Commentaria in Isaiam
Others think that the counsellors here speak of themselves, as though they, having received their wisdom from their ancestors, were proclaiming their royal lineage before Pharao, and thus winning authority with him; for, as St. Jerome says, the Egyptians think the founders of their race to be heroes and gods, namely that they boast to be sprung not from royal but from divine seed; hence the Septuagint translate: How say ye to the king, We are sons of the wise? So St. Jerome, Cyril, St. Thomas and Hugh. Truly the Satirist says: “Look not to the trappings and the empty names of the Catos.” And again: “Birth, and ancestors, and what we ourselves have not done: scarcely do I call these our own.” It is a great thing to be noble, not to seem so; to live nobly, not to be born so; to be noble not by nation, not by family, but by virtue and deeds.
13. THEY HAVE DECEIVED EGYPT, THE CORNER OF THE PEOPLES THEREOF.—A corner, because in a building it holds the chief place and holds and binds together both walls; hence it is used metaphorically by the Hebrews for a prince, who binds and holds the people by his laws, and is the firmament, pillar and ornament of the kingdom and commonwealth. So Christ is called “made the head of the corner,” and the corner stone of the Church, Psalm 117:22, and Matthew 21:42. So the members of the Swiss commonwealth are called Cantons, that is, corners.
The sense therefore is, as if to say: The counsellors deceived Pharao, saying that Egypt is the corner, that is, the chief of peoples, which excels the neighbouring peoples, and whose duty it is to hold them to their duty and peace, and to defend them against enemies; as if to say: It is thy part, O Pharao, to defend the Jews against Nabuchodonosor; this is thy title, this thy ancestral emblem; namely, Pharao is the corner of the peoples, Pharao is the defender and protector of the Jews and of the other neighbouring nations. This is their foolish counsel, of which he spoke in verse 11; for by this means they brought destruction on Pharao and Egypt; for they irritated and provoked the Chaldeans, and their most powerful and warlike king, who therefore invaded and laid waste Egypt. Others, as Leo Castrius, Arias and Lyranus, take this of the destruction of Egypt by the Romans. Hence Lyranus wittily says: “The corner, which is formed by two converging lines, is here called the union of Antony and Cleopatra.”
14. THE SPIRIT OF GIDDINESS,—by which the head is wont to be disturbed and turned, so that one thinks that everything he sees is whirling and revolving. The “spirit of giddiness” therefore is a spirit disturbed and erring. Hence the Chaldean and the Septuagint translate: the spirit of error. Hence our version soon explains, adding: “And they have caused Egypt to err in all its works,” as if to say: God blinded them, God overturned and made foolish their counsel; how God does this, I have said elsewhere.
15. AND THERE SHALL BE NO WORK TO EGYPT, THAT MAY MAKE HEAD OR TAIL.—Their works shall be imprudent, useless and harmful; so that there shall be no work of theirs “that may make,” that is, produce, a head, that is, an old and wise man; and a tail, that is, a vigorous and strong youth, who would carry out what the old and wise had prudently decreed.
Note the Hebraism: to make a head, that is, a prince, is to do the work of a prince, worthy of a prince, for which one may deserve to become or to be a prince, so that that work seems as it were itself to make the prince. Hence the Antiochene version has: There shall not be an Egyptian man who was chief (prince), nor tail, and in that day the Egyptian shall be like a woman, and shall be afraid at the hand of the mighty God. And the Arabic Alexandrian: There shall not be to the Egyptian a man whom he may appoint head and tail, first and last.
BOWING DOWN AND RESTRAINING.—This is the same as what went before, head and tail, as in the Arabic and Syriac already cited. Hence the Septuagint translate, beginning and end; as if to say: The work of the Egyptians will be imprudent, silly and mutilated, having neither head nor tail, beginning nor end. Hear St. Jerome: “The Lord,” he says, “mingled in the midst thereof the spirit of error, and they have caused Egypt to err in all its works, as a drunken man staggereth and vomiteth, who is drunk with vices; of which drunkards Joel speaks: Woe to you that are drunk without wine! And not only drunk but vomiting, with the poison of dragons and the incurable rage of asps, that after they have vomited out wine of this sort they may understand their drunkenness, and know that as long as they were drunk they had neither beginning nor end, that is, neither head nor tail, but a trunk, an animal at both ends. Hence the Septuagint and Symmachus translated ‘beginning and end’; Aquila, ‘bent and perverse,’ wishing the old men to be understood by the bent, and by the perverse the wanton boys who do everything perversely; and therefore the sense is that in Egypt not only is the head lacking and the tail, but both old men and boys, that is, both beginning and end. Youths and boys therefore are called perverse and restraining, because they are driven by the movements of the passions, which ought to be restrained.”
Pagninus and Vatablus translate this in the nominative, thus: Nor shall there be for Egypt a work that may do head or tail, branch or rush, and explain thus: “Neither magnates nor plebeians will do anything that profits the commonwealth, nor by their work or industry will Egypt be able to be freed from the Assyrians; the head and branch are men of the first rank; the tail and rush, plebeians and ignoble men.” See what was said on chapter 9, verse 14.
17. AND THE LAND OF JUDA SHALL BE A TERROR TO EGYPT,—as if to say: Even the very name of Juda shall be a terror to the Egyptians, because when they wished to help it, they received so great a defeat from the Assyrians. Hence Aquila for “terror” translated “one who looks about,” “who fearfully and trembling looks around, and dreads the approaching enemy,” as St. Jerome says and explains; secondly, St. Cyril: Juda, he says, shall be a terror to the Egyptians, because of Christ born of it, who would crush the idols of the Egyptians; thirdly, and best, Sanchez: Terror, he says, signifies reverence, religion, observance and admiration. Hence St. Jerome in his Commentary for “terror” translated “solemnity,” as if to say: The time will come when Egypt will receive Christian rites, and will then keep the same religion and the same feasts as the land of Juda, that is, the Church, which began in Sion and Juda; Zacharias, chapter 14, verse 16, explains it plainly. For here the Prophet passes from the defeat of Egypt to its restoration through Christ, as is his custom, to add comforting things to sad ones, and to conclude all the old deeds of the fathers with the consolation and redemption of Christ the deliverer; this is clear from what follows.
18. IN THAT DAY THERE SHALL BE FIVE CITIES IN THE LAND OF EGYPT.—Among those cities of Egypt one will be Heliopolis (that is, the city of the sun; because in it was a temple of the sun, whence it was dedicated to the worship of the sun, as of its god). This, says St. Jerome, is clear to have been done even to this day: for the city Ostracina and the others near Rhinocorura and Casium, which border on Judea, speak Syriac, and some think that neighbouring Syrians were transferred there by Nabuchodonosor. Secondly, more truly and clearly, these things were fulfilled in the time of Christ and of St. Mark, as will appear in verse 19. As if you should say: Egypt will receive the faith and worship of Christ, and will speak piously and Christianly, as the Apostles and other Jews converted to Christ speak. So St. Cyril and others generally. He numbers five cities, because there were five principal cities, and as it were metropolises, in Egypt, which Ezechiel names, chapter 30, namely Memphis, Tanis, Alexandria, Bubastus and Heliopolis. Above the others he names Heliopolis, which lies between Alexandria and Coptus, both because at Heliopolis the worship of the sun and the gods flourished, whence it was the city of the priests, as Strabo testifies, book 17; wherefore it most of all at first resisted the Gospel of Christ; and because, subdued by Christ and the Apostles, it was as devoted to Christ as it had been to the sun and idols, and Christian religion and monastic life wonderfully flourished in it. Hence Heliopolis, and its monasteries and monks, are so often mentioned in Palladius, Ruffinus and others.