Commentaria in Isaiam
17. SEEK JUDGMENT.—Inquire which of the litigants’ cause is just: do not, on account of gifts, favors or fear, precipitate or pervert the sentence. This verse pertains to judges, advocates, procurators and the like: for if these are avaricious and unjust, they pervert all laws and the commonwealth itself. Whence follows:
RELIEVE THE OPPRESSED, JUDGE FOR THE FATHERLESS, DEFEND THE WIDOW. AND COME, AND ACCUSE ME, SAITH THE LORD.—Behold here God requires for reconciliation and justification not faith alone, as heretics will have it, but also works by which they dispose themselves for it, as if to say: If you have performed these works, and by them seriously testify your true contrition, penance and amendment, accuse me of infidelity and inconstancy if I do not receive you into favor, if I do not do you good, if I do not perform what follows. For “accuse” the Hebrew is nochecha, that is, let us dispute, let us contend, I with you of impiety and broken faith, if you persevere in sins; you with me of perfidy, unless I stand by my promises.
Note here the humanity of God, who descends to our judgments, and as it were disputes equal with equal. Hence he says in Isaias 43, 26: “Let us be judged together: tell, if thou hast anything.”
18. IF YOUR SINS BE AS SCARLET, THEY SHALL BE MADE AS WHITE AS SNOW: AND IF THEY BE RED AS CRIMSON, THEY SHALL BE AS WHITE AS WOOL.—If your sins be shall be, after the manner of crimson, bloody, that is, however enormous and horrible, they shall be wholly washed away. He alludes to the dress of harlots. For he calls Jerusalem “a harlot,” verse 21, for harlots formerly adorned themselves with scarlet and purple. Whence Plautus in the Poenulus:
A harlot ought rather to wear modesty than purple. Foul morals smear a fair adornment worse than mud.
Hence Babylon too, says St. Jerome, is called the purple-clad harlot, Apocalypse 17, 4. He compares sins to scarlet and purple for their bloody redness, not for the splendor of the same, say St. Cyril, Haymo, Rupert and others. Cajetan goes further, who thinks that by redness is signified the vengeance of God, by whiteness glory. Wolfgang Musculus plays the buffoon here when he thus explains: “If your sins be red as the sins of the Cardinals.” For sins are not here compared with sins, but with cloths dyed in scarlet: but these jesters know in Scripture only how to trifle and revile.
Note the Hebraism. Sins properly cannot be whitened; what he says, therefore, “Your sins shall be made white,” is the same as if he said: You sinners shall be cleansed and whitened from your sins. It is a metonymy, by which the quality is put for the person in whom the quality inheres; so in Leviticus 14 it is often said that the leprosy is cleansed, that is, the leper cleansed from the leprosy; and 3 Kings 14: “As dung is wont to be cleansed,” that is, a house from dung. St. Basil reads from the Septuagint: If your sins be as phoeniceum, and thinks that sins are here compared to elephantiasis and leprosy; for these diseases are called by the Greeks phoinix, because they are of a red color like the palm, which is called phoinix, says Galen: for sin is the leprosy of the soul, says St. Basil. But the Hebrew shani signifies not leprosy but crimson.
Note: Coccus is a dyeing grain which grows on a certain shrub, of which Pliny, book 9, chapter 12, and book 16, chapter 8, and Dioscorides, book 4, chapter 48. In this grain is born a certain little worm, small, reddish and fragrant, which, coming out of the grain, is sprinkled with strong white wine, dried and crushed into a powder for dyeing, and red cloths, which are thence called crimson or scarlet: just as with the blood of a fish, which is called purple, cloths are dyed and are called purple. Moreover this color, especially repeated, or twice-dyed (dibaphus), is lasting, bright and radiant. Whence Silius, book 17:
But Scipio on the other side shone with burning scarlet. As if to say: If with your sins the first white robe of innocence you have foully stained as with red spots of blood, and have moreover dyed others in the same way as with the worm of scarlet; do penance, change your life, do good works, and soon all your sins shall grow white like snow and wool, that is, shall be wholly washed away and forgiven, and for the dye of wickedness, says Chrysostom, you shall receive again the first white and splendid robe of grace and justice. Observe here: If wool has once drunk the scarlet dye, it cannot be washed out and whitened by nature: but God wholly purifies the soul that has drunk in sins, so that no scar or trace of sin remains, which in healing a wound no physician can do, says St. Chrysostom, homily 80 to the People.
