Commentaria in Isaiam
For the people speaks of itself, now in the singular, now in the plural. By “way” and path he understands the words often used by the Prophets about hearing and worshipping the Holy One of Israel, or rather the manner and rule of life which the Prophets prescribed to them.
The Holy One of Israel—for which the Septuagint and the Chaldean render, the word of the Holy One of Israel; as if to say: Why do you keep repeating this to us, O Prophets, “Thus says the Lord, with fasting, weeping and lamentation,” and so on? It is wearisome to hear it; let these ungrateful and bitter voices cease, let this mournful preaching cease. This is a mimesis, for it is the voice of the obstinate Jews, as is plain.
…is in wealth and luxury gained by frauds, plunderings and tumults. So Vatablus. Second, Adam and Sanchez: as if to say, You have hoped in the Egyptians, who are slanderers and troublemakers. Third, and properly, you hoped and relied upon calumny and tumult, namely by which you tumultuously slandered Jeremiah, who forbade this flight, as a false prophet, that you might crush him, Jeremiah 43:2. So the Beggars in this age in Belgium, France and England increased their fortunes by tumults and calumnies; for they learned to fish in troubled waters.
13. Therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach that falleth—as if to say: As a wall that is broken and leans toward ruin at last falls suddenly and all at once, and crushes with its great weight and fall those who dwelt beneath it, so this iniquity, that is, this proud and vain confidence which you place in the Egyptians against God’s command, will crush you. Again, the Egyptians themselves, struck down by the Chaldeans like a collapsing wall, will by their fall overwhelm and grind down you who lurk under their protection, as the tower of Siloe falling crushed eighteen men, Luke 13:4. He compares the crushing, that is, the laying waste, of the Jews, first to the ruin of a wall; second, to the breaking of a small flask, which is so shattered that no fragment is left.
And sought for in a high wall—for “sought for” the Hebrew has a word which Arias, Vatablus and Forerius render swelling, bulging, jutting out beyond the plumb line, because it is a part torn away from the wall and leaning toward ruin. But the root signifies to draw out, to elicit something from a person or thing that lay hidden; and in a person this is to question and require. Our translator therefore rightly renders “sought for.” Now first, Arias explains “sought for” as sought out; second, others, “sought for,” that is, inquired after.
Third, Hugh, “sought for,” that is, patched up; fourth, Emmanuel Sa, “sought for,” namely by the Jews, who hoped and wished to be saved beneath this broken wall of the Egyptians; fifth, others, “sought for,” that is, inspected by the builders, as suspect and dangerous, and therefore needing inquiry, inspection and examination; sixth, Sanchez: “sought for,” he says, that is, absent and failing; for so we say that those who have fallen in the battle line are “sought for,” or missed; so also the part of the wall that is “sought for” is that part which, where it fell, is not found in the wall; or whose firmness was sought for, that is, not found; seventh, and most aptly Adam, “sought for,” that is, huge, sudden and unforeseen, so that after its fall its cause, which does not appear, is asked about in wonder. So of the sudden and sad fall of Saul and Jonathan David asks: “How are the valiant fallen?” 2 Kings 1; and Isaias, chapter 14, of the fall of Baltassar: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer?” and Jeremias of the fall of Jerusalem: “How doth the city sit solitary?” Lamentations 1:1.
15. If you return and be quiet, you shall be saved—as if to say: Give up the flight, and abandon the way by which you go on into Egypt; if you turn back from this undertaking and road, return home and rest there, you shall be saved from the inroad of the Chaldeans. That the flight into Egypt is here the matter is plain from what goes before and follows. Second: if you return to God by true contrition from your disobedience, by which you wish to go on into Egypt against the will of the Lord, and from every other crime, and purpose henceforth to cease from all sin, you shall be saved, that is, you shall be justified, and you shall obtain God’s grace and friendship in this life and his glory in the life to come. Hence the Septuagint renders, if you turn and groan, then you shall be saved (from which words that saying commonly bandied about seems to be taken: “In whatever hour the sinner shall groan, he shall be saved”). Hence from this place St. Leo, Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome and others, whom Francis Suarez cites and follows, treatise On Penance, Question 8, article 4, disputation 4, section 2, rightly infer that true contrition abolishes sins and is always joined with the infusion of justifying grace; because a conditional truth demands that, the antecedent being posited, the consequent be infallibly posited, namely that, conversion being posited, salvation begun, that is, justice, be posited; and a man is converted as soon as he elicits the first act of contrition.
In silence and in hope—that is, if you keep silent and rest in your own land, and hope in God, and do not laboriously run to Egypt, you shall be strong, and safe from the Chaldeans. He alludes to Exodus 14:13–14.
Morally, learn here how useful and strong are hope, quiet and silence, if indeed we do not look anxiously to human defenses, but trust in God and quietly rest. Do you wish to know the fruits of silence of the tongue, and likewise of the mind? Hear:
The first is that it avoids and restrains both the sins of the tongue and the tumults of the mind. St. Laurence Justinian, book On Discipline, chapter 15, having listed the vices of the tongue, says: “All are avoided by the rule of silence alone”; and St. Augustine had taught this before, on Psalm 88: “Against these,” he says, “the vices of the tongue, the best remedy is silence.” The author of the rule of monks in St. Jerome says: “An enjoined silence corrects a slanderous tongue.”
The second is that it teaches the mind to be wise, and the tongue to speak prudently and piously. Hence St. Laurence Justinian, in the place already cited, says that “silence is the beginning of speaking well.” Richard of St. Victor, on that verse of the Canticle 4, “Thy lips are like a scarlet lace,” teaches that the lace, which binds and ties, signifies the guard and discipline of the tongue, and the scarlet color, charity. For silence teaches the spouse of Christ to speak what belongs to piety and quiet charity. St. Gregory, homily 2 on Ezechiel: “He knows how to speak truly,” he says, “who has first learned to be silent well.” And for this reason such care of silence is taken in monasteries. Hear what the author of the Life of Clairvaux under St. Bernard writes, book 1, chapter 7: “At midday and at midnight, those who came upon the place found silence, apart from the sound of labors, or when the brothers were occupied in the praises of God. Moreover, the order and fame of that silence made it so reverenced even by secular men who came there that they feared to speak, I do not say anything wicked or idle, but even anything not to the point.”
The third is that, as one of the saints says, “Silence is the mother of the wisest thoughts,” and makes a man heavenly and divine. Hear Blessed Peter Damian to the Empress Agnes, epistle 130: “While the noise of human speech ceases, there is built up in you through silence a temple of the Holy Spirit. Hence it is that the sacred History bears witness of the building of the temple of Israel, that hammer and axe and every tool of iron were not heard in the house of the Lord while it was being built. For the temple of God grows by silence; because when the human mind does not pour itself out through outward words, the structure of the spiritual building rises to a lofty summit; and the more it grows, the higher it is lifted, the more it is shut in and forbidden to pour itself out outwardly by the guarding of silence; for silence is the guardian of justice, and it is said through Jeremias: It is good to wait with silence for the salvation of the Lord.”
The examples of silence are illustrious. Among Christians Theonas was silent for thirty years, as appears in the Lives of the Fathers, in Theonas. St. Gregory Nazianzen was silent the whole of Lent; he gives the cause, in his oration On the silence of Lent: “Obeying,” he says, “the precepts of pious men, I shut my lips as with a bolt; and if you ask the cause of this act of mine, I abstained from speech altogether in order to learn to govern my words.”
St. Arnulph, bishop of Soissons, was silent continually for three years and six months, as his Life has it, chapter 8, in Surius, August 15.
“Severus Sulpitius, deceived in his old age by the Pelagians, and recognizing the fault of talkativeness, kept silence until death, that the sin he had contracted by speaking he might wholly amend by being silent,” says Gennadius in the Illustrious Men, under Severus.
Abbot Pambo, hearing that verse of Psalm 38, I said: I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue, said: “This is enough; I will hear the rest when I have fulfilled this.” After a long time he returned, and being asked why he had delayed so long, he answered: “I had not yet perfected what I learned.” So the Tripartite History, book 8, chapter 1. By silence he attained this, that when dying he said: “Up to this hour I do not repent of any word I have spoken; and so I go to God as one who has not yet begun to be pious or religious.” Palladius is witness in the Lausiac History.