Commentaria in Isaiam
20. “FOR THE BED IS STRAITENED.” First, the Jews expound thus: By the Chaldeans you shall be reduced, O Jews, to such straits that two spouses shall not have room to lie down together, but one of them must be thrust out of place and bed; and that they shall not have blankets and coverings so large that both may be covered at once. But this sense is cold and Jewish.
Secondly, therefore, and genuinely, as if God said: You, O Jews, admit besides me other lovers of yours, namely idols and the devil; and so you cannot remain with me in wedlock, because the bed of my love is so narrow that it admits only one bride and one bridegroom, and altogether excludes a third, namely an adulterer; nor can it hold God and the devil, God and the world, God and mammon: wherefore I scourge you by the Chaldeans and others, to bring you back to me, and that you may thrust the other gods out of this bed of yours and mine. “Two,” says Ausonius, “do not receive partners: love and rule.” “And all power will be impatient of a sharer,” says Lucan. Hence Julius Caesar also said: “I would rather be first in Gaul than second at Rome”; and since he would not suffer Pompey to be above him, as neither would Pompey have him equal, he wrung from him by war the empire with his life. So also Alexander, asked by Darius to divide the empire with him, answered: “As the world does not bear two suns, so neither does the earth two kings. Wherefore either submit yourself to me, or prepare your line for tomorrow”; he prepared it, and, being slain, the kingdom yielded to Alexander. So also the Tragedian: “Neither kingdoms nor marriage beds know a partner.” A similar proverb is: “No man can serve two masters,” Matthew 6:24. And: “What concord hath Christ with Belial?” 2 Corinthians 6. St. Jerome: God therefore wills alone to occupy the whole bed of our heart; hence He commanded, saying: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul,” Deuteronomy 6:5. See what is said there. Hence also the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 10:21: “You cannot,” he says, “drink the chalice of the Lord, and the chalice of devils: you cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord, and of the table of devils.” Rightly Lyranus on that of Matthew 6:24, “You cannot serve God and mammon”: “The human heart,” he says, “cannot hold God and the devil at once: but the devil being received by sin, God goes out: God being received by charity, the devil goes out.”
Allegorically, Leo Castrius: God’s bed, he says, that is, the Church, does not hold the shadow and the truth, Moses and Christ, the burdens of the law and the sweet yoke of grace.
“THAT ONE MAY FALL OUT.” The Hebrew is mehistarea, that is, from overflowing, or from being above, as if to say: that there is not room left for the other, but the other must fall, as St. Jerome rightly translates.
21. “FOR THE LORD SHALL STAND UP AS IN THE MOUNT OF DIVISIONS” (as if to say: As in Baal Pharasim, which signifies “place of divisions,” God threw down the Philistines for David, 2 Kings 5, and there David the victor divided and separated himself from the Philistines conquered and dispersed: so He will rise up and) “THE LORD WILL STAND” (against you), that He may scatter, divide and destroy you: and as for Josue in the valley of Gabaon He stayed the sun, and smote the Amorrhites, not so much with arms as with hail and stones cast from heaven upon them, Josue 10; so likewise He, against you, O Jews! as adulterers and apostates, will be angry, and in anger will cast you down and smite you. So St. Jerome, who allegorically refers this to the end of the world: for then there will be Baal Pharasim, that is, the place of divisions, in the valley of Josaphat, where Christ will separate the lambs from the goats, and assign to the lambs, that is, the saints, heaven, to the goats and the wicked, hell.
“THAT HE MAY DO HIS WORK” (a work decreed by Himself, namely vengeance and punishment, the sins of the Jews requiring it, which work is not proper to God, if you regard His nature and innate goodness, but) “HIS STRANGE WORK” (and as it were) “FOREIGN TO HIM”: because unwillingly and as if compelled by the wicked this He does. So when He brought the flood on the world, He did it touched with grief of heart within, Genesis 6; so about to punish He sighs, saying: “Ah! I will comfort myself over my adversaries,” Isaias 1:24. Secondly, “strange and foreign work” is an unusual and admirable work, namely an unwonted punishment. For because God had been kind and beneficent to the fathers of the Jews on account of their piety, it seemed to their wicked posterity an unwonted thing, and foreign to God’s custom, to experience God’s anger and vengeance. Again, because this vengeance was to be sharp and unheard-of, as bringing the destruction of the nation and people of God, it seemed to them admirable and altogether extraordinary. Hence the Septuagint translate, his destruction is strange (for which the Complutensian reads, bitterness).
22. “AND NOW DO NOT MOCK” (ye mockers, who mocked the Prophets, and said, verse 10, “Command, command again,” likewise) “THESE MY THREATS, LEST YOUR BONDS BE TIED STRAIT” (Vatablus translates, lest they become stronger), that is, lest you be bound sooner and more tightly by the enemy, lest God through him punish you more severely and with a heavier captivity. For as a fox which falls into a snare draws the knot and the snare tighter the more it tries to free and extricate itself, so the wicked by evasion, and mockers by deriding the threats and punishments of God, wrap and bind themselves in them more and more. Hence it follows:
“FOR I HAVE HEARD A CONSUMPTION AND A CUTTING SHORT UPON ALL THE EARTH” (that is, a consumption and a destruction, and that shortly to come upon the whole earth, namely of the Jews) “I HAVE HEARD OF THE LORD,” as if to say: You will no longer say, “Command, command again,” because soon God will inflict the calamity He has threatened you: for your mockeries and crimes will soon fill up the measure of sins appointed you by God, and so will hasten His vengeance.
24. “SHALL THE PLOUGHMAN PLOUGH ALL THE DAY?” Note: From this place to the end of the chapter is a continuous parable of the farmer, by which he exhorts the Jews and all nations to good works, and to fruit, as if to say: The ploughman does not always plough to make a sowing, but first he ploughs; secondly, when he has ploughed some days, afterwards he looses the oxen, and breaks the clods, and levels the surface of the earth; harrows it; thirdly, when he has done this, he casts seed, and when it sprouts he weeds it, that is, cleanses it of tares; fourthly, he reaps the ripe harvest and gathers it; fifthly, he threshes each according to its condition, namely all pulses, as gith and cummin, more lightly, that is, with rod or staff; but wheat, which is harder to beat out, more heavily, namely in Palestine with carts, which have as it were saws and teeth beneath, by which, drawn round over the crops, they beat out the grain; or also with oxen, which press it out by treading it with their hoofs.
Now apply this thus to the Jews and to men. First, the farmer is God; secondly, the field is Israel; thirdly, God sows this field; the seeds are the law, and now the grace and gifts of God; fourthly, then He reaps, and gathers the fruits of good works, which to draw out He threshes, that is, afflicts us, some indeed more severely, others more lightly, according to the constancy and strength of faith.