Commentaria in Isaiam
Chapter 2. Synopsis of the Chapter
He flies off to Christ, and foretells that the Church will be raised up by Christ like a mountain, and that to it all nations shall flow, who shall turn wars into peace, swords into ploughshares. Second, verse 6, he returns to his own times, and reproves the crimes of his people. Third, verse 10, he foretells the disaster and devastation to be brought upon the Jews by the Chaldeans. Finally, in the last verse, he flies off to Christ, and warns them not to provoke and exasperate him, as being God.
1. The word that Isaias the son of Amos saw, concerning Juda and Jerusalem. 2. And in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. 3. And many people shall go, and say: Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall come forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4. And he shall judge the Gentiles, and rebuke many people: and they shall turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5. O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord. 6. For thou hast cast off thy people, the house of Jacob: because they are filled as in times past, and have had soothsayers like the Philistines, and have adhered to strange children. 7. Their land is filled with silver and gold, and there is no end of their treasures. 8. And their land is filled with horses, and their chariots are innumerable. And their land is full of idols: they have adored the work of their own hands, which their own fingers have made. 9. And the mean man bowed himself down, and the great man hath been debased: therefore forgive them not. 10. Enter thou into the rock, and hide thee in the pit from the presence of the fear of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty. 11. The lofty eyes of man are humbled, and the height of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. 12. For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and high-minded, and upon every one that is arrogant: and he shall be humbled. 13. And upon all the high and lofty cedars of Libanus, and upon all the oaks of Basan. 14. And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the elevated hills. 15. And upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall. 16. And upon all the ships of Tharsis, and upon all that is fair to behold. 17. And the loftiness of men shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. 18. And idols shall be utterly destroyed. 19. And they shall go into the dens of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, from the presence of the fear of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty, when he shall rise up to strike the earth. 20. In that day a man shall cast away his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which he had made for himself to adore, moles and bats. 21. And he shall go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the holes of the stones, from the presence of the fear of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty, when he shall rise up to strike the earth. 22. Cease ye therefore from the man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for he is reputed high.
1. THE WORD THAT ISAIAS THE SON OF AMOS SAW, CONCERNING JUDA AND JERUSALEM,—not yet to come to pass, but at the time of the Messias, when namely from Juda shall be born Christ, the Apostles, and the new Church. For that it is treated of it here is plain from the next verse, when he says: “And in the last days,” etc., and he treated of the same at the end of the preceding chapter, verses 26 and 27; to this therefore these pertain.
Whence the Septuagint for “and it shall be” render, “because it shall be,” as if giving the reason of what was said at the end of the preceding chapter. Note “word,” that is, vision, namely a thing seen, or the thing seen. See Canon 1.
Again symbolically St. Jerome: “Here,” he says, “it is rather called word than vision, because in the former chapter Isaias sees a vision, but here the Word which was in the beginning with God (not in but as made flesh he has taught us in the Church), and in that first, threatening the Jews, comes to the salvation of the Gentiles: in this, beginning from the salvation of the Gentiles, Israel being punished, gathers the believers of both callings into the Church of Christ.”
gives, and is the beginning of the prophecy: for the Hebrews are wont to begin a book or an oration with ve, that is, and.
2. AND IN THE LAST DAYS,—in the last time, namely of the Messias. It is a synecdoche. For day, and, as St. John calls it, “the last hour,” stands for the last time of the law of Christ, a quite lengthy one. So St. Augustine, epistle 80 to Hesychius.
Note: The time of Christ is called “the last,” that is, later or following (for this only the Hebrew acharit signifies), even though properly it be not the last and latest. So Jacob dying says to his sons, Genesis 49, 1: “Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you the things that shall befall you in the last days,” that is, in the following times, namely after my death. Second, properly the time of Christ is called “the last,” both because Christ is the end of the law and the Prophets, and because it is the last with respect to the origin and duration of the world, and of the preceding ages and states: namely if you divide all time from the origin of the world into first, middle, and last; or into the law of nature, of Moses, and of grace: for then the law of grace is the last, and no other law or state will succeed it. In vain therefore do the Jews quibble: The last time is not yet, therefore the Messias has not yet come.
PREPARED, THE MOUNTAIN OF THE HOUSE OF THE LORD.—The Hebrew nachon signifies not only prepared, erected, directed, but also founded, fortified, furnished, established and made stable; so that no forces, indeed not even the gates of hell, can prevail against it. So elsewhere too “to prepare” is often taken for “to establish,” as Proverbs 8, 27: “When he prepared, that is, founded, the heavens, I was present.” Psalm 23, verse 2: “He hath prepared, that is, established, it above the rivers.”
Ask: Which mountain is this? The Jews answer, it is Sion, which under the Messias, they say, will be placed upon Mount Carmel and Thabor, and be lifted up three leagues.
But these are their usual old wives’ tales. See Galatinus, book 5, chapter 3.
Second, some Catholics take by the mountain the glory of Sion, which it received when Christ was presented in the temple, taught at the age of twelve, wrought many miracles, and at last sent the Holy Ghost from heaven upon the Apostles. But this sense is symbolic. Third, St. Cyprian, or whoever is the author of the book On Sinai and Sion, says this mountain is the cross of Christ. Again St. Gregory, book 1 on 1 Kings, says this mountain is the Blessed Virgin: for her sanctity shone above all Saints and Angels, and stood out like a mountain. For she “raised the summit of her merits above all the choirs of Angels up to the throne of the Deity,” says St. Gregory on book 1 of Kings, chapter 1, near the beginning. But these also are symbolic and mystical.
Fourth, St. Jerome, Basil, Rupert, and many other ancients hold that this mountain is Christ. For he is the mountain on the top of mountains, that is, of the Apostles and Prophets, whom he surpasses and excels by his doctrine and grace. This sense coheres with the following; for Christ is the head of the Church; whence Christ and the Church are counted as one, according to the rules of Ticonius in St. Augustine. Whatever therefore is said of the Church is said also of Christ.
Fifth, and most aptly, Cyril here, and Eusebius, book 2 of the Demonstration, Athanasius, at the beginning of his epistle to Epictetus, understand by the mountain the Church; for this is the most lofty house of the Lord, and most conspicuous, just as if it were situated on a mountain. Hence the Septuagint for “prepared” render manifest, that is, evident. He alludes both to the temples and altars of the ancients, which were erected on mountains, for there they sacrificed, and for this reason they were called High Places; and to the mountains Sion and Moria, as I shall say presently, as if to say: The High Place or altar of the Lord, namely the Church, will lift itself far above the peaks of other high places. Hence it is plain that the Church of Christ is visible, and that the church of the innovators, which flees the light, and says that it is invisible, is not the Church of Christ, but of Antichrist. Anagogically, this mountain is the kingdom of heaven, namely the Church triumphant, says St. Bernard, in a sermon on the words: “Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord?” “For there will be,” he says, “the mountain of peace, the mountain of joy, the mountain of life, the mountain of glory. And all these mountains are one mountain of consummate felicity.”