Commentaria in Isaiam
Where note that deafness and blindness are twofold: one incipient, such as that of the hard of hearing and the dim-sighted; the other perfect, such as that of those who were born deaf and blind, or have been such for many years. The former is naturally curable, the latter incurable. Again, the cause of deafness and blindness is threefold: the first from without, namely when an outward fleshy growth is formed over the organ of hearing, namely the drum, and a film over the eye, namely over the cornea. The second, because the organ itself, in which sensation resides, namely of hearing and of sight, is corrupted or damaged and disordered. The third, when a superabundant humor in the brain, namely bile or phlegm, flows down to the organ of hearing (exciting there a sound and ringing, which hinders the perception of another sound) or of sight, and obstructs and fills it. The manner of cure for each is by removing the cause and applying contraries. The first is therefore cured if the fleshy growth or film is cut and eaten away by some corrosive substance, or drawn out or cut away with a needle or other instrument. The second, if the organ is mended and strengthened. The third, if bile and phlegm are removed by purgations, by abstinence, by letting blood from the nose, etc. So teach Galen, Paulus Aegineta, and other physicians generally.
Morally, all this can easily be applied tropologically to spiritual deafness and blindness; for there are some not wholly blind and deaf, but half-blind and hard of hearing, who hear the admonitions of superiors and the inspirations of God, hear, but slowly and with difficulty. Whence by the cry of penances rebukes and tribulations they must be roused to hear, as stiff-necked horses which are not ruled by the bit must be driven with spurs. And this is the utility, and a great one, of tribulation, that it makes the deaf hear what is necessary for salvation. The threefold cause of spiritual deafness and blindness is like the bodily. The extrinsic (which was assigned first) is avarice, which with external things, and the desire and care of them, so fills the ears, eyes and mind that one cannot hear or see anything else. This is to be cured by cutting out from the soul at the root the desire of wealth and the comforts of this life. The second, of a vitiated organ, is when someone labors under phantasms and false worldly principles, contrary to the law of God and to his vocation. This is to be cured by rooting out of the mind these phantasms and principles. The third, of bile and phlegm, is pride and gluttony and luxury. This is to be cured by abstinence, prayers, penances, confessions and letting of blood, that is, the lowering of the soul, and by frequent humiliations: which done, one will begin to hear and see what belongs to salvation.
21. AND THE LORD WAS PLEASED TO SANCTIFY HIM.—As if to say: That Israel is deaf and blind is not the fault of God, but of Israel itself, who by stopping up its eyes and ears made itself deaf and blind. For God was willing to sanctify him, and therefore gave him holy Doctors, Prophets, the sacred Scripture, sacred rites, and multiplied and set forth with so many beautiful ceremonies, with so great a majesty of Levites and priests and pontiffs, with so many and so great miracles and victories. But Israel, made through all these things not holier but worse, deafer and blinder, constituted for itself the just punishment of God, namely enemies, to plunder and lay waste to it; as follows. So Procopius, Adam and others, and the Chaldee favors it. Secondly, Forerius explains thus: “The Lord was willing,” that is, he consented to this blinding of the Jews, indeed was as it were glad that Israel should thus betray the obstinacy of its heart: “that he might sanctify him,” in Hebrew, for his justice’s sake, as if to justify himself, namely that he might make known his justice, in not sparing his people for their crimes, and taking away from it the kingdom of God, and giving it to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. For the justice, or holiness, of God has two parts, namely to punish the wicked, and to do good to the pious and just. Paul bids us consider both, namely the severity of God toward those who have fallen, namely the Jews; but his goodness toward those who were grafted on the trunk, namely the Gentiles believing in Christ. So far Forerius.
Moreover, in doing this God magnified the law, because he fulfilled it, and inflicted on them the threats which he made to the Jews through Moses in the law. So Vatablus, who for “he was willing” translates, he had an excellent will toward you; namely good pleasure, that is, gratuitous benevolence and beneficence toward the unworthy.
22. BUT THIS IS A PEOPLE ROBBED AND WASTED, as if to say: Israel itself, so loved by God, sought and exalted, whom God in so many ways willed to sanctify and bless, because of its sins and its obstinacy made itself a prey, to the demon and to Titus and the Romans, say St. Jerome and Leo Castrius (though some of the ancients refer this to the destruction of the Jews by the Chaldeans); whence it will fall into the snare of the strongest young men and will be detained in prison, as follows.
