Commentaria in Isaiam
Chapter Forty-one
The Prophet had persuaded the Jews in the preceding chapter that those who worship God and hope in him will change strength and will fly like eagles; here he now shows how much more wisely they do this than the Gentiles, who trust in their idols. He therefore brings in God disputing with the Gentiles, and pleading his cause as before judges, and bidding them plead the cause of their gods, since these, being dumb images, cannot themselves speak for themselves. Thus he makes God plead his own cause, and begin: Let the islands keep silence before me, etc. First, then, he proves his divinity from the power and providence which he showed to his servants, namely Abraham and his posterity, by giving them so many miraculous victories, leading them through the desert, protecting them, etc. Secondly, verse 11, by promising them for the future this same help and beneficence of his, whence he tacitly exhorts them to persist in hope and worship of him. Thirdly, verse 21, he disputes with the idols, and convinces that they are not gods by two arguments. The first is the sure foretelling of the future, in which he shows that he, and not the gods of the Gentiles, is powerful. The other is, verse 24, that the idols neither exist of themselves nor are firm, but are made by workmen, and fastened with glue lest they come apart and fall, and therefore can do neither good nor harm to anyone.
1. Let the islands keep silence before me, and let the nations change their strength: let them come near, and then let them speak: let us come near to judge together.
2. Who hath raised up the just one from the east, hath called him to follow him? He shall give the nations in his sight, and shall rule over kings: he shall give them as dust to his sword, and as stubble driven by the wind to his bow.
3. He shall pursue them, he shall pass in peace, no path shall appear in his feet.
4. Who hath wrought and done these things, calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord, I am the first and the last.
5. The islands saw, and feared, the ends of the earth were astonished, they drew near, and came.
6. Every one shall help his neighbor, and shall say to his brother: Be of good courage.
7. The craftsman encouraged the founder, striking with the hammer him that smote at that time, saying: It is ready for soldering: and he strengthened it with nails that it might not be moved.
8. And thou, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend:
9. in whom I have taken thee from the ends of the earth, and from the remote parts thereof I have called thee, and said to thee: Thou art my servant, I have chosen thee, and have not cast thee away.
10. Fear not, for I am with thee: turn not aside, for I am thy God: I have strengthened thee, and have helped thee, and the right hand of my just one hath upheld thee.
11. Behold all that fight against thee shall be confounded and ashamed: they shall be as nothing, and the men shall perish that strive against thee.
12. Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, the men that resist thee: they shall be as nothing: and as a thing consumed, the men that war against thee.
13. For I am the Lord thy God, who take thee by the hand, and say to thee: Fear not, I have helped thee.
14. Fear not, thou worm of Jacob, you that are dead of Israel: I have helped thee, saith the Lord, and thy redeemer the Holy One of Israel.
15. I have made thee as a new thrashing wain, having sharp teeth: thou shalt thrash the mountains, and break them in pieces: and shalt make the hills as chaff.
16. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, in the Holy One of Israel thou shalt be joyful.
17. The needy and the poor seek for waters, and there are none: their tongue hath been dry with thirst. I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.
18. I will open rivers in the high hills, and fountains in the midst of the plains: I will turn the desert into pools of waters, and the impassable land into streams of waters.
19. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, and the thorn, and the myrtle, and the olive tree: I will set in the desert the fir tree, the elm, and the box tree together:
20. that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.
21. Bring your cause near, saith the Lord: bring hither, if you have any thing to allege, saith the king of Jacob.
22. Let them come, and tell us all things that are to come: tell us what things were former, and we will lay our heart to them, and know the latter end of them, and tell us the things that are to come.
23. Shew the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that ye are gods: do also well or evil, if you can: and let us speak and see together.
24. Behold, you are of nothing, and your work of that which hath no being: he that hath chosen you is an abomination.
25. I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come from the rising of the sun: he shall call upon my name, and shall make princes to be as dirt, and as the potter treading clay.
26. Who hath declared from the beginning, that we may know: and from time of old, that we may say: Thou art just? there is none that sheweth, nor that foretelleth, nor that heareth your words.
27. The first shall say to Sion: Behold they are here, and I will give to Jerusalem an evangelist.
28. And I saw, and there was no one even among them that could give counsel: and who, when I asked, could answer a word.
29. Behold, they are all in the wrong, and their works are vain: their idols are wind and vanity.
He commands silence, for he challenges them and wishes to contend with them judicially, Theodotion: let them be mute and silent. “Let them keep silence,” therefore, that is, let them hear me in silence: it is a metalepsis. For he does not impose on the Gentiles an absolute silence, but he demands that they, in silence, listen to him as he sets forth the arguments of his cause and divinity. Then let them freely answer him, if they have anything to say. This is what he means by “let them change their strength,” that is, let them be strengthened in mind, in power and in arguments, that they may dispute with me; let them refute me boldly, bravely and audaciously, and establish their own cause if they can. “Let them come near,” therefore, and when they have heard me, “then let them speak. Let us come near to judge together.” So St. Jerome, Cyril, Procopius, Theodoret. It is a hysterologia, or inverted order of words; for in plain order he would have said: Let the Gentiles change their strength, let them come near, let us together approach the judgment, let them hear me in silence, then let them speak. So Forerius. For “let them keep silence” Symmachus translates, plough (for the Hebrew charas signifies this also) to me, ye islands, that is, as Procopius says, serve me, ye islands, as the ploughman serves his master. The Septuagint, reading chadas for charas, that is, he renewed, he built, translate, celebrate the dedication, and, as Nazianzen has it, in his oration on the New Sunday, the translator renders, be ye dedicated, as if to say: Renew the fallow ground of the Gentiles with the plough of the faith and preaching of Christ. Again, renew the fallow ground of your heart, plough, sow in it new virtues and good works, and so dedicate your heart as a new temple of God, and keep the feast of this dedication. In like manner Jeremias says, chapter 4:3: “Make a new field for yourselves, and sow not upon thorns.” Thirdly, the Hebrew charas can be translated, build, and edify yourselves to me, ye islands, that is, that you may be a spiritual house for me.
ISLANDS.—He calls the islanders “islands,” that is, remote nations lying across the sea from the Jews, such as the Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, etc.
2. WHO HATH RAISED UP THE JUST ONE FROM THE EAST?—First, Hugh, Adam and Pagninus understand by “the just one” Cyrus, who was the executor of divine justice and vengeance, by overthrowing the Chaldean tyrants and freeing the Hebrews from them, and whom God summoned for this from the East, that is, from Persia. The words of Isaias favor this exposition, in which he vividly describes his victories, as also in chapter 45, where he expressly names Cyrus in verse 1. For that chapter seems similar to this, and of the same argument.
Secondly, St. Jerome, Cyril and Procopius take “the just one” to be Christ, as if to say: Christ was given by God to men as a kind of sun of justice rising in the East. For as the sun rising there illumines and gives life to the world, so Christ, as Zachary says, “hath visited” and enlightened “us, rising from on high,” namely from the rising of divine light; for thence God the Father made him rise for us.