Commentaria in Isaiam
Indeed here at Rome, in the palace of the Pontiff in the Vatican, I have seen the figure of a sleeping lion with this inscription: Sleeping, he watches.
Again, of all animals with curved claws the lion alone sees as soon as he is brought forth into the light; hence he is called by Plutarch a solar animal. So the Egyptians, says Horus Apollo, Hieroglyphics 19: “To show a watchful and diligent man, or even a guardian, they paint the head of a lion; for the lion closes his eyes when he watches and keeps them open when he sleeps, which is a sign of guard and watch. For this reason they have painted lions on the gates of temples to stand as guards.” The Septuagint keep the Hebrew arie, that is, lion, as a proper name; hence others, reading with different points, translate: call Urias to the watchtower of the Lord, as though the watchman were here called Urias, and were Christ, who is called Urias, that is, light of the Lord, says St. Jerome.
UPON THE WATCHTOWER OF THE LORD I AM. As if to say: I, Isaias, am the watchman and Prophet of the Lord, already named, who, according to the demands of the office committed to me, keep watch night and day continually, that I may receive the word of the Lord and look forward to things to come, and announce them to others, as watchmen in a watchtower and sentinels at their posts announce the coming of soldiers and enemies to the citizens.
Morally, let preachers and leaders of the faithful, and the faithful themselves, learn here to watch for coming and future dangers and calamities. This most vigilant watchman heard: “Babylon is fallen, is fallen, my threshing, and the children of my floor”; that is, Babylon, and you Babylonians, children of the floor on which the threshing is done, all of you are to be threshed. Let us likewise foresee, as from a watchtower, the ruin of the wicked and their eternal punishment, and look to the wonderful threshing that will take place in the valley of Josaphat and at death, and beware of it. Hence Christ warns, Matthew 24:42: “Watch ye, therefore, because you know not at what hour your Lord will come.” St. Ambrose, book 5 On the Faith, chapter 8: “We do not know,” he says, “the sure moments of the future judgment, so that, always as men set on the watch and placed on a kind of watchtower of virtue, we may turn away from the habit of sinning, lest the day of the Lord find us among our vices.” Peter Chrysologus, sermon 23: “No one is ignorant,” he says, “that vigils are salutary for all things; to watch more is to live more; for what is more like death than the look of one asleep? The king, ever awake, guards against the snares of the enemy; the soldier by careful night watching repels nocturnal attacks; the sailor by watching enters uncertain ways; the shepherd adds nights to days, lest any occasion be given to wolves to prey upon the flock; the wise traveller, in the breezes of the night, forestalls the heat of the sun.” So you also, O Christian, who are soldier, sailor, shepherd and traveller to heaven, keep watch! The spouse, Canticles 5:2, says: “I sleep, and my heart watcheth”: the mind sleeps that prepares itself for judgment; it sleeps, I say, to perishable things and the trifles of the world, but watches to eternal things. In the same book, chapter 3, verse 7: “Threescore valiant ones surround the bed of Solomon, because of fears in the night.” John, Apocalypse 4, sees animals full of eyes before and behind: so it becomes Christians to be Argus-eyed and hundred-eyed, lest death and judgment oppress them sleeping. For so Isboseth, that is, the man of confession, was struck in his sleep by death and thrown down to hell, 2 Kings 4. So Holofernes, sleeping, was overcome by the watching Judith, chapter 13. Sisara, the general of the army, was lulled to sleep with a draught of milk by the woman Jahel and slain, Judges 4. Samson, overcome by sleep, was shorn by Dalila and stripped of his strength, Judges, chapter 16. From the sleeping Saul David took away the spear and the cup, 1 Kings 26. Therefore think continually on that saying: “The life of mortals is a vigil.” Be watchful, then, and watch always with St. Vigilius. Say with Isaias: “O God, my God, to thee do I watch at the break of day.”
9. BEHOLD, HERE COMES A MAN RIDING ON A TWO-HORSE CHARIOT. Here the watchman announces what he has seen, and roars like a lion, crying: I see the Persian ranks coming and bursting into the city; I see Babylon overthrown by them, falling and going down. Note “rider,” that is, riders, that is, two horsemen, namely Darius and Cyrus. So we commonly say, The soldier or horseman is at hand, meaning soldiers or horsemen are at hand: “A man,” that is, any one of them (for the Hebrew isch, that is, man, is distributive, and means the same as anyone, whichever you like), sits in his “two-horse chariot of horsemen,” that is, equestrian and warlike, in which horsemen fight either from the chariot itself or from its horses, asses or camels; for there are other chariots, rural and for burdens, which are for carrying loads and goods, not for fighting. Hence the Hebrew is, behold, a chariot, or two-horse chariot, of men comes, a chariot, I say, of a pair of horsemen. So Vatablus: a two-horse chariot, that is, two chariots, and two chariots of two horsemen. Our Interpreter, for recheb, that is, chariot, read rocheb, that is, rider or horseman.
It could, secondly, be that “rider” is taken properly in the singular, to denote Cyrus alone, who finished this war; he is called the man of the two-horse chariot of horsemen because he came against Babylon with the joined army of two nations, namely the Medes and the Persians. For although in verse 7 he put two horsemen, namely Darius the uncle of Cyrus, a man of sixty, and Cyrus himself, yet here he puts Cyrus alone, who was a young man, spirited and warlike, and who alone, as it were, carried this matter through.
AND HE ANSWERED. That is, the watchman Isaias answered, that is, cried out of his own accord; for no one here asks him. So Christ is often said in the Gospel to have answered, that is, to have spoken, to have begun to speak.
BABYLON IS FALLEN, IS FALLEN. “Troy fell from her lofty height”; Babylon was utterly cast down: for this is what the doubling of the word “is fallen” signifies. As a type of this, the city of Rome, which at the end of the world will return to idolatry, is called Babylon, and is said to be destined for devastation, Apocalypse 17:2, says Francis Ribera in the same place. For in Babylon there is here expressed a type of the overthrow, both of the world and of its king the devil, through the faith and grace of Christ, and most of all of the city and the world at the end of the age.
10. MY THRESHING, AND THE CHILDREN OF MY FLOOR. “Threshing” is the same as children of the floor, that is, wheat and grain beaten out by threshing on the floor (so arrows are called “daughters of the quiver,” Lamentations 3:13); so he calls either Babylon, or rather, as St. Jerome says, Jerusalem and the Jews, who were threshed, trodden, worn down and reduced to a few by the Assyrians and Chaldeans. Hence the Septuagint translate, forsaken and sorrowing, as if to say: I will not thresh the Babylonians, but crush and destroy them; but you, O Jews, who are my people, I will thresh, as corn is threshed on the floor; so that from a great heap of corn, the chaff winnowed away and the stalks and straw cast out, few grains remain, because they have been beaten out of them; so also you through so many calamities I will thresh, not to destroy but to prove and purify, and to store them like chosen grain in the granary of my Church and commonwealth. Moreover, “children of the floor” is plainly the same as what is threshed on the floor, by the usual idiom of the Orientals. So among the Arabs “son of the clouds” is rain, “son of the sheath” is the sword, “son of the lip” is speech, talk.