Commentaria in Isaiam
15. BEHOLD THE GENTILES ARE AS A DROP OF A BUCKET.—St. Irenaeus, book 5, chapter 29, reads, as a drop from a pitcher. This is an anticipation of an objection, as if to say: Someone will say: Granted that God needs no help or counsel of men, yet men are the image of God and as it were certain earthly gods, and are therefore highly esteemed by him; wherefore they have grounds for pleasing themselves. He overturns this, saying: “Behold the Gentiles are as a drop of a bucket,” because, as heaven is as a point, so all the nations, compared with the multitude of the Angels, are as a drop of a bucket. “Consider then,” says St. Chrysostom on chapter 1 of Ephesians, sermon 3, and at length in homily 2 On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, “how small a part of this drop you are, and how great you are in comparison with God.” St. Athanasius, On the Unity of Substance of the Most Holy Trinity, book 1, at the end, thinks that this signifies that no one can hide or flee from the divinity of the Trinity, because to it the whole world is as a drop. Hence both Plato and Plotinus, asked: “How can God see all things?” they answer: “Because this whole machine of things is, in the sight of God, like a point.” So, according to Clement of Alexandria, Stromata book 7, at the end, Theognis said: “You, Megarians, are neither third nor fourth nor twelfth, nor in any number or reckoning, but like dust which the wind scatters, and like a drop of rain.” See, then, what all earthly things are, and you yourself, though you rule the whole world. “What is man that thou art mindful of him, O Lord?” “What is it,” says St. Jerome, “that man is proud, who is like a drop from a bucket, falling and neglected?” indeed the least part of this drop, not even the hundred-thousandth. “As, if a small drop flows from a bucket, it is disregarded by the bearer, so the whole multitude of the nations, compared with the heavenly ministries and the multitude of the Angels, is counted as nothing.” So far St. Jerome. Again, as a drop neither burdens the bucket if it stays nor lightens it if it falls out, so men, if they all perish, leave nothing empty, nor, if they are in the nature of things, do they occupy or fill anything, if you look at the vast expanse of sea and world. So, Wisdom 11:23, the whole world before God is said to be “as a drop of the morning dew,” which falls everywhere before daybreak, and straightway at the rising of the sun and of the light is dried up, is absorbed and vanishes.
AND AS THE SMALL WEIGHT OF THE BALANCE.—So also Wisdom 11:23 says: “For the whole world before thee is as the least grain of the balance.” “Weight” is the least inclination or motion: for the Greek has it so, that is, as the leaning or inclination of the scales of a balance, which, since they are always in motion, always incline one scale more or less hanging up or down than the other: which the ancients called to “momentate.” Vatablus understands it of the very beam of the balance, or the tongue that supports and holds up both scales equally. And so Plutarch in his Camillus seems to take it.
The sense is, as if to say: As this inclination of the scale is the least, and of the least weight, so also the world, as great as it is, is least in respect of God.
Secondly, as this inclination is unstable and passing, and is always in motion, so is this world before God. Thirdly, as this inclination can be removed by the least motion of him who holds the balance, and made to incline to the other side, so also the whole world is in all things at the nod and will of God.
More recent writers, such as Vatablus and Forerius, translate the Hebrew shachak as a lightness, or like a light speck of dust (such as the atoms which we see turning in the sunbeams), which neither adds to nor takes from the weight in the balance: so man is of no price in God’s sight, nor does anything added to God increase him (for God alone, being immense and infinite, is as great and effects as much as God and the world joined and put together), nor did man bring any help, counsel, weight or moment to God, who willed to create him, and through Christ to recreate and reform him, and to bring him to his appointed weight.
BEHOLD THE ISLES ARE AS A LITTLE DUST.—The Hebrews called “isles” the regions lying across the sea, even if they were mainland, such as Italy, Spain, Greece, etc. For “as a little dust” the Septuagint translate, as spittle, or spit. For the Hebrew signifies something fine and small, which suits spittle as well as dust.
“The earth,” says Boethius, book 2 of the Consolation, “is the point of a point,” namely of the world, which is a point if it is compared with God. Forerius translates: “Behold, he will cover the isles as a thin thing” (for the word comes from the root talal, which means to cover), as if to say: It is easy for God to submerge all the isles, as if a mist covered them. Vatablus, deriving the word from a root meaning to cast, translates: behold, he will cast the isles away like the finest dust, or carry them elsewhere; as we read in histories that isles, as if floating and drifting in the sea, have often been carried elsewhere. Our version has: behold, the isles are as a little dust that is cast away, that is, worthless and small: namely, all are like a light grain, or sand deceiving the eyes.
Morally, consider who you are, who God is, that you may think little of yourself and humble yourself, and wonder at and revere God.
So Abraham: “I will speak,” he says, “to my Lord, whereas I am dust and ashes.” So Moses, asking the name of God, hears: “I am who am,” as if to say, I am, you are not, Exodus 3:14. See what is said there. So St. Francis spent whole nights in meditation, and said nothing else than: “Who art thou, Lord, and who am I? Thou art an abyss of being, of wisdom, of holiness and of all goods; I am an abyss of nothingness, of ignorance, of sins and of all miseries.”
16. AND LIBANUS SHALL NOT BE SUFFICIENT—as if to say: So great is the loftiness and majesty of God that all the wood, all the incense, all the spices, all the animals of Libanus and of any mountains whatever would not suffice for holocausts, if they were offered to him according to his dignity. So St. Jerome, Cyril and others. He says this in order to rouse Jews and Gentiles alike to the worship and reverence of the true God and to contempt of idols, as if to say: The majesty and holiness of God are immense; wherefore he can be worshipped and matched by no victims, save one infinite victim, namely that by which the only-begotten Son of God will offer himself on the cross. He, therefore, will accomplish what Libanus and the whole world could not do. For he will equal the dignity of God: for he who will be offered, and at the same time will offer himself to God as a holocaust and an atonement for the world, will be God, and equal to God.
17. AND AS NOTHING.—Forerius translates, more than nothing. For if you compare nothing with any created being, it is less distant from it (since both are finite, and the distance of a finite thing from a finite thing is finite) than any being, indeed the whole world, is distant from God; for this distance is infinite. For God transcends all created beings infinitely: and therefore he is distant from them not only negatively but also positively, infinitely: whereas a being has a finite positive distance from nothing. For as being is finite, so also its opposite, namely non-being or nothing, is finite: for it is the negation or privation of finite being. Nothing, therefore, in itself, and as it were positively, is finite: because it has less being than a being: for it has no being, and is wholly nothing. Negatively, however, nothing is in a certain way infinite, because it denies all being, and all things, even if they were infinite: it denies, therefore, the infinite things that are or can be; but positively it is finite, and is only finitely distant from a created and finite being. But if you compare nothing with God, nothing can be more distant from God than nothing. I speak physically: for morally sin is more distant from God. And in this sense it is a hyperbole, as if to say: All the nations, indeed all beings, are supremely and infinitely distant from God, and therefore, if a greater distance could be given than that of nothing from God, they would be more distant from God than nothing. To this the Apostle alludes, 1 Corinthians 1:28, when he says: “God hath chosen the things that are not,” that is, those which are of no price or moment. See here also how far “the Word made flesh” humbled himself, and how truly the Apostle says: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” For man is nothing, and more than nothing, before God.