Tertullian explains this otherwise in Scorpiace, chapter 11, and from him Leo Castrius tenaciously: The stains of the soul, he says, are made white by scarlet (Tertullian reads rosy) and the little worm, that is, by martyrdom or the blood of Christ, according to that of Apocalypse 7, 14: “These are they who have washed their robes, and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” But this sense does not suit this place and the letter: for here sins themselves are compared to crimson and the worm, not the blood of Christ or of martyrs.
OF THE LAND (Chanaan); for he speaks to Jews; by this, however, understand anagogically the land of the living in heaven. Whence Tertullian, book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter 26, explains this of the endowments of the glorified body, and (as he says) angelified, “you shall eat.”
20. BUT IF YOU WILL NOT, THE SWORD (of the Babylonians, and afterwards of the Romans, says St. Jerome) SHALL DEVOUR YOU.—Why then do heretics deny that there is free will in the sinner? For the sinner can at will wish and not wish to obey God, as Isaias says here (chapter 1, verse 20). Musculus and Calvin reply that the sinner does evil not indeed freely, but yet willingly, not by compulsion, and therefore is reproved and punished by God. But asses and brutes also act willingly; yet who is so stupid as to say to an ass, commanding: If you will and obey the orders of your master, you shall be feasted by him richly? who would punish it with threats and death for not obeying orders? For “sword” the Hebrew is chereb (a word of 3 consonants): but if you read it with other points, choreb, it will be dryness and barrenness, which is directly opposed to the fertility and abundance of the goods of the land. So Sanchez.
Symbolically, St. Justin, in his oration to Antoninus Pius, explains that saying of Isaias 1, “the sword shall devour you,” thus: The sword, he says, is the fire of Gehenna, of which those who do evil become the food; hence he says, the sword, that is, fire, shall devour you; otherwise he would have said: The sword shall cut you; for to devour belongs to fire, not to the sword.
21. HOW IS THE FAITHFUL CITY (said in the tone of one wondering and lamenting with grief) BECOME A HARLOT? (Jerusalem namely, which formerly was faithful to God, and as a spouse chastely kept faith with him, and clung to him alone; and thence was) FULL OF JUDGMENT, that is, had pious and just judges, and just tribunals: now “become a harlot,” turned to idols as to adulterers, and thence to frauds and injustices: whence JUSTICE DWELT IN IT, BUT NOW MURDERERS.—For harlot the Hebrew is zonah, which can be rendered innkeeper, tavern-keeper, one who makes gain from any source; and therefore receives any guests. For such was Jerusalem, which received into itself all the Gentiles and their vices and manners, especially frauds and injustices, as follows, so that the crimes of all nations, like a sort of flood, flowed into that common inn. So Sanchez. Second, for “dwelt” the Hebrew is jalin, that is, spent the night: the Septuagint ekoimeth, that is, slept, as if to say: Formerly justice rested softly and slept securely in Jerusalem, as in its own bed, now in it robbers and murderers sleep in quiet and without fear. Third, two capital vices, says Hieronymus Prado on Ezechiel 9, near the end, Isaias here charges the Jews with: first, harlotry and falling away from God their husband; second, murder. The first against the first table of the Decalogue, the second against the second: to the first he opposes faith, to the second justice, which two flourished in the noble city, while it kept both tables, that is, the whole law; Note here: Justice is the companion and effect of faith and true religion, as injustice is of infidelity and impiety: for those who do not keep faith with God, how will they keep it with men? Among heretics, therefore, prodigal of faith, there cannot be true justice, as neither true chastity.
22. THY SILVER IS TURNED INTO DROSS: THY WINE IS MIXED WITH WATER.—Faith, says Prado, he here calls “silver,” justice “wine”: which two he laments to be mixed and corrupted with dross and water, namely, first, in place of fidelity toward God, the filth of idols succeeding, in place of religion, superstition; second, in place of the wine of fervent charity and justice toward the neighbor, the water of dissolute liberty and boldness for every kind of fraud and crime succeeding. It is therefore a proverb, as if to say: “Thy silver is turned into dross,” or into dregs and froth, that is, the pure religion of God is turned into impure superstitions; “thy wine is mixed with water,” that is, thy justice is mixed with avarice and injustice.