Commentaria in Isaiam
Arias Montanus asserts it; for Eliakim seems to be the same here as there; for in both places he is called the son of Helcias. Others deny it, because it would have been unsuitable and difficult for one and the same man to preside over the temple and the court: unless you say with Sanchez that this Sobna, Ezechias having heard this oracle of God, was deprived of the governorship of the temple which had been given him by the impious Achaz, and that Ezechias, lest he should seem to cast him off altogether, moved him from the temple to the court and made him his scribe. Moreover Josephus, book 10 of the Antiquities, chapter 1, Abulensis on 4 Kings 18, question 33, and from them Tornielli in the year of the world 3322, hold that both Eliakim and Sobna in Isaias are different from Eliakim and Sobna, of whom 4 Kings 18:18 and 19:4, because, they say, these in Isaias were priests; those in the books of Kings were laymen. For Sobna was the scribe, and Eliakim was governor of the house, namely the royal one, that is, royal procurator, as Josephus says.
16. What dost thou here?—what doest thou in the temple of God? O Sobna, O profane man! as if to say: Thou art unfit and unworthy of this place.
Or as if somebody here?—As if to say: He who thinks himself to be someone and great, when he is nobody, thinks himself a shepherd and governor, and therefore hews out for himself a magnificent sepulchre as an eternal monument of himself, when he is only the mask and shadow of a shepherd, where there is a hendiadys, as if to say: O shepherd! not a shepherd, but an idol and image of a shepherd, thou art feigned and painted.
17. Behold the Lord will cause thee to be carried away.—The Hebrews relate that Sobna, when he saw Sennacherib, Judea being stormed, threatening Jerusalem, fled to him with other Jews; but Sennacherib, having received the slaughter from the Angel, raged in indignation against the Jews, and chiefly against their prince Sobna, and then he was carried off to Nineveh, and suffered what Isaias here foretells. So they.
As a cock is carried away,—especially a castrated one, namely a capon, with wings and feet bound, to be sold in the market; for this sufficiently represents the miserable lot of Sobna and of the captives who were to be led away into Assyria. The Hebrew is gaber, that is, man; Vatablus renders it hero, as if he were so called, the glorious Sobna, who in the magnificence of his sepulchre and other things made himself equal to heroes and princes.
A cock, because such is he among hens. So it is said, “the he-goat himself the husband of the flock,” especially because the cock is pugnacious, vigilant, keen, imperious like a man. See Viegas on Apocalypse 2, comment 1, section 9, and Delrio, adage 750, who against Forerius prove exactly this.
He fitly compares the proud Sobna to a cock, who on his own dunghill among the hens struts proudly and lifts his comb; but conquered and captured he lowers his comb and his wings, especially when, bound, he is led to the market to be sold. For such was Sobna; perhaps it also marks the lewdness of Sobna, that he moved among his concubines as a cock among hens.
And as a garment he will lift thee up.—Garment, first, can be taken as an adjective, so that it is the same as clothed, covered, veiled, as if to say: And, with head veiled, he will lift thee from thy land, and lead thee away, as culprits condemned to death are wont to be led away with their forehead and eyes veiled: for so the faces of captives also were veiled, as is plain of Sedecias, Ezechiel chapter 12.
Secondly, garment can be taken as a noun, so that it is the same as vesture or cloak. Hence St. Jerome, Haymo, Adamus, Lyranus and others explain it thus: as if to say: As easily, O Sobna, will God expel thee from thy country and carry thee away, as one easily lifts a rolled-up cloak from the ground and carries it off.
Thirdly, Sanchez renders: he will make thee wander wandering; fourthly, the Syriac renders: forgetting he will forget thee; and the Arabic: blotting out shall be blotted out thy name, and the memory of thee, who wouldst make it eternal.
18. With a crowning he will crown thee with tribulation.—The Chaldee: he will take away from thee the tiara, and enemies shall surround thee like a wall; the Septuagint: he will take away thy glorious robe and crown, as if to say: In place of the crown and pontifical tiara he will crown thee, that is, surround thee on every side, with tribulation and ignominy.
Secondly, Vatablus and Forerius render: winding about he will wind thee with a bandage, and like a top will cast thee into a spacious land, as if to say: O Sobna, who wast clothed with a diadem, that is, a fillet of fine linen, now he will whirl thee like a fillet, so that like a globe or ball thou mayest easily be whirled by the Assyrians, and turned and rolled into any part or region, and nowhere stand fixed and sure; whence it follows:
As a ball he will toss thee into a large country—as if to say: He will give thee the form of a ball, which is easily rolled over a wide field and thrown farther; for like a ball I will cast thee into distant Assyria, into exile. For ball Vatablus has top; others render globe. For the Hebrew dur signifies everything round and revolving.
Lyranus notes that a ball is tossed by players from hand to hand; others, that it is wont also to be thrown very far and very easily. Arias adds that a ball is not held but struck back, and players strive above all that it may nowhere come to rest: thus there is indicated for Sobna a great wandering, an easy expulsion, a distant exile, a continual roaming, and a certain perpetual instability and vexation.
Morally, the ball signifies the fleeting life of men, subject to constant changes. For man is tossed hither and thither like a ball by God. Truly the Satirist says: “For the gods hold us as balls”; nay, the whole world is like a ball in the hand of God, who “plays in human affairs by divine power.” Does he not play with a ball when he throws crowns, sceptres, tiaras, empires now to this side, now to that? when he casts down the most powerful tyrants from the throne, and, raising grooms and swineherds from the dust, lifts them to monarchies? Why do I say a ball? God makes kingdoms pass away “as the foam upon the face of the water,” Osee 10:7; and, as Philo says in his book On the Immutability of God, human affairs, and even the most flourishing empires, are only a shadow and the lightest breeze, and go to and fro like the tides of the sea. So the Emperor Zeno, cast down from empire, said: “Man is the plaything of God.” See Delrio, adage 739.
There (in the large land, namely in Assyria, not in thy sepulchre, which thou hast splendidly hewn out for thyself) shalt thou die, and there shall be the chariot of thy glory, the shame of the house of thy lord,—understand: there it shall be, and shall be plain to all; or repeat “shall die,” as if to say: The ignominy of the temple, brought upon it by thee, shall die when thou art led away, and its former glory shall rise again. For good pontiffs are the honour, wicked ones the dishonour, of the temple. Wherefore let a bishop consider as said to himself the words of Pius, the Pontiff, who died a martyr in the year of Christ 163, in his epistle to Justus, Bishop of Vienne: “Let all thy people be protected by thy holiness.” Vatablus and others render: there shall be the chariot of thy glory, O Sobna, thou who art the ignominy, disgrace and reproach of the house of thy Lord.
20. And it shall come to pass in that day: I will call my servant Eliakim.—In the place of Sobna I will substitute the humble and pious Eliakim. When this was done is uncertain. Probable is what Sanchez says, that it was done before the coming of Sennacherib; for when he came, Ezechias sent to him Eliakim, governor of the house (of the temple), and Sobna the scribe. Eliakim therefore was already then governor of the temple in place of Sobna. Bellarmine too, book 1 On the Word of God, chapter 12, probably holds that this Eliakim is the one who in the time of Judith went round Juda and roused all to fight against Holofernes; for he was honoured by all, even by king Manasses, now returned from captivity and therefore penitent and pious, as a father. The reckoning of time favours it; for Manasses succeeded in the kingdom his father Ezechias, under whom were done those things which Isaias here says of Eliakim. Whence it follows that the victory of Judith over Holofernes happened under Manasses, after his captivity and penance. So also Serarius on Judith, chapter 4, question 2. Hence again some hold that in this chapter the subject is the disaster and captivity of Juda in the time of Manasses, when he with others was led bound to Babylon. For then together with him Sobna the pontiff was carried away, and Eliakim was put in his place, that sufficient authority of rule in the Church might be given him.
Allegorically, the old priesthood and pontificate failing, a new one succeeded through Christ, who is Eliakim, that is, God rising again. So St. Jerome and St. Cyril.