Commentaria in Isaiam
(the Septuagint have, and you, O Apostles) TO THE HEART OF JERUSALEM, with words which may soothe her heart, refresh it, and drive all sadness from it. “It is an idiom of Scripture,” says St. Jerome, “that he who speaks to one that mourns, and consoles by soothing, is said to speak to his heart.”
So Sichem to Dina, corrupted by him, and therefore sad, “spoke to her heart,” as is read in the Hebrew Genesis chapter 34. So in Osee, chapter 2, it is said: “I will lead her into the wilderness, and I will speak to her heart.”
Finally hear St. Bernard, sermon 5 on the Nativity of the Lord: “Be comforted, be comforted, saith the Lord your God, says Emmanuel, God with us. The stable cries this, the crib cries it, the tears cry it, the swaddling-clothes cry it. The stable cries that it is prepared for the cure of the man who had fallen among robbers. The crib cries that fodder is supplied to the same man, who had been compared to beasts: the tears cry, the swaddling-clothes cry, that his own bleeding wounds are now washed and wiped. Yet Christ needed none of these, nothing of these for himself, but all for the elect.” Aptly St. Clement, book 2 of the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 15, teaches that bishops should use these words of Isaias with sinners, to call them back to penance by giving hope of pardon.
AND CALL TO HER. The Septuagint, and comfort her. So the Holy Spirit is called Paraclete, that is, advocate, or consoler; there is signified therefore a vast consolation to come: for four times he repeats “comfort”: for he says: “Be comforted, be comforted, speak to the heart of Jerusalem, comfort her.”
In Hebrew it is qiru eleha, that is, cry to her, or call her, namely that you announce to her this wonderful consolation, and so refresh and console her. For the sense comes to the same. And so “call to her,” by metalepsis, is the same as comfort her, as the Septuagint translate: for to this she is called, to receive consolation.
FOR HER EVIL IS COME TO AN END. So the Roman edition. For “evil” the Hebrew has tsaba, that is, warfare: but the sense is the same. For “evil” here does not mean wickedness, but labor, affliction and trouble: warfare signifies military duties. Whence the Septuagint for “evil” translate humiliation. So it is said in Matthew 6:34: “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,” that is, affliction. So the Apostle says: “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil,” that is, wretched. Evil therefore here signifies the tribulation and the punishments of sins which the Church suffered, not so much from the heathen Emperors for the first three hundred years, as some hold (for these things befell her after Christ, not on account of sins, but to sharpen her virtue and glory: but here the Prophet speaks of the consolation brought by Christ; for this is his first consolation), but which she suffered before Christ, when the Gentile world still served unbelief, sin and the devil; or when the Jewish people served the Romans, Greeks and other heathens, who exacted from her harsh penalties for sins, and cruelly harassed her. This, then, was her evil, her warfare, that is, the stadium of labors, and the time of her warfare and servitude and afflictions fixed by God (for so the Jews were once to serve as soldiers up to the year 50), as if to say: Now the course of thy labor and trouble is fulfilled, and the time of penance, in which thou hast served in bearing adversities and divine chastisements, hast exercised thyself, and in a manner been a soldier: for, as follows, “her iniquity is forgiven.” Christ also, as he put an end to her iniquity, so he put an end to her warfare and evil, or captivity; for as the Poet says of love: Every lover is a soldier, and Cupid has his camp. Service and office in the tabernacle, Numbers 4, is often called tsaba, that is, warfare, as if to say: God abolished that burdensome warfare of the old tabernacle, and made a new and easy Christian warfare in the Church succeed it, of which the Apostle writes, 1 Timothy 1:18, and admonishes him to fight in it a good warfare. Whence St. Justin, Against Trypho, and Tertullian, book 1 Against Marcion, a little after the beginning; and from them Leo Castrius, and Forerius. Every struggle is a warfare, and labor, and the cross, and pain, and patience rejoicing in hardships have their camps.
So every penitent also is a soldier: and penance is a hard warfare. So St. Job also says, chapter 7, verse 1: “The life of man upon earth is a warfare.” And explaining this warfare, verse 3, he says: “Wearisome nights have been allotted to me,” and chapter 14 he says: “Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries,” and so on.
