Commentaria in Isaiam
And it brought forth wild grapes.—Note that labrusca is here put for the fruit of the labrusca; for the labrusca is a wild vine, whose flower, as Dioscorides witnesses, book 5, chap. 5, is called oenanthe, as if to say the flower of the wine or of the vine: the labrusca grape is therefore unripe, sour and cheap. Hence the Septuagint for labruscas translate thorns; Symmachus, imperfect, that is, unripe. For it is, says Pliny, book 16, chap. 26, a wild vine, which he himself calls mad, which luxuriates with a threefold yield, but a vanishing one: for on it at the same time some grapes ripen, some swell, some flower; but nothing is ripe and useful: for they show fruit rather than offer it. The Hebrew beushim means stinking: hence Aquila translates, rotten; for, as Cassius Dionysius relates from Varro: “There are some vines which rot the fruit newly produced before the clusters are nourished together and ripen.” Now the sense is, as if to say: My beloved, namely God the Father, and his Son and heir Jesus Christ, looked from the vineyard so cultivated by himself for sweet grapes, pleasant and agreeable to his stomach; but behold, he found them unsweet and bitter, which cause him distress and nausea: surely from the Jewish people he looked for the glad and sweet wine of virtues, faith and good works: but it gave him the sour juice and vinegar of unbelief, injustice (as he says in verse 7), pride, lust, and so on, and that very vinegar instead of wine it truly offered to Christ the Lord on the cross: for St. Chrysostom, homily 9 On the Cross and the Thief, teaches that the eye of the Prophet looked to this in particular; and the Fathers commonly refer these things to the Passion of Christ.
Tropologically, he bears stinking grapes who turns his mind and zeal from the faith and piety which he ought to have rendered to God to mad, false and foolish thoughts. Again, luxuriant but imperfect and unripe grapes are Religious and others who begin the way of virtue with great fervour but soon grow lukewarm and do not finish what they have begun. Likewise those who from levity and inconstancy now embrace this kind of life, virtue and study, now that, and while they try all things fall short in all, and, as Sanchez says, in that not so much labour as manifold play produce nothing ripe which the Lord may pluck and take: for nothing so hinders progress in the spiritual way as this inconstancy and frequent change of counsels and studies.
3. Now therefore, men of Juda, judge.—God here, out of kindness, submits himself to the judgment of the people, that the people may justify God in so evident a cause, and be forced to cut its own throat with its own testimony and sword.
4. What is there that I ought to do more, and so on. Was it that I looked?—It is a grave reproach, as if to say: What office of the vinedresser have I omitted? What have I neglected in cultivating the vineyard? What ought I to have done for it that I have not done? Have I sinned in this, that I looked for grapes? Is this the fault, this my sin, namely my long waiting for fruits, and my too great long-suffering? Has it made wild grapes out of grapes? Long delay and time ripen grapes: has my delay alone, then, made them unripe? So God. On the contrary, man can and ought to say truly: “What ought I to have done for my Lord that I have done? Who am I, what am I, what evil am I not?” says St. Augustine; for a holy man ought to reckon himself an unprofitable servant to God. In like manner God complains through Jeremias, chapter 2, verse 21: “I planted thee a chosen vineyard, all true seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vineyard?”
5. I will take away the hedge thereof,—as if to say: I will strip the Jewish people of the law and of my protection, and of the guard of the Angels, that it may be laid waste by the Romans, and I will transfer these to the Gentiles. Hence Josephus, book 7 of the Jewish War, chap. 12, says that a little before the destruction of Jerusalem the very heavy gate of the temple opened of its own accord, and a voice (of the Angels) was heard in the temple: “Let us depart hence.” Of like kind is that saying of the Angels or the soldiers, Jeremias 51:9: “We have cured Babylon, but she is not healed: let us forsake her.”
6. It shall not be pruned, and it shall not be digged.—For a luxuriant vine is wont to be pruned and cut, likewise to be digged, or ablaqueated, that is, to have the earth dug away that was about its roots, that they may draw in air and heavenly moisture; which all skilled in husbandry teach to be necessary to the fertility of vines and trees. Hence St. Ambrose, Hexameron book 3, chap. 12: “He digs round the vineyard,” he says, “when he has lightened it of the mass of earthly cares.” Again, the earth near the vine is wont to be dug, as a field is dug, that the seed may draw from the dug and undermined earth a greater and better juice. Hence Forerius translates, it shall not be hoed, or it shall not be heaped up: for adar in the passive conjugation is to be gathered, collected and brought together into one, for example into a heap, as is done around vines, to which the earth is drawn together with a hoe; as is also done in ploughing in the furrows of fields. For a vineyard requires perpetual, varied and continual cultivation.
The sense is, as if to say: God will abandon this vineyard, will not prune it, nor restrain the luxuriant malice of his people; again, he will not dig round it, touch it, prick it, or hoe it; but will let it be overgrown, hidden and choked with briers and thorns. This is a great punishment, when a sinner is forsaken by God, and is permitted the longer to follow his lusts with impunity and wallow in concupiscence. For, as St. Gregory says, homily 12 on Ezechiel: “He who is turned away from God, and prospers, is so much nearer to perdition as he is found estranged from zeal for discipline.”
Tropologically, the soul must be pruned and cultivated by the precepts of God as well as by adversities, says St. Basil here.
And I will command the clouds to rain no rain upon it.—The rain which is denied to the vineyard rejected by God, that is, to the Synagogue, is heavenly doctrine: whence among the Hebrews both words are derived from the same root. For from yara, that is, he sent, sent down, cast, is derived moreh, that is a teacher sending forth his teaching; and yoreh, that is rain sent down from heaven; and torah, that is law, or doctrine sent into the ears and mind of the disciple by the teacher. Hence the Apostles and apostolic men are called clouds: because through them God rains this heavenly shower on the Church, Isaias 60:8: “Who are these that fly as clouds?” and Joel 2:23: “Because he hath given you a teacher of justice, and he will make the rain to come down to you, the early and the latter.” So St. Jerome. The sense, therefore, is, as if to say: I, God, will forbid the Apostles and their followers to water the Jews with the shower of holy doctrine and of the Gospel, but they shall pour it on the Gentiles. So St. Jerome, Cyril, and at length Basil.
7. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.—Here he explains the song and the parable of the vineyard, as if to say: This vineyard is the people of Israel.
And the man of Juda his pleasant bud.—The Septuagint, his beloved bud; the Chaldee, the plant of his delight; others, his delicate bud, as if to say: The tribe of Juda (under which understand Benjamin also, which clave to Juda in the schism of Jeroboam), in this vineyard of all Israel, is the bud, or vine, which uniquely pleased God, and was his delight. For he does not relate it to the vineyard but to the Lord of hosts, who went before. The cause was that Juda retained the faith, the worship and the temple of God; and that from Juda Christ was to be born, who is the desire of the everlasting hills.
I looked that he should do judgment, and behold iniquity: and justice, and behold a cry.—As if to say: From this vineyard so laboured by me I looked for grapes, namely judgment and justice; but it gave wild grapes, namely iniquity and a cry. He calls justice judgment, or that which is just: our Prado, however, distinguishes these: Judgment, he says, signifies judicial power, in so far as it punishes the guilty: justice signifies the same, in so far as it acquits and vindicates the innocent. As if to say: I looked from the Jews for judgment; “and behold iniquity,” because they acquit the guilty: and for justice, “and behold a cry,” because they condemn the innocent, who accordingly cry out and wail because of this wrong.
But by “cry,” as opposed to justice, you may more aptly understand the cry of the unjust themselves, the angry and violent, such as is wont to be that of robbers, when with violence and noisy threats and shouts they terrify travellers in order to rob or murder them. Again, by this word Isaias properly looks to the cry of the Jews against Christ: “Crucify him, crucify him.” So St. Jerome and Cyril. In like manner Jeremias says, chapter 12, verse 8: