Commentaria in Isaiam
7. And he shall cast down in this mountain the face of the bond that was bound together,—that is, the oppression of the devil, says Haymo; hence Symmachus renders: he will cast down the face of the Ruler. Secondly, St. Jerome: He will make the face of death be swallowed up, he says, and the bonds with which all peoples were bound; of which it is said in Ecclesiasticus 40:1: “A heavy yoke is upon the children of Adam, from the day of their coming out of their mother’s womb, until the day of their burial into the mother of all.” Thirdly and more fully, he will cast down the face of the bond, that is, the bond itself, that is, original sin, and its effects and bonds: whence the Hebrew is hallot, hallot, that is, bond, bond, that is, very many and all bonds. Our version has “bound together,” that is, folded back and enwrapped, so as to constrain a man with many coils as with bonds, and bind him more tightly: for all these evils and bonds hang together, and are as it were bound together both with one another and with the first sin of Adam. These bonds therefore are the troubles of this life, and of mortality after the fall of Adam, as if to say: God will break all the veils and bonds, that is, the covering spread over all nations (Isaias 25:7), as the Hebrew has it, as in 2 Kings 15:30, 19:5 and Esther 6:12, in which mourners veiled the face.
Forerius proves and explains this interpretation thus: We have fittingly rendered it as a covering spread out, for it was obscure who had begun the web. But enough of the grammatical meanings, which had first to be grasped; for ignorance of them has led otherwise learned men into error in obscure places of Holy Scripture. And, to keep to the same likeness, it is my opinion that since nothing makes men fall headlong so much as entanglement, obscurity, coverings, and finally blindness itself, the Prophet, speaking of the removal of these things by the Lord on the mountain of Sion, used a most fitting word. For he says that the Lord will cast down what led the nations to the precipice, namely ignorance or blindness, which, like a veil or a very wide covering spread over the minds of all nations, left no one able to understand it, and none who knew God or glorified him as God. But on that mountain, when the Lord had given his disciples the Holy Spirit, by whom they might be taught to teach all nations, the veil was rent. “The Lord hath made known his salvation: he hath revealed his justice in the sight of the Gentiles.” The likeness of a veil is frequent in Scripture to signify ignorance. For Paul says, “the veil is still upon the heart of the Jews,” and “shall be taken away when they shall be converted to the Lord,” 2 Corinthians 3. Nor did the rending of the veil in the temple signify anything else, I believe, than that by the death of the Lord the most holy and hidden things are laid open to all; and that none will remain in blindness except those who with their own hands put the veil again over their eyes, or give themselves to the god of this world, whose work it is to blind minds, lest the splendour of the Gospel shine upon men; of whom Paul says, Ephesians 4: “I testify that henceforward you walk not as the Gentiles walk, having their understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts.” But the benefit of Christ was not to be placed in last place. And if anyone wishes to understand it of the reign of sin, which reigned over all, the Chaldee also mentions here a rule that was over all.
That is, the bonds of errors, diseases, persecutions, miseries, tribulations and death, which began to afflict all men as soon as Adam sinned, and by which men are bound and tied. “AND THE WEB THAT HE HATH WOVEN OVER ALL NATIONS.” What he first called a bond, he here calls by another metaphor a web; for from a web are made wrappings, cords and bonds. So the poets explain fate, or God’s decree about each man, by the web and the threads of the Fates, who spin to each, that is, dispense, a good or evil lot according to merit and the will of God; of them it is said: Clotho turns the spindle, Lachesis spins, and Atropos cuts.
8. “HE SHALL CAST DOWN DEATH FOREVER.” Behold, here he names and explains the chief part of the bond and the web, namely death. Saint Paul cites this place, 1 Corinthians 15: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” For where the Hebrew has billa in the piel, that is, he shall cast down, he shall swallow up, Paul reads bulla, that is, is cast down, is swallowed up; then the Hebrew lanetsach can be rendered as well “in victory” as “for ever.”
“AND THE LORD GOD SHALL WIPE AWAY TEARS.” Behold another part of the bond, namely weeping, groaning and tears in all the troubles and afflictions of this life. Saint John alludes to this, Apocalypse 21:4: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more.” Behold the bonds that God will take away from the blessed.
9. “AND THEY SHALL SAY IN THAT DAY: LO, THIS IS OUR GOD” (namely Christ Jesus, that is, our Savior, to which the Hebrew alludes, meaning he will save us with eternal salvation, as if to say: this salvation of Christ shall always endure; so Saint Jerome), “AND WE SHALL BE GLAD” (and we shall rejoice) “IN HIS SALVATION,” as our version has it, that is, in his salvation, as the Septuagint renders it.
10. “THE HAND OF THE LORD SHALL REST ON THIS MOUNTAIN.” “Hand” means the power of God, as if to say: God will put forth his riches, his delights, his magnificence, and will powerfully and liberally pour them out on the blessed in Sion, that is, in heaven. So Adamus. This is the genuine sense.
Second, Sanchez takes “hand” as God’s avenging hand, which will no longer chastise his saints to purge and expiate them, as he did in this world.
Third, others say, as if to say: God will with his hand, that is, his power, bless the saints with immense joy, giving them eternal rest.
“AND MOAB SHALL BE THRESHED UNDER HIM.” Saint Thomas takes Moab properly to mean the Moabites, as though Isaias here foretold that they were to be subdued by the Machabees. But the matter here is not the Machabees but the blessed and their enemies, namely the demons and the damned, whom he calls Moab by synecdoche, because the Moabites were perpetual enemies of the people of God, the Jews, and drew them to lust and the worship of their god Beelphegor, that is, Priapus, Numbers 25; as if to say: “Moab,” that is, the people of the wicked, and therefore of the damned, “under him,” namely Christ the judge, and his holy and blessed people, “shall be threshed,” that is, trodden down and afflicted.
“AS STRAW IS BROKEN UP WITH THE WAIN.” He alludes first to the people of the East, who for want of hay give straw to their beasts: “They have,” says Saint Jerome, “toothed carts, with wheels that turn in the middle like saws, which grind the stubble and cut it small into chaff.”
Second, he alludes to David, father and type of Christ, who cut down and trampled the Moabites. For “wain” the Hebrew has madmena, which comes from the root dama, that is, to cut down, and signifies a toothed wain that cuts, as our version and the Septuagint render it. But the Chaldee, Symmachus, Vatablus and the Hebrews generally in recent times render madmena as a dung-heap, from the root domen, that is, dung, as if to say: God will trample Moab, that is, the wicked, as straw is trodden in a dung-heap, to become dung.
11. “AND HE SHALL STRETCH FORTH HIS HANDS UNDER HIM, AS HE THAT SWIMMETH SPREADETH FORTH HIS HANDS TO SWIM.” For “under him” the Hebrew has in the midst of it. Hence Vatablus expounds this of Christ, as if to say: As one skilled in swimming is wont to stretch out both hands along the water, so Christ, stretching out both hands, will strike down his enemies, the wicked, and that by the virtue and merit of his cross.
The cross, then, was the wain by which Christ ground and broke the wicked; whence, for the word that follows, some render, in the piercings of the wain.
But our version, the Septuagint and others refer this to Moab, as if to say: the demons and all the wicked will be trodden down by Christ the judge, so as to present the appearance of a man wholly beaten, such as is the appearance of a swimmer, who, spreading out and flinging forth his arms, shows the gesture of a man altogether despairing and overcome. So Saint Jerome, Adamus and others. He compares them, therefore, to a shipwrecked man swimming in the sea; because as such a one is tossed in the deep of the sea, so the wicked, having made shipwreck of salvation, are tossed in the abyss of the fire and torments of hell. Secondly, as a swimmer in a raging sea stretches out his hands in every direction to seize a tree or a rock on which to escape, but in vain, for he finds nothing to lay hold of by which he may flee, so the damned vainly seek escapes or relief from their punishments; for wherever they throw themselves, they are surrounded and overwhelmed by flames. Thirdly, as a swimmer in the sea despairs of life, so the wicked despair of salvation.
“AND HE SHALL BRING DOWN” (Christ) “HIS GLORY,” namely that of Moab, that is, of the reprobate. For the Hebrews often change persons without notice, as here the passage goes from Moab to Christ; see chapters 14 and 16. Sanchez, however, goes on to take this of Moab, as if to say: Moab “shall be humbled,” that is, its pride and “glory,” its boasting, “his,” that is, its own, shall be brought low; for the Hebrew vau affixed signifies both its own and his.