Commentaria in Isaiam
3. Call his name, Make speed to take away the spoils. “Call,” that is, predict that this boy will be such that he can rightly be so called; for in fact this name was not given to Christ, but another, namely Jesus. See Canons 37 and 29.
Note: Isaias is commanded to call Christ by two names that signify the same, repeated, namely first: “Make speed to take away the spoils”; secondly: “Make haste to take the prey,” that the sure and great speed of this plundering may be signified, as if to say: “Thou, boy, O Christ, shalt be a most swift plunderer; thou most quickly wilt take away from him for thyself us who were the spoils of the devil, and wilt convert the world and pervade it like lightning,” as Apelles painted Alexander the Great holding lightning in his hand, because he in the swiftest manner, namely in six years, subdued the world and became monarch; as if to say, Christ shall quickly despoil and plunder the kingdom of the devil, when ascending on high he shall lead captivity captive, and likewise the kingdom of Damascus and Samaria, as follows. This is what Paul says of Christ: “And despoiling the principalities and powers, he hath exposed them confidently in open show, triumphing over them in himself,” Colossians 2:15. Such a plunderer and despoiler of the devil was Paul, of whom Jacob, Genesis 49:27: “Benjamin a ravenous wolf, in the morning shall eat the prey, and in the evening shall divide the spoil.” Secondly, these two names signify that Christ will deprive of life and kingdom two kings, namely Rasin and Phacee, and again Herod and Obodas; finally that he will do the same twice, the first time as a sign and prelude of the latter; for the slaughter of Rasin and Phacee was a sign of the slaughter of Herod and Obodas.
4. For before the child knows how to call his father, etc., the strength of Damascus shall be taken away, and the spoils of Samaria. The Septuagint render: before the child knows how to call father or mother, he shall receive the strength of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria. As if he were to say: This child, who is to be born of the Virgin Mother of God, will be wonderful, and will exist before he is born; for he will be God. Before he knows how to speak in the natural and common way, and to say what infants say first, “My father, my mother,” as the Hebrew has it, indeed before he comes forth from his mother’s womb, he will begin to despoil and plunder his enemies. For he will deliver the two tribes subject to king Achaz, and he will destroy their enemies, namely Rasin and Phacee, and their kingdoms Damascus and Samaria, by means of the king of the Assyrians. So say St. Jerome, the Chaldee, the Septuagint and others.
Chronologists note that this prophecy of the Virgin who was to bear Emmanuel was uttered by Isaias in the eighth year of Achaz, or at the beginning of the fourth; and that what is foretold in this chapter belongs chiefly to the fourth year of the reign of Achaz, and began to be fulfilled then. For from 4 Kings 16 and 2 Paralipomenon 26 it is clear that in this year 4 Theglatphalasar, king of the Assyrians, carried the Nephtalites and a great part of Samaria away into Assyria. Phacee also was killed by Osee, who seized the kingdom and was the last king of Samaria, overthrown with his kingdom by Salmanasar in the ninth year of his reign, which was the sixth of Ezechias. In like manner Theglatphalasar then took Damascus, killing Rasin, and carried its inhabitants away to Cyrene. For these things happened in the twentieth year of Joatham, as is said in 4 Kings 15:30, that is, from the time Joatham began to reign, in the year 20, which was the fourth year of Achaz; for Joatham reigned only sixteen years, and Achaz succeeded him at once. So the Hebrews in the Seder Olam. Again, that Phacee was slain in the fourth year of Achaz is plain from 4 Kings 15:27, where it is said that Phacee began to reign in the fifty-second year of Ozias and reigned twenty years; Joatham succeeded Ozias in his seventy-second year and reigned sixteen years; then Achaz succeeded him, whose fourth year was the twentieth and last of Phacee. Wherefore Calvin errs shamefully when, on verse 16 here, he affirms that Phacee perished in the nineteenth year of Achaz, and that Osee then succeeded him; for from what has been said it is plain that this happened eight years earlier, namely in the fourth year of Achaz. See here how quickly this prophecy of Isaias was fulfilled, namely in that same year, so that the name of Emmanuel, who brought these things to pass, was rightly given by him: “Make haste to take away the spoils,” etc. Again, this prophecy was fulfilled in Herod and Obodas, king of Damascus, as I said on chapter 7, verse 10; for Emmanuel, now born, cast them down from kingdom and life. The strength of Damascus and Syria, then, are Herod and the Herodians, and the Jews and Gentiles with Herod, drawing the same rope, and persecuting Christ and Christians. For all these Emmanuel either overthrew or subdued, and brought under his faith, and so he freed the Jews, that is, the true faithful who confess God, from their servitude and tyranny. Isaias therefore here foretells five plunderings.
By the antitype of the deliverance of Judea and the plundering of Samaria and Syria, Emmanuel, newly born, will free Judea and the Church from the tyranny of Herod and Obodas; and he will begin to plunder when he calls the three Magi, until then unbelievers, led by the star from Damascus, that is, from the East, with their wealth and treasures, from the spoils of Samaria, that is, of idolatry, to which Samaria was above all given, to his cradle and manger, that they may offer to him as to their king and Lord the gold, frankincense and myrrh which they had before offered to idols and to the devil.
Secondly, he will take from Damascus and Samaria, that is, from the kingdom of the devil, the innocent little ones, who were to be slain by Herod in hatred of the infant king newly born, whom he will have reached only at the age at which infants begin to call father and mother.
The little king will crown them in the cradle with the crown of martyrdom. So Irenaeus, book 3, chapter 18.
Thirdly, this child, still in his mother’s arms, fleeing from Herod and entering Egypt, will there break the idols, as tradition holds he in fact did, of which below at chapter 19, verse 1. And so from that time he will begin to drive idolatry out of Egypt and out of the world.
Fourