Commentaria in Isaiam
Although Salmeron, tom. 1, p. 33, thinks that in the Hebrew a gimel crept in, corrupted, for the neighbouring zain, and that for belaag, as now read in Isaias, belaaz should be read, that is, in barbarous tongues, and consequently others and different from your tongue: for the Hebrew laaz signifies barbarous. The sense, therefore, is, as if to say, Isaias, or rather God through Isaias: My exhortation to penance made to the Jews through Isaias and the other Prophets seemed to you, O Jews, troublesome and ridiculous, as if I had spoken to you with lisping lips and a barbarous tongue: hence, imitating the stammering of the Prophets and mocking them, you say lisping and stammering, and repeat: “Command, command again.” Wherefore I will punish you through the Chaldeans (who seem to you to lisp and stammer), soldiers and ministers of my justice, that with jeers in their own Chaldaic tongue they may summon and restrain you unbelievers, and mock you, now conquered and captive, and jeer at and refute your Hebrew words with their Chaldaic; and, by the type, figure and likeness of these, in time I will send the Apostles, who by the gift of other tongues will likewise convict your unbelief, O Jews! and will seem to you to lisp, and the preachers of the cross of Christ will be mocked by you and by the wise of the world as fools. For in this sense the Apostle cites here the words of Isaias, 1 Corinthians 14:21. So St. Jerome and Cyril.
Note: the particle “for” is taken not properly but adversatively for “but”: for when he says, “for with the speech of lip,” it is the same as if he said, “But, or nevertheless, with the speech of lip, and another tongue” God will speak by the Chaldeans “to this people,” to reprove them.
12. “TO WHOM HE SAID: THIS IS MY REST, REFRESH THE WEARY.” As if to say: God said: I have long wished to rest among the Jews, both then and above all at the time of Christ, and not only wished, but also prayed and besought them, saying: “Refresh me,” by praying and beseeching you, “the weary.” Secondly, and rather, “refresh the weary,” that is, refresh the weak, the wretched and the tired; for in this mercy is my rest and consolation. Hence God through the Prophets cried out nothing else, as it were, than: “Shew mercy and compassion every man to his brother,” as is plain in Zacharias 7; but they would not hear me, and despised me. So St. Jerome and Cyril.
13. “AND THE WORD OF THE LORD SHALL BE TO THEM: COMMAND, COMMAND AGAIN” (Here God punishes the scoffers, and turns their jeers back upon themselves, as if to say: Because they themselves laughed at the words of the Prophets, saying: “Command, command again,” therefore in turn God, when calamity and ruin press them, will laugh at them, and say): “COMMAND, COMMAND AGAIN, EXPECT, EXPECT AGAIN, EXPECT, EXPECT AGAIN (hence it will come about), THAT THEY MAY GO AND FALL BACKWARD,” as shamefully overcome by the enemy, and laid on their backs, so that they cannot rise again, and thus be crushed by him and trodden under foot, and be taken as if led into the nets of hunters. So justly God mocks and punishes mockers, according to that of Proverbs 1:25: “You have despised all my counsel, etc. I also will laugh in your destruction, and will mock when that shall come to you which you feared.” So Suidas relates under the word Datis, that Datis and Artaphernes, generals of Darius, sent ambassadors into Greece, to make trial of the cities and to demand earth and water. And the islanders all assented; but the Lacedaemonians, promising to give both, cast them into a well and buried them with earth; testifying that they had furnished what was demanded.
14. “MOCKERS,” who mock the threats of the Prophets, saying: “Command, command again.”
“WE HAVE STRUCK A COVENANT WITH DEATH.” As if they said: We are secure from the Assyrians and Chaldeans, we do not fear their devastation, nor death and hell, that is, the place and state of the dead, which the Prophets threaten us, as if we had made a pact with them. It is a catachresis. Secondly, properly, Sanchez: As, he says, the Gentiles numbered death, that is, Atropos or fate, and hell, namely Pluto, or Hades, among the gods: so these mockers, imitating the rite of the Gentiles, venerated the same as gods, and by certain rites and ceremonies thought they merited them for themselves, and as it were bargained with them, so that nothing evil was to be feared from them.
“AND WITH HELL WE HAVE MADE A COVENANT.” For “covenant,” Vatablus has: we have made conference with hell, and with it we have transacted and agreed. The Prophets say that many horrible things to see are in hell: we have already seen them, and do not shudder. So the wicked commonly say: “The devil is not so black as he is painted.” So Vatablus.
Secondly, Viegas on Apocalypse 11, Commentary 4, section 4, number 8, translates the thing as provision, supply, which is of many feasting together, or wishing to sail together: which they do not do unless allied, as if to say: With hell we have made provision, or supply, as if about to sail together and to land at the same port of the infernal regions. So the demon appearing to witches, and playing with them, persuades them it is well with him, that he is joyful and happy, and not much tormented by the fire of hell; and therefore that they after death will obtain the same joyful lot with him.
Thirdly, some take by death and hell the king of the Assyrians: for with him the Samaritans had made a pact, and were his tributaries: hence under his wings they lived secure, fearing nothing. To these, then, the Prophet announces that this pact is dangerous and pernicious; because the king of the Assyrians will lay them waste, and lead them off to death and hell. Some add that this king is called death and hell because he ruled the Pontic and Cimmerians, and from them he gathered an army. These are called the dead and hell, because in Pontus there is Mount and town Cerberion; likewise Heraclea and the cave from which Hercules is said to have dragged Cerberus; likewise Cocytus, Phlegethon and Tartarus. Finally among the Cimmerians Homer places the seat of hell, either for the perpetual darkness, or for the frequent mines of metals, or for the deeply shaded valleys inaccessible to the winter sun: whence the Gentiles judged that there was the door of hell.
Morally, St. Gregory, book 6 on the Books of Kings, chapter 3: “The impenitent,” he says, “like Saul, have struck a covenant with death and hell. To strike a covenant with death is to commit evil boldly, and to promise always to go on doing it. For they do evil without ceasing; but by loving what they do, they as it were promise never to depart from friendship with death. For the more insensible they become in the covenant of death, the more sharply are the bowels of mother Church shaken by pity for them.”
“WHEN THE OVERFLOWING SCOURGE SHALL PASS, IT SHALL NOT COME UPON US,” as if to say: The scourge and calamity of the Assyrians, when it has overrun the ten tribes, will not come upon us.