Commentaria in Isaiam
Chapter 4
He goes on with the threats of destruction, and teaches that there will be so great a slaughter of men that seven women will seek the marriage of one man. Then, verse 2, he consoles the remnant, promising them Christ the Saviour, through whom God will enlighten, lead and protect them like the pillar of fire and cloud which was the guide of the Hebrews in the desert, and like the tabernacle, which shelters its dwellers as a shade from heat and rain.
1. And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying: We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, take away our reproach. 2. In that day the bud of the Lord shall be in magnificence and glory, and the fruit of the earth shall be high, and a joy to them that shall escape of Israel. 3. And it shall come to pass, that every one that shall be left in Sion, and shall remain in Jerusalem, shall be called holy: every one that is written in life in Jerusalem. 4. If the Lord shall wash away the filth of the daughters of Sion, and shall wash away the blood of Jerusalem out of the midst thereof, by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning. 5. And the Lord will create upon every place of mount Sion, and where he is called upon, a cloud by day, and a smoke, and the brightness of a flaming fire in the night: for over all the glory shall be a protection. 6. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shade in the daytime from the heat, and for a security and covert from the whirlwind, and from rain.
1. And seven women shall take hold.—These things belong to the preceding chapter, as if to say: In the destruction of Jerusalem, of which from chapter 3 until now, there will be such slaughter of men, famine and wasting, that because of their fewness, seven, that is many, women will hardly be able to obtain one husband.
Allegorically, St. Jerome: “Seven women,” that is the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, “shall take hold of one man,” namely Christ. But St. Cyril reproaches this allegory as hardly apt and fitting to the literal sense, especially in what follows. Second, more aptly, St. Basil: “Seven women,” he says, that is the whole Synagogue, living on its own bread, that is its own law, will take hold of one man, namely Christ, asking to be freed by him from the reproach of spiritual barrenness.
Tropologically, St. Cyril: “The seven women are many souls, who through faith have received Christ, and who seek him as the bread and garment of salvation, and ask of him offspring and the fruit of virtues and good works.
Only let thy name be called upon us—as if to say: Do not plead want, or that thou canst not feed us; we will feed and clothe ourselves: only be our husband, and let us be called thy wives, that the reproach of barrenness, which was great in the old law, be taken from us. Husbands are bound to give their wives food, clothing and the conjugal debt: but we ask one thing only, namely the conjugal debt; the rest we will provide by our labour or our money. So Roman women took the names of their husbands: for they were called Caia, Tullia, Cornelia, Lucia, Publia, from the husband Caius, Tullius, Cornelius, Lucius, Publius, as Valerius testifies, book 10. So among the Hebrews Mary is called Mary of Cleophas, Mary of James, of Zebedee, and so on, that is, the wife: and in the Canticles the bride is named for her husband. So Sanchez. So Marcia, wishing to return to Cato her husband, says in Lucan, book 2:
Grant only the name of that marriage: let it be lawful to write on my tomb, “Marcia of Cato.”
As if to say: The Lord will make the Jewish people sprout and bud again, dry and almost rotten in a foreign land, and will make it return to its former fertility and glory. But the Fathers and Interpreters commonly take these things of Christ and the Church; hence for “bud” the Hebrew is tsemach, by which name Christ is called by Jeremias, chapter 23, verse 5, and by Zacharias, chapter 6, verse 12, in the Hebrew. Again, Christ is called by Isaias, chapter 11, the fruit and bud of the earth.
The sense, therefore, is, as if to say: Christ, the son of the Virgin Mary, born on earth, will be glorious and exalted at the time when the Romans shall lay waste Juda; because through him and his Apostles the Christian Church will be propagated; so that even princes and other chief and distinguished men run with joy to the Church of Christ and believe in Christ, especially the remnant of Israel and of the Jews. So St. Jerome.
By Sion, therefore, and Jerusalem he understands the spiritual one, namely the Church: he who, surviving the disaster and destruction of the Jews, shall be left in Sion, not so much carnal as spiritual, that is, he who has passed over from the Synagogue to the Church of Christ and been enrolled in it, shall be called holy; every one that is written in life, that is, in the foreknowledge and predestination of God, by which he has enrolled his own to eternal life: provided, however, that God first wash away his filth and blood, that is, murders and other gross and grievous sins, as follows;
Symbolically, this cloud shining in the night signifies the divine consolation by which Christ mitigates and soothes for the Saints their darkness and calamities. On the other hand, the cloud by day is affliction, by which God tempers and moderates the prosperity of the just and the glory of the world (lest they be taken by it and grow insolent). So God in the day of prosperity protects his own with the cloud of affliction, and in the night of affliction visits them with the fire of divine delight and joy. For excessive prosperity harms as much as adversity. For our nature in this exile can bear neither great sorrow nor great joy: by the former we are shaken and slip into despair; by the latter we grow proud and vain. Therefore it is fitting that sorrow be tempered by some spiritual delight, and delight by sorrow. Let us not, then, always seek joy, nor detest sorrow. For both, namely joy in affliction and affliction in joy, are called a pillar, without which our building will fall. Again, this light in the night, that is, interior consolation in affliction, is mixed with smoke that moves to tears, that is, compunction. For to the Blessed in heaven the joy will be pure, and the light without smoke, and the rest without labour. So H. Pintus.
Over all the glory shall be a protection. 6. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shade in the daytime from the heat.—He alludes to the Mosaic tabernacle, and the ark of the Testament, which was the glory of Israel, and upon which especially rested the pillar of cloud, and from there it spread abroad, a type of the Church, on every side over all the camp, overshadowing it and protecting it from heat; but here the ark signified the Church and all the faithful, as I said on Exodus 25:10, as if to say: “Over all the glory,” that is, over the whole Church, or over every place in which there shall be glorious and holy men, that is, believers in Christ, shall be the divine protection and the grace of the Holy Spirit (of which that pillar of cloud was a type, as St. Ambrose and the ancients teach), by which, as by a tabernacle and a shade, from the heat of burning, of temptations, persecutions and adversities they shall be protected and hidden, and shall be safe and secure. So St. Jerome and Cyril. And this is the genuine sense: for all these things regard the glory of Christ and the Church.
Note: The ark is called glory because, first, in the ark were the tables of the law, which Moses had received, and beside them the rod of Aaron and the manna, which were the glory of Israel; second, because above the ark were the Cherubim and the propitiatory as the throne of God, from which he gave answers to the Pontiff clothed with the Urim and Thummim; third, because the ark led the Hebrews through the Jordan, and through the desert forty years, and was the terror of their enemies, and the shield and victory of the Hebrews. Hence when the ark was taken by the Philistines in the time of Heli, the wife of Phinees said: “The glory is departed from Israel, because the ark of God is taken,” and therefore, having borne a son, she called him Ichabod, that is, where is the glory? as if to say: We have been Trojans; Ilium was, and the great glory of the Teucrians, that is, of the sons of Isaac and Israel. Otherwise Sanchez: for he thinks there is an allusion here to the espousals and wedding of the Synagogue; for she is called glory, as if to say: Over that glory, that is, over the bride so gloriously adorned, namely the Synagogue of the Jews, there shall be divine protection like the canopy which was once held over the new bride at weddings; or like the garment with which the bridegroom about to enter marriage once covered the bride: as Booz, about to marry Ruth, covered her with his cloak, Ruth 3; and in his tabernacle, that is in the temple as in his bridal chamber, God will embrace this his bride, and protect her from all evil.
Morally, note that pious men are forsaken by the world but protected by God. The worldly and voluptuous do not perceive how sweet, secure and tranquil is the life of those who practise true piety. This is what the Psalmist sings, Psalm 30:21: “Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy face from the disturbance of men;” and again: “in his tabernacle: in the day of evils he hath protected me in the secret place of his tabernacle.” He alludes to a prince, who receives into his own chamber him whom he wishes to be safest, lest he be hurt by persecutors. So God throws himself before the just man, so that whoever wishes to hurt him must first strike and hurt God. Hence again the Psalmist says, Psalm 90:1: “He that dwelleth in the aid of the most High, shall abide under the protection of the God of heaven;” and Paul, Colossians 3: “Your life is hid with Christ in God.” It is the same, therefore, to be holy and to be hidden and protected by God.
Wherefore Pintus explains “over all the glory shall be a protection” thus, as if to say: This divine protection, by which the Lord guards the just, surpasses all the glory of this world: for that is extinguished by the brief death of men and the forgetfulness of posterity; hence Isaias says, chapter 40:6: “All flesh is grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of the field.” Euripides, in Plutarch, says that it lasts one day, and is at once extinguished. In which place he was rebuked by Demetrius Phalereus, because he ought to have said not one day but one point of time. But divine protection and glory is eternal.