Commentaria in Isaiam
Third, and more simply, “he shall judge,” that is, he shall rule and have dominion; so likewise Gedeon, Jephte, Samson, and others are called judges, that is, princes and rulers of Israel. By “judge,” therefore, is here signified the full dominion of Christ over all nations, as also Psalm 71, 2: “Give to the king thy judgment, O God, to judge thy people with justice.” Whence follows: “And rebuke many people,” namely the Scribes, Pharisees, and any others unbelieving and disobedient to him, even philosophers and wise men. For these Christ shall rebuke, both here through himself and the Apostles and other heralds, that they may either be converted or be confounded; for this is what Christ says of the Holy Spirit to be sent by himself: “When he is come, he will convince the world of sin,” John 16, 8; and in the general judgment, when he shall condemn them. So St. Basil and others.
Fourth, and more sublimely, “he shall judge the Gentiles,” that is, he shall settle and compose by just judgment the quarrels and hatreds of the Gentiles, and shall restrain and check those who stir up quarrels and wars. Whence the Septuagint render, he shall judge between the Gentiles. So Tertullian, book 3 Against Marcion, chapter 21, and Athanasius, book 1 On the Incarnation of the Word, as if to say: Christ by the Evangelical laws of charity, modesty, justice, meekness and patience shall compose all the strifes of the Gentiles, and uproot hatreds and antipathies, restrain the quarrelsome and fierce, and bring it about that in the same Church they live as friends, like brothers, Romans and Greeks, Jews and Gentiles, Spaniards and French, Germans and Gauls, English and Scots, etc., because in place of the spirit of anger, pride, aversion and revenge, he will give them the spirit of gentleness, humility, love and concord; by which shall come to pass what Isaias says, chapter 11, verse 6: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: the calf and the lion and the sheep shall abide together, and a little child shall lead them. The calf and the bear shall feed: their young ones shall rest together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” Again by this spirit shall come to pass what follows:
AND THEY SHALL TURN THEIR SWORDS INTO PLOUGHSHARES, AND THEIR SPEARS INTO SICKLES.—Discords and wars ceasing, soldiers shall become farmers, and shall turn their arms into mattocks, ploughshares and sickles: for all shall strive for concord and peace, and in peace shall till the earth and fields. “From whence are wars and contentions among you? Are they not hence, from your concupiscences, which war in your members?” says St. James, chapter 4. So of a sword melted into a sickle of peace sings Martial, book 14, epigram 34:
Sure peace has melted me into peaceful uses; I am now the farmer’s, before I was the soldier’s.
On the contrary, of a sickle melted into a sword in time of war sings Virgil, book 1 of the Georgics:
And the curved sickles are forged into the stiff sword.
The hoes ceased; the mattocks were turned into javelins, and a helmet was made of the weight of a rake.
And Joel, chapter 3: “Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your spades into spears.” The forerunner and as it were the beginning of this Christian peace was the peace of the whole world which was at the nativity of Christ: “Let us turn over,” says St. Jerome, “the histories of the ancients, and we shall find that until the twenty-eighth year of Augustus Caesar, in whose forty-first year Christ was born in Judea, there was discord in the whole world, and single nations burned against neighbouring nations with zeal for fighting, so that they slew and were slain. But when the Lord Savior was born, when under Cyrinus the governor of Syria the first enrolment was made in the world, and the peace of the Roman empire was prepared for the Evangelical doctrine, then all wars ceased, and men were not exercised through towns and villages for battles, but for the cultivation of fields.” Hence of the time of Augustus Virgil sings, book 1: Then the rough ages shall grow gentle, wars being laid aside; the gates of war shall be shut, etc.
Not long after Augustus the temple of Peace was restored at Rome by the Emperor Vespasian, whose magnificence the ruins of today attest. Of it St. Jerome thus writes on Joel: “Vespasian and Titus, having built the temple of peace at Rome, placed in its shrine the vessels of the temple of Jerusalem, and all the offerings, which Greek and Roman history relates.”
That Paul among others did this Tertullian teaches, Against the Gnostics, chapter 11: “Paul the Apostle,” he says, “from a persecutor, who had first shed the blood of the Church, afterwards changing the sword for the pen, and turning the dagger into a plough, a ravening wolf of Benjamin, then bringing food himself also.”
Pintus explains this symbolically: The Apostle, he says, Romans 6, 13, asserts that the members of a wicked man are swords and arms of iniquity, with which he wounds and injures his soul, whereas they ought to be arms of justice, with which he might fight against vices, and in which he might carry God, according to that saying, 1 Corinthians 6, 20: “Glorify and bear God in your body.” It is nothing else, therefore, for swords to be turned into ploughshares, and spears into sickles, than that the senses and all the members which were arms of the devil should be made ploughshares cutting and tilling the field of the Lord with works of charity, and be turned into sickles reaping the fruits of piety most pleasing to God.
AND THEY SHALL NOT BE EXERCISED ANY MORE FOR BATTLE.—You will ask: How is this true? for after Christ there have been wars, and are, not only between Christians and infidels, but even among Christians themselves. They answer: First, the Anabaptists, Erasmus, Agrippa, and formerly the Manichees, that war is in itself evil; whence it was permitted to the Jews, as imperfect, but forbidden and taken away by Christ and the Apostles. More stolid and impudent, or rather more impious, was Luther, who took away not only offensive war but also defensive.
For his is this paradox: “It is not lawful to resist the Turk invading the Christians.” The reason is: “Because the Turk is the scourge of God; whoever therefore resists him, resists God.” But by the same reasoning he would have concluded that neither the devil nor any wicked man may be resisted, whom yet God commands to be restrained, indeed to be slain. God therefore, as he wills to permit the Turks to harass us with war, and the demon and the impious to tempt and vex us: so on the contrary he wills us to resist them, unless he expressly reveal the contrary, as he revealed to the Jews that he willed them to surrender Jerusalem to Nabuchodonosor. So God left some Chanaanites in Judea, that in them he might train and exercise Israel, and compel it to his worship, as well as to continual warfare, Judges 3, verse 1. This, then, is an error and heresy, which is sufficiently refuted by the wars of the Machabees, of Josue, of Constantine, and others, undertaken not only by God’s permission, but also at his command.
Whence second, more Catholically and truly Cyril answers, that after Christ in the new law wars are not so many, nor so great, nor in the very bowels of the world, as they were before Christ. So 4 Kings 6, 23, the Syrians are said not to have come any more into the borders of Israel, because they came more rarely than before: for that they came sometimes is certain. But, granting this is true, it still does not satisfy, nor exhaust the force and depth of the prophetic sentence.
Third, St. Jerome and Eusebius, book 1 of the Evangelical Preparation, answer that this is taken of the birth of Christ, when, Janus being shut for the third time, the highest peace long prevailed in the world. But neither does this explanation equal the words of Isaias: for by them not lasting but absolute and eternal peace seems to be promised. For this signifies “nor any more.” Add that this peace is here suggested as not to precede Christ, but to be brought in by the reproof and rebuke, that is, the preaching of Christ already born; for he says: “And he shall judge (Christ) the Gentiles, and rebuke many people, who, rebuked and converted by him, shall turn their swords into ploughshares, etc., neither shall they learn war any more.”
I say therefore, from Canon 6, when God promises anything to the Synagogue or Church, however ample and universal the words, it is nevertheless to be understood of the good and upright only, who keep the covenant and friendship with God promising and covenanting. This peace therefore here promised, and sung by the Angel at the birth of Christ, universal and perpetual, flourishes among the true faithful of Christ, who follow the institution, doctrine and laws of Christ their King and Teacher (for these everywhere inculcate peace, concord and charity) of whom Isaias has thus far treated here. For these, by the holy discipline of Christ, having subdued pride, avarice and other depraved movements and desires of the mind, keep perpetual peace with themselves, and with God, and with other men, and, if of necessity they bring a just suit or war against some unjust man invading themselves or their goods, they refrain from hatred, desiring not to hurt another, but to recover their own: and so they seek not war in itself, but through war peace and justice. So Tertullian and Athanasius above, and Irenaeus, book 4, chapter 67, and Origen, book 5 Against Celsus.