Commentaria in Isaiam
Third, these old sacrifices at the time of Christ displeased God; because through Christ, slain by the Jews, they were wholly abolished, rejected and made deadly. For that Isaias also looks to Christ, St. Cyprian, book 1 Against the Jews, chapter 16, Cyril, Basil, Procopius, Dionysius and Leo Castrius teach, who accuses those who deny it almost of Jewish perfidy.
THE HOLOCAUSTS OF RAMS, etc., I DESIRE NOT.—For the causes already said: to which St. Jerome, Cyril and Rupert add another, namely that God did not will the old sacrifices in themselves, because they did not please him ex opere operato, as the sacrifices of the new law please, but ex opere operantis, which was lacking here: for the operators or offerers were themselves impious. And they add that the old sacrifices were prescribed by God to the Jews not because they were pleasing to God, or because God desired them, but that by them he might call away the people occupied with them from the sacrifices of the Gentiles and of idols: on which matter I have spoken in Leviticus, in the Preface.
12. WHO HATH REQUIRED THESE THINGS AT YOUR HANDS, THAT YOU SHOULD WALK IN MY COURTS?—Repeat: who required. In walking, in my judgment you do nothing else than tread the courts and wear down the pavement: this I do not require, indeed I think that in this way the holy things are rather trodden on and polluted than adorned and honored: for the court before the Holy and the Holy of holies was the temple both of the people and of the priests: for these burned their victims in the open court.
of the Church, golden and silver, which he called abominable, whereas they are angelic. For Angels were seen by St. John, Apocalypse 8, 4, and elsewhere more often, with censers, burning incense to God in them.
THE NEW MOONS, AND THE SABBATHS, AND OTHER FESTIVALS I WILL NOT ABIDE.—In Hebrew chodesh, in Greek neomenia, in Latin novilunium, or calends, as follows: namely the first day of each month (for the Hebrews used lunar months, and reckoned them from one new moon to another), which was celebrated and festal both with sacrifices and with the sounding of trumpets, as I said on Numbers 28, 11. Other feasts were those of Pasch, Pentecost, Tabernacles, Trumpets, Atonement, of which I spoke on Leviticus 23. For the same cause God rejects the feasts of the Jews as the sacrifices, namely because, as follows, YOUR ASSEMBLIES ARE WICKED.—In Hebrew, atsara, that is, your assembly and iniquity, that is, equally iniquity, that is, it is as most iniquitous as most numerous; your assemblies are most iniquitous, because namely they are assemblies of impious men obstinate in sins. Again, because you come together not so much to sacrifice as to feast, drink and revel: for in the court the laity feasted on the peace offerings. Hence beautifully St. Chrysostom: “To spend feasts in wantonness,” he says, “is to turn propitiation into guilt”; and St. Augustine, book On the Ten Strings: “The Jew,” he says, “would do better to do something useful in his field than to stand idle in the theatre; and their women would do better on the Sabbath to spin wool than all day to dance shamelessly at their new moons.”
Properly atsara, that is, the feast of the assembly and collection, was the eighth and last day of the unleavened bread or Pasch, and the eighth of the feast of Tabernacles: for on that day the people, about to return home as the feasts were now finished, assembled first in the temple to give thanks to God and to take leave, and hence this day was called the day of assembly or collection, as I said on Leviticus 23, 36.
The Septuagint render, fast and idleness, which St. Jerome explains, as if to say: That fast does not please God which has idleness of good works, that is, which is empty of good works. Sanchez, however, thus: as if to say: Your fast is idle, because though laborious, it is useless: for things which lack honest usefulness, however much they wear out the worker with fatigue, are idle.
13. INCENSE IS AN ABOMINATION TO ME.—“Incense,” that is, victims burned and consumed for me: for of these was the discourse, and they are called incense or burning or a thing burned; because they were offered to God by fire, as I said in Leviticus. Second, however, “incense” can properly be taken for thymiama; for they sacrificed it equally with victims and burned it on the altar of incense; which though in itself aromatic and pleasant to the nostrils, yet from the fact that coming from the filthy hands of the impious it acquired a stench, it breathed up something heavy and foul to the nostrils of God. Wherefore Wolfgang Musculus ineptly and impiously here twists these words of Isaias against the incensings that are made in the Mass, and against the censers
14. YOUR CALENDS (new moons), etc., MY SOUL HATH HATED.—God properly has no soul, as neither body. But his deity, which is the purest spirit, is called “soul” by anthropopathy.
THEY ARE BECOME TROUBLESOME TO ME.—The Septuagint render: You have become to me a surfeit, I will no more forgive your sins, as if to say: I will cast out or vomit you with your sins, as a stomach full of harmful food is relieved by vomiting.
15. AND WHEN YOU STRETCH FORTH YOUR HANDS (when with outstretched hands in tribulation you flee to me, and implore my help), I WILL TURN AWAY MY EYES FROM YOU.—For your prayers smell of a foul soul, from which they are formed and poured forth. The cause follows:
FOR YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD.—“Blood,” that is, shedding of blood and murders, as if to say: You are bloodthirsty, cruel for vengeance, keen for hatreds, for violence and rapine: for all these are the beginning and commencement of murder, and are therefore rightly signified by blood.
Second, “blood,” that is, crimes. Where note that blood in the Prophets is a symbol of sin, as is plain at verse 18, and Osee 4, 2: “Blood hath touched blood,” that is, they heap sins upon sins, as the Chaldee explains, and St. Jerome and St. Gregory, book 11 of the Morals, chapter 6: “Blood,” he says, “touches blood, when fault heaps fault.”
Both because the shedding of blood or murder is a most grievous sin; and because the eating of blood was forbidden and detestable to the Jews, Leviticus 7, 27; and finally because nothing is more unclean and virulent than menstrual blood, as I said on Leviticus 15, 25. In like manner the sins of men, above all the carnal, such as gluttony and lust, are most unclean, and corrupt the mind equally with the blood and flesh. Rightly therefore Christ ruled: “Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God”; because these are corrupted in themselves by original sin, and are more and more corrupted day by day by actual sins.
Finally Tertullian and Cyprian, and Leo Castrius, refer these words to the Jews crucifying Christ and crying out: “His blood be upon us, and upon our children.”
16. WASH YOURSELVES, BE CLEAN, etc.—Thus far by threats he has terrified the impious Jews: now lest they despair he invites them to penance, and gives hope of reconciliation, and teaches its manner; he says therefore: “Wash yourselves,” not with water, not with your frequent baptisms: for these cleanse the legal filth of the body, not of the mind: but wash and purify your heart from pride, gluttony, hatred, envy, and other evil thoughts, desires and plots; for it is for this reason that Jews and Gentiles as well as Christians, about to sacrifice, wash their hands, that they may be admonished first to wash away the vices of the soul. On which matter see what is said on 1 Timothy 2, 8. Hearing these words and exhortations of Isaias, “Wash yourselves, be clean, etc.,” read in church, a certain fornicator, pricked in conscience, was converted, and wholly changed his unchaste life into a chaste one. Whence St. Paul, the disciple of St. Anthony, having seen him before, when entering the church, dark and clouded, drawn and ruled by demons with a bridle put in his mouth, and his holy angel following sadly from afar: now saw him going out with bright face and white body, and the demons following him from afar, but his holy angel near him, joyous and exceedingly glad, as Rufinus relates, book 3, in the Lives of the Fathers.
Tropologically, to those who are initiated by baptism it is said: Wash yourselves, be clean, says St. Clement, book 8 of the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 8.
CEASE TO DO PERVERSELY (you have put on the worst habits, you have grown used to drunkenness, quarrels, hatreds, frauds, rapine, etc., now unlearn those, lose the habit of them, and gradually put on the contrary good habits), LEARN TO DO WELL.—“The whole religion of Christians is to live without crime and without stain,” says Lactantius, book 5, chapter 9, and Mercurius Trismegistus: “The only worship of God is not to be evil.”