THE SNARE OF ALL THE YOUNG MEN.—“Snare,” actively, is taken by St. Jerome and St. Thomas, as if to say: The Scribes and Pharisees by their depraved traditions and dogmas, as with snares, ensnared the young men, that is, the younger and ruder among the people. So Osee says, chapter 5:1: “You have been a snare to the watch, and a net spread over Thabor”; and chapter 9:8: “The prophet is become a snare of ruin over all his ways.” Secondly and more genuinely, from the Hebraism take “snare” passively, that is, ensnared. Whence from the Hebrew Angelus Caninius, and his disciple Forerius, translate word for word thus: The snare, the young men all of them, or all themselves, as if to say: All the vigorous and strong young men in the wars will be a snare, that is, ensnared, and by the arms and stratagems of the Romans taken as in snares. Our version has “snare of the young men,” as if to say: The Israelites were a snare of their young men, because on account of their sins their sons and young men were taken in war by the Romans and ensnared. So Cyril, Adam, Vatablus and others. The abstract, therefore, is put for the concrete, snare for ensnared. See Canon 38.
A little differently Sanchez: It is called, he says, “snare” or chain of the young, that is, strong and most powerful, which is cast not upon old and weak men but upon young and robust, who can break even strong bonds and ropes, or by which strong young men are bound and chained.
NOR IS THERE ONE THAT SAITH: RESTORE,—as if to say: There is no one who thinks of delivering the Jews from captivity, no one who cares for them, they are given over to oblivion by men and by God, they will live in perpetual exile and captivity.
23. WHO IS THERE AMONG YOU?—This is the voice of the Prophet complaining that the Jews do not believe these oracles of his, indeed despise them, as if to say: Would that there were among you even a few who would ponder these things with themselves as is fitting! for it is not a small matter, but your eternal freedom and salvation.
“Jacob” and “Israel” he takes generally for any descendants of Jacob, of the two tribes as well as of the ten, as will be plain in the following chapter, verse 4, and chapter 44, verse 1. So Adam, as if to say: Do you not see, O Jews, that your fathers were often laid waste by the Philistines, Moabites, Idumeans and Assyrians: and that now recently, in the sixth year of Ezechias, the ten tribes were wholly destroyed and led away into Assyria? And why? Was it not because they sinned against God, and despised his warnings and prophecies, as you also sin and despise? See therefore that you do not undergo the same judgment and vengeance of God. For I foretell that these things certainly hang over you, unless you receive the oracles of God, and above all Christ the Lord and his Gospel. Let this be said even now to the faithful, such as the Belgians, afflicted by long war: “Who gave Belgium to plunder, to slaughter, to fire?” etc.
Sanchez, more simply, refers it to the ten tribes, as if to say: God, against whom we have sinned, gave Israel to plunder. “And,” that is, because, they would not walk in the ways of his commandments.
25. AND HE HATH BURNED HIM ROUND ABOUT, AND HE KNEW NOT.—He speaks of Israel, now in the singular as of a commonwealth, now in the plural as of a people and multitude. The sense is, as if to say: God, through the Assyrians, afflicted all the ten tribes, and the whole of Samaria; because “he knew not,” that is, did not believe the Prophets, who threatened him thus from God. Or more simply, as if to say: Israel was so obstinate, so stupid, that even when it was being laid waste it did not understand that these things were inflicted on it by God on account of its sins. The same happens today to Christians.
Forerius takes it otherwise, who understands all this, from verse 24, of the destruction not of the ten, but of the two tribes by the Romans, as if to say: Who, I ask, gave the beloved people of God into captivity, not of seventy years, as once, but now of a thousand and six hundred years? Surely Jehovah, because it despised his Messias: wherefore he sent upon it a strong and hard war and siege of the Romans, which brought it into this continual desolation. “And he knew not,” as if to say: Even after so dire a calamity he did not understand that he was being punished for his unbelief in the Lord Christ: indeed, even after he was wholly burned up, he does not reflect, does not return to his heart, to see that he suffers these things because of the Christ slain by him; but persists obstinate in Judaism and in hatred of Christ. But the former sense is more fitting. For he stings the Jews by the example and recent calamity of their brethren, namely the ten tribes or Samaritans.