Commentaria in Isaiam
THE WIDOW’S CAUSE COMETH NOT IN TO THEM.—Because they do not hope for bribes or favors from poor widows, they therefore do not take up to defend or judge their causes, but always put them after the richer; or, if they are compelled to judge the cause, they adjudge not to them but to the opposing party, because he is rich or a friend. Note here and at verse 17, how much care God has for widows and orphans, and commands that their right be rendered to them, and punishes those who oppress them.
Illustrious in this part was the Emperor Theophilus; for, as Cedrenus and Zonaras narrate, tome 3, in his Life: A certain general had despoiled a soldier of a notable horse; the soldier fell in battle; the general gave this horse to the Emperor Theophilus. The wife of the slain soldier, seeing the Emperor Theophilus riding to the Blachernae church as was his custom, mounted on her husband’s horse, at a quickened pace approached and seized the horse’s bridle, crying out that this was hers and no other’s, but that the Emperor himself had given the cause of her husband’s death. The terrified Emperor ordered her to stay until he returned to the palace, and on returning at once called her to him and inquired of the whole matter more carefully. When she had recited it from beginning to end, at once this general also is brought before him, and the woman being hidden by the Emperor’s order, he is sharply questioned about the horse. When he asserted that it had been his own, and not procured by seizure, the woman was brought out from behind the curtain, to convict the guilty man of violence. At the sight of her he was stunned, and stood mute for a time, and at last, coming to himself, fell suppliant at the Emperor’s feet weeping, and confessed his sin. Therefore the Emperor assigns his goods to the widow and her children by right of inheritance; and, stripping him of his rank, condemns him to perpetual exile.
Zonaras relates in the same place a like thing of the same Emperor: a woman hated Theophilus, and accused Petronas, the brother of the Empress, that he was building a house in her neighborhood so high that it obstructed her lights. Petronas, summoned by the Emperor, and asked what the woman said, replied that she was talking nonsense. Then the Emperor said: Take care that she does not appeal to me again about the same matter, which will not be to your good; and he ordered the woman to go to Petronas, and, unless the damage were repaired, to return to him. When she had done so, and had obtained nothing from Petronas, in despair she again appealed to the Emperor: he at once commanded certain senators to see whether damage was being done to the woman. They went at once, and reported the damage ascertained to the Emperor: who, going forward into the forum, and standing there in a certain place, ordered Petronas, stripped of his garments, to be scourged on back and breast, and what he had built to the woman’s injury to be destroyed, and the material and the ground itself to be assigned to the woman.
24. THEREFORE SAITH THE LORD THE GOD OF HOSTS.—Here Isaias begins properly to act the Prophet, to prepare the way to Christ, who will give a remedy for all the evils hitherto recounted. This part of the chapter is therefore joyful and consoling.
AH, I WILL COMFORT MYSELF OVER MY ADVERSARIES, AND I WILL BE REVENGED.—Forerius thinks that hoi, “alas,” is an interjection not of one grieving, but of one exulting, as if God said: I exult, because I shall receive consolation in the vengeance and destruction of the Jews my enemies. For in like manner he himself says, Ezechiel 5, 13: “I will accomplish my fury, and I will cause my indignation to rest in them, and I will take comfort”; and Deuteronomy 28: “And as the Lord rejoiced before upon you, doing you good, and multiplying you; so he will rejoice destroying you and bringing you to nought.” But properly the Hebrew hoi, and the Latin “alas,” is of one grieving, not of one exulting. By this word, therefore, God signifies: first, that he punishes sinners grieving and unwilling, so that he seems to depart from his own disposition and from himself. Second, that the punishment will be heavy. For so a physician groans when he sees a patient so ill that he must burn or cut. “A brave man then groans, when he composes himself to firmness,” says Cicero in the Tusculans; so wood-splitters, about to give a heavy blow, draw it forth with a groan and sigh. “Alas,” then, is of one grieving, “I will comfort myself” of one rejoicing: “I will comfort myself,” that is, I will be revenged: for the first half-verse, I will comfort myself over my enemies, is explained in Hebrew fashion by the second, when he adds, “and I will be revenged of my adversaries.” For men who have suffered injury are wont to rejoice and be consoled if they can avenge themselves on their enemies: so here God speaks of himself in human fashion, yet so as to signify that he, since he is most benign, far otherwise than men, against his will, grieving and groaning, descends to vengeance, though that be a consolation to his justice. Thus, then, God’s vengeance when he punishes, and justice, is mixed with clemency and mercy, and so the vengeance itself does not so much avenge as he sympathizes. Whence the Hebrew hoi, which afflicts God himself by anthropopathy; because God, unwilling and as it were grieving, punishes and afflicts the sinner: indeed the same affection is in God by which he avenges and punishes, and by which he sympathizes with the punished; and it is of one both grieving and rejoicing, and signifies both “alas” and “woe,” as the Septuagint render; because God receives with sorrow the solace which vengeance is wont to bring, truly a pious father even in judgment and chastisement. Add: this vengeance of God is supreme mercy; for by this chastisement he converts and amends the sinner, and makes him from an enemy a friend, from unjust just, from a bondman of the devil and hell a servant of God and heir of heaven. See Canon 46. Whence follows:
UNTIL IT BE PURE, AND I WILL TAKE AWAY ALL THY TIN.—Vatablus renders, I will purge thy dross as with soap. But dross is not wont to be purged with soap, and the Hebrew bor signifies not only soap but any thing that has the power of purging: bor also signifies pure, as our version plainly renders. Again Vatablus and the Hebrews refer this to Sennacherib, who besieged Jerusalem in the 14th year of Ezechias. But these were only threats of God: for Sennacherib neither took nor laid waste the city, indeed through the prayers of Isaias and Ezechias he with his men was crushed by an angel; wherefore you may better refer this to the captivity both Babylonian and Roman, and this will be plain at verse 27. Moreover these are the words of a God angry with sins, but propitious to sinners: for wonderful is the vengeance of God, by which he pursues, kills and abolishes the sins in man; but by his wonderful clemency changes the sinner, transfers him to another life, and confers on him his graces and gifts: for he makes, for example, Peter the impure, drunken, incestuous, proud die, and Peter the pure, sober, chaste, humble, etc., rise again. And it is a metaphor from goldsmiths and silversmiths, who by fire melt silver, and separate and purge it from dross, tin, and other metals, as if to say: As the silversmith melts and refines a mass of impure silver in the fire, and that long and often (whence for “I will turn” the Hebrew is ashiba, that is, I will bring back and turn again the hand, as the goldsmith does to purge, file and polish his work), until it is pure; so I, by the fire of tribulations, plagues, and of the Chaldean and Roman enemies, will refine and afflict you, O Jews, until idolatry, injustice, Pharisaic traditions, and other filth of sins have been fully separated and purged from you; and from men of lead, tin and iron you become men of silver and gold. Again I will punish, and take from the midst, the impious judges, princes, Pontiffs, Scribes and Pharisees. For these can be understood by the dross and tin, as I said at verse 22. Whence Jeremias, chapter 6, at the end, uses a like metaphor of the smelter and the reprobate silver.
Note: Here tribulation is the furnace and crucible, by which the elect are purged and the wicked burned up. See
26. AND I WILL RESTORE THY JUDGES AS THEY WERE BEFORE, AND THY COUNSELLORS AS OF OLD.—The former good judges were Moses, Josue, Gedeon, and others in the book of Judges; and after them David, Solomon, Josaphat, etc. And God restored such after the Babylonian captivity, when he gave them Esdras, Nehemias, Jesus the son of Josedech, the Machabees, etc. So St. Jerome, Chrysostom, Haymo, Hugh, Sanchez.