Commentaria in Isaiam
Fourthly, and most plainly, Sanchez takes ut as until; whence the Chaldean renders, until: for this is what the Hebrew lamed signifies in ledato, as if to say: Emmanuel shall feed on infantile foods, honey and butter, until he grows and comes to that age in which boys are wont to separate and discern between good and evil, as if to say: Emmanuel will not only be born, but also be nourished and grow like other boys to adult age.
Morally, St. Bernard, sermon 3 On the Nativity, infers from this: Bodily pleasure, then, is evil, so are praise and honour evil; but affliction, contempt and reproach are good, because the wise boy, the Word an infant, chose these and refused those. For either Christ is deceived, or the world errs: but it is impossible that divine Wisdom be deceived; the world errs, therefore; all worldlings and followers of vanity err, according to that of the psalm: “I said: These always err in heart:” but Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life, teaches by word and example what is truly good, what evil, what to flee, what to embrace in order to attain the blessed life. Would that all Christians would weigh this worthily, as is fitting, imprint it on the heart and express it in conduct! For in this reasoning and its practice lies the marrow of Christian wisdom. The reason is that pleasure inflames the concupiscence of corrupt nature, the cross extinguishes it.
16. FOR BEFORE THE CHILD KNOW TO REFUSE THE EVIL AND TO CHOOSE THE GOOD, THE LAND WHICH THOU DETESTEST SHALL BE FORSAKEN.—“For,” according to the second sense given at verse 14, is to be expounded by “because;” but according to the first sense by “surely, certainly, but indeed:” for the Hebrew ki often signifies this, as if to say: But indeed, to confirm my promise of the deliverance of Jerusalem from the hand of Rasin, I moreover assert and promise that before this child is born and grows up, he himself, as God, will deliver Jerusalem and the Jews from the two kings whom thou, O Achaz, so abhorrest, indeed will utterly lay waste their land and kingdom through the Assyrians. So St. Jerome and Haymo: see what is said at verse 14: for Isaias returns from the child Christ to his own times. Again, because it hints at the reason why this child is to be called Emmanuel, that is, God strong with us, namely because he will valiantly conquer and lay waste the two kings and the hostile kingdoms.
Mystically, Richard of St. Victor, part 1, book 2 On Emmanuel, chap. 18: “Before,” he says, “the boy by experience knows not only to refuse evil but also to choose good, and, laying aside lower goods, to grasp the best; before, I say, he ascends to heaven, ‘the land shall be forsaken,’ that is, the kingdom of the devil and of his angels on earth shall be destroyed: for Christ did the former in his passion, the latter in his ascension.”
FROM THE FACE OF HER TWO KINGS.—that is, by her two kings, or on account of the crimes of their two kings their land shall be forsaken. Secondly, that is, on account of the two kings who besiege thee and think to cut thee off, thou, O Achaz, detestest their land and kingdom. He speaks of the overthrow of Rasin and Phacee. For Rasin was slain by the Assyrians, Phacee by Osee his prefect and successor, as will appear in chap. 8. Secondly, newly (but properly referring to the time of Christ), the Rev. Father John Decker, a notable Chronologer and Theologian, and once my colleague at Louvain, understands by the king of Samaria Herod; by the king of Syria, Obodas: for under these kings Christ was born, and as an infant deprived them of kingdom and life. For Herod died miserably, and lived hardly fifteen months after Christ was born; Obodas died a few months before Herod, witness Josephus, book 16, chap. 19, and Strabo, book 16 of Geography. Whence, signifying this, he says: “The land shall be forsaken of the face of kings,” not of those, namely Rasin and Phacee, but “her” (or, as Symmachus, Aquila, Theodotion and the Chaldean render, his own) namely Herod and Obodas, whose type and predecessors were Phacee and Rasin. For these kings, and especially Herod, were enemies of the Jews, and endeavoured to extinguish the royal stock of David and Achaz. Wherefore Herod, though he was king of Juda and Jerusalem also, is yet called king of Samaria both by Isaias and by Appian of Alexandria, book 5 of the Civil Wars, because he was a foreigner and a tyrant and enemy of the Jews, as was clear both in the slaughter of the Holy Innocents and in that cruel decree by which, dying, he ordered the chiefs of the Jews to be shut up in the circus and killed, lest the Jews should rejoice at his death, but be forced even against their will to weep for the slaughter of their own. The sense then is, as if to say: These kings, and especially Herod, are plotting to transfer the kingdom of Juda from thy stock, O Achaz, to themselves, and to overthrow thy posterity; but behold, Emmanuel, to be born of thee, though yet an infant, will swiftly overthrow him, and destroy him with a lousy disease, and so will recall the kingdom of Juda to himself and to thy stock, and increase and glorify it. Isaias therefore alludes to the infanticide of Herod, and asserts that the infant Emmanuel will overcome and slay the infanticide Herod, by whom he is sought to be killed. That this sense also is literal will appear in chap. 8, verse 4.
