Commentaria in Isaiam
The first edict of Philip Augustus, king of the Franks, crowned in his father’s lifetime, was against blasphemers, who adduce the name of Christ contumeliously and abusively in testimony and in the assertion of any trifling matter, whom he decreed should be plunged into the river without delay. The second was against pipers, actors, parasites, and the like artists of pleasure, from whom he barred the court. In agreement with this is the canon found in distinction 21, where it reads thus: “If anyone swears by the hair or head of God, or uses blasphemy against God in any other way, if he is in ecclesiastical orders, let him be deposed; if a layman, let him be anathematized.” And in the Authentics, under the title That those who revel against nature, it is enacted: “Let no one swear by the members of God or by his hair, or blaspheme God in any other way: for on account of these offenses famines, earthquakes and pestilences occur. We command, therefore, that such persons be seized and subjected to the extreme penalties.”
To Robert, king of the Franks, the son of Hugh Capet, praying once in the city of Orleans for peace and the tranquillity of his kingdom, Christ appeared and gave answer that he would not have peace in his kingdom until he had rooted out blasphemies and notorious crimes. Nor is it strange: for these seem to proceed from contempt or hatred of God: and hatred of God is the greatest of sins. Nicholas Boerius relates this, Decision 301.
In the year of salvation 1569, two garrison soldiers at Strasbourg were thrown into chains, the one blaspheming God, the other insulting the prefect of the cohort. For the former, on account of his proven courage, all the best men interceded, for the latter none. The prudent Senate, judging it unworthy that the violator of God should be in better condition than the slanderer of a man, the investigation of the case having been committed to those to whom it fell, when it learned that a horrible blasphemy had been uttered, though by a drunken man and one out of his mind, thinking that more is owed to the divine Majesty than to human favor and intercession, punished the blasphemer with capital punishment, his tongue drawn out through the neck. So the Theatre of Human Life reports, volume 13, book 4, and our d’Auroultin in his Examples, chapter On Blasphemy, a work which outside Belgium is unknown to many; would that it were known and well worn!
24. BY THE HAND OF THY SERVANTS, through thy servants, Rabsaces and his companions. See chapter 23.
I HAVE GONE UP TO THE HEIGHT OF THE MOUNTAINS; as if to say: The narrow and steep paths of the mountains, so that there was scarcely passage for horseman or footman, I have so leveled, by felling trees and rocks, that I have mounted with my chariots to their summits. Vespasian did the like in the passes of Libanus, when he led his forces through them into Judea, as Josephus testifies, book 3 of the Jewish War, chapter 5. So Sanchez. So Hannibal made a road for his army through the Alps: hear Juvenal, Satire 10:
Nature set before him the Alp and the snow; he parted the crags and broke the mountain with vinegar.
Moreover by Libanus he understands the whole of Judea and Syria: for Libanus was its beginning and as it were its wall and bulwark. It is a synecdoche. THE FOREST OF ITS CARMEL. Vatablus understands the temple, which stood as it were a forest on Carmel, that is, in a fertile field, whose priests, he says, are like trees in a forest. Others understand Jerusalem; others, any fortified cities of Juda situated on high ground. Most simply take Carmel as it sounds, namely the most fertile mountain of Juda, abounding in vines, olives and other fruit-bearing and fragrant trees, on which Elias and Eliseus dwelt, and afterwards the first Carmelites: for this Order took its name from Carmel; as if to say: As I will lay waste Libanus, so also its Carmel. He says “its,” namely of Libanus, which came first: because Carmel looks toward Libanus. For by Libanus he understands the whole of Judea: and Carmel is a part of Judea. Note the word forest: hence it appears that on Mount Carmel there was a forest or wood. So Adrichomius.
25. I HAVE DIGGED AND HAVE DRUNK WATER; as if to say: Abounding in a multitude of soldiers, I dug wells through them in dry places, and so furnished sufficient water to the whole army: this Caesar, Scipio and other most valiant generals did, and this a commander of a camp must do, as Vegetius teaches, book 4, chapter 10.
