Commentaria in Isaiam
11. LET THE DESERT BE EXALTED.—Judea has the sea on the West, on the South the desert, both of Palestine and of Arabia. And so, as a little before he invited the sea and the islands, that is, the Western nations, crowded with cities and inhabitants, so here he invites the desert Southern nations to the praise of God. He says, then: “Let the desert be exalted,” as if to say: Let the Cedarenes, Arabs and other nations dwelling in the desert, and so the whole Gentile world hitherto desert and cast down, now lift itself up, leap and exult for joy, and, as Forerius and Vatablus translate, raise and lift up its voice, and sing for joy to God. He adds the reason:
CEDAR SHALL DWELL IN HOUSES.—As we call a barbarous man a Scythian, so the Hebrews called him a “Cedar” or “Cedarene.” For “Cedar” were the wild Arabs, robbers and barbarians, who did not dwell in houses in a fixed place, but living in tents wandered about everywhere, and fed on everything, as I shall say at Jeremias 49:28. By these, then, he understands all uncultivated, rustic and barbarous nations, who are also called Pagans, because they come together to the fountains (for in the Doric dialect pega is said for pege), that is, they gather at fountains as wild beasts, which live alone, yet, pressed by thirst, gather at fountains. Pagans, then, were so called as if drinking from the same fountain. So from Festus Perottus and Baronius in the Martyrology on January 31, where he also adds that the Ethnics were thence called Pagans about the time of the Emperor Constantine, because, excluded as idolaters from the cities, they withdrew to the villages and hamlets, and there secretly worshipped their idols. The sense, therefore, is, as if he said: The Pagans through Christ will cease to be Pagans; they will dwell not in tents but in houses. This we see literally fulfilled today in Brazil and the whole of the West Indies.
Again, as if to say: The barbarous nations, wandering through all idols and vices, living in the darkness of unbelief (for “Cedar” also signifies darkness, as being dark and horrid, and therefore black and swarthy; whence the Poet: “He hid in dark caves”; for he calls deep caves dark, by metalepsis; for deep things seem to be dark: so St. Jerome), will dwell in houses, that is, in the Churches, indeed in one house, that is, in the one common Church, fixedly. So St. Jerome.
PRAISE YE, INHABITANTS OF PETRA.—“Of Petra,” that is, of rocks, says Sanchez. Whence Vatablus translates, let those rejoice who dwell on the heights of the rocks, as if to say: The barbarians who live in rocks and mountains, as in Cedar and in desert places, far from men, rustic and wild, these will be converted to the Church and will praise God. Secondly, properly “Petra” can be taken here as the city and metropolis of Arabia, which thence is surnamed Petraea. Then by synecdoche he takes through Petra the whole of Arabia. So Cyril, Haymo and Hugh. For Arabia is threefold, namely Desert, Happy and Rocky. Whose conversion he foretells, because it was a neighbor of Juda, uncultivated and barbarous, as if he said: No region, however wild and barbarous, as Arabia is, will be inaccessible to the Gospel, none not subject to it; and because Christian religion flourished in it. For St. Paul preached in Arabia, Galatians 1:17; from Arabia the three Magi came to Christ newly born. In the same place the Homerite Martyrs under the tyrant Dunaan shone in constancy of faith at the time of the Emperor Justin and Pope Hormisdas, of whom see Baronius, volume 7, until Mahomet, born of Arabia Petraea, and buried there at Mecca, drew the Arabs over to his sect.
THEY SHALL CRY FROM THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAINS.—It could be translated more fittingly, with reference to the “praise ye” which went before, with Vatablus and Forerius: Let them cry out and applaud, as also what follows should be put for “they shall give.” For he invites and rouses them to the praise of God. But prophetically our version better translates in the future, “they shall cry.” For the Prophet foresaw that the Gentiles, roused by this voice of his as by that of the heralds of the Gospel, would in fact cry out and give applause to Christ and the Gospel; this is what he says:
12. THEY SHALL GIVE (that is, shall give) GLORY TO THE LORD, AND SHALL DECLARE HIS PRAISE IN THE ISLANDS (that is, to remote nations),—as if to say: Not only will they themselves praise God in their own land, but through the whole East and South they will carry the knowledge and proclamation of God, and will be as Apostles and Evangelists of Christ.
