Commentaria in Isaiam
He touched the earth with his feet, and Olympus with his head. Which Virgil imitated: And she walks on the ground, and hides her head among the clouds, and Horace: With exalted head I shall strike the stars.
And Seneca: Touching the lofty pole with proud head.
How truly Timon said: A man of ambition is a bag full of vanity.
St. Thomas adds that the Gentiles were so vain and foolish as to believe that princes and heroes after death were taken up among the stars, or numbered among the heavenly gods; as Hercules, Castor, Pollux and others are said to be set and fixed in heaven.
Finally, the swollen mind of tyrants was so puffed up and elated, and from elation so mad and foolish, that they boasted of being able to rule over the sea, the winds and the heaven, indeed thought so; for Scripture relates this of Antiochus, 2 Machabees 9:8: “Who seemed to himself to command even the waves of the sea, being filled with pride above the condition of man, and to weigh the heights of the mountains in a balance, and so on, and he who a little before thought he could touch the stars of heaven, no man could carry for the intolerable stench.” So the impious and mad Balthasar here says: “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,” as if to say: I will rule the stars and the clouds, thence I will hurl thunder and thunderbolts, I will be Jupiter the high-thundering. He had heard from the Hebrew captives that God had led them by a pillar of cloud, and often appeared to Moses in a cloud. Hence David sings of him, Psalm 103: “Who makest the clouds thy chariot.” Wherefore St. Chrysostom, homily 2 on the Acts, calls the cloud “the vehicle of God.” Hence Christ also, as God ascending into heaven, was borne thither by a cloud. The same vehicle, therefore, Balthasar here arrogated to himself.
So the swollen Pharao said: “The river is mine, and I made myself,” Ezechiel 29:3. So the Emperor Diocletian, after his triumph over the Persians, forgetting mortality, wished to be adored as a god, and held as brother of the sun and moon: hence men before him prostrated themselves on the ground in reverence, and fixed kisses on his feet. Therefore this pride of his was sharply punished by God: for his whole body swelled, and then, burst in various places, wasted slowly in such a way that his blaspheming tongue brought forth a multitude of worms within the very jaws, which creeping out of his mouth filled the whole place of his abode with the worst stench. Finally, barking like a dog, he breathed out his wicked soul. So Nicephorus, book 7, chapter 20; Sigonius, book 2 On the Western Empire, in the year of the Lord 297.
The Emperor Heliogabalus took this name because he wished to be and to be called the sun; for Elah-gabal signifies the sun: for before he was called Gabalus, whose most impure morals may be seen in Lampridius.
Caligula wished to be held a god, and even to seem to have dealings with the moon. Wherefore he asked the senator Vitellius whether he had seen him embrace the goddess?
To whom Vitellius, cleverly flattering, replied: “Only to you gods, Lord, is it permitted to see one another.” Behold to what folly pride drives mortals. Dio is witness, book 59. The reasoning of Caius Caligula, says Philo in the book On the Embassy to Caius, was this: The shepherd of sheep is not a sheep, the shepherd of oxen is not an ox, nor of goats a goat; therefore the shepherd of men is not a man: what then? A god. He made himself therefore a god. He assumed the insignia of gods, the caduceus, winged sandals and cloak of Mercury; the radiate crown, bow and arrows of Apollo; the breastplate, sword and shield of Mars, and in this way displayed divinity. So that madman made men cattle, that he might make himself God.
Xerxes joined the Hellespont with rafts as with a bridge, and then, earth cast upon them, made the journey over it with the whole army. But when a storm had broken up the bridge that had first been made, Xerxes ordered that sea to be beaten with rods. Hear Herodotus, book 7: “Xerxes, taking it ill that the sea had broken up the ships, ordered three hundred lashes to be inflicted on the Hellespont, and a pair of fetters to be sunk into its deep. I have heard also that he sent with them men to brand the Hellespont. He certainly commanded them to deal blows to the Hellespont, saying barbarous and mad words: O bitter water! thy master inflicts this punishment on thee, because thou hast harmed him who had done thee no wrong. Yet king Xerxes will cross thee, whether thou wilt or not.”
