Commentaria in Isaiam
10. Say to the just man that it is well.—From the unjust and their punishment he turns by antithesis to the just and their reward; for as those reap the fruit of evil works, so these from the seed of good works reap the fruit of joy, glory and exultation, both in this life and chiefly in the life to come. Hence, in place of “that it is well,” the Hebrew is ki tob, which may be rendered “that it is good,” that is, he shall eat the pleasant and sweetest fruit of his devices. “Devices” in Scripture means the pursuits, plans and works of the godly as well as the ungodly. For as the godly study to find out new ways of doing well, living rightly and pleasing God, so the ungodly study to find out new pleasures, and new ways of enriching themselves, exalting themselves and pleasing the world.
The Septuagint, for imru, that is, say, read isru, that is, bind; whence they translate, let us bind the just, because he is useless to us, as though they were the words of the Jews wishing to seize Christ, bind and kill him.
For “he shall eat” the Hebrew is “they shall eat”; hence St. Jerome explains thus, as if to say: You who are to read this prophecy, say to the just man, namely Christ, that is, praise Christ, because he has overthrown the Jews well and made them eat the fruit of their iniquities. But this sense is narrower and more remote. The first sense, therefore, is the genuine one, and the Hebrew “they shall eat” is to be explained distributively by the syllepsis familiar to the Hebrews, as if to say: Each shall eat; every one of them shall eat. So Vatablus.
Woe to the wicked unto evil—that is, to one poured out into all malice; hence the Hebrew is, woe to the wicked evil one, or malignant one. So Vatablus. Woe in Scripture signifies destruction, both present and eternal, as if to say: Both present and eternal damnation await all the wicked. Second, Adamus explains thus: “Woe to the wicked unto evil,” namely destined; because he is destined by God to grievous torments; so that it is the same as what went before: “Woe to their souls! for evils are rendered to them.”
For the reward of his hands shall be given him.—It is a metonymy.
12. As for my people, their exactors have stripped them.—He has given the inward cause of the ruin of the commonwealth, namely the sins of the people; now he gives the outward cause, which the same sins of the people deserved, namely avaricious, rapacious, unwarlike and careless princes and prelates.
By “exactors,” therefore, he understands princes and magistrates, who were not so much praetors as plunderers of the people; likewise prelates and teachers, such as the Scribes and Pharisees; for these in their avarice exacted very much from the people, so that they bade children refuse support to their parents and say corban, that is, this gift is dedicated to God, it must be given to the temple. For “have stripped” the Hebrew is meolel, that is, they have gleaned, that is, stripped them almost to the last farthing: for a vineyard is gleaned when, after the vintage is done, the few grapes that remain here and there are eagerly sought out again and gathered: so these plundered and flayed the people of their means.
And women (that is, the womanizing Scribes and the effeminate Romans) have ruled over them.—See what was said on verse 4. So the Poet says, “Achaean women, no longer Achaeans”; and Virgil, Aeneid book 9: “O truly Phrygian women, for you are not Phrygian men,” as if to say: From men you have degenerated into women.
Second, properly “women,” that is the wives of the Scribes and Pharisees, have ruled over them, namely over the Scribes, their husbands, who were womanizers, and consequently over the rest of the Jews. So Cato said: “Women rule us, we rule the senate, the senate Rome, Rome the world.” This is a great scourge. For woman in her rule is powerless, foolish, avaricious, and commands great exactions for the adornment of herself and her household: and she acts not so much from reason and judgment as from feeling and lust, or from impulse and rashness. So Adamus.
O my people, they that call thee blessed, they deceive thee.—He warns the people, out of a feeling of sincere compassion, that they may recognize that they are deceived by their Scribes, who, on account of gifts made to the temple and to themselves, call thee blessed and blessed of God: but they deceive, and turn and lead thee away from the law, from virtue, from God, from blessing and salvation: for they study not thy interests but their own and their avarice; and to fill their purses they teach thee vain and impious things, and flatter thy sins, and promise to expiate all by thy gifts and sacrifices; but falsely. For these gifts and ceremonies do not please God, nor appease him;
faith, which worketh by charity.
Morally, note here how great an evil is flattery. The Wise Man said truly, Proverbs 27:6: “Better are the wounds of a friend, than the deceitful kisses of an enemy.” Plato in the Phaedrus calls the flatterer and says that he is “like a juggler.”
For, worse than any robber, he robs us of reason and judgment; indeed he is crueller and more pernicious than Circe herself: for she transformed the outward form of men into beasts, but the flatterer by his allurements transforms the inner man. Second, as a shadow imitates whatever you do: if you stand, it stands; if you run, it runs: so the flatterer follows wherever you turn; if you are silent, he praises your silence; if you speak, he extols and admires your speech; if you rejoice, he pretends to rejoice; if you grieve, that he grieves. Again, as the shadow grows or shrinks, the body itself is neither increased nor diminished: so we are neither better for praise nor worse for detraction. Hence Antisthenes, as Laertius testifies, said to one who told him, “Many praise you”: “What evil have I done?” That philosopher judged it shameful to be praised by the base, and to be applauded by a blind and rash multitude. Third, Plutarch, in his treatise On the Flatterer and the Friend, “calls the flatterer an enemy of country and virtue.” Diogenes “calls flattery a honeyed snare”; Epictetus in the Handbook compares flatterers to ravens. For “as they destroy the eyes of the dead, so flatterers destroy and blind the minds and hearts of the living.” Fourth, flatterers are like the heliotrope, a plant whose nature is love of the sun, so as to be turned about with it, and wherever the sun turns, to bend its top in the same direction; at night also, as if longing for the sun, it closes its flower: so parasites accommodate themselves to kings and people in all things, and applaud their vices. Therefore Agesilaus, king of the Lacedaemonians, used to say that they should be hunted down no otherwise than the ambushers of one’s own life.
And they destroy the way of thy steps (the reason, state, safety and happiness of virtue, both private and public).—For they take from thee all fear of evil, of the enemy and of destruction, that thou mayest the more securely sleep in thy sins and be crushed by the enemy at hand; for they say, as Jeremias says, chapter 6: “Peace, peace, and there was no peace.” For this is the cause why the Jews were delivered to the Chaldeans, namely that, as is said in Lamentations, chapter 2: “Thy prophets have seen for thee false and foolish things, and they did not lay open thy iniquity, to stir thee to repentance.” So morally the sinner who puts aside all fear, who acknowledges God only as merciful, and does not fear him as the avenger of evils, nor thinks himself liable to eternal punishments, plainly scatters his own steps, and rushes headlong into all evils, of punishment as well as of guilt; for he who fears God sets his feet in the way of salvation, according to Psalm 127: “Blessed are all they that fear the Lord, that walk in his ways.” “He that is without fear cannot be justified,” Ecclesiasticus, chapter 1, verse 28. Hence, to rouse both the nobles and the people to fear, he gives a spur, saying:
13 and 14. The Lord standeth to judge (he speaks properly of the judgment, not the last and universal, but the judgment of the Jews, which he carried out in the destruction by the Romans, too) and stands to judge the people,—that is, against the elders or senators of the people, whom he before called “exactors,” by punishing them justly, and killing or taking them captive, because they unjustly oppressed the people and deceived them. So St. Jerome.
Note: Senators are called “elders” because elders ought to be mature, wise and upright; and therefore men advanced in years used and still use to be chosen as senators: for old men are riper and wiser than the young.
Others explain, as if to say: “With the elders,” that is, with the Patriarchs, Prophets and Apostles, the Lord will come to judge the peoples.
For you have fed upon my vineyard.—You, O Scribes and Pharisees, who ought to have been the keepers of the vineyard, that is of the Synagogue, or of my people, have eaten it up by stripping it of its goods. The Septuagint translate, you have burnt: for the Hebrew biar signifies both, as if to say: You were the cause why Jerusalem was destroyed and burnt by the Romans.