Commentaria in Isaiam
Note: for “thy messengers” the Septuagint read, evil angels laboured in vain for the people. St. Justin, in his work against Trypho, and Procopius take this of the demons, who gave Pharao more help, to work the wonders with which they contended against Moses. But here it is not the time of Moses that is in question, but of Jeremias.
5. THEY WERE ALL CONFOUNDED,—that is, they will be confounded; so also the following past tenses are to be explained by the future; for they are prophetic words, as is plain from what precedes and what follows.
6. THE BURDEN OF THE BEASTS OF THE SOUTH.—The Septuagint render it, the vision of the four-footed beasts in the desert; and they set this before the following prophecy as its title. Moreover, this is not a new prophecy, but the continuation of the former, against the Jews fleeing into Egypt against God’s will. This is plain from what follows. What has gone before, then, was as it were a preface and a preliminary narrative to the following prophecy, whose title is set down here. So St. Jerome.
He therefore calls these Jews beasts: first, because they stupidly and brutishly forsook God, whose help and vengeance they had so often and so recently experienced, and fled for refuge to the king of Egypt and to idols. Secondly, because they went laden with their goods, which they had carried out from the ruin of Juda, like beasts of burden. They are said to be of the south because Judea borders on the desert, by which one goes to Egypt, and because they were fleeing into Egypt, which lies to the south of Judea. So St. Jerome and others; as if to say, as Forerius observes, the burden, that is, a threatening and harsh prophecy, against the Jews, who, against the will of God, laden with their goods like beasts, go toward the south, that is, toward Egypt.
Mystically St. Bernard, in his sermon on the burden of the beasts of the south, although less fitly to the literal sense: “The south, he says, which is a warm wind, signifies the Holy Spirit, as you have in the Canticle of Canticles: Arise, O north wind, and come, O south wind, blow through my garden. Happy the soul that is a beast of this south, that is ruled by the bridle of its moderation, that is subject in all things to its will. Happy indeed the soul over which the Holy Spirit presides, and which he directs in all its works, whose thoughts he orders, whose motions he sets in order, and whose manners he composes. Of such it is written: Wheresoever the impulse of the spirit was, thither they walked. Of whom the Prophet says: Thou madest a way in the sea for thy horses. Paul was a beast of this south, who said: We have received not the spirit of this world, but the spirit that is of God: that we may know the things that are given us from God. And see how the beast of the south is everywhere ruled by the bridle of him who presides.” And soon after: “He, therefore, who is a beast of the south is burdened with another’s weakness, burdened with another’s iniquity, burdened with another’s necessity and perversity. The burden is the hunger of the poor, the oppression of the needy, the misery of the sick, … are beasts of the south, and are therefore burdened by the south,” that is, by the Holy Spirit, whose charity is poured forth in our hearts.
IN A LAND OF TROUBLE,—that is, they were, or they passed through. As if to say: the beasts of the south, that is, the Jews, passed through the land of trouble, that is, the desert, in which there is great want of things, hunger and thirst; whence in Deuteronomy 32:10 it is called a place of horror and of vast wilderness; in which again “lions from them,” that is, they come out from the places and caves of the land to attack travellers; and likewise “vipers” and “basilisks,” as is plain from Deuteronomy 8:15; the Jews, I say, passed through, “carrying their riches upon the shoulders of beasts”: for so these words are to be connected and completed. So Vatablus, Pagninus, Adamus and Sanchez; as if to say: I seem to see the Jews fleeing through the desert, and their beasts and camels carrying on their backs the wealth which they carried out from the ruin of Jerusalem.
Secondly, Procopius takes the lion, the viper and the basilisk for the demons and gods of the Egyptians; for Herodotus, in Euterpe, teaches that the Egyptians worshipped these. As if to say: wretched Jews, why do you leave the true God for Hammon, whom the Egyptians worshipped in the form of a goat? For Hammon signifies a goat to the Egyptians, according to Herodotus.
Thirdly, St. Jerome, Haymo, Forerius, and Cyril also favouring it, think that the lion, the viper and the basilisk here mean the Jews themselves. As if to say: these beasts, that is, the Jews, who are like the lion, the asp and the basilisk in fierceness and a poisonous conscience, were going in the land of trouble, that is, in the desert, carrying their riches on camels into Egypt.
