Commentaria in Isaiam
Tenthly, let them consider the example of Christ, who, when sought for a kingdom, fled, and led a private life; nay, was subject to His parents. Eleventhly, that the Saints fled dignities, and when compelled to undergo them, groaned as under a heavy burden. Ambrose, demanded as Bishop of Milan by the voices of the people, fled from the city by night. St. Chrysostom, fearing the episcopate, withdrew into solitude. St. Martin, as Sulpicius testifies, would not even accept the diaconate, much less the episcopate, unless compelled. St. Gregory, elected Pontiff, not only fled, but even wrote to the Emperor Maurice, begging him not to consent to his election. St. Ammonius the hermit cut off his ear that he might not be made a bishop. St. Malachy, as St. Bernard writes in his Life, would not have accepted the episcopate had the assembled bishops not threatened him with anathema. “Every high place,” says Bernard, “he dreaded as a precipice.” St. Augustine, on learning of the death of his bishop, fled from the city. Hear him, sermon 1 On the common life of clerics: “In any place where I knew there was no bishop, I avoided going there; and this I did as far as I could, that I might be saved in a lowly place, and not be endangered in a high one.” St. Fulgentius did the same, and was at last made Bishop of Ruspe by force. So also St. Leo, elected Supreme Pontiff, shrank in horror. Hear him, sermon 2 on his own assumption: “Lord, I have heard thy hearing, and was afraid; I considered thy works, and trembled. For what is so unaccustomed, so fearful, as labour to the frail, loftiness to the lowly, dignity to the unworthy?” Truly Seneca says in the Hercules Furens:
Rule as one puffed up, and carry the spirit of others. God, the avenger, follows the proud from behind.
On the contrary, humility and the flight from dignities are, first, “the safest treasure of all the virtues,” says St. Basil, chapter 18 of the Monastic Constitutions. Secondly, “it is the guardian of chastity and the mother of patience,” says St. Bernard, in the treatise On the order of life. Thirdly, “it is the firmest foundation of the whole spiritual structure,” says Cassian, Conference 19, chapter 12. Fourthly, “it is the whole discipline of Christian wisdom,” says St. Leo, sermon 7 on the Epiphany. Fifthly, God exalts the humble and humbles the proud, says Christ. Sixthly, humility is the most effective procurer of grace and divine help. For as rain and rivers flow down into the valleys, so the grace of God rains down and descends into the humble soul. Seventhly, all the gifts of God and all virtues go to ruin unless humility is present, says St. Gregory, Morals 27, last chapter. Eighthly, the humble man is loved by God and men; the proud man is hateful to all. Ninthly, let him consider that saying of Christ, Luke 6: “Woe to you when men shall bless (praise) you!”
Tenthly, let him consider that saying of St. Augustine, in his epistle Fortify for yourself the way to obtain the truth, which has been fortified by Him who truly sees, as God, the weakness of our steps. The first of these is humility, the second humility, the third humility; so it shall be that what Anna said is fulfilled: “The barren hath borne many, and she that had many children is weakened.” In short, the humble man is like another Michael, the proud man like another Lucifer: as St. Francis through humility became a Seraph, and through the Seraph received the stigmata of Christ impressed upon him, and after death was carried up in heaven to the choir of the Seraphim, as was revealed in a vision to a certain holy man, according to St. Bonaventure. So Pharao, Arius and Calvin, through pride, were plunged and cast down into the depths of Tartarus, that they might sit with Lucifer in the fiery seats. Hear the sayings of the Fathers in the Lives of the Fathers, book 7, chapter 13: “One of the Fathers used to say: Humility is the forerunner of charity, as John the Baptist of Christ; and thus it draws to God, because God is charity.” Another, asked what humility was, said: “It is a tree of life growing up on high.” Another: “It is the land in which God commanded sacrifice to be offered to Him.” Another: “The perfection of man is humility.” Another: “Humility neither is angry nor suffers others to be angry.”
Furthermore, the signs of humility Albert the Great briefly describes thus in his Paradise of the Soul, chapter 3: Humility, he says, is true and perfect when honour that is shown is despised, and honour that is not shown is not sought. Secondly, the truly humble man always fears lest some glory be shown him; and when it has been shown him, he is dismayed and saddened to the very marrow. Thirdly, the truly humble man never glories in any glory or grace, unless by it he intends to give his hearers confidence toward God. Fourthly, the truly humble man compares himself neither with a greater, nor a lesser, nor an equal; nay, he believes no one beneath him, scorns no one at all, and despises himself alone from the heart, and fervently desires to be despised by all, and rejoices when he is despised: such a man fears no insult, because he loves no glory. So Albert.
Verse 18.—“All the kings of the nations, etc., have slept in glory”—they were buried gloriously, not with the common people, but in a house, that is, in the sepulchre or mausoleum of their parents and kings.
“Out of thy sepulchre.”—Balthasar could not be drawn out of a sepulchre, because he had none. The sense, then, is that he was not carried into the sepulchre of kings, which thy ancestors, and thou thyself, hadst appointed for thee and magnificently adorned. Hence Vatablus renders it, thou art cast out from the sepulchre, that is, cast far from the sepulchre, that thou mightest not be carried into it.
The Hebrews take this of Nabuchodonosor, whom they fable to have been drawn out of his sepulchre by his son Evilmerodach, that he might thus show the Babylonians that his father had not been changed into a beast, as before, but was truly dead, and so that he himself might be admitted by them to the succession of the kingdom as son and heir; and that he did this on the counsel of Jechonias, and therefore exalted him. So St. Jerome reports here. Abulensis adds in the fourth book of Kings, chapter 25, question 37, and Haymo and Hugh here, that on the same counsel the corpse was divided into three hundred parts, and these were distributed among as many vultures (to devour them), that there might be no hope of his return. I believe these three hundred to be not prodigies but lies.
“As an unprofitable branch”—like a barren shoot, or one bearing bitter and evil fruit, which is not grafted into the earth, or, if grafted, is plucked up.
“Defiled and clothed”—with gore and blood and the corpses of the slain, and the worms swarming from them; this is what he said, verse 11: “Under thee shall the moth be strewed, and worms shall be thy covering.”
“Went down to the foundations of the pit.”—So he calls the depth both of the sepulchre and of hell; for it is likely that the corpse of Balthasar, with the other corpses of the slain Babylonians, was cast into some great pit or ditch. Hence what follows: “Thou shalt not have fellowship, not even (so much as) with them in burial: with them,” understand “with the kings of the nations”; for these he set against him in verse 18, and not those slain by the sword; for to these he likens him in this verse.
Verse 20.—“The seed of the wicked shall not be named for ever,” verse 28, of the pious; for no one of the stock of Nabuchodonosor succeeded Balthasar, but with him the whole royal stock was extinguished. So St. Jerome.
Verse 21.—“Prepare his children for slaughter.”—Hence it is clear that the sons of Balthasar, whether natural or adopted, that is, those appointed by him as heirs of the kingdom, were likewise slain; that he had several natural sons, since he had so many concubines, is likely enough.
NEITHER SHALL THEY FILL THE FACE OF THE WORLD WITH CITIES.—That is, they shall not fill the surface of the cities of the world, that is, they shall not fill the cities of the world; it is a hypallage: or “the world of cities,” that is, a world that abounds in cities. As if to say: God will cut them off, lest they fill the world and its cities with governors and with men like themselves, namely impious and hateful to God; for as the king is, such are the courtiers, and the people, and the cities. So Vatablus.
Secondly, Arias and Forerius translate: they shall not fill the face of the world with cities, that is, they shall not found or adorn many cities in it.
Thirdly, Sanchez explains: as if to say, The sons of Balthasar shall not fill the face of the world, that is the whole world, with their cities; that is, they shall not hold under their dominion the cities of the whole world, as they boasted; for the face of the world, of the wind, of the sword, is called the world itself, the wind, the sword.
23. AND INTO POOLS OF WATER.—For Babylon is in marshes beside the Euphrates, which the Persians had led off into various streams and ditches; therefore, when it was overthrown, only the pools and streams of the Euphrates remained.
AND I WILL SWEEP IT WITH THE BESOM OF DESTRUCTION.—That is, as Vatablus says, I will sweep it with the besom of the destroyer. As if to say: The Persians will lay waste and plunder Babylon as carefully and thoroughly as a maidservant sweeps the pavement with brooms, scouring and rubbing it as if to wear it away, as Dutch maidservants do, most devoted to cleanliness. With a similar trope Plautus says: “He will sweep me away entire with the dust”; and of Tyre Ezechiel says, chapter 26: “I will scrape her dust from her.”
24. THE LORD OF HOSTS HATH SWORN, etc.: IF NOT, AS I HAVE THOUGHT, SO shall it be, I say; otherwise may I not be God, may I not be held truthful. For the word “if,” among the Hebrews, is the mark of an oath of execration, in which they by euphemism leave the curse itself unspoken.
25. TO BREAK THE ASSYRIAN,—that is, Sennacherib; for God crushed him in his own land, that is, in Judea. For the Prophet returns to his own times, and to Sennacherib, already pressing upon the city, of whom he treated earlier and afterwards: that the Jews, seeing that Isaias had truly foretold the destruction of Sennacherib, might also believe that what he had foretold of the Babylonians and others, long afterwards, would be true and would truly come to pass. Some others understand by the Assyrian Holofernes: for he, sent by Nabuchodonosor, who reigned in Assyria, namely in Ninive, was crushed in the mountains of Israel near Bethulia with his whole army, when his head was cut off by the heroine Judith.