Commentaria in Isaiam
Mystically, the same, ibid., part 1, book 2, chap. 21: “Honey,” he says, “comes from heaven by means of dew, butter from flesh by means of milk: for what is butter but a kind of fat of milk? and what is honey but a sweet-flowing thickness of dew? In milk is understood the sweetness of the heart, in butter the exultation of the heart: butter is gathered from milk, and true exultation of the heart is generated from true sweetness of the heart. According to the abundance of benignity will be the abundance of joyfulness. If we look at the heart of Christ, nothing is sweeter than it, nothing more benign, no heart has exulted more richly than that heart.” Hence in chaps. 23 and 24 he teaches that from the Father and the Holy Spirit all sweetness of grace, consolation and glory was instilled into our Emmanuel from the hour of his conception.
Tropologically, St. Ambrose, or whoever is the author of the later book On the Faith of the Resurrection, at the beginning: “The boy,” he says, “shall be filled with the Holy Spirit, whose doctrine is sweeter to us than honey and the honeycomb; for honey is the symbol of wisdom, Proverbs 24:13; milk of innocence.” Hence Homer calls just men galaktophagoi, that is, milk-eaters, witness Clement of Alexandria, book 1 of the Pedagogue, chap. 6. And mystically is hinted here, verse 22, witness the Chaldean, what he says: I am meek and humble of heart.
Beautifully St. Bernard, sermon 29 On the Advent: “In this sheep,” he says, “namely Christ, you will find a sweet nature, a good nature, and very good, like butter, not however the curd or cheese of sin. So too Christ is the bee that feeds among the lilies, that inhabits the flower-bearing country of the Angels; whence he flew to Nazareth, which is interpreted flower, to the flower of Mary’s virginity, and brought us only the honey of mercy, but reserved the sting for the wicked on the day of judgment.”
Milk and honey were once given to the newly baptized, clothed in white garments (the Ethiopians still do the same, as is clear from their Ritual, vol. 5 of the Bibliotheca of the Holy Fathers), to signify first, their infancy in Christ; second, the sweetness of the Christian life; third, infantile humility and meekness. Hence at the first Sacrifice which they heard, namely on the Sunday in white, that epistle of Blessed Peter was recited: “As newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile.” So Tertullian, book 1 Against Marcion, chap. 14: “By the fellowship of honey and milk,” he says, “God the creator makes his own infants;” and in On the Crown of the Soldier, chap. 3: “Thence received, we foretaste the concord of milk and honey.” So also St. Jerome on Isaias chap. 55. Hence St. Agnes also said: “I have received honey and milk from his mouth.”
Finally Origen, homily 2 on these words of Isaias: “Emmanuel,” he says, “eats butter and honey, and seeks from each of us to eat butter. How he seeks butter and honey from each of us, the discourse will teach. Our sweet works, our most agreeable and useful words, are the honeys which Emmanuel eats, which this one who was born of a virgin eats. But if our words are full of bitterness, anger, animosity, annoyance, foul talk, vice, contention, ‘he hath given gall into my mouth,’ and the Saviour eats not of these words. But the Saviour will eat of the words which are among men, if their words be honey. Let us prove this from the Scriptures: Behold I stand at the door and knock: if any man open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. He promises, therefore, that he will sup of ours with us: and it is certain that we too sup with him, if we sup him. For eating of our good words, works and understanding, he restores us with his spiritual and divine and better food. Therefore, because it is blessed to receive the Saviour, with the doors of our principal heart opened, let us prepare for him honeys and all his supper, that he may lead us to the great supper of the Father in the kingdom of heaven, which is in Christ Jesus, to whom is glory and empire for ever and ever. Amen.”
THAT HE MAY KNOW TO REFUSE THE EVIL.—Calvin contends from this verse and the following that the soul of Christ in infancy lacked the use of reason and understanding. “And of this ignorance of Christ,” he says, “Luke bears witness, when he says: And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men. It was needful, therefore, that for a time he should be like infant children, so that as to his humanity he was destitute of understanding.” Bucer and Whitaker agree with Calvin.
But this error is refuted, first, from Jeremias chap. 31, verse 22: “A woman,” he says, “shall compass a man.” Christ was therefore in the womb a man, not in bulk of body, but in wisdom and grace.
Secondly, from Isaias chap. 9, verse 6, where this little child is called “Wonderful, Counsellor;” and, as the Septuagint render, angel of great counsel. And chap. 11, verse 1: “There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and of understanding,” etc. The flower rising from the rod is Christ being born of the Virgin: upon the flower, therefore, not only upon the fruit, that is upon the infant Christ, not only on the man, the spirit of wisdom rested.
Thirdly, Hebrews 10:5 of Christ: he Thirdly, Hebrews 10:5 of Christ: he “saith, when he cometh into the world,” namely Christ Jesus on the day and hour at which the Word was made flesh: “Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not: but a body thou hast fitted to me: holocausts for sin did not please thee. Then said I: Behold I come.” Finally the Apostle adds: “In the which will we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once.” Therefore Christ from the beginning of his incarnation had an act of action and will, by which he offered himself and his death to the Father for the redemption of men. Again, in the first instant of Christ’s conception there dwelt “in him all the fulness of the Godhead corporeally,” and therefore also then “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (were in him) hidden,” as the same Apostle says, and St. Luke, chap. 2, verse 40: “The child,” he says, “grew, and waxed strong, full of wisdom.” For this fulness of wisdom, as of grace and glory, was due to him by virtue of the hypostatic union with the Word, and flowed from it as it were naturally.
Fourthly, St. John the Baptist, sanctified in the womb, had the use of reason; whence “the infant leaped in the womb” as soon as the Blessed Virgin saluted the mother Elisabeth: of which the Church sings:
Reclining in the hidden couch of the womb, thou hadst perceived the king abiding in his chamber.
Hence each parent, by the merits of the son, lays open hidden things.
What was given to John, was it not given to Christ?
Fifthly, St. Jerome here: “Still wrapped in swaddling clothes,” he says, “and fed on butter and honey, he will have judgment of good and evil, that by these words we may know that the infancy of the human body did not prejudice the divine wisdom.” So also the other Fathers, Interpreters and Scholastic Doctors with St. Thomas, who besides the divine knowledge, which Christ had as God, attribute to him as man in the first instant of the incarnation a twofold knowledge: first, beatific, namely the vision of God and of all things in God; second, infused, by which he knew all things outside God by infused light: they add a third, acquired, by which Christ learned and experienced by experience the same things which he already knew by infused knowledge. See St. Thomas and the Scholastics, part 3, Questions 10, 11, 12. And of this third Isaias and St. Luke speak here. The sense, then, is, “that he may know to refuse the evil,” etc., as if to say: What was said ironically to Adam after sin, Genesis 3: “Behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil,” this is truly said of Emmanuel.
the word ut they take for although, as if to say: This boy will be wiser than other boys, and will know to refuse the evil and choose the good; and although he will be such, yet after the manner of others he will eat butter and honey. To this agree Vatablus and Adam, who take the particle ut concomitantly, as if to say: This boy will so eat honey as an infant, that yet at the same time he knows how to refuse the evil: for he will be the Word an infant, a wise boy. But lamed signifies that, not although.
antecedently, as if to say: This boy will eat that he may grow to adult age, in which by experience he will learn and know to refuse the evil and choose the good, which before he knew only by infused knowledge. Hence the Septuagint for ut render, before he know, etc.