Commentaria in Isaiam
18. TO WHOM THEN HAVE YE LIKENED GOD?—He digresses to censure the idolatry of the Gentiles (for this hindered them from Christ and salvation: for idols were the crooked and rough things in the way of the Gentiles, which in verse 3 he commanded to be removed, that the way might be prepared for the Lord), namely that, when pressed by enemies or another nation, or led by desire of some thing to obtain it, they fled to idols of gold and wood, without life, when they ought to have implored the help of God, and fixed all their hope on him, as most powerful and most kind; whence he concludes, in verse 31: “They that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength.” This, then, is the epilogue of this whole discourse, namely that he may teach that hope is to be placed in God, not in idols, and that the Gentiles must pass from the worship of idols to the worship of God set forth in the Gospel of Christ.
Note: the Gentiles, by making and worshipping statues of Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury, etc., worshipped idols of stone and wood, not God; yet they are said to have made God like them, because they equated these with God, and worshipped no other God than these statues, and consequently transferred God and the Godhead to the statues, as if God were like them, and had a similar body, indeed as if the body of the statue were the body of God: which was a grave injury to God, namely to equate statues with God, and consequently to make God like, indeed equal to, statues. Hence Forerius translates from the Hebrew word for word: To whom will you liken God, and what likeness will you equate to him? And so “you have made like,” verse 18, is explained by “you have equated.” This is what the Apostle says, Romans 1:23: “They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts,” etc., which he explains by adding: “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” You see here that this likeness, or likening, of statues is nothing else than that they transferred the worship of the Creator to creatures, that is, to statues, “and imposed the incommunicable name (of God) on stones and wood,” as the Wise Man says, Wisdom 14:21. The sense, then, is, as if to say: Since all the nations compared with God are as a drop, indeed nothing and vanity, with what rashness, impiety and sacrilege do you, O Gentiles, compare and equate Jupiter and the idol of Jupiter with God, and God with Jupiter, indeed make God Jupiter, and Jupiter God?
19. HATH THE WORKMAN CAST A GRAVEN IMAGE?—He takes “graven” for “molten,” for the workman casts it. For the Hebrew pesel, which our version renders “graven,” signifies an idol, whether carved, cast, painted or hewn. Here he mocks the madness of idolaters, as if to say: Are not your idols wood, or metals hewn, melted, cast or carved by workmen, who seek for this purpose woods that do not rot, lest they be eaten by moths or decay; and who fasten them with hammers and nails, lest they be thrown down by wind or some other shock, and adorn them with gold and silver? How then do you compare them with God, and make them your gods? Does the workman then make divinities? Does Vulcan forge gods?
21. DO YOU NOT KNOW?—so the Roman version reads, in the present, you will not know in the future, as if to say: Can you not easily know and hear, from the very beginning of the world, by the tradition of fathers and forefathers, that the foundations of the earth were laid by God, or that the earth itself was made and founded by God the Creator? and therefore that its one and only creator is he who created the metals: who would be so deluded as to believe that a statue carved or cast of gold or silver is God? Note: “The foundations of the earth” are not the poles or ends of the earth, as Cyril would have it, but the earth itself, founded and established by God. For the earth, hanging in the air, has no other hinges or supports than that it is firmly placed there by God. Leo the Armenian, the iconoclast emperor, abused this passage perfidiously; he had as a partner in crime Theodorus, whom, after removing Nicephorus, he had given the see of Constantinople. This Theodorus was raging against the holy images, and when once these words of Isaias were recited in church: “To whom have you likened the Lord? Has the workman or the goldsmith prepared a likeness?” he drew nearer and whispered in the Emperor’s ear: “Hear the Prophet, lord, and obey him.” Then Leo poured out his war on images with greater madness, and began to rage against the worshippers of images and of God. So Zonaras and others. Perfidiously, I say: for the images of Christians are not images in the sense of idols, like those of the Gentiles, against which the Prophet here thunders; nor are they worshipped as gods; nor are they made equal to God by the faithful, so that God should feel an injury done to him in being likened, compared and equated to images. For no one of the faithful is so simple or stupid as to worship images as gods, as the Gentiles did. Moreover, that God here does not censure even images of God himself is plain from this, that he himself took on this image, appeared in it, and showed himself to men to be seen; not only when the Word was made flesh, but also with the Patriarchs and Prophets he presented and set forth an image of himself to be venerated, as he did to Moses, appearing to him in an assumed body, Exodus 33 and 34, and to Isaias, chapter 6:1, and Daniel, chapter 7:9, and St. John, Apocalypse chapter 1, verse 13. If God has shown us an image of himself, why may it not be expressed by a like image? For an image is so called from the notion of likening and representing, as Sanderus teaches from the Second Council of Nicaea, book 1 On the Adoration of Images, chapter 3. See Damascene, book 4, chapter 17, and his oration On Images, and the Second Council of Nicaea, which is wholly for images.
22. HE THAT SITTETH UPON THE CIRCLE (Vatablus, globe) OF THE EARTH,—as if to say: He who sits in the heavens like a king of the world and presides, and looks down on the whole circle and compass of the earth, and sees men in it walking and leaping about like locusts, cicadas and ants. For Forerius translates locusts as cicadas.
Note that men are fittingly compared to locusts; for both are small, vile, soft, wretched and perishable animals. For, first, the locust is born of putrefaction; so also is man. Whence St. Job says: “I have said to rottenness: Thou art my mother; and my sister,” “to the worms.” Secondly, the locust is swollen with humor; so “what is man but phlegm and bile?” Thirdly, the locust is slender, and in length of legs surpasses all animals in proportion to the size of its body: so also does man. Whence Ecclesiastes, chapter 12, verse 5, describing the miseries of the aging man: “The almond tree shall flourish, the locust shall be made fat,” that is, grey hair will come, and swelling of the feet will follow, namely gout. For the locust is so called because it has long feet, say Isidore, Lyranus and Albert, book 16 On Animals, where he refutes others, who say it is called locusta as if “standing in a place.” So with its feet made fat and swollen the locust swells and grows fat. Fourthly, locusts, says Albert, are all female, as scarabs are all male: so men have womanish minds, and likewise vices. Fifthly, locusts, because they lack eyelids, have very hard eyes; indeed there are those who think they lack eyes and sight: hence they are likewise stupid. Whence the proverb: “He has a locust’s mind,” that is, he has little mind and brain; which Lucian uses in his Tragic Jupiter: so also men are foolish, and in divine things and in what concerns their salvation are hard, and blind as a mole. Sixthly, locusts have no king, and devour one another, says Aldrovandus, book On Bloodless Insects, chapter On the Locust: so men suffer from disorder, and destroy one another. “Man is a wolf to man.” Seventhly, locusts do not so much have a flight of their own as are carried by the wind, and when they have lifted themselves a little from the earth, they fall again as their wings fail: so man, as he flowers in age and glory, so soon likewise falls. Eighth, locusts are innumerable: so are men. Again, locusts are exceedingly light and mobile: so men are light and inconstant. Hence Isidore: “Locusts,” he says, “are wandering souls, leaping into the pleasures of the age.” Ninth, the locust is a gluttonous animal, feeding on every shoot: so man is cast down into his belly. Hence, tenth, the locust is an animal most harmful to crops, laying waste whole kingdoms and provinces; whence by some the locust is called as if “place-burning.” So much so that Pliny, book 11, chapter 29, writes that in the region of Cyrenaica there is a law to make war on the locusts three times a year, first by crushing the eggs, then the young, lastly the full-grown, with the penalty of a deserter.