Commentaria in Isaiam
Vatablus translates, in due season I water it; and so our “I will give drink” can be taken for “I will water”; for what giving drink is to man, watering is to the earth; and as man drinks wine, so the earth drinks rain when it is watered. For watering, not giving drink, properly belongs to a vineyard.
“LEST ANY MAN VISIT IT”: lest anything be done against it, lest any harm befall it: for this reason I keep and guard it night and day. Vatablus translates, lest perhaps an enemy visit it.
4. “THERE IS NO INDIGNATION IN ME”: I cannot be angry and indignant with a vineyard so good, so fruitful, as I was indignant with the barren vineyard, namely the Synagogue, in chapter 5.
“WHO SHALL MAKE ME A THORN AND A BRIER?” As if to say: Who will bring it about that I become thorns to so choice a vineyard? who will make me prickly against it for its slight sins, that I should trample it and set it on fire? As if to say: No one.
Note that God as it were does violence to Himself when He punishes. Hence St. Jerome explains it thus: “Who will make me hard and cruel, that I should overcome my nature?” God therefore departs as it were from His nature, when He goes from clemency to vengeance. This is what the Church sings: “O God, whose property it is always to have mercy and to spare.” Hence clemency is the proper virtue of princes and of a generous spirit. Others translate, who will set me against the brier and thorn? that is, why against the wicked, who are in the world what thorns and briers are in a choice vineyard, fruitful of the best wine? Others, who would set a brier against me, that I should meet it as a thorn? But our Version is better and truer; for the Hebrew yitten signifies “will give,” not “will set against” or “oppose.” Hence Vatablus also translates, who will make me a brier and a thorn? and the words that follow require this.
“SHALL I MARCH AGAINST IT IN BATTLE, SHALL I SET IT ON FIRE TOGETHER?” As if to say: By no means. For the vineyard is dear and chosen to me; therefore I will not attack it in battle, or set it on fire, as I set Jerusalem and the Synagogue on fire; for all this is to be read as a question.
“Shall he not rather take hold,” namely this vineyard of mine, by its grace and beauty, “of my strength,” that is, my strong vengeance, that I may not put it forth against her; because she, even if now and then she sins venially, will make continual peace with me, will always serve me, will be a friend, and will bear most pleasing fruits. Secondly, Sanchez takes strength to mean clemency: for so strength is taken in Numbers 14:17, as if to say: This vineyard will not take hold of my strength, that is, my clemency; that is, she will not bring it about that I am not clement to her.
Thirdly, others refer this to Leviathan, and understand the contrary, namely, he will by no means take hold, as if to say: Let Leviathan and his ministers be certain that they will not be able to overthrow my strength, which I will show against him for the Church, but I will put it forth against him, and then there will be no hope of peace.
6. “WHEN THEY SHALL RUSH IN UNTO JACOB.” So the Roman text, not “out of Jacob,” as the Syriac translates; for it has: they who are of the root of Jacob shall gain; and Israel shall bud, and they shall fill the face of the earth with fruits; and the Arabic of Alexandria: they who are of the root of Jacob shall be doubled, and the house of Israel shall bud, and they shall fill the world with fruits. Indeed St. Jerome also in his Commentary (where he not rarely differs from the text of Scripture which he himself translated and which the Church has approved) translated: They who shall go out from the root of Jacob, that is, the Apostles born of the Jews, etc., these shall fill the world with the seed of the Gospel. In the text, therefore, he rendered paraphrastically, giving not the words but the sense; for the Hebrew is, word for word: As the Apostles come or enter, Jacob shall take root, Israel shall bud and flower, so that the produce fills the face of the world. For all these things done so suddenly signify that their fervour and impetus in preaching was great: otherwise “impetus” is not in the Hebrew. Here the canticle ends, and the Prophet passes to the Apostles and their preaching and fruit. The sense is, as if to say: The Apostles, who with the impetus of the Spirit enter to convert the Jews, will make Israel flourish again by this new grace of Christ: these also shall fill the whole world with the “seed” of the word of God: or with “seed,” that is, with the posterity of the faithful. Note: From almost the beginning of the chapter Isaias passes gradually from the day of judgment and the triumphant Church back to the militant, and to Israel converted by the Apostles at the time when the rest of Israel and Judea was overthrown for unbelief and the death of Christ. See Canons 4 and 7. Hence there follows, “Shall he,” etc.
Otherwise Sanchez; for he goes on to take this of the Blessed: The Prophet here shows, he says, who those are to be with whom He will no longer be angry, but whom He will embrace for ever; namely that it will not be carnal but spiritual Israel, that is, the Gentiles converted to Christ and the Church. He therefore arranges it thus: “From the number of those who shall come in great multitude to Jacob, and shall fill the earth (these are they who shall embrace the religion of Christ), he shall flourish and bud who can truly be called an Israelite.”
Again Forerius translates by the subjunctive this way: “If they who come made peace with me, the Jacobites would take root, the Israelites would flourish and bud, and would fill the face of the world with their produce.”
7. “HATH HE STRUCK HIM ACCORDING TO THE STROKE OF HIM THAT STRUCK HIM?” namely Israel and the people of the Jews. He passes from the faithful remnant of the Jews to the remaining unbelieving Jews, according to Canon 7, as if to say: Has God punished the Jews equally, by the law of retaliation, so that as they cruelly harassed, scourged and killed Christ and His Saints, so He also scourged and killed them? As if to say: Not at all: He has not yet done this.
8. “IN MEASURE AGAINST MEASURE” (in Hebrew, in measure measure, that is, by an equal and opposite measure (or by a double measure, or by measuring once and again); to signify God’s keen and exact examination in judging and punishing. So Prado on Ezechiel chapter 5, at the end) “THOU SHALT JUDGE” (O Lord!) “IT” (namely the vineyard of the Jews, that is, the Synagogue; since it will be wholly cast away by Thee: for God has meditated hard things against it) “IN HIS HARD SPIRIT IN THE DAY OF HEAT,” that is, in the time of vengeance to be taken by Himself, namely that He may cut off its citizens by Titus and the Romans, and scatter them as exiles through the whole world. So St. Jerome, Cyril, Procopius. That is, according to measure in sending it away (it can also be translated, in its branch) thou wilt contend with it: He will carry it away by His heavy wind in the day of the east wind; as if to say: God, like the east wind, will carry away the branches of the Jews, as they tried to carry away the Apostles of Christ; and so He will render like for like to them.
Otherwise Sanchez, who returns to verse 4 and takes this of Leviathan, as if you said: God will strike Leviathan not with that stroke with which one is wont to strike himself, which, because it brings pain to the striker, is not wont to be heavy and hostile; but with such a stroke God strikes His friends; nor will God slay Leviathan in the way in which He kills His friends and those who die in Him: for these will some day rise again; but he will never cease to die, according to that of Jeremias 30:14: “I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy, with a cruel chastisement.”