Commentaria in Isaiam
Chapter Twenty-five
As in chapter 12 he closed the benefits of Christ’s first coming with a canticle, so here he concludes the gifts of the second coming with a hymn of thanksgiving. Here, then, is the praise of God the glorifier, which Isaias assumes in the person of those to be saved through the passion of Christ, who, few amid so great a number of the damned, will remain, and will congratulate God and themselves. These praises and jubilations of the Blessed St. John often imitates in the Apocalypse. So St. Jerome, and it is plain from the connection with the preceding chapter. First, then, the Blessed here give thanks to God that, their enemies the impious and the proud having been cast down and the world laid waste, they have come to the harbour of salvation. Secondly, verse 6, by the banquet of marrowy things and the vintage, and by the loosing of the bound fetter, the liberty and delights of the Saints are described. Thirdly, verse 10, he foretells that Moab, that is, the reprobate, will be threshed and trodden under the wain of God.
1. O Lord, thou art my God, I will exalt thee, and give glory to thy name: for thou hast done wonderful things, thy designs of old faithful, amen. 2. For thou hast reduced the city to a heap, the strong city to ruin, the house of strangers, to be no city, and to be built no more for ever. 3. Therefore shall a strong people praise thee, the city of mighty nations shall fear thee. 4. For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the whirlwind, a shadow from the heat: for the blast of the mighty is like a whirlwind beating against a wall. 5. Thou shalt bring down the tumult of strangers, as heat in a thirsty place: and as heat under a burning cloud, thou shalt make the branch of the mighty to wither away. 6. And the Lord of hosts shall make unto all people in this mountain, a feast of fat things, a feast of wine, of fat things full of marrow, of wine purified from the lees. 7. And he shall destroy in this mountain the face of the bond with which all people were tied, and the web that he began over all nations. 8. He shall cast death down headlong for ever: and the Lord God shall wipe away tears from every face, and the reproach of his people he shall take away from off the whole earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. 9. And they shall say in that day: Lo, this is our God, we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord, we have patiently waited for him, we shall rejoice and be joyful in his salvation. 10. For the hand of the Lord shall rest in this mountain: and Moab shall be threshed under him, as straw is broken in pieces with the wain. 11. And he shall stretch forth his hands under him, as he that swimmeth stretcheth forth hands to swim: and he shall bring down his glory with the dashing of his hands. 12. And the bulwarks of the height of thy walls shall fall, and shall be brought low, and shall be pulled down to the ground, even to the dust.
1. Thou hast done (that is, certainly wilt do, and in thy foreknowledge and decree hast already done) thy designs of old faithful (as if to say: Those things which from eternity thou hast thought and decreed, and which of old thou didst threaten through the holy Patriarchs and Prophets, and promise concerning the destruction of the world and of the impious, and the glory of the pious, those thou hast faithfully fulfilled, that is, wilt fulfil. Whence, wishing it done, he subjoins), amen,—that is, so be it, as the Septuagint render.
Secondly, Vatablus and Sanchez render the Hebrew emuna amen: thou hast done thy designs of old, which are faithfulness, faithfulness, that is, most faithfully and most firmly. It is strange that St. Thomas here at the end of the chapter expounds amen as if it were a Greek word made up of a privative a and men, that is, moon, as if to say: without a moon, that is, without defect, namely solid and stable. For it is certain that amen is Hebrew, and has a Hebrew, not a Greek, etymology.
2. For thou hast reduced the city to a heap.—He calls the world the city, which in the greater part of itself is the city of the impious; hence he gives thanks to God for it cut down, and reduced “to a heap,” that is, to a pile of stones. The same he calls a house (the Hebrew armon, that is, palace, notes the proud houses of the powerful and rich in the world) “of strangers,” that is, of the impious, as the Septuagint render; for the impious, though by regeneration in baptism, or through the Sacrament of penance, they have become sons of God, yet by their own perverse will have degenerated and alienated themselves to idols or vices, as to their gods.
3. Therefore shall a strong people praise thee,—of the saints, namely, and of the elect, who have bravely overcome themselves and their desires, the allurements of the world and the temptations of the devil. So Lyranus. Hence the Septuagint for a strong people render beggars and those who bear iniquity: for these are strong in beggary who bear injuries and calumnies generously. They render therefore: Therefore shall a beggar people bless thee, and the city of men bearing iniquity shall bless thee; for, as follows, thou hast become the strength of the poor, as if to say: These poor will ascribe this their fortitude not to themselves but to thee, and to the strength of thy grace: for they will acknowledge the weakness of their nature, and that of themselves they are feeble, but strong from God. This therefore is Christian fortitude, which does not succumb to adversities, but, like the palm, rises the more. As lime is kindled by water, fire by the fan, iron is sharpened and heated by the whetstone, so the fortitude and patience of the Saints grows by afflictions and persecutions, and is the more inflamed; indeed “virtue grows green with a wound,” and, as Cato said:
The city of mighty nations (that is, the Church gathered from strong nations) shall fear thee,—shall revere thee, as sons observe and revere parents. So the Septuagint. The heavenly Jerusalem, therefore, is the city of the strong, whose type were the strong men of David, 2 Kings 23:8. Hear on this matter the famous vision which John Moschus relates in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 10: “Abbot Athanasius told us of himself: There came to me once a thought, saying: What do you think will be for those who strive and those who do not strive? And when I was in an ecstasy, there came to me one who said to me: Follow me. He led me to a place full of light and glory, and set me near a door whose appearance cannot be described. And we heard within as it were an innumerable multitude praising God. And when we knocked, someone within heard, and said: What do you want? My guide said: We wish to enter. He answered: No one living in negligence shall enter here. But if you wish to enter, go away, strive, esteeming the vanities of the world as nothing.”
Secondly, Vatablus renders: the city of violent and tyrannical nations (for these in Hebrew are called aritsim, verses 4 and 5, where likewise our Version renders robust or strong, as will be plain there) shall fear thee, as if to say: The city of the impious who oppressed the pious, of which I have already spoken, seeing so great a disaster of itself, will servilely fear the executioner: this sense is more consonant with the Hebrew aritsim.
God was to the Saints in every whirlwind, that is, persecution, and in every heat, that is, temptation, a protector like a shade, in which they hoped, and to which they fled.
For the blast of the mighty (in Hebrew aritsim, that is, of violent tyrants) is like a whirlwind.—There is here a threefold sense: the first, that the Prophet here explains how great was the whirlwind and heat of the impious against the pious, as if to say: The force and fury which violent men and demons brought upon the frail faithful and saints, and in the time of Antichrist (for he treats of him) will bring, was and will be strong and violent as a whirlwind, which even drives against a wall and throws it down, as if to say: Therefore I rightly said that thou alone wast their strength; because amid the assaults of enemies, as amid whirlwinds and waves, they stood immovable like rocks and stones. Their same fury was like “heat in a thirst,” that is, like the heat which wonderfully afflicts the thirsty. Why shouldst thou, O Lord, not rightly “bring down the tumult” of these “strangers”? So Lyranus, Vatablus and Forerius connect and punctuate this.
The second sense is that these words pertain not to the impious but to Christ, as if the Prophet explained how great the whirlwind and heat, that is, the fury, of Christ against the impious is to be: for the verb “thou shalt bring down” which follows is to be repeated by zeugma, as if to say: Thou, Lord, wilt bring down the high and proud spirits of the arrogant and of tyrants, as a vehement whirlwind drives against a wall and throws it down; and again thou wilt bring down their “tumult,” that is, their force and power, as excessive heat is wont to consume men in burning and thirsty sand.