Commentaria in Isaiam
4. IF IN SOME WAY HE MAY HEAR. Supply: as if to say, Pray for us, if perhaps God will hear, and so on, as Forerius and Vatablus translate from the Hebrew.
6. FROM THE FACE OF THE WORDS, from the words and threats: for the Hebrews by prosopopoeia give these a face. Before the ambassadors of Ezechias came to Isaias, God had already revealed to him their coming and what answer should be made to them, says St. Jerome: whence as soon as they came, Isaias answered them without prayer and without recourse to God.
7. I WILL GIVE HIM A SPIRIT, an adversary, says St. Jerome. Secondly, in Hebrew it means wind, as if to say: A messenger or rumor will come through the air like the wind, that is, very swiftly and unexpected, and this rumor will come as from an uncertain source, as if it were borne by the wind. Forerius: What if some spirit of the angelic ones were sent for this purpose, to carry such a message?
Thirdly, Vatablus: “spirit,” that is, an impulse and desire to return to his own country.
Fourthly, Leo Castrius: “spirit,” that is, corrupted and burning air, namely pestilence: for by this the Assyrians perished, as Berosus teaches in Josephus, book 10 of the Antiquities, chapter 1.
Fifthly and best, Lyranus and Sanchez: I will send, as it were, a panic terror, and a message of the coming of Tharaca king of Ethiopia, to draw him away from the siege of Jerusalem that he may fight against him; which done, on his return he will be smitten by the Angel, and therefore will flee to his own in Assyria, and there be slain.
A like fear and consternation God sent upon the Canaanites that they should not pursue Jacob, Genesis 35:5; and that they should not resist the Hebrews as they came on, Exodus 23:27; and upon the Syrians besieging Samaria, 4 Kings 7:6. So when Saul beset David on every side so that no escape lay open, God sent him a messenger saying that the Philistines were rushing into the borders of Israel: whereupon he was called off from David and forced to return to defend his own borders. How wonderful is God’s providence toward his own! how faithful his guard!
13. ANA AND AVA. The Septuagint fused these two into one, Anaveava; whence Anagugava crept corruptly into the Septuagint. Ana was the royal seat of the Lydians (whose king later, in the time of Cyrus, was Croesus), before Sardis was founded and raised to be the capital of the kingdom by Asarhaddon the son of Sennacherib, or by Sardanapalus, as some think; whence they seem to have taken their name from him, so that Sardis is called as it were the city of Sardon, that is, of the lord and prince. “Sepharvaim” some think was the royal seat of the Pontic and Bosphoran kingdom, of which Strabo speaks, situated near the Cimmerian Bosphorus and the Euxine Sea: whence the Maltese (who use many Syrian and Arabian words) call “Sepharbaim” a crossing, or the swimming across of animals, namely the Bosphorus. For Bosphorus is so called as it were the ox’s passage, that is, the ox’s way and road, because in it the narrows of the sea are so small that an ox can cross them by swimming. So our Maltese Fathers assured me at Rome.
14. THE LETTERS, that is, the letters of Rabsaces: for this is what the Hebrew sepher signifies.
16. WHO SITTEST UPON THE CHERUBIM, who sittest on the mercy-seat above the ark, which is as it were thy throne overshadowed by the two Cherubim, from which thou givest answers in the Holy of Holies: whereby it is symbolically signified that thou hast all the ranks and choirs of Angels subject to thee, and as it were ridest upon them. See what was said on Exodus 25:18.
22. THE VIRGIN DAUGHTER OF SION. That is, O Jerusalem! See chapter 18.
HATH WAGGED HER HEAD BEHIND THEE, as mocking and threatening.
23. AGAINST (that is, against, as Vatablus translates) THE HOLY ONE OF ISRAEL, as if to say: What is this mad blasphemy and pride of thine, O Sennacherib! that thou hast dared to provoke God and challenge him, as it were, to a duel? Knowest thou not that he is the holy guardian and protector of Israel, who will not suffer his holy city and temple to be polluted and defiled by thee, but will rise up against thee as a fierce avenger?
Morally, learn here how God is enraged against the proud and the blasphemous, and punishes them most sharply. Holofernes, indignant that Achior had commended the power of the God of heaven, said, Judith 6:2: “Because thou hast prophesied to us, saying that the nation of Israel is defended by their God, . . . I will show thee that there is no God but Nabuchodonosor, when we shall have slain all of them as one man.” But afterwards his head is cut off by the hand of one woman.
The blasphemous and proud Antiochus was incurably struck with an invisible plague. So the Jews also, having often vomited out blasphemous words against the Son of God, were therefore cut off by Titus.
The wicked thief, fixed to the cross, also blasphemed, when he said: “If thou be the Son of God, save thyself,” and soon afterwards perished on that account.
For blasphemy St. Paul delivered Alexander and Hymeneus to the demon to be tormented.
In the year of the Lord 494, on the eighth day before the Kalends of January, a wonderful, terrible and singular thing happened, at which the ears of the hearers are astounded. When Euthymius, a defender of the Arian faction, was summoning a dancing runner in the baths of the palace of Helenianae, the flatterer Olympius, approaching him and catching sight of some who were bathing, who asserted that the Son is of the same substance with the Father, addressed them in these words: “What then,” he said, “is the Trinity, or where on the wall is it not inscribed? Behold,” said the obscene man, “I too have a trinity.” Whereupon those who were present, enraged, were about to kill him; but were prevented by a certain presbyter. Soon the vengeance of God seized him: for having gone down into a cold bath, he straightway came out, crying: “Have mercy,” and tearing his flesh with his nails, pulled it from the bones. Those who stood about seized him and wrapped him in a linen cloth, and laid him back as he fainted from the cold. When they asked what had befallen him, Olympius answered: “I saw a man clothed in white garments, who poured three hot basins over me, saying: Do not blaspheme.” His relatives therefore took him up and carried him to another bath, which adjoined the church of the Arians. But when they wished to take him out of the linen, they tore away all his flesh; and so, dying, he breathed forth his soul. So Damascene, Ado, Platina, Vascus, and from them Baronius, in the year of Christ 494.
Julian the Apostate emperor, in the war which he waged against the Persians, being gravely wounded, drew blood from the wound in the hollow of his hand, and flung it toward heaven, looking up as though at Christ, as if to lay the cause of his death upon him; and he is said to have cried out: “Thou hast conquered, Galilean, thou hast conquered;” and as the blood flowed from him: “Be satisfied, Nazarene,” he exclaimed. So the Tripartite History, book 9, chapter 25.
In the Life of St. John Chrysostom it is told that, when St. Chrysostom was praising the Holy Trinity, who supplies us with the yearly fruits, Anthemius answered him: Not Christ, but the elements of the world produce them in their seasons, by the providence of the gods. His speech had not yet come to an end when, possessed by a malignant spirit and dashed upon the ground, he lay miserably roaring, to those who were present a cause at once of tears and of fear, rolling his eyes, gnashing his teeth, and spitting foam most foully from his mouth.
Gregory of Tours, book 4 of the History of the Franks, chapter 16, relates a like thing: A certain Leo of Poitiers, he says, who, like his name, was like a lion in every cruel greed, is said to have said once that Martin and Martial, Confessors of the Lord, had left nothing useful to the strength of the treasury; but straightway, struck by the power of the Confessors, he was made deaf and dumb, and died out of his mind: for the wretched man came to the basilica of St. Martin at Tours, kept vigils, gave gifts, but the accustomed power did not regard him; he went back with the same infirmity with which he had come.
St. Gregory the Pope, book 4 of the Dialogues, chapter 18, tells of a boy of five, accustomed to blaspheme God, who was snatched by a demon from his father’s bosom.
The Emperor Justinian condemned to the extreme penalty those who swear by any member of God, or by his hair, or who blaspheme God, as is plain in the Authentics, Collation 6, title 5.