Commentaria in Isaiam
2. And the diviner.—The Hebrew kosem may be taken in a good sense, to signify a conjecturer, a shrewd man and a forecaster, who from observation of past causes, effects and signs conjectures about future or hidden things (so the Septuagint, translating it so, Vatablus and other more recent writers), or in a bad sense, to signify a soothsayer or diviner (so St. Jerome and other ancients), as if to say: God will take away from the Jews all prophecy, true and false alike, and all prophets, true and lying.
3. The captain over fifty.—who is set over fifty soldiers. For the Jews had pentecontarchs, as we have hecatontarchs or centurions, who are set over a hundred soldiers.
That is, God will take away from the Jews their leaders and captains, so that there is none among them who can lead in war and draw up a line of battle. Hence Epaminondas, as Plutarch testifies, leader of the Thebans and Boeotians, as he was dying urged his people to make peace with the enemy on any terms: for he saw that among the Boeotians there was no one who could preside wisely over the war as a leader; with him, therefore, the empire of the Thebans began and ended. That saying is true: “An army of stags led by a lion is more formidable than an army of lions led by a stag,” as Chabrias said, and from him King Philip, in Plutarch.
And the honourable of countenance—one who by his maturity, gravity and authority presides over others and directs them; as if to say: There will be no one who can in any way succour the failing country, whether by divine oracle, as a prophet; or by his own authority, as an honoured man; or by human counsel, as an elder; or by the stratagems of war, as a captain of fifty; or by mathematical engines, as architects are wont; or by his eloquence, as one skilled in the mystical word. For although the Jews, besieged by the Romans, made frequent sallies against their engines and plans, they scarcely contrived any engines, as Josephus testifies. Moreover, their engines were useless to them, nor could they avert the destruction, but the Romans made themselves masters of the city and the very strongly fortified citadel of Sion. Hence he does not say “architect,” but “I will take away the wise man among the architects.”
And the skilled in mystical speech.—“The skilled in mystical speech,” says Hieronymus Prado, is a pious man and powerful in the gift of prayer, who by his praises and incantations can calm and soften the divine wrath.
Second, and more fitly, he is one who is powerful in eloquence, in the grace and effectiveness of persuading, for instance, of reconciling hearts, soothing the angry, bending the stubborn, amending the wicked: for such men are necessary in a commonwealth, to scatter and quell the tumults and seditions of the people when the enemy is at hand. Hence St. Jerome: “The skilled in mystical speech,” he says, “or, as Theodotion translates, the skilled enchanter; and, as Aquila, the skilled whisperer, is a man learned and practised in the law and the Prophets as well as in the Gospel and the Apostles: one who can heal each disturbance of the soul by his teaching, and bring the mind back to a sound state, while the fornicator recovers chastity, and the glutton frugality, and he who was once avaricious gives alms.” This speech is called “mystical,” both from its manner, because mystically, that is secretly and hiddenly, it creeps into the soul and bends it; and from its end and fruit, because it works in the soul a mystical, that is a spiritual, movement and conversion, and mystical gifts and virtues. The Septuagint translates, a prudent hearer, that is a prudent judge, who, namely, having heard the counsellors or prophets, can distinguish between good and bad, between true and false. For so, when one prophet spoke, the others listened and judged, 1 Corinthians 14:29; and here too a judge could be understood by the one skilled in mystical speech, that is in prophecy, who, namely, has the gift of discernment of spirits, so that, as one experienced and expert in prophecy, he can tell the genuine from the spurious.
Note here the manner in which commonwealths fall when God strikes them, namely when civil and ecclesiastical leaders, and upright and wise men who direct others by word and example, gradually fail. The Politic author said shrewdly: “Five things declare whether a commonwealth is well or ill: first, the temples of prayer; second, the court; third, the school; fourth, the forum; fifth, the clock; as these are well or ill kept and governed, so is the commonwealth.” Thus the Emperor Charles V, when he visited cities, was accustomed to look at the clock to see whether it was clean and in order. He was also wont to inquire after three persons: whether there was in the city a Magistrate, a Pastor and a Teacher.
Moreover, even the Gentiles held that wise and prudent men are the charioteers of the commonwealth, and that prudence is the pillar of human life. Plato said that “commonwealths would be happy if either philosophers ruled them or kings philosophized.” He understood philosophy not as speculative and dry, but as practical, that is political, economic and ethical. Euripides used to say that “one sound counsel overcomes a great multitude of soldiers.” Antisthenes: “Prudence,” he says, “is the safest wall, which neither falls down nor is betrayed.” Archytas: “As a commander leads an army, a helmsman guides ships, God the world, and the mind itself the soul, so prudence tempers and rules happiness itself in the present life.” For, as Isocrates teaches: “It is the part of the prudent man to remember what is past, to act with caution in the present, and to foresee and guard against the future.” For these are the three works of the prudent man, and if they are observed, the commonwealth as well as human life will be happy. What the eye is in the body, therefore, prudence and the prudent man are in the commonwealth. Wherefore a king or prince lacking prudence is like a one-eyed Cyclops deprived of his eye, who does nothing from judgment but everything from fancy and caprice, with tumult, and so brings unhappiness upon the commonwealth and himself. So Plutarch. The Politic author said truly: “More things are done in the highest affairs by the auspices and counsels of fortune than by weapons and hands.” On the contrary: “All things,” says Tacitus, “begun with thoughtless impulse, strong at the start, grow feeble in time; and: counsels that are crafty and bold seem happy at first sight, are hard in the handling, and sad in the outcome.”
4. And I will give children to be their princes.—As if to say: I will not only take away old men, prophets and prudent princes, but in their place I will give boys as princes, not so much in age as in imprudence, folly and manners, that is, rash men, fools, unwarlike, wanton, dissolute: this is a great punishment of a commonwealth, and it is plain from Ecclesiastes 10:16. At Rome, in the porch of the tavern of the veterans (from which oil flowed miraculously about the birth of Christ), in which old and retired soldiers used to be kept, these verses were inscribed in letters of gold:
Ancient Rome, while the old Quirites ruled you, no good man went without reward, nor was any man bad:
When the fathers died, a depraved youth succeeded, by whose counsel you are thrown headlong.
Of such men Lucan says, book 8:
The age of the Nilotic tyrant is suspect to us: for trust is a hard thing, and demands strong years.
Nicomachus, in Vopiscus, in the life of the Emperor Tacitus: “May the gods,” he says, “avert boy princes and fathers of the country called beardless youths, whom sweets, and gatherings, and whatever boyish pleasure invites to be given consulships.” The Poets feign that the boy Phaethon asked his father the Sun for the driving of his chariot. His father said: “Thou askest great things, Phaethon, and such as do not befit this strength of thine.” He wrung it from him nevertheless; and what a conflagration the unskilled youth gave the world!
Most truly Ecclesiastes 10:16 says: “Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child!” And the Hebrew: “heroes are harmful to themselves.” Such boys were the foolish and unlearned Scribes and the princes of the priests and of the people; likewise those factious Zealots, who by their rash seditions and slaughters destroyed the city and their fellow citizens more than the Romans did, as Josephus testifies, books 5 and 6. And this befell the Jews by the just judgment of God, because they had preferred the seditious Barabbas to Christ the King of glory, as St. Athanasius says in his sermon On the Passion and the Cross. So in this age the English schismatics, because they would not be subject to the Pontiff, by the just judgment of God had as head not only of the commonwealth but also of the Church, first, the filthy man Henry VIII; second, not a man but a boy, Edward; third, not a male but a woman, Elizabeth. Are not these monsters that posterity will marvel at? Are not these the disgrace of our age?