Commentaria in Isaiam
Chapter 19
He foretells the defeat of Egypt, on account of the dissensions of its inhabitants and the proud and foolish counsels of its princes, by which they led Pharao into war and disaster. Then he foretells the salvation and blessing which Christ shall bring to Egypt, so that Egyptians and Assyrians, together with the Jews, shall embrace Christ and the Church.
1. The burden of Egypt. Behold the Lord will ascend upon a swift cloud, and will enter into Egypt, and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst thereof. 2. And I will make the Egyptians rise up against the Egyptians: and they shall fight, every one against his brother, and every one against his friend, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom. 3. And the spirit of Egypt shall be broken in the inner parts thereof, and I will cast down their counsel: and they shall consult the idols, and their diviners, and them that have familiar spirits, and the soothsayers. 4. And I will deliver Egypt into the hand of cruel masters, and a strong king shall rule over them, saith the Lord the God of hosts. 5. And the water of the sea shall be dried up, and the river shall be wasted and dry. 6. And the rivers shall fail: the streams of the banks shall be lessened and dried up. The reed and the bulrush shall wither away. 7. The channel of the river shall be bare from its fountain, and every thing sown by the water shall dry up, it shall wither away, and shall be no more. 8. And the fishers shall mourn, and all that cast a hook into the river shall lament: and they that spread nets upon the waters shall be brought to languish away. 9. They shall be confounded that wrought in flax, combing and weaving fine linen. 10. And the places of its watering shall be dried up: all that made pools to take fishes shall be in grief of soul. 11. The princes of Tanis shall become fools, the wise counsellors of Pharao have given foolish counsel: how will you say to Pharao: I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings? 12. Where are now thy wise men, let them tell thee, and shew what the Lord of hosts hath purposed upon Egypt. 13. The princes of Tanis are become fools, the princes of Memphis are decayed, they have deceived Egypt, the corner of the people thereof. 14. The Lord hath mingled in the midst thereof the spirit of giddiness: and they have caused Egypt to err in all its works, as a drunken man staggereth and vomiteth. 15. And there shall be no work to Egypt, that may make head or tail, that may bow down or refrain. 16. In that day Egypt shall be like unto women, and shall be astonished and afraid, because of the moving of the hand of the Lord of hosts, which he shall move over it. 17. And the land of Juda shall be a terror to Egypt: every one that shall remember it shall be afraid of it in himself, because of the counsel of the Lord of hosts, which he hath determined over it. 18. In that day there shall be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Chanaan, and swear by the Lord of hosts: one shall be called the city of the sun. 19. In that day there shall be an altar of the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a monument of the Lord at the borders thereof: 20. It shall be for a sign, and for a testimony to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt. For they shall cry to the Lord because of the oppressor, and he shall send them a saviour and a defender to deliver them. 21. And the Lord shall be known by Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day, and shall worship him with sacrifices and offerings: and they shall make vows to the Lord, and perform them. 22. And the Lord shall strike Egypt with a scourge, and shall heal it, and they shall return to the Lord, and he shall be appeased towards them, and heal them. 23. In that day there shall be a way from Egypt to the Assyrians, and the Assyrian shall enter into Egypt, and the Egyptian to the Assyrians, and the Egyptians shall serve the Assyrian. 24. In that day shall Israel be the third to the Egyptian and the Assyrian: a blessing in the midst of the land, 25. Which the Lord of hosts hath blessed, saying: Blessed be my people of Egypt, and the work of my hands to the Assyrian: but Israel is my inheritance.
1. THE BURDEN OF EGYPT.—Mystically, St. Bernard, in his discourse On the Burden of Egypt, sermon 5, thus philosophizes:
“Egypt is interpreted darkness. There are, however, darknesses of ignorance, and of iniquity. Come, brethren, this burden is not light, which we bear from the ignorance of our blindness, not knowing in many things what is expedient, what we should praise, what disapprove; so that we often call evil good, and good evil. But neither do we know what to pray for as we ought, and in the light of the Scriptures we walk as in the night.” BEHOLD THE LORD WILL ASCEND UPON A SWIFT CLOUD.—“Those, therefore, who are such are burdened by Egypt, but are not burdened with Egypt, that is, with those who are Egypt and darkness, children of darkness, of whom the Lord says in the Gospel: Every one that doth evil hateth the light. And the Apostle: They that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that are drunk, are drunk in the night.”
This is said symbolically and poetically; for Poets, to signify the speed and heavenly majesty, the strength, battle and victory of God, are wont to represent God as carried by the clouds, sitting and riding upon the clouds, as though thence he hurls storms, winds, hail and thunders against his enemies, if he will. So the Psalmist does, Psalm 17:14. Hence St. Athanasius, in his book On the Incarnation of the Word, reads: upon a light cloud. Secondly, a “swift cloud” signifies the swiftest army of the Assyrians, of whom God was as it were the captain and leader, who sent them against the Egyptians most swiftly and mightily, so that like a dense cloud they might hurl thunderbolts, that is, darts and arrows, against the Egyptians and strike them down. So St. Jerome, St. Thomas, Haymo, Hugh and Lyranus. Egypt was laid waste both by Sennacherib, as will appear in the next chapter, and by Nabuchodonosor, as Jeremias foretold, chapter 46, and Ezechiel, chapter 30.
The Assyrians shall plunder and ravage the temples, and the golden and silver gods of the Egyptians, and shall lead them away captive with the Egyptians to Babylon, as Jeremias says, chapter 43, verse 12.
Allegorically, St. Cyril, Jerome, Procopius, Theodoret here, Eusebius in book 2 of the Demonstratio Evangelica, chapter 4, St. Athanasius, Augustine, Bernard, and others whom Leo Castrius cites, say: Christ shall come in a light cloud, or, as Aquila translates, in a light thickness, that is, in a body conceived of the Holy Ghost of the holy Virgin Mary; for as a cloud is generated of the breath and vapour of the earth, so the body of Christ was formed of the Holy Ghost and earthly substance, the deity tempering the sun; on which cloud Christ as a boy was borne, fleeing Herod into Egypt, as it were bringing forth rain, that is, spiritual doctrine, with which a little after he rained upon Egypt so many holy shoots of Monks, and so many illustrious flowers of the Church of Alexandria under St. Mark and thereafter.