebrew it is Lucifer, son of the dawn, that is, Lucifer, who with the dawn and out of the dawn seemed to be born as its son: hence the Septuagint for Lucifer render heosphoros, that is dawn-bearer, who shines in the dawn, and as it were bears it. Hence also the Alexandrian Arabic version has: How is fallen the star of the dawn (or the star of the break of dawn) from heaven, rising at daybreak?
For this star in Hebrew is called helel, in Latin Lucifer, in Greek heosphoros, because in the morning it brings the first light and dawn to the world; the same is called Hesperus and Vesperugo, because it brings evening and night: for as in the morning at dawn it precedes the rising sun, so in the evening it follows it setting. Wherefore this star bears the image of each fortune and condition, namely dark and adverse, when it follows the setting sun, and then it is called Hesperus; but prosperous and bright, when it runs before the rising sun, and is called Lucifer. Hence Sophar says to Job, 11:17: “And brightness like that of noonday shall arise to thee at evening: and when thou shalt think thyself consumed, thou shalt rise as the day star.” For, as Boethius sings:
And he who at the first hour of night drives on the chilly Hesperus, changes again his wonted reins, the pale Lucifer at the rising of Phoebus.
Hence also Virgil, Aeneid, book 8, compares the splendid Pallas to the morning star, which receives first the rays of the sun, and thence shines, when he says: Pallas himself in the midst of the column, conspicuous in cloak and painted arms; as when the morning star, bathed in the wave of Ocean, lifts his sacred face to heaven.
So, as Horace compares Julius Caesar to a star, saying:
The Julian star shines forth above all: