Commentaria in Isaiam
Second, by these “boys” may be understood Titus and the Roman catamites, as I shall soon say: for to these God gave, that is, handed over to be punished, the Jews, as criminals are given to the executioner; although Sanchez explains “I will give” as “I foretell that they will be given.”
And the effeminate shall rule over them.—He notes the lust and pederasty of princes, both Jewish and Roman, for instance Titus, the conqueror of the Jews, whom Suetonius places among the troops of his favourites, and the Emperor Hadrian, who was a male harlot (as Aquila here translates) to Trajan; as Antinous was to Hadrian himself, as is plain from Dio and Xiphilinus in the Life of Hadrian. Again, that the Romans at that time were most effeminate is plain from Juvenal, satires 6 and 7:
Wealthy, soft luxury with its shame has broken the ages, and so on.
Hence, consequently, they were also of a mind not manly but effeminate, that is womanish, timid, weak and fainthearted.
Second, the Septuagint and Theodotion, in place of “boys,” translate “mockers,” that is, those who make sport: for the Hebrew alal means to mock, to disfigure. For the Jews, taken by the Romans, were mocked, as they themselves had mocked Christ. So Leo Castrius, from St. Athanasius and Procopius. Finally, the “effeminate” are those subject to the rule of women, who are governed by them and by their sons. Famous is the saying about the boy Diophantus: “Diophantus commands the Greeks”; because his father commanded Greece, his mother his father, and the son his mother.
Because they have boys and the effeminate for princes, it will follow that no order of age or rank will be kept, but without respect the boy will rise against the old man, the commoner against the noble, each against his neighbour. So it came about under Titus; for, as Josephus teaches, the city of Jerusalem was divided into three parts by those factious Zealots of whom verse 4 speaks: some occupied the citadel and the temple, a second party the lower, and a third the upper part of the city. So St. Jerome. This discord is the sure ruin of an empire; as, on the contrary, unity in the same is its preservation: “For no nation, or hardly any, can be destroyed by adversaries unless it has consumed itself by its own enmities,” says Vegetius.
6. A garment is thine: be thou our prince.—As if to say: Each will say to each of the richer, or the better clad: Thou hast a fine garment and a splendid robe: therefore thou hast wealth and provisions: be thou, then, our prince.
Uphold us who lie under this ruin, that is, with thy hand support our commonwealth, tottering and in despair, lest it fall; but he will say: I am no healer—I cannot cure so great an evil; this disease and sickness of the commonwealth surpasses my art, this ruin surpasses my strength and means; I cannot support or restore it. So, nearly, Cyril. This is what the Emperor Hadrian prudently warned: “Lean not on a falling wall.” And in my house there is no bread—which I might distribute to the starving people, to relieve their hunger and sustain them. For “healer” the Hebrew is chobesh, that is, a surgeon, who binds up a wound. He alludes to chapter 1: “The swelling wound is not bound up.” As if to say: This city is now not so much a commonwealth as a hospital; it needs, then, a surgeon (which I am not) more than a prince and governor: do not choose me, therefore, as prince. So Sanchez. For “I am no healer,” the Septuagint translates, I will not be prince; Pagninus, I will not be lord; another, I will not be curator; Pintus, I will not be a binder, the figure taken from surgeons; the Chaldee, I am not worthy to be head or prince. Hence gather that a prince or prelate is head and physician and surgeon, and ought not only to bind his subjects with just precepts but also to heal their wounds and the languors of their minds. Wherefore a king is called by the Greeks a word from the word for remedy, drug and health, as Plutarch and Eustathius note, and from them the Lexicon.
Alciati, emblem 143, depicts a prince attentive to the safety of his subjects under the figure of an anchor with a dolphin wound about it; the dolphin, as Pliny testifies, book 18, foretells a storm, and when the sea is stirred by winds guides the ship’s anchor as if by human instinct, that it may be fixed more safely. For so a prince ought to take care that the commonwealth be not troubled by the storm of war.
St. Jerome warns here that the common people choose as shepherds and princes the richer men, rather than the wiser or fitter; and that therefore those so elected ought not to acquiesce in their judgment unless they know themselves equal to the burden.
8. For Jerusalem is ruined.—(These are the words not of one excusing himself from rule, but of the Prophet, as if to say: Therefore no one will be willing to undertake the government of Juda and Jerusalem, because it will fall and be destroyed. He adds the cause of the destruction:) Because their tongue and their devices are against the Lord—as if to say: Because by their cursing and blasphemous words, and by their wicked plots and works they have provoked God. For they called Christ possessed by a devil, a wine-drinker, a Samaritan, and persecuted him no less than his Apostles. The opening and look of their countenance bear witness that they have deserved this ruin, this destruction. They themselves complain and ask: How has so great a punishment come upon us? Why are we overwhelmed with such evils? What sin of ours has deserved this disaster? The Prophet answers: Let them not go far; let them only look at one another’s faces: there they will recognize and read written their cause and guilt. For the brazen, unwrinkled and shameless brow will answer, and will give a clear testimony of their boldness and wickedness; for the countenance speaks crimes, though all else be silent: in their face are seen wantonness, arrogance, pride, and so on; their face cries out that they swell with pride, anger, hatred and lust. Hence, explaining, he adds: “They have proclaimed their sin as Sodom.” The same says in Jeremias, chapter 3: “Thou hadst a harlot’s forehead, thou wouldest not blush.” This he explains clearly of the women in verse 16, saying: “The daughters of Sion are haughty, and have walked with stretched out necks, and with wanton glances of their eyes, and made a noise as they walked,” as if to say: The unwrinkled brow gives them the testimony of boldness. That the men were like the women he here signifies, nor is there doubt: crimes shining in the face therefore signify that they have fully deserved this disaster. Hence St. Jerome, rendering not the phrase but the sense, explains saying: “They themselves have received back their sins.” In like manner Jeremias says, chapter 14: “Our sins have answered us.” And Osee, chapter 5: “The arrogance of Israel shall answer in his face.” The Hebrew hakkarath can be rendered, first, “recognition, opening, unveiling,” as our version has it, from the root nakar, that is, he recognized, he knew. It signifies four things.
Second, estrangement; as if to say: The estrangement and uprooting of their countenance, or their pale and livid face, signifies their frauds and crimes. Hence the Septuagint translates, the confusion of their face stood against them. Third, pretence, feigning, painting of their countenance answered them: for nakar in the hithpael means to pretend to be known, to behave as a stranger: for both men and women, verse 16, paint their faces and put on a kind of mask of the face: for they pretend to be good, friendly, just and chaste, when they are wholly otherwise, namely wicked, hostile, deceitful and unchaste; these masks of crimes therefore bear witness to their guilt, and call them to the punishments they deserve. Fourth, very aptly hakkarath can be rendered hardness, harshness, impudence; for this they bore in their countenance. Hence R. Jonas says that in Arabic haccar signifies hardness, from the Hebrew root hakar, that is, he showed himself harsh, hard, shameless; his countenance was brazen, and as it were stupefied. So some more recent writers.
Note the Hebraism by which abstract terms are put for concrete: “the recognition of the countenance,” that is, sins recognized in the countenance, which the Septuagint calls confusion; because they bring forth shame, present and eternal: so fear is called a thing to be feared; praise, a thing to be praised; custody is called a precept to be kept; hearing, a thing heard; vision, a thing seen.
Tropologically, learn that the countenance is the image of the mind, and this not only naturally but also supernaturally. So that holy Bishop in the Lives of the Fathers, book 3, no. 166, at holy Communion saw also the souls of those who approached, through their faces: for he saw the faces of sinners to be black as coals and filled with blood; but the faces of the just he saw white and bright. The same was seen by Blessed Paul the Simple in the same place, no. 167. I follow the latest edition of our Father Heribert. The Wise Man said truly, Ecclesiastes 8:1: “A man’s wisdom shineth in his countenance.” The reason is that mind and feeling flourish in the head and countenance.
Alas, how hard it is not to betray a crime by the face! And Claudian:
The brow reveals the fires of the breathing breast. And Seneca:
And the faces of the wrathful themselves bear their crimes. And the same:
The face speaks whatever you deny.