Commentaria in Isaiam
Mystically, the Petra of the desert is the Virgin, who is a protection, like a rock, to those who are deserted by all help, says Hugh; for she more nearly than Ruth gave us this Lamb. See Viegas on Apocalypse 11, Commentary 3, section 24.
Finally, Christ was sent to Moab, that is, to the destruction of sin. So Alcazar on Apocalypse 14, note 1, where he contends that this is the literal sense; but from what has been said it is clear that it is the mystical sense.
2. AND IT SHALL BE: AS A BIRD.—The Prophet returns, after the parenthesis in which he briefly breathed and flew away to Christ, to the begun defeat and captivity of Moab. As if to say: The Moabites, beyond the river Arnon, where the boundaries of Moab are, shall be violently and swiftly led away to Babylon, and there dispersed, as birds flying from the nest are scattered when some plunderer invades the nest.
Do you wish to escape the calamity, O Moab, and to make God propitious to you and your protector? Take counsel of your own people, or rather of me; do, I say, what I suggest:
PUT AS NIGHT [THY SHADOW].—Symbolically, as noon and heat signify great affliction and calamity, because the sun burns most at noon, so shade and night signify its remedy, refuge and refreshment. Hence in chapter 4, verse 6, it is said: “And there shall be a tabernacle for a shade in the daytime from the heat.” The sense therefore is, as if to say: O Moabites, do you wish to be safe, do you wish to escape the hands of Nabuchodonosor? Do what I say: namely, receive humanely, cherish and protect your kinsmen and neighbours the Israelites, exiles and fugitives from their country, both from fear of Sennacherib and of other tyrants, and most of all because of the devastation by Nabuchodonosor, and render them the like in turn. For so Abraham, their father, received, helped and cherished Lot, your father, and freed him when he was taken by Chodorlahomor. Moreover, he demands a shadow as night, that is, a very dense shadow, as if he said: Let your welcome, piety and humanity not be light, narrow and brief, but copious, large and liberal. Tropologically, note here that the best remedy to escape impending affliction and the vengeance of God is mercy. Do you wish to escape misery? Be merciful to the miserable; do you wish to be received into heaven? Receive the stranger into your house: for “blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Hence St. Gregory Nazianzen says: “Be God to the afflicted, and in affliction you will find the Lord God,” and Daniel persuaded Nabuchodonosor, that he might escape the impending destruction: “Redeem thou thy sins with alms, and thy iniquities with works of mercy to the poor.”
So Lot received the Angels at Sodom into his house, thinking them to be strange men, and defended them as he could against the impudence of the Sodomites. Whence he was delivered by them and led out from the burning of Sodom, Genesis 19.
Rahab received the spies whom Josue had sent into Jericho, kept them faithfully and let them go. Hence her house alone was spared by the Hebrews in the destruction of Jericho, Josue 2 and 6.
The Sunamite woman received Eliseus as he passed by into her hospitality, and for that he obtained for her a son, and raised him when he was dead, 4 Kings 4.
Zachaeus, rejoicing, received Christ into his house, and therefore heard from him: “This day is salvation come to this house,” Luke 19.
St. Gregory relates, in book 3 of the Dialogues, chapter 11, that Cerbonius, bishop of Populonium, received into hospitality some soldiers passing through, hid them from the Goths who came upon them, and preserved their lives. When Totila, king of the Goths, heard of it, he ordered him to be thrown to bears before all the people, to be devoured by them. But the bear let loose upon him, forgetting its ferocity, with neck bent and head humbly lowered, began to lick the bishop’s feet: “That it might be plainly understood by all that toward that man of God the hearts of men were savage, and those of beasts as it were human.” Wherefore the people and the king himself were moved to veneration of him.
The same Gregory, in homily 23 on the Gospels, relates of a certain very hospitable man, who by hospitality deserved to receive Christ in his own person, from whom he heard in a vision: “On other days you received me in my members; yesterday you received me myself.”
St. Augustine relates, in the City of God, book 22, chapter 8, that a certain Innocentius, given to hospitality, was miraculously cured of a most dangerous wound.
Pope Leo IX was a man wonderfully hospitable, so that when once he found a leper before his door, he ordered him to be placed in his own bed; but when in the morning the doors were opened by the porter, the leper was nowhere to be found: it was believed that Christ, under the name of a poor man, had lain there. So Platina and others in his Life, about the year of the Lord 1050.
4. FOR THE DUST IS AT AN END.—Martin de Roa, a learned man, in book 4 of his Singularia, chapter 1, explains thus, as if to say: Thy wretched and base condition, O Moab, and thy mourning, are gone; servitude is driven away, and the enemy is gone, to whom thou wast forced to make supplication by sitting in the dust, or touching the ground and dust with thy forehead. For all these things are signified by dust among the Hebrews, Romans and Greeks; all in mourning sprinkled their heads with dust, or sat in it. But what follows shows that it is not a question here of the dust of Moab and her friends, but of Sennacherib and the enemies. For although the Prophet treats of the destruction of Moab, yet he remembers Sennacherib, who threatened Juda, because many out of Judea were to flee into Moab on his account. Isaias therefore warns the Moabites to receive them humanely, if they wish to deserve the grace and help of God. For if they are hard and unmerciful toward them, they will, for this sin and many others, their measure at length being full, experience the vengeance of God, and be devastated unmercifully likewise.
The sense therefore is, as if to say: Do not excuse thyself, O Moab, from receiving the fugitive Hebrews, by saying that thou fearest Sennacherib, or any other enemy and ravager of theirs, because he will shortly be ended and vanish.
will vanish like dust, and be swiftly and wretchedly consumed. “And a throne shall be prepared,” etc., that is, the old throne of the kingdom at Jerusalem shall be prepared for Ezechias, the just and good king, and for his posterity, that is, confirmed and strengthened through the mercy of God. So Adam and others.
Allegorically, this throne is that of King Christ, who judges the poor as well as the rich in judgment and justice, Psalm 88. Indeed Sanchez and others wish this sense concerning Christ to be the literal one; but it is truer and plainer that it is allegorical.
Note that by a Hebraism a mark of likeness, “as,” is to be understood; for thus this is to be explained: the destroyer is ended, as dust. Sennacherib and those like him are compared to dust: first, on account of the innumerable army, which seemed like sand or dust; secondly, because he was smitten by the Angel with a light stroke, just as by a light breath of wind all the dust is blown away and scattered, so that the ground appears solid and clean, as though swept with brooms.