Julian the Apostate, that he might be held a god, wished when dying to feign that he had vanished from the sight of men and as it were ascended into heaven, and therefore planned secretly to plunge himself into a river; but he was hindered by his own people, who smelled the thing out, as St. Gregory Nazianzen relates, in the oration against Julian.
Chosroes, king of the Persians, insolent with victories, wished to be worshipped as a god. Hence he made a chariot of gold, in which, amid subtle and hidden channels, he poured water from above like a god, that he might seem to give rain; and in an underground cave horses drew chariots round about, and made a sound rivalling thunder, that he might seem to thunder. In such a shrine the profane man sat, as God the Father, and by his side he placed the cross of the Lord on the right in place of the Son, and a cock on the left in place of the Holy Ghost: he ordered himself therefore to be named and worshipped as God the Father. Wherefore, punished by God, defeated by Heraclius, he was at last slain by his son. So Siffridus the priest, book 1 of the Epitome, in the year of the Lord 612, and Baronius, in the same year.
Hear what the Chronicles of the Danes write of King Canute, and from them Polydore Virgil: Canute, they say, king of the Danes and of England, is reported to have said, a chair having been set on the shore: “Thou art part of my realm, O sea, therefore obey me”: but straightway the sea, with a rush, bathed his lap with its waves. Whereupon the frightened king rose from his throne: “Vain,” he said, “is the power of all kings, and God alone is almighty”; and having placed his crown upon a cross, he afterwards stood out as an excellent cultivator of piety and modesty, more than before, and persuaded his people (for whose sake he did this) to do the same.
I will sit in the mount of the covenant. Understand it as “like”; as if to say: As God was worshipped in the mount of the covenant, that is, in the temple of Jerusalem, before it was overthrown by my father Nabuchodonosor: so also I, Balthasar, shall be worshipped as a god on my throne, or in the shrines of Babylon.
Note: The temple of Solomon is called a mountain, both because it was high like a mountain, and because it was situated on Mount Sion. It is called of the Covenant, that is, of the Pact, because in it the tables of the law and the ark of the covenant were kept. The same temple is called the “sides of the north,” because it was situated in the northern part of the city, as is plain from Psalm 47:2: “Mount Sion, the sides of the north, the city of the great king.”
Hence the Septuagint here render: upon the lofty mountains (Sion and Moria), which are toward the north.
Parabolically, he notes first, under this figure, the pride of the devil, who wished to sit on a throne equal to God, both in heaven and on earth, namely in the temple, that he might be adored there. Hence St. Chrysostom, homily On Adam and Eve, volume 1, holds that the angel who said this was called “Sathael, that is, the position of God, or one setting himself as God”: “One angel, the first,” he says, “who was called Sathael, assuming a malignant and wicked presumption, said: I will set my seat in the north, and I will be like the most High.” He who is called Lucifer in Latin is therefore called Sathael [in Hebrew]. “And so for such presumption he fell irreparably, so that the first angel, hurled from the angelic height, was named devil.” “He said,” says Jerome, “Lucifer (but now not lucifer but hesperus): I will sit in the mount of the covenant, I will be like the most High. O impudent one! O impudent one! Thousands of thousands minister to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stand before him; and thou shalt sit?
The Cherubim stood and did not sit. What hast thou laboured for, to sit now?”
Second, under this figure, say Jerome, Cyril and Basil, he signifies the pride of the king of Babylon, as if he had said: I will strive to raise my name and kingdom above all men and all things, that I may rule the whole universe; and as if, casting off all reverence for God, he scarcely knew himself to be mortal, and thought some divine power was in him, and therefore wished to be worshipped and adored as a god in temples.
The Hebrews add that Nabuchodonosor wished to be adored and worshipped as a god in the temple of Jerusalem, which is hardly credible: for he himself overthrew it. In a like trope Ezechiel, chapter 28:14, says of the proud king of Tyre: “Thou a cherub stretched out and protecting, and I set thee in the holy mountain of God: thou hast walked in the midst of the stones of fire.”