Commentaria in Isaiam
The sense therefore is, as if to say: As the farmer sows, reaps and threshes each thing in its places, orders, times and ways, so God in Israel, and in this great field of the world, now sows grace, now admonishes, now rebukes, now punishes, now has mercy. You therefore, O Jews, and every nation, should zealously observe and reflect what God is doing in them at any time: indeed let each observe in himself what God is working in him on this day and at this hour: whether He is sowing, or reaping, or threshing, and let him strive to cooperate with God who works and to respond, and through His threshing-sledge and affliction to give grains of patience, charity and other virtues. So St. Jerome, Vatablus and others. Wherefore the Saints zealously and attentively received all the inspirations, admonitions, rebukes, tribulations, etc., of God, and either cooperated with them, or bore them patiently, and drew from them the fruit which God wished. So Samuel to God: “Speak,” he says, “Lord, for thy servant heareth.” So David: “I will hear,” he says, “what the Lord God will speak in me.” And Paul: “Lord, what wilt thou have me do?” And Isaias, chapter 6: “Behold, here am I, send me.” So St. Francis, hearing any inspiration of God, stood still, and collected his whole self to receive it, and having received it, at once carried out what he had heard. Wherefore our holy Father Ignatius rightly said that few know how much they themselves hinder the working of God in them, and put a bar against Him who would work great things, because they either do not hear the voice of God, or do not cooperate with it as they ought. Indeed the Blessed Virgin alone always attentively received the voice and grace of God, and cooperated with it equally, so that, for example, if she received a grace as intense as a thousand, she drew out an act as intense as a thousand, and that continually and assiduously. None of the other Saints did this: for human infirmity now in intensity, now in continuance fails, so as not to match the grace of God: yet those who are generous strive to equal it as much as they can; and these make the greatest progress in virtue and grace.
The Gentiles saw this through a shadow; hence Alexander the Great in Egypt heard the philosopher Psammon, and most approved his saying, by which he affirmed that “all men are ruled by God: for that is divine which in each one profits and commands.” And he himself, thinking more philosophically on the same matter, asserted that “God is the common father of all men, but takes as His own sons those who are the most excellent of men, and these He forms, polishes and perfects.” So Plutarch in his Alexander.
Morally, St. Ambrose, book 3, On Interpellation, chapter 2, teaches that the just man is a farmer like God: “For this man,” he says, “like a good farmer ploughs his field with a certain ploughshare of more rigid abstinence; this man uproots with a certain pruning-hook of virtues, the cutter of vices; this man manures by humbling himself to the earth, knowing that God raises the needy from the earth, and lifts up the poor out of the dunghill; this man guards his fruits, that he may lay them up more abundantly there.” Scripture often uses this metaphor of agriculture when speaking of God and divine things, as is plain in John 4.
25. “GITH.” It is a kind of seed, hot and black: whence in Greek melanthion, commonly called nigella. See Columella, book 7, and Pliny, book 20, chapter 16. Ruellius thinks it is that seed which rustics in Gaul call in their language poivreton, as it were little pepper: because the poorer folk are wont to season foods with this seed in place of pepper.
Allegorically, St. Jerome: gith and cummin, that is, the rude people, will be gently corrected with a staff: but wheat, that is, priests and the wise, will be trodden by the hard wheel of a cart, and the powerful will powerfully suffer torments. And God will teach the farmer to distribute all these with judgment and wisely. So St. Jerome.
28. “BUT BREAD CORN SHALL BE BROKEN SMALL.” It is a metonymy.
“Bread,” that is, wheat and corn, from which bread is made, is wont in Palestine to be broken small by the wheel of a cart and the teeth of the threshing-sledge, and beaten out with greater force, yet with measure and moderation: for it is not threshed for ever or perpetually; but thus the threshing-sledge is drawn round, or the grain trodden by the hoof of the ox, until it falls out of the husks, not however that the grains of wheat be broken; as if to say: So likewise God does not afflict you, O Jews, and His other faithful, to destroy and cut you off, but to purge you from the chaff of vices, and to lay you up like select grains in the barn, that is, in His Church. So St. Jerome.
“NOR BREAK IT WITH ITS HOOFS.” From this it appears that in Judea, in the time of Isaias, they also threshed with the hoofs of horses or oxen treading the crops: for by treading they beat the grain out of its husks, as is still done in some provinces; though St. Jerome seems to deny it, perhaps because in his time this mode of threshing among the Jews had gone out of use; or, as Sanchez says, because the crops were not threshed by horses alone, but by the hoofs of horses which at the same time draw toothed threshing-sledges, or saw-toothed carts.
29. “THAT HE MIGHT MAKE HIS COUNSEL WONDERFUL, AND MAGNIFY JUSTICE.” For “justice” the Chaldean translates repentance. Note: In a parable there are three parts. First, the proparabola, as it were a prologue of the parable; secondly, the parable itself, that is, the fable or story; thirdly, the post-parable, applying the parable to our morals or instruction, from which the sense and scope of the parable is to be gathered. The proparabola here was verse 22: “Do not mock, lest your bonds be tied strait.” The parable was the various works of the farmer, which he narrated from verse 24 to this point. The post-parable is here. So Forerius. The sense therefore is, as if to say: As in farming, namely in tilling the field, sowing, reaping, threshing, in their places and times, God shows great wisdom and justice, as it were distributive, giving to each what the matter and time demand; so likewise He in the prophecy of this chapter shows His providence and distribution about the ten tribes and about the two, and about Christ. Wherefore there is no reason for you to wonder at it: for He acts as a wise farmer, who, as the matter requires, variously exercises and rules the field, that is, the world, and especially the Synagogue and His Church, or the faithful people: now He weeds and purges; now threshes and punishes; now has mercy and spares; now gathers the fruits, and chooses and sets aside His own.
So first, you, O Jews, He cultivated with His constant and fatherly indulgence. Then in you He sowed the seeds of the law and of Holy Scripture. See therefore that you render Him worthy fruits of virtues and merits. But afterwards He will call you to the threshing floor and the threshing of tribulation, from which however He will free you, and bring you back to your country, as the farmer lays up in the barns the corn cleansed by hard threshing. For this immediately preceded, and this threshing, its examination, end and fruit the Prophet chiefly urges in this parable. When therefore God threshes and chastises you, to draw out and beat out the grains of penance, of virtues and of change of life, see that you do not overturn this work of God by your hardness and obstinacy, and compel Him to thresh you even to consumption and cutting off, which I have heard hangs over you, in the proparabola, verse 22. But rather receive this tribulation patiently, and through it return to heart and to God; thus you will be the threshed and the sons of the floor of the Lord, as he said, chapter 21, verse 10. For this is the threshing of love, not of hatred.
Allegorically, Leo Castrius, as if to say: God now ploughs, harrows, weeds, that is, prepares the fields, that is, the minds of the Jews, that at the time of Christ He may sow the Gospel in them, and reap Christian works, worthy of Christ, worthy of the Gospel.
“THAT HE MIGHT MAKE HIS COUNSEL WONDERFUL,” etc. Others translate, who is wonderful in counsel, and magnificent in work.