Commentaria in Isaiam
So Claudian, in the book On the Rape of Proserpine, brings in Pluto consoling her and promising her a wonderful light:
Do not think the day lost; we have other stars, there are other orbs;
and you shall see a purer light, and shall marvel more at the Elysian sun and its pious dwellers.
In the day when the Lord shall bind up the wound—when God, namely, shall heal in us the wound of all corruption, misery, sadness and mortality, by the four endowments of the glorified body.
27. Behold, the name of the Lord cometh from afar.
Cyril, St. Thomas, Hugh and Forerius refer this to the slaughter of the Babylonians, as if to say: After a long space, namely after two hundred years, the Lord shall come to overthrow Babylon through Cyrus. Others refer it to the slaughter of Sennacherib and the Assyrians; but that did not come from afar.
Second, and genuinely, St. Jerome, St. Thomas, Hugh and Lyranus refer this to the day of judgment; for of this he treated in the preceding verse and treats in the following, especially verse 33, where he speaks of the fire of Topheth, that is, of hell.
The sense, therefore, is as if to say: “Behold the name,” that is, the majesty, power and vengeance of an angry God, which he will exercise in the day of judgment upon the reprobate, shall come long after. Hence follows: “His wrath burning,” and so on.
Mystically, Sanchez: The vengeance of God, he says, comes from afar, because he is most merciful, and a stranger to punishing and far removed from it. His wrath burning—this is a fine hypotyposis of an angry God: for the angry are wont to have flashing eyes.
28. His breath as a torrent overflowing—as if to say: The breath that went forth from the mouth of the angry God was so great that it alone seemed likely to prostrate all enemies; no otherwise than a raging torrent, swollen up to the middle of the neck, prostrates, overwhelms and drowns men. So Sanchez. Note: “An overflowing torrent” is a proverb signifying the greatest abundance, and speed, and impetus, and slaughter and ruin. For a torrent, especially an overflowing one, involves all these.
as far as depends on the force of fire and burning; but God preserving them for eternal torments, otherwise they would be nothing, or annihilated.
From the Hebrew it can be rendered, with R. David, Pagnino and Vatablus, to sift the nations with the sieve of vanity, that is, with a useless winnowing, that is, because the grain is not purified but lost, and everything that is in the winnowing fan is cast out to the wind.
And a bridle of error, which was in the jaws of the peoples. First, Forerius and Sanchez explain, as if to say: The bridle and yoke which Sennacherib and the Chaldeans put upon the Jews, by which they drove them from their country through various regions, and made many even to wander and err from their ancestral religion to the worship of the Gentiles (as appears from Jeremias 16:13), God will destroy and crush. Second, and genuinely, as if to say: God in the day of judgment will crush and destroy the power of the demon. Consequently he will take away this bridle of the world and of error, with which many are now bridled. To this belongs the exposition of St. Gregory, homily 13 on Ezechiel: “The bridle of error,” he says, “bound the jaws of the peoples when the Gentile world, bound by the error of idols, knew not how to give God the praise of confession. But this very bridle of error is now turned for us into a canticle, and rejoicing we sing psalms and chant: All the gods of the Gentiles are devils, but the Lord made the heavens. Well is it said: As the voice of a sanctified solemnity; because while we render God the praise of confession, we rejoice in the sanctified solemnity.”
29. You shall have a canticle as in the night of a sanctified solemnity—so it is to be read, namely as the Romans, the Hebrew and the Chaldean read, not as the Plantin and others. First, he says “as in the night”; because, says Pintus, when the paschal victim was to be sacrificed, the Jews spent the whole night watching with gladness and song. Second, and genuinely, the Prophet speaks of the saints and the elect, who in heaven will sing a canticle as of the night (that is, of nights; it is a Hebrew antiptosis, for the Hebrews confuse cases, and use one for another, even for all) “of a sanctified solemnity,” not of the Pasch but of the crossing of the Red Sea; as if to say: The Blessed shall sing such a canticle as the Hebrews sang when, having crossed the Red Sea by night and Pharaoh being submerged, they sang: “Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified,” Exodus 15:1. For this canticle of Moses teaches the elect who shall sing it.
Others understand by the night the night of the wedding, in which the Hebrews, they say, went from the desert, that is, from the fields, with pipes and symphony to the mountain, that is, to Jerusalem; as if to say: The canticle of the Blessed will be like an epithalamium or wedding hymn; but weddings are nowhere called a “sanctified solemnity.” And as he that goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord—for those who were about to pay vows and to sacrifice were wont to go up exulting with harps and pipes.
30. And the Lord shall make his voice to be heard (as if to say: the Lord will make known to the whole world the power of his voice, by which like thunder he will cast the wicked into hell, at the burning of the world, and then in hell.) He shall dash them in a whirlwind—that is, as in a whirlwind and hail. It is a catachresis, signifying that God will destroy the reprobate in a terrible and horrible manner. So St. Jerome.
Second, Vatablus explains, as if to say: God will conquer the Assyrians not by arms, nor fighting in earnest, but as if in play. Third, Forerius, as if to say: The Assyrians and Sennacherib will be conquered not by arms but by sacrifices, which were offered with timbrels and harps; for the prayers of the pious avail more to victory than the arms of soldiers. For the Hebrew tenuphoth, which our version renders “principal,” signifies elevation and shaking, and hence the victim which was offered in sacrifice to God the Creator of all by being lifted and shaken toward the four quarters of the world in the manner of a cross. But rather the war of tenupha is a sharp and illustrious war, in which the victor shakes his enemy this way and that, as a lion a bull; or in which, as if sure of victory, he rejoices by the raising of his hands, exults, and as it were triumphs while fighting. Rightly, then, our version has “in principal wars”; and hence the first sense is more genuine; the Septuagint render tenupha as exchange; for they render, they shall fight against him with timbrels and harp in exchange.
31. At the voice of the Lord the Assyrian shall fear, being struck with the rod—that is, the devil and every tyrant and oppressor, shall be struck and condemned by the sentence of God. So St. Jerome. He alludes to Assur, that is, to Sennacherib, who was smitten by God the avenger.
32. And the passage of the rod shall be founded—this rod or scourge of God, passing over the reprobate and smiting them, will be founded, that is, strong, firm, stable and perpetual in hell: and so (with timbrels and harps, that is, with the highest jubilation and triumph of the saints), in great battles (that is, in a renowned and glorious manner of fighting and subduing enemies, namely by his nod and command alone, which is wont to be celebrated with timbrels and harps, as was done for Moses, Exodus 15, and for David against Goliath), he shall overthrow them: for the saints will marvelously rejoice over their wicked enemies, alive, trampled and doomed to eternal damnation. So St. Jerome.
33. For Topheth is prepared from yesterday. The Chaldean has Gehenna.
For Topheth was Gehenna, that is, the valley of the sons of Ennom, near Jerusalem, where the Jews burned their sons to the idol Moloch, and, lest they be moved by their wailing, beat the toph, that is, timbrels; hence the place was called Topheth, as if Timbrel, and by its possessors was called Gehenna; whence, because of the like cruelty and burning, hell has been called Topheth and Gehenna.
Now first, St. Cyril, St. Thomas, Hugh, Forerius and Sanchez refer this to the Assyrians and Chaldeans, and think that Sennacherib’s forces were slain by the Angel in Topheth, nay burned, as in Topheth infants were burned to the idol Moloch. Again, for the Chaldeans and the king, as Pagninus renders, namely Baltassar, God “prepared” his own “Topheth,” namely in Babylon, where, unburied, he was cast on a dunghill and rotted: as in Topheth was the burying-place of the Jews, who there rotted, as Jeremias teaches, chapter 19, verse 11. The Septuagint plainly render otherwise, namely, for thou shalt be deceived before days. So the Complutensian read, though the Roman codices of Caraffa have, for thou shalt be exacted before days; for the slip from “thou shalt be deceived” to “thou shalt be exacted” was easy. The cause of this difference is that the Septuagint took Topheth, or, as the Hebrew has it, Tophte, not as a proper name but as the future of the verb patha, that is, he enticed, he deceived.
Second, and genuinely, the Prophet here gives the reason why he said in the preceding verse that the passage of the rod of God upon the wicked is founded, that is, perpetual; namely because he prepared for them from yesterday, that is, from of old, from the beginning of the world, Topheth, that is, Gehenna. Of the origin, etymology and so on of Topheth I shall speak on Jeremias 7:31.