Cyril takes the lion, the asp and the basilisk for the demons, who lay the riches of their deceits, that is, the wealth and pleasures with which they deceive men, upon the backs of camels and beasts of burden, that is, upon foolish and perverse souls. Now the asp is a most venomous serpent which, with a slight bite, without feeling or pain, in a sweet sleep (whence it is also called the drowsy one) dissolves a man in death; such again are the pleasures and sins, which kill the soul with a sweet tickling. Whence Origen, and Castrius after him, warns each of us to consider how great riches of asps he has formerly carried, and the wealth of beasts in his soul, that he may cease from sinning, unless he wishes to feel the bite of the asp.
THE FLYING BASILISK.—In Hebrew meopheph saraph, that is, a flying fiery serpent, or burner, such as were sent upon the murmuring Hebrews in Egypt. So Pliny says, book 22, chapter 15: “Egypt also breeds countless serpents, raging beyond all deadliness: basilisks, amphisbaenas, scytalae, acontiae, dipsades, vipers and many others; and the asp, easily outdoing them all in size and beauty, never of its own accord leaves the waters of the Nile.” (Rosenmüller.) There is nothing but pride, that is, an empty show of wealth and strength, and it is “vain, without strength to go”: you are deceived, therefore, O Jew, who hope in Egypt! Wherefore do not flee thither, but be quiet and remain in the soil of your native land.
Vatablus and the Rabbis, from the Hebrew, translate: their strength is to sit still, or rest and quiet. As if to say: the safety and strength of these fugitives lie in this, that they remain in Judea and do not flee into Egypt.
8. NOW THEREFORE GO IN,—namely, into the chamber. The command here is given not to Jeremias, who was to be born afterwards, as the Hebrews and Hugh will have it, but to Isaias himself, that he should write these things for the people upon a tablet, as things to come after a hundred and fifty years, that on the last day, when these things come to pass, they may know that they were foretold, and that they were forewarned by God; nay, that it may be an everlasting testimony both of the divine care and providence toward them, and of their own obstinate malice and perverseness against so many warnings and commands of God.
UPON BOX,—in Hebrew, upon a writing tablet, which was formerly commonly made of boxwood, whose wood does not rot, says St. Jerome, so that it might be set before the eyes of the Jews longer and more clearly. For it looks to the distant times of Jeremias, as I have said. So Propertius says, book 3, elegy 3: “The wax on the common boxwood (that is, the tablet) was dingy”; and Prudentius, book 9, on the martyrdom of St. Cassian, pierced by his pupils with styluses and tablets:
Others hurl their tablets at his face, and the waxed boxwood cracks, driven against his bloodied cheeks.
He calls them waxen tablets, because they wrote with styluses on wax.
9. Lying sons—faithless sons, and therefore adverse, estranged and fallen away from the faith and piety of their patriarchs.
10. Speak to us pleasant things—let them favor our desires. Such today are the soft and the voluptuous, who cannot bear austere preachers and sermons on death, judgment, hell and eternity. And this was the cause of heresy; for the people sought to hear pleasant things about the freedom of the flesh. Luther and Calvin heaped these upon them. What wonder if so many have gone after them? When the philosopher Arcesilaus was asked why very many deserted the Academy for Epicurus, while very few came back, he answered most shrewdly: “Eunuchs can be made from men, but men can by no means be made from eunuchs.” So from wisdom all are easily carried headlong into the pit of error, but to return from error to the way of truth is the lot of few. So Laertius, book 4.
So Strato the natural philosopher, when it was objected that Menedemus had more disciples than himself, said: “What wonder if more are found who prefer to be bathed than anointed?” For the delicate are bathed, while those who prepare themselves for the contest are anointed; signifying that he did not tickle the ears, but taught the practice of conquering vices and exercising virtues.
Errors—that is, things smooth and pleasing to our ears, eyes and palate; for these are often false and mistaken. Again, “errors” means the false oracles of a prosperous success of our flight into Egypt. These impious men said: Speak to us pleasing oracles; but because these were mistaken, the Prophet, putting in the true name of the matter, says: “Speak,” etc., “errors.”