13. THE LORD SHALL GO FORTH LIKE A MIGHTY MAN (Forerius translates, like a giant).—He gives the reason why the Gentiles will give glory to the Lord; namely because he himself, like a mighty warrior and triumpher, will go forth to war, namely to conquer the idols and all sins and vices: likewise the Jews, tyrants, philosophers and all his enemies. There is signified here, therefore, the wonderful and magnificent victory of God and of the Gospel through Christ, who “hath rejoiced as a giant to run the way,” to conquer the kingdom of sin and of the demon; that he, the stronger, coming upon that strong armed prince of the world, might drive him from the world, and either confound, or destroy, or convert all his followers. More aptly St. Cyril and Procopius understand by the mighty one God, who accomplished the same through Christ. The sense comes to the same.
Anagogically, St. Cyprian, in his book On the Good of Patience, at the end, and St. Augustine on Psalm 82, refer all this to the last judgment; for then Christ will drive all his enemies, demons, tyrants and the reprobate into hell.
AS A MAN OF WAR SHALL HE STIR UP ZEAL.—The redemption of Christ is in Scripture ascribed to the zeal of God and Christ, and signifies their indignation against the devil, proceeding from love toward men. For God was indignant that men, such noble creatures of his, whom he had created to his image, were possessed tyrannically by the demon, drawn away from himself. This is what is said in Joel 2:18: “The Lord was zealous for his land”; Zechariah 1:14: “I have been zealous for Jerusalem and Sion with a great zeal”; and chapter 8:2: “I have been zealous for her with great indignation”; Isaias 9:7: “The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.” For it seemed that for so many ages the zeal of God was cold, as if he did not care for the salvation of men, nor for his own affairs and honor, when impiety and the kingdom of Satan everywhere prevailed. The Lord therefore roused up his cry and zeal and indignation when he sent his Son, and the Son himself when he came down to us, says Forerius. Do you wish to know what, how great and how powerful zeal is in God, Angels and Saints? Hear: “By zeal,” says St. Ambrose on Psalm 118, sermon 48, “Jerusalem is avenged, by zeal the Church is gathered, by zeal faith is acquired, by zeal chastity is possessed”; and again: “Zeal is charity; charity is strong as death, zeal is hard as hell. Hard is the zeal which no allurement of this life overcomes. Hard as hell, by which we die to sin that we may live to God. The Angels too without zeal are nothing, and lose the prerogative of their substance, unless they sustain it by the ardor of zeal”; and Hugh: “Zeal,” he says, “is a fervor of soul prone to compassion with nature, and to vengeance of fault, and to devotion of grace; zeal therefore usefully scourges the servant, corrects the son, anxiously and faithfully guards the marriage: the servant by punishment, the son by compassion, the marriage by devotion”; St. Augustine, tractate 10 on John: “Let the zeal of God,” he says, “eat up every Christian, so that, as far as in him lies, he suffers nothing perverse. You see a brother running to the theatre; forbid him, warn him, grieve, if the zeal of the house of God eats you up. You see others running and wishing to get drunk, and wishing this in holy places, where it ought nowhere to be; forbid those you can, coax those you can, do not be still; yet, if it is a friend, let him be admonished gently; if it is a wife, let her be most severely restrained; if a maidservant, let her be restrained even by blows”; more divinely St. Dionysius, On the Divine Names, chapter 4: “More divine,” he says, “is the name of love than of dilection. And the divine Ignatius writes: My love is crucified. But divine love is also ecstatic, not suffering the lovers to be their own but of those they love. Such had Paul, saying: I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.” From this love and ecstasy he teaches that God is called Jealous, “as much toward the love of existing things, and as God the rouser of desire in his lover,” namely of his spiritual and holy desire, or of the thing desired, which he himself loves and desires, “and as showing himself jealous, and jealous of what is desired.” And St. Thomas, 1–2, question 28, article 4: “Zeal,” he says, “proceeds from the intensity of love. For it is manifest that the more intensely any power tends to something, the more strongly it repels everything contrary or repugnant. Since love, therefore, is a certain motion toward the beloved, as St. Augustine says in his book of 83 Questions, intense love seeks to exclude everything that is repugnant to it; and this is zeal, as a husband is jealous of his wife, lest by the company of others the singularity which he seeks in his wife be impeded.”