Commentaria in Isaiam
By the king of the Assyrians understand Sennacherib, or Nabuchodonosor, who after the overthrow of Ninive became monarch and ruled the Assyrians as well as the Babylonians; and the Babylonians were neighbours of the Assyrians and mingled with them; whence many reckon the monarchy of the Assyrians and of the Babylonians as one, and both, having tasted the wealth of Juda, gaped after it. So St. Jerome.
so here too, at the command, that is, at the nod and impulse, of God who wills to punish the Jews, the Egyptians and the Assyrians will run up at once like lictors. God will need only a whistle for them to fly into Judea.
Note first that this whistle of God was not some peculiar revelation made to the Assyrians and Egyptians, but only an inward prompting and inspiration of God, stirring them up to attack the Jews in war, if they could justly do so, that is, if they had a just cause of war; but if not, merely presenting to them, ready to invade anyone in order to enlarge their borders and wealth, the Jews as easily to be subdued by them, and this is the more likely. See Canon 36.
Note secondly that the Egyptians are called flies, first, … for impudence; third, because like flies they were foul and unclean; fourth, because like flies they grew and multiplied (for Aristotle teaches, in Book 7 of the History of Animals, chapter 4, that the Egyptians are naturally very fruitful); fifth, because Egypt, being a very hot region where it scarcely ever rains, swarms with flies and gnats. The Assyrians he calls bees, first, because they were mighty with arrows, as bees are with their stings (so St. Jerome); secondly, because like bees they were conspicuous in gilded arms and variegated garments (so Cyril); thirdly, because in their wars and undertakings they were diligent like bees, industrious, laborious and constant.
Note thirdly: the Prophet speaks here both of the war of Pharao Nechao, in which, in punishment of the idolatry of king Manasses, Juda fell, and king Josias, the grandson of Manasses, 4 Kings 23; and of the expedition of Sennacherib against the Jews.
19. And they shall come, and shall all rest in the torrents of the valleys. He persists in the metaphor of flies and bees, which so beset the valleys and torrents as to gnaw and defile everything; so the Egyptians and Assyrians laid waste everything in Judea.
20. In that day the Lord shall shave (he continues to say the same in another metaphor) with a hired razor, in these.
It is an apposition, as if to say: with a razor hired for wages, which is none other than those who dwell beyond the river Euphrates, namely the Assyrians with their king.
Note: Sennacherib with the Assyrians is called a razor hired for wages, because he, as one hired by God to punish and lay waste the spoils and kingdoms, shaved off most lightly, like a barber, down to the skin everything that was for the safety and honour of the Jews and of other nations, which are signified by the name of hairs; indeed the whole body politic, namely the “head,” that is, the princes, and the “beard,” that is, the craftsmen and the base populace of Juda, and carried them off, says Cyril.
So Egypt was given by God to Nabuchodonosor as the wages for Tyre.
For “hired” the Septuagint render it as “shaved,” that is, of hairs, namely the spoils of enemies; for they read it with shin; but our version and others read it with sin, and then it signifies hired for wages, a word that marks the clemency of God, who, being merciful, does not keep such lictors at home but summons them from elsewhere, hired, to do their work; for as Isaias says, chapter 28, verse 21: “His work is strange to him.” “For God made not death, neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living. For he created all things that they might be; and he made the nations of the earth for health; and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor kingdom of hell upon the earth,” Wisdom 1:13.
Note secondly: the cutting and shaving of the hair was a sign of slaves and of slavery, into which the Jews were to be reduced by the Chaldeans. Whence Aristophanes says: “Being a slave, dost thou let thy hair grow?” And Pomponius Laetus, On the Triumph of Diocletian: “It was the custom,” he says, “for those freed from captivity to follow the chariot of the triumphing general with shaven heads, in token of their former slavery.” So, behind the chariot of T. Flaminius, who triumphed over Macedonia, two thousand Roman captives whom he had given their liberty followed with shaven heads. So also St. Peter, when preaching at Antioch, had his head shaved by wicked men in mockery, as though he were a vile man of servile condition, as Bede testifies in his History of the English. The Church turned this into honour and dignity: for she commanded priests and religious to shave the head and to wear the shaven hair like a diadem of the divine and heavenly kingdom; for this is the “kingly priesthood” of Christ and of Christians, as St. Peter says, 1 Epistle, chapter 2, verse 9.
Further, the Rabbis take this one shaven of head and beard to be Sennacherib himself, of whom they tell this story, or rather fable, which St. Jerome relates in his Questions on the Second Book of Paralipomenon 32: “The Hebrews relate,” he says, “that his head and beard were shaved by an angel in ignominy, and that this was what was said through Isaias: In that day the Lord shall shave with a sharp razor, in the king of the Assyrians, the head and the beard, and so on. And when he had come with this same ignominy to the temple of his god Nesroch, who, they say, was worshipped among the remains of Noe’s ark, he complained, praying, why the god had not helped him, who even offered his sons Adramelech and Sarasar to him, if he would hold that sacrifice acceptable. His sons, hearing this after so many disasters, ruins and disgraces, fearing to be killed by him, killed him.”
21. And it shall come to pass in that day that a man shall nourish a young cow. That is, in this Babylonian devastation there will be so few men that those once rich will hardly have more than one cow and two sheep; and so few of them will remain that the milk of one cow and of two sheep will suffice a whole family, not only for drink but also for butter and food; especially because, the fields lying deserted and untilled, everything will turn into shoots and pasture for the cattle, on which the cows, fed and swollen, will give abundant milk and thence butter. So St. Jerome and Cyril.
22. For butter and honey (which the untilled land of itself pours forth) shall every one eat that shall be left, not wheat, not barley and the like, which the earth does not bear unless it is tilled and sown; as if to say: the land will then be wholly desert, and therefore men will live not on wheat but on milk and honey.
23. Every place where there were a thousand vines, a thousand pieces of silver. The vineyards, because they will be overgrown with briers and thorns, will be of so little price that a vineyard may be bought for one piece of silver, that is, as the Septuagint have it, one shekel, and a thousand vines for a thousand pieces of silver. So Cyril.
Secondly, and better, as if to say: Fields once so fruitful that each single vine, that is, the yearly yield of the vines, was valued at a piece of silver, and a thousand vines at a thousand pieces of silver, shall be turned into thorns and briers. So Forerius and Sanchez.
24. With arrows and bow. As if to say: Into these deserted woodlands, into these places, now no longer vineyards but briar-thickets and thorn-brakes, no one, because of wild beasts and robbers, will dare to enter unless he be well armed.
25. And all the mountains that shall be raked with the rake, and so on. As if to say: The valleys and fertile fields will be abandoned, and men will flee for fear of the enemy with their flocks to mountains fortified by nature, and these they will dig not with the plough, as they once did the fields, but with the hoe, that is, they will clear them of thorns and briers so that they can be sown and tilled, or serve as pastures; wherefore the thorns will not be a terror to them, even if they be pricked and hurt by them; because necessity and hunger will compel them not to mind these pricks; and yet after all this labour of theirs, the oxen will graze those mountains and the cattle will trample them. So St. Jerome.
Secondly, and more fittingly, Sanchez: As if to say: Mountains once planted with vines, which were broken up not with the plough but with the hoe, and which were carefully surrounded and defended by the owner on every side with thorns as with a hedge, now that the thorns and hedge have been scattered by the enemy, will be a terror to no one to keep anyone from breaking in there freely; whence the oxen will rush into them as into pastures, and they will be trampled by them and by other cattle.
Note the Hebraism: “And all the mountains, and so on, there shall not come thither,” that is, he shall not come to all the mountains.