You will say: After Christ the Jews, even those converted to Christ, served the Romans, nay Christ himself paid tribute for them; how then did he put an end to their servitude? I answer: Properly and primarily Christ freed us from the captivity of sin, death, the devil and hell. For this is spiritual, greatest and eternal, compared to which temporal servitude is small and as nothing. Secondarily, however, he also freed us from the temporal. First, because he himself, being born as prince of peace, brought peace with him into the world, and brought it about that Augustus Caesar ruled the Jews not as an enemy and tyrannically, as Salmanasar, Nabuchodonosor and other devastators of the Jews had done, but politically and peacefully, as a lawful prince with equal right, nay humanely, as he ruled the other nations subject to him. See what was said on Isaias 2:4. Secondly, because Christ took away sin from the Jews converted to him, and consequently servitude as far as it was a punishment of sin: he made it, therefore, that servitude was not a punishment of guilt for faithful servants, but a condition of lot and nature, nay that it was to them an exercise of patience and virtue, and matter and cause of liberty and heavenly glory. Thirdly, because by grace he brings it about that servitude to Christians is not forced and harsh, as it was to the Jews, but free and sweet: for he makes them bear it with equanimity and willingness out of love of God. “For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” 2 Corinthians 3:17. This is what Christ says to the Jews: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed,” John, chapter 8, verse 36. Fourthly, because Christ, subjecting Constantine the Great and the other Emperors thereafter to his faith, made them rule Christians not as tyrants nor as Caesars, but as fathers. Fifthly, because in the resurrection he will abolish all servitude in the Saints, and will give them liberty, nay the heavenly kingdom, that they may be eternal kings and lords of the world.
Secondly, some take by evil the most hard and laborious ceremonies, purifications, circumcisions, sacrifices, and so on, in which the Synagogue before Christ in the Jewish temple served God, and as it were soldiered: so they expound the service of the Levites: The warfare is fulfilled, that is, the law of Moses, and the Synagogue of the Jews is no longer the Church militant; but that is now the law and Church of Christ, which is not so much warfare as peace and rest, and free from that troublesome warfare of the Jews; easily and sweetly, now helped by Christ and the holy Angels, it fights for God and heaven. This exposition is apt. Yet the former is favored more by what is added: “Her iniquity is forgiven.”
SHE HATH RECEIVED OF THE HAND OF THE LORD DOUBLE. “Double,” that is, manifold and great, or many and large. So the Chaldee, Origen on Jeremias, homily 12; and others: for “double” is often by catachresis taken for much and heavy, as I said on Jeremias 16:18.
First, the sense is, as if to say: Double, that is, many and grievous punishments thou hast paid for thy sins: thou hast given a double measure of punishments; wherefore thy evil and affliction are fulfilled. So Procopius, Theodoret, Cyril. Who also add that the punishments are called double, not because God punishes sins beyond what is condign, and twofold: for this is alien to his justice and clemency: but because from love of the Church he seems to himself to have inflicted on her punishments twice as grave as she deserved, just as a father, who has chastised his most dear son for a great sin with a very light punishment, seeing his pains and weals, grieving, and soothing him, says: Alas, son, I chastised thee too much, my sudden anger inflicted on thee blows too sharp. Again Forerius thinks this is said to the Church on account of Christ, who is her head, and took upon himself to expiate her crimes; whose satisfaction therefore is ours, as if to say: Enough, nay too much, have I punished my son for thy crimes. For Christ by his death and cross so satisfied divine justice that, though men had sinned far more greatly, yet by Christ’s satisfaction not only are all guilts to be extinguished, and all sins remitted, but Christ also can ask besides most ample rewards for himself and for them, owed to his obedience and extreme patience as Son of God. Through Christ, therefore, we have satisfied God more than we owed. Finally St. Jerome and Hugh say the Jews received “double” because first by the Babylonians, secondly by the Romans they were overthrown. But against this, among other things, is that the overthrow by the Romans was accomplished long after Christ.