Commentaria in Isaiam
St. Jerome notes, and says: “That it is put in the title that Isaias prophesied under Ozias, Joatham, Achaz and Ezechias is not, as in other Prophets, to be understood confusedly, so that we do not know what was said specially under which king; but it is recorded to the end of the volume what was said separately under Ozias,” namely what is said from chapter 1 to chapter 6, verse 4, “and what under Joatham,” namely what is said in chapter 6, “and what under Achaz,” namely what is said from chapter 7, verse 1, to chapter 14, verse 28, “and what was revealed to him by the Lord under Ezechias,” namely the rest, from chapter 14, verse 28, to the end of the book. So he. This is generally true; yet it admits of exception, as will appear in chapter 17, verse 1.
2. HEAR, O HEAVENS, AND GIVE EAR, O EARTH, FOR THE LORD HATH SPOKEN.—Isaias wins attention for himself by a pathetic appeal, calling upon heaven and earth to hear the words, not his own, but the Lord’s. Haymo understands by heaven upright, spiritual and heavenly men; by earth, ruder and earthly men, or even the depraved and unbelieving. But this sense is tropological.
Literally, therefore, St. Basil, Jerome and Cyril take by the heavens the inhabitants of heaven, namely the Angels; by the earth, the earth-born, namely men, so that it is a metonymy.
Second, more literally and genuinely, the same Cyril and Rupert take the heavens and the earth themselves in the proper sense; for Isaias uses prosopopoeia toward inanimate creatures, so that the speech may be graver and full of indignation, and this first, to signify that the Jews received all their goods from heaven and earth through God, to whom they have now been so ungrateful; second, because the Jews adored the sun, moon and stars in heaven, and on earth beasts and stones, he therefore now calls upon those very things as their judges; third, and chiefly, because, since rational men, namely the Jews, would not hear God and the Prophets, Isaias therefore calls upon inanimate creatures, which always obey God, so that the complaint and reproach may be most grave; he calls upon them, I say, as mute and eternal witnesses, that heaven and earth may be witnesses both of the past covenant made by God with the Jews, Deuteronomy 30, 19: “I call heaven and earth to witness this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing”; and of the present perfidy of the Jews, by which they have broken this covenant (for these words of Isaias correspond exactly to those of Moses just cited); and of their future punishment, that heaven and earth may be not only witnesses but avengers of their Creator. For “the whole world shall fight with him against the unwise,” Wisdom 5, 21. Like are Psalm 49, 4, and Deuteronomy 32, 1: “Hear, O ye heavens, the things I speak: let the earth give ear to the words of my mouth.” So St. Ambrose on Psalm 118, sermon 44: “God calls the elements to witness,” he says, “to convict those who will not keep the divine precepts, that he may shut off every refuge of excuse.” And St. Chrysostom here, who also adds examples:
“For this reason,” he says, “the Prophet sent to Jeroboam, passing over the king to whom he was sent, very skilfully turned his speech to the altar,” 3 Kings 13: “And Jeremias called upon the earth itself, saying:” Thee therefore, O my people, I nourished as a son, and, as Theodoret translates, brought up; the Septuagint translate, “I begot,” when namely “Earth, earth, earth, write this man, a man cast out,” Jeremias 22. He says therefore: since the impiety of men is so great that they harden against the words of God, I will speak to heaven and earth. Heaven, though most remote, will hear; the earth, though stony and dense, will listen. But the ears of men are deaf.
The sense, then, is as if to say: You, insensible and lifeless heavens, you, brute and deaf earth, hear from me what my people will not hear, hear the just complaint of my covenant made with the Jews, and of the law given them by me; as you were witnesses of it then, so now be witnesses both of their disobedience, ingratitude and rebellion, and of my just complaint and threatening against them, and in the future be witnesses of my vengeance, by which I shall execute and inflict on them the evils which I here threaten; and be not witnesses only, but also lictors and avengers; namely you, earth, show yourself iron to the impious Jews; you, heaven, be brass to them. Again and more: on the day of judgment do you, heaven, hurl thunder and lightning upon them; you, earth, open yourself beneath them. So Rupert; see what is said on Deuteronomy 4, 26. Let the same preacher say in the name of God to every sinner: Hear, O heavens, hear, ye elements, hear, ye rocks, hear, ye brutes, a new thing for you, hear an unheard-of deed, hear a portent of the ages: This sinner whom I created, redeemed, endowed with my grace and with every good, has despised me, has blasphemed me, has preferred Venus to me, Bacchus to me; he has made his belly his god, and so has robbed me of my divinity, and transferred it to Venus and his belly. Why then, O heavens, O thunderbolts, do you not rush upon this wicked man? Why do you not blast, strike, torment, destroy the man guilty of treason against the divine majesty?
Allegorically, “this thing was fulfilled in the Lord’s Passion, when the sky at midday lost the day, and the earth by its excessive trembling lost its firmness. From this one may judge what is reserved for those on whose account nature almost bore the punishment of funereal mourning,” says Zeno, Bishop of Verona, sermon 5, On Isaias, who flourished renowned for doctrine, holiness, miracles and martyrdom under the Emperor Gallienus, and whom St. Gregory also mentions, book 3 of the Dialogues, chapter 19. His writings are extant in tome 2 of the Library of the Holy Fathers.
FOR THE LORD HATH SPOKEN.—He prepares attention from the dignity of the speaker, as if to say: It is not I, but the sacred and divine majesty that speaks this through me; for my tongue is the pen of the divine scribe, namely the Holy Spirit, and my throat is a trumpet blown and sounding with the divine breath.
I HAVE BROUGHT UP CHILDREN, AND EXALTED THEM: BUT THEY HAVE DESPISED ME.—“Children” properly and first he understands the Jews of his own time, not those who lived at the time of Christ, as Jerome holds, although these words may by similarity be extended and applied to them, indeed to all men; for the ingratitude of all is here censured. I adopted thee as a son to me, Exodus 4, 22. The Hebrew is higdalti, that is, I magnified, that is, I nourished, I made thee grow, come to maturity. For I nourished thee when thou wast a little one and few, through Joseph in the land of Gessen, that thou mightest grow into an immense multitude. Again I nourished thee with manna in the desert; and with milk and honey in Chanaan. Second, and rather, I nourished thee with spiritual food, namely by the law given on Sinai, so many prophecies, so many sacred books, so many warnings, so many promises. This is what Osee says, chapter 11, verse 3: “I was like a foster father to Ephraim, I carried them in my arms”; and Isaias, chapter 46, verse 3: “Who are carried by my bowels.” Finally “I exalted,” that is, above all other nations I loaded thee with riches, miracles, victories, kingdom, temple and other gifts, and made thee lofty and glorious, and formidable to other nations.
BUT THEY HAVE DESPISED ME.—He does not say: They have forgotten, they have neglected, but positively, “they have despised me,” as if directly contemning, spurning, violating and transgressing me and my commands, as the Hebrew has, and at last crucifying me, says Zeno of Verona, sermon 1, On Isaias. How great is this thy impudence, O Jew! O Christian! how great thy ingratitude, how great thy pride! These words of Isaias again correspond, as an antistrophe, to the words of Moses, Deuteronomy 32, 6: “Is this the return thou makest to the Lord, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he thy father, that hath possessed thee, and made thee, and created thee?” etc. Lycurgus refused to make a law against the ungrateful, because it would be a portentous thing not to acknowledge a benefit. The ingratitude of a son toward a father is therefore a twofold portent; but a threefold one toward a liberal and beneficent father.
3. THE OX KNOWETH HIS OWNER, AND THE ASS HIS MASTER’S CRIB: BUT ISRAEL HATH NOT KNOWN ME.—It is an argument from the less to the greater, namely from brutes to men, and that to move the feelings. St. Jerome notes that the rebellious and ungrateful Jews are here likened not to a noble horse, or a sagacious and grateful dog, but to a stolid ox and ass; for what is more stolid than an ox? what more stupid than an ass? Yet the Jews, and all the ungrateful, are more stolid than these. So, conversely, Plato used to call Aristotle a mule; for the mule, when it has been filled with its mother’s milk, kicks its mother: so Aristotle, stuffed with the best of Plato’s teachings, opened a school against him in the Peripatos, and desired to be his perpetual adversary. So Aelian, book 4.