Commentaria in Isaiam
15. Why do you tear to pieces (gradually consume) my people, and grind the faces of the poor?—that is, you waste them with hunger and want and make them faint, as Amos says, chapter 8, verse 4. Second, for “grind,” Vatablus translates, you strike with fists; others, you bruise; the Septuagint, you confound, as if to say: With disgrace, harsh words, indeed with blows, you afflict and torment the poor. Understand here any poor whatever, but most of all the poor of Christ, namely the disciples and Apostles of Christ; for of these, beaten by the council, Luke says, Acts 5:41: “And they indeed went from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus.”
Let princes and prelates think this still said to themselves; and no less those of the Church, who consume the goods of the Church on their luxuries or amours.
16. Because the daughters of Sion are haughty.—From the men and princes, in verse 14, he passes to wives and daughters, who in order to adorn themselves richly made their husbands exactors and plunderers of the poor, by whose sweat and blood they, adorned for wantonness, revelled and shone. He notes three vices of women, especially of girls: the first is pride; the second, boldness; the third, lust. Pride is signified in that, in order to be seen, they put high shoes beneath them, that in them they might walk loftily and seem as it were queens and of some higher rank.
And have walked with stretched out necks.—In their great pride they stretched out the neck like cranes or swans: this is the bearing of the insolent and bold.
And with wanton glances of their eyes they went—casting their eyes aslant, that is, throwing the eye sideways at young men and lovers, and wantonly winking at them, which is the surest sign of a shameless and harlot woman, says St. Chrysostom: “Touches, jests, nods, whistlings are the beginnings of a dying virginity,” he says; elsewhere he compares these women to the basilisk, because each of them by her look ensnares and kills men. See St. Chrysostom, homily 27 on that saying of Matthew: “Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her,” and so on. The Chaldee translates, they went with winking eyes, and with hair wound about, and provoking with their feet, which ours translates, “and made a noise as they walked.” And made a noise as they walked—that is, they made a sound with silken garments rubbing together and striking the pavement; folded, they signified that they were clad in silk. For the Hebrew taphaph seems to signify the shaking and rustling of garments, such as is wont to come from that silken stuff which is commonly called taffeta.
Second, others translate the Hebrew taphaph as “they played on timbrels,” they went beating the tambourine, as boys do at a dedication and at weddings. For the Hebrew toph signifies a timbrel. So Vatablus.
Third, and properly, “they clapped,” that is, they walked with a soft movement, a broken gait and a stamping of the feet, like those who dance a triple step, as is wont to be done in choruses. Hence Virgil: “Some with their feet beat out the dances.” The same of boys, from which accordingly the infant is called taph, Ezechiel 9:6.
Fourth, “they clapped,” that is, they raised the sound of rattles, says Vatablus; for so adorned youths and girls, walking in new and creaking shoes and sandals, show themselves off; and perhaps they added rattles and cymbals to their shoes; for Cicero in the speech against Piso testifies that the effeminate Gabinius added these to his shoes; and pearls knocking together in their shoes made a sound; for Pliny teaches that this was wont to be done, book 9, chap. 24: “These,” he says, “they call crotalia, as if they delighted also in the sound and in the very clash of the pearls, and even poor women affect them, saying that a pearl is a woman’s lictor in public.” Where he says that these sounding pearls are to women as lictors; because as lictors going before thrust back the crowd, signifying that the consul is present, so the sound of the pearls signified that a noble lady was approaching, so that all should give way from her path.
And they walked with measured step—they walked with a stately step, composed for majesty and elegance; perhaps also on the soles of their shoes or buskins they wore studs set in order so that, pressed into the ground with a sound, they left certain amorous tracks. So Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus book 2, chap. 11. Sanchez.
17. The Lord will make bald the crown of the head of the daughters of Sion.—As if to say: God will punish this proud lust of the women of Sion by their greatest disgrace; namely that he takes away and shaves bald their chief ornament, the hair, and this first and chiefly by the enemy Chaldeans; for enemies are wont to shave captives. Hence the Septuagint, for sippach with sin, that is, “he will make bald,” reading schippach with shin, “he will make handmaids,” translate, the mistresses will go in lowliness. For shaving and baldness was the mark of the conquered, and hence of slaves male and female, even among the Gentiles. So it was said of the Scipios:
Under whose rule shorn Africa lies.
Second, by God, who will strike this glorious head of the proud with a just punishment, namely alopecia, ringworm and leprosy, which will bare the head not only of hair but of flesh: for this is sippach, with sin.
Others add, third, that they will be made bald by the weight which as captives they will carry constantly on their heads: for so the soldiers of Nabuchodonosor, carrying burdens for the siege of Tyre, had their heads bald and their shoulders stripped of hair, as Ezechiel says, chapter 29. How great an ornament of women (in which accordingly they so please themselves) the hair is, and how great the deformity of baldness, Apuleius teaches, chapter 9: “If,” says Apuleius, “you strip of its hair the head of any woman, however distinguished and beautiful; though she were cast down from heaven, though attended by all the chorus of Graces, and followed by the whole people of Cupids, girded with her own girdle, fragrant with cinnamon and dripping balsam, yet if she come forth bald she cannot please even her own husband.” To this looks Ovid’s line:
Shameful is a maimed flock, shameful a field without grass, and a shrub without leaf, and a head without hair.
And the Lord will discover their hair.—For “hair” the Hebrew is pot, that is, an angle, namely the hair that is at the corners of the forehead and is artfully curled, in which youths and girls take especial pride. Others translate pot as buttocks, as if to say: Those who walked in long garments and swept the ground with their trains will now, like maids and slaves, go in garments cut short, so that they scarcely cover the parts to be reverenced. So Isaias says, chapter 20, verse 4: “So shall the king of the Assyrians lead away the captivity of Egypt, … naked and barefoot, with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.” So the sons of Ammon cut the garments of David’s servants as far as the buttocks.
Third, others translate pot as the shameful parts. Hence the Septuagint translated, he will uncover their shame, as if to say: God by the Chaldeans will strip the daughters of Sion, and expose them naked to be derided and violated; this is what Jeremias laments, Lamentations 5: “They ravished the women in Sion.” God will cause these daughters to suffer their monthly courses and a flow of blood, that by that foul stream of blood the ornaments of their shoes may be defiled.
Verse 18. The ornament of shoes.—The Septuagint add, from the Hebrew, a further word, which some translate head-bands, others nets and curls. With Sanchez I follow St. Basil, who says that these are those ornaments which are sewn on the edge of garments or hang from it, such as the little bells and pomegranates which hung from the tunic of the Pontiff; and these perhaps those proud, sacrilegious women wished to imitate on their garments.
Little moons.—They were necklaces horned like the moon; these they wore either on the head, like diadems, or on the neck, or on the garment.
Verse 19. Necklaces.—A necklace is an ornament of the throat which hangs from the neck; so called because it admonishes to virtue: for formerly a necklace was given for some distinguished deed.
Bracelets.—They are arm-pieces, or circles and little chains that adorn the arms: bracelets are named from arms; because formerly the shoulders with the arms were called arms.
Mitres.—They are veils, or linen headbands, shining with gems and trembling little plates of gold. The Hebrew realoth also signifies poisons, and aptly: for, as St. Jerome says, “if a man or woman adorns himself and provokes the gaze of men toward himself, even if no harm follows from it, yet he will suffer eternal judgment; because he has brought poison, and there would have been someone to drink it.”
20. Hair-dividers.—They are instruments for parting the hair and likewise for curling and crisping it, namely curling-irons; or, as Lyranus says, combs. Second, Sanchez says that hair-dividers are ribbons, bands and fillets, which divide the hair into curls and plaits, and so divided preserve, support and set it off, commonly called hair-bands: which kind of dressing of the hair Juvenal calls building up the head, and Nazianzen to tower the head, or to raise it in the likeness of a tower. Third, St. Jerome, on Ezechiel 24:17, translates the Hebrew peerim as crowns: by them nobles and rich were distinguished from commoners.