Commentaria in Isaiam
Secondly, he alludes to the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, where the temple was built; for there, as on his own floor, God winnowed out the chaff of the vices and errors of his people by his true law, doctrine and worship, and laid them up like grain beaten out and cleansed in his granary.
Morally, here and in Jeremias 51:33, and often elsewhere, threshing is the name for tribulation, and for the people or soul tried by it; for tribulation is so called from the tribula, with which the crops are pressed and threshed so that the grain may be beaten out. And the tribula is so called from rubbing, as if teribula, because it rubs the crops to beat out the grain. Learn, therefore, how useful tribulation is: it is a threshing, and makes us children of God’s floor, while it separates us from the chaff, so that we may say with St. Ignatius: “I am God’s wheat, and I am ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.” This is what the Wise Man says, chapter 3, verse 5: “Afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God hath tried them, and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace he hath proved them, and as a victim of a holocaust he hath received them, and in time there shall be respect had to them.” St. Augustine says beautifully on Psalm 61: “In the furnace,” he says, “the straw burns and the gold is purified; the one is turned to ashes, the other is stripped of its dross: the furnace is the world, the gold the just, the fire tribulation, the goldsmith God. What the goldsmith wills, therefore, I do; where the goldsmith puts me, I endure. I am bidden to endure; he knows how to purify. Though the straw burn to set me on fire and as it were consume me, it is turned to ashes, and I am rid of dross. Why? Because my soul shall be subject to God, for from him is my patience. Who is he to you, from whom is your patience? For he is my God, and my saviour, my protector; I shall not be moved.” The same again: “No servant of Christ,” he says, “is without tribulation; if you think you have no persecutions, you have not yet begun to be a Christian.” The same elsewhere: “The scourge,” he says, “within and without glorifies the sinner, compels the unwilling, instructs the ignorant, guards the runner, protects the weak, rouses the sluggish, and leads on to death the one who lives always.” The same, On the Barbarian Times, chapter 3, volume 9: “If you are gold, why do you fear the fire? If you are wheat, why do you fear the threshing sledge? You will not appear in the ear as you were before unless the sledge in crushing has separated the chaff from you; if you are oil, why do you fear the pressure of the press? Your quality will not be made plain unless the weight of the stone also presses upon you.”
11. THE BURDEN OF DUMA. The Septuagint: the burden of Idumea, which is called Edom or Idumea from its father, the red one, and Seir from the same, the hairy one.
The Jews trifle when for Duma they read Rome, as though the Romans were descended not from Aeneas and Troy but from Esau and the Idumeans, so that whenever there are prophecies against the Idumeans, they are prophecies against the Romans. St. Jerome laughs at this here and elsewhere.
Note: Proper names often suffer loss of the first letter: thus Idumea is called Duma, Jerusalem is called Salem, Abraham is called Ram, Job 32:2; Benjamin is called Jemini; for the son of Jemini is the same as the Benjamite, as the Septuagint translate. And Cajetan, on Judges 3, says this is beyond doubt among the Hebrews; so Adeodatus the Bethlehemite is called in Hebrew Lemites, 1 Paralipomenon 20:5, as St. Jerome notes there in the Hebrew Traditions.
So the Belgians commonly shorten proper names, saying for Nicolaus Glaes, for Elisabeth Lysbet, for Joannes Jan, for Dorothea Door, for Sebastianus Bastiaen, for Coelia Celie.
Mystically St. Bernard, On the Burden of Duma, sermon 7, comments thus: “Duma is interpreted silence. You know, brethren, that silence burdens many, and quiet weighs on them, so that to those who keep silent and rest all things are a burden; the head aches, the belly rumbles, the eyes grow dim, and the reins are nearly loosed; but to those who go out, wander hither and thither and speak, all things are pleasant, sorrows are given over to forgetfulness, and to each of the members its office is restored. O how great is the power of the tongue, which clears the eyes, lightens the head, strengthens the reins, and gives firmness to the loosened knees! It makes the weak untiring in labours, patient in injuries, ready for a journey, prompt to obey. So if you see a monk sitting in the cloister looking about here and there, yawning often, stretching his hands and feet, now laying down a book, now taking it up again, and at last, as if driven by goads, running about from place to place, from lecture-room to lecture-room, do not doubt that he sighs under the burden of Duma. There is, besides, another kind of silence, which lays an eternal weight upon many. It is the silence which, springing from shame and confusion, shuts up the confession of sins, or shuts out their remission; for what burden such a silence deserves, the prophetic word does not keep silent.”
HE CRIETH TO ME FROM SEIR (the Plantin editions wrongly read, king of Seir, as is clear from the Hebrew, the Greek and the Roman texts). The sense is, as if to say: I, Isaias, seem to be set by God as a watchman, to see the terror and tumult of war, and to hear the Idumeans, thrown into consternation by the coming of Nabuchodonosor, anxiously asking their sentinels: WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT? that is, what have you seen or perceived of the enemy? or rather, “what of the night?” that is, what hour of the night is it? For in this fear and dread we anxiously wait for day and light; at night even silence itself frightens, especially where danger threatens from the enemy or from elsewhere. So the Belgians and Germans commonly say: what is of the day? that is, what hour of the day is it? what is of the night? that is, what hour of the night is it? So Adam. Others, as if to say: “What of the night?” that is, how will this our night, that is, our affliction and danger, end? Will it be perpetual, or turn into light?
12. THE MORNING COMETH, AND THE NIGHT. First, some explain it thus, as if the watchman answered: The morning indeed is dawning, but the night will last for us, that is, the affliction and calamity threatening from the enemy.
Secondly, others, as if to say: Morning and night you ask over and over, “Watchman, what of the night?” Go on, as often as you please, going and returning ask the same thing, deafen my ears by asking the same; for you ask in vain, you waste your labour, it is all over with you, you must perish. So Vatablus. It is as if the watchman in impatience repeated, and flung back in the face of the importunate what they had so often asked, and said: “The morning cometh, and the night, it cometh, it cometh.”
Thirdly, Sanchez, as if to say: Why do you, like children, ask so often morning and night, “Watchman, what of the night?” and meanwhile do not take arms, do not draw up your ranks, to resist the enemy? For the enemy is to be repelled not by wailing and asking, but by swords and fighting. Hence he adds: “If you ask, ask,” and if you ask and inquire, inquire of the watchman by what way and plan the enemy is to be met, with what defences the city is to be fortified, what arms are to be used; and then at last come equipped with fitting arms, not with soft and womanish wailing; so we commonly say: “Do what you are doing: do it,” that is, in earnest and vigorously.