Commentaria in Isaiam
And upon the kings.—Neither power nor majesty will exempt kings from the judgment and wrath of God: “For the mighty shall be mightily tormented.”
The demons, with the other impious and the common people, bound as it were in bundles, shall be cast into the fire of hell, as we cast a bundle of larger and smaller sticks into the fire. Haymo thinks that these bundles will be made various, according to the various crimes: “They shall be gathered,” he says, “in the gathering of one bundle, that those who are equal in guilt shall be condemned alike and in punishments: the covetous with the covetous, the luxurious with the luxurious.” See St. Gregory, Morals, book 9, chapter 39.
And after many days they shall be visited.—Origen expounds thus: The damned will indeed be shut up in the prison of hell; but the prison will not be perpetual, because when they have been there for many days, that is, for a course of a hundred years determined by God, they will be visited that they may be freed. Thus Satan wished through him to take away faith and the memory of the eternity of punishments, which chiefly restrains men from sin. Hence St. Gregory, Morals, book 34, chapter 16, explaining that of Job 41: “He shall esteem the deep as growing old,” that is, he says, “shall make it be esteemed by men.” But this is an error; for the fire is called in Scripture eternal and unquenchable. See St. Augustine, City of God, book 21, chapter 23, and Canon 13, at the beginning of the book.
Secondly, Haymo: After many days, he says, that is, years, they shall be visited, namely that they may rise again, and be tormented in body and soul.
Thirdly, Lyranus renders: from many days; the sins committed many days ago and long since will be punished.
Fourthly, and genuinely, “after many days,” that is, after many ages they shall be visited, that is, punished, as if to say: Although for many days and years they are in hell, yet their punishments will never be finished; but after however many days and years there will be a perpetual beginning of punishments; for “they shall be visited” signifies an act continued and perpetuated. The eternity of punishments is therefore here signified. So St. Jerome, Adamus, and Suarez in the place presently to be cited. Hence the Septuagint render: Through many generations shall be their visitation, and so it can be rendered from the Hebrew. So on the other hand the eternal salvation of the just is signified, when it is said, chapter 25, verse 9: “Behold this is our God, etc., and he will save us.”
Fifthly, our Turrianus, in his book On the Eucharist, chapter 31, and Alcazar on Apocalypse 20:4, note 4, understand by this visitation, to be after many years, the loosing of Satan bound by Christ, to be after a thousand years; for by the host of heaven and the kings of the earth are understood demons, whom Paul calls the rulers of the world. For Alcazar holds that chapters 22, 24, 25, 26 and 27 of Isaias plainly correspond to chapters 16, 18, 19 and 20 of the Apocalypse, namely that the destruction of Tyre, which Isaias describes in chapter 23, is the destruction of pagan Rome, or of Gentilism, which John, Apocalypse 16 and 17, narrates under the name of Babylon. That in chapter 24 Isaias describes the reprobation of the Jews, and the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, of which John treats in the Apocalypse from chapter 6 to chapter 12, in the seven seals of the sealed book. Then, therefore, Satan was bound by Christ for a thousand years, until the times of Antichrist, when he shall be loosed for a little time, as John says, Apocalypse 20. Hence the three following chapters of Isaias, namely 25, 26 and 27, are spent in thanksgiving to God, that he laid waste pagan Rome, and converted it into a new Sion, that is, the Christian Church; and subjected to its obedience Leviathan, or the beast of the sea, that is, the pagan Roman empire, just as in Apocalypse 19 the heavenly ones for the same cause redouble: Alleluia. And that this is the secret, of which Isaias says, chapter 24, verse 16: “My secret to myself, my secret to myself.” Hence in chapter 26 Isaias sings of it: “The city of our strength Sion, etc. Open ye the gates, and let the just nation enter in. The old error is passed away, for he shall bow down them that dwell on high,” in Hebrew marom, as if to say in Rome. For Rome in Hebrew is derived from rum, that is, from height. But these are mystical, and ingenious applications rather than genuine explanations of Sacred Scripture, as is plain from what has been said and will be plain from what will be said on the Apocalypse. To this may be referred the exposition of St. Thomas, Summa, part 3, question 52, article 6, reply 4, which is this: “Christ, descending into hell, all who were in whatever part of hell were in some way visited; but some for their consolation and deliverance; others for their confutation and confusion, as the damned. Hence it is subjoined there: And the moon shall blush, and the sun shall be ashamed.” So also St. Jerome explains. St. Thomas goes on: “It can also be referred to the visitation by which they will be visited on the day of judgment, not that they may be freed, but that they may be further condemned, according to Sophonias 1: I will visit upon the men that are settled on their lees.” Where Suarez adds: “Because,” he says, “on the day of judgment Christ will as it were anew condemn the condemned.”
Mystically, St. Cyril explains this visitation of the overthrow of idolatry, and of the power taken from the demons by Christ; for he himself by his own power repressed them, and as it were shut them up in custody.
23. And the moon shall blush.—First, the Chaldee renders: The worshippers of the sun and moon shall blush on the day of judgment, before God and Christ the judge.
Secondly, moon and sun signify the idol of the sun and moon; and the idol signifies the demon inhabiting the idol, says Adamus, as if to say: When the demons, who are now worshipped as gods on earth, shall see Christ, death being overcome, reign simply and absolutely, then they shall be confounded.
Thirdly, others: The sun and moon shall blush when they see so great a glory and light of the Blessed, because in comparison with it their light will seem slight.
Fourthly, and genuinely, as if to say: The very moon and sun shall be amazed and shall blush, when they see so great a damnation and punishment of the reprobate, and so great a majesty of Christ the judge and of the Blessed in heaven. The moon shall blush, therefore, that is, as Joel says, and from him St. Peter, Acts chapter 2: “The moon shall be turned into blood,” that is, shall blush like blood, and, as Christ says: “The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light.” The cause of the blush and confusion St. Jerome gives: “The moon,” he says, “shall blush, and the sun shall be confounded, seeing that men who enjoyed their light have done nothing worthy of the goodness of God, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good and the evil.”
The stars therefore shall blush that they shone for the impious man, who abused this light to perpetrate many and nefarious crimes, with which he infected and contaminated earth, air and heaven. If the sun and moon blush, how then shall the impious man himself blush and be confounded? So St. Caesarius, brother of St. Gregory Nazianzen, Dialogue 2, gives the cause why the moon now reddens, now grows pale: murders, poisonings and other crimes which are done by night at her light. “Therefore,” he says, “the moon for grief burns, shudders, hides herself, putting on a cloud, after the example of her brother (he calls the sun the brother of the moon, who in the passion of Christ, indignant at the Christ-slaying Jews, withdrew his rays), disdains to bestow her splendour on the unworthy, from heaven as from a watch-tower crying out by her very change, and punishing with darkness, and restraining murderers from impious deed.” If you take this literally as it sounds, it smells of the error of Plato, who held the sun, moon and stars to be animate; but if mystically and symbolically, as Isaias here, it is true.
Moreover the Septuagint render: the brick shall melt, and the wall shall fall; for the Hebrew laben or lebana signify both brick and moon: and chamma, that is, sun, if you read it with another point, choma, signifies wall. Again, for chapera, that is, shall blush, they read haphera, that is, shall be broken, shall fall away, shall fall. The sense is: In the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, or rather of the whole world, by the fire of the conflagration all the bricks shall melt and all the walls fall. In the Complutensian edition of the Septuagint and some others there is added likewise what our Version renders: “And the moon shall blush, and the sun shall be ashamed.” But this is not read in the Roman edition of the Septuagint, nor in St. Cyril, and in Procopius it is added in the margin as from another edition; and St. Jerome testifies that the Septuagint rendered for these words: the brick shall melt, and the wall shall fall. For it does not seem credible that the Seventy in the same place rendered the same word in two ways, one and another.
When the Lord shall reign,—when he shall begin to reign in the valley of Josaphat near Mount Sion, judging and condemning the wicked, but glorifying the Saints.