Where note that Phacee was aptly the forerunner and type of Herod: for both were evildoers and unjust: both excellent in arms, worst in morals: both endowed with a tyrannical temper; accustomed to extortions and plunderings, and to the dismembering of their own citizens; both labouring under an insatiable desire of ruling, they rose against their lords: Phacee against Phaceia king of Israel, by killing him; Herod not only against Christ, but also against Hyrcanus his king and pontiff, by whom he had been made governor of Galilee, and whose granddaughter Mariamne he took as wife: through whom he afterwards had access to the kingdom of Judea. But a most ungrateful and most cruel man, he killed this wife of his, and her mother Alexandra, and the two sons he had by her, Alexander and Aristobulus, whom with Augustus Caesar’s consent he had appointed heirs of the kingdom. He also drowned the other Aristobulus, Mariamne’s brother. Again he killed his son Antipater five days before his own death. I pass over the Holy Innocents, and countless others whom he removed by various punishments, sword, poison, halter. In like manner Phacee slew of Juda 120 thousand in one day, took two hundred thousand women and children, and carried off infinite booty to Samaria, 2 Paralipomenon chap. 28, verse 6.
So Rasin, king of Damascus, accustomed to plunder, puffed up with his victories and gaping after Jerusalem, was a type of Obodas, king of Damascus, who had made Arabia a refuge of robbers, and these, pouring out over the fields, continually harassed Judea. Aretas also, the successor of Obodas in the kingdom, was hostile to the Jews. Again, as the king of the Assyrians, after slaying Rasin and Phacee, took possession of the kingdom of Damascus and of Samaria, so when Obodas and Herod were dead, Caesar Augustus seized the kingdom of both as spoil and brought it back to himself; whence Samaria was called Sebaste in honour of Augustus. And although Augustus divided Herod’s kingdom among his sons, he took from them the name and right of kings. So for a long time in Syria he would not allow Aretas to succeed Obodas, yet at last he granted him this kingdom. This is that Aretas whose governor at Damascus wished to seize St. Paul, when Paul was let down in a basket from the wall.
From what has been said it is clear that the prophecy of the patriarch Jacob, Genesis 49:9, uttered literally of Juda and allegorically of Christ: “Juda is a lion’s whelp: to the prey, my son, thou art gone up,” looks not only to the manly age of Christ but also to his infancy. For the yearling lamb himself, putting forth horns and hoofs, slew the lion and the bear, and after the example of his father David wrested the prey from their mouths. The arrows of the little child were made the wounds of his enemies, whose indignation drank up their spirit. Finally the oracle of Micheas 4:13 was fulfilled: “I will make thy horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass, and thou shalt break in pieces many people, and thou shalt kill their spoils to the Lord, and their strength to the Lord of the whole earth.”
Secondly, it is clear that Calvin wrongly interprets these words of Isaias thus: “Before the boys who are soon to be born grow up, each kingdom, of Samaria and of Damascus, must be deprived of its kings.” For the Prophet does not fix the limit of his prediction at youth, which ranges widely, but at infancy, and before Emmanuel can utter articulate words.
Thirdly, it is clear that Eusebius is mistaken in thinking that the Prophet here foretells that Damascus and Samaria, a little before the birth of Christ, would be left desolate and without a king, their kings removed. For it is certain that when Christ was born Herod reigned in Samaria, Obodas in Damascus, and after Obodas, Aretas.
17. The Lord shall bring upon thee. Here the Prophet passes from Rasin and Phacee to Achaz and the Jews, and punishes their unbelief and crimes with like destruction, according to what he threatened them in verse 9: “If you will not believe, you shall not continue.” The sense therefore is, as if to say: I have foretold the destruction of Syria and Samaria by the Assyrians; now I foretell the same to thee, O Juda, namely that the Lord will bring upon thee days of unheard-of vengeance, such as thou hast not experienced in all the calamities thou hast suffered from the time that Ephraim, that is, the ten tribes under Jeroboam, separated themselves from thee. “He shall bring,” I say, “with the king,” that is, by the king of the Assyrians (it is a hyperbaton: for “with the king of the Assyrians” must be referred to “he shall bring”), whom thou thyself hast taken to thyself as a scourge. For when thou wast pressed by the Syrians and Samaritans, thou didst implore his help, not God’s; and he, seeing the fertility of thy land and allured by it, began to gape after it, and at length invaded and seized it.