AND HAVE DRIED UP WITH THE SOLE OF MY FOOT (that is, wherever my army set its footstep) ALL THE RIVERS OF BANKS. “Rivers of banks” he calls waters, both rain-water and spring-water, which in the field are enclosed by banks and kept as in a fish-pond or pool; so that it is the same as is said of the same thing in 4 Kings 19:24: “And I have dried up with the soles of my feet all the shut-up waters”; or rather he so calls flowing streams, which are enclosed on either side by their banks as by embankments. So St. Jerome, as if to say: For my army, so numerous and strong, wherever I went, I partly turned aside the rivers and made them fordable and passable; partly I drank them dry. So Xerxes dried up the rivers of Greece, of whom Juvenal, Satire 10:
We believe that deep rivers failed, and streams were drunk dry while the Mede was at his meal.
26. HAST THOU NOT HEARD WHAT I HAVE DONE OF OLD (that is, decreed to do, according to chapter 29) to the nation of the Jews? FROM THE DAYS OF OLD I HAVE FORMED IT (Hebrew yatsarti, that is, I formed, fashioned, that is, in doing the thing I conceived the form, ordered, prescribed); as if to say: Hast thou not heard, O Sennacherib, that what thou gloriest to have done to Juda and to the other provinces, namely that thou hast laid them waste and subdued them, this very thing I thought of beforehand from of old, predefined and prescribed in each of its parts, as is plain from Isaias, and now have brought about and accomplished in act, namely that fenced cities should be reduced to ruins by thee, in such wise that thou shouldst not take Jerusalem, but shouldst fall there? Do not therefore ascribe thy victories to thyself, but to me: for under my leadership thou hast gained them, and therefore, to show this to thee, ungrateful and proud, I will stay them, nay turn them into disasters. So Forerius, Vatablus and others.
AND IT IS MADE TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE HILLS FIGHTING AGAINST HIM. St. Jerome and Adam take the fighting hills to be princes at variance among themselves.
Secondly and more plainly, Sanchez: the “hills fighting,” that is, contending (for this is the Hebrew) and fighting (as in 4 Kings 19) with the Assyrians, are the cities of Juda and of other nations situated on hills, and therefore fortified, as follows; as if to say: By God’s will it came to pass that Sennacherib should root out, that is, overthrow, the lofty and strong cities that fought and struggled fiercely against him: for that he did this is plain, chapter 36, verse 1; so that he could cross rivers however copious, by the toil of an infinite army and the labor of each man, as if to say: If so many thousands of men carry away single pitchers of water, they will cross without hindrance wherever they wish, the streams being dried up by the soles of their feet. In like manner boasts Alaric in Claudian, On the Gothic War, verse 526: “We have seen mountains sink beneath our feet, and rivers dry up; I broke the Alps, and drained the Po with my victorious helmets.”
Thirdly, it can be rendered plainly with Vatablus: now I have brought it about that I reduce fenced cities to heaps of ruins; or, as Forerius, that God may cause to fall the waves contending against the fenced cities; the Syriac and the Arabic translate: and now I have brought it, that it be for the destruction and desolation.
27. THE INHABITANTS THEREOF WERE WEAK OF HAND, THEY TREMBLED. St. Jerome takes the hand to mean the help of God, as if to say: The Jews were conquered by the Assyrians because God shortened and drew back his hand from them, and stretched it out to the Assyrians, giving them courage and strength and prosperous success in war to subjugate the Jews. Whence the Arabic translates: he left them in their own hands (that is, cast them away), and they were broken.
Secondly and better, take the hand to mean the power and strength of the Jews, as if to say: The Jews trembled when Sennacherib came, because their hand, that is, their power, was shortened by God, that is, cut off. Whence in Hebrew it is qitsre yad, that is, short of hand, and, as our version has it, 4 Kings 19, “weak of hand,” that is, infirm, unwarlike, and as it were maimed, the Jews trembled before the Assyrians. So Forerius, Vatablus and others. Whence the Syriac translates: the inhabitants were left in their own hand, crushed and confounded.
THEY BECAME AS THE GRASS OF THE FIELD, and so on. He compares the Jews, weak and straightway laid low by the enemy, to hay, grass, and the herb that grows on roofs, which, scorched by the sun or frost, or trodden under foot, or for lack of moisture, withers and dries up: for in like manner all the strength of the Jews withered and dried up at once at the coming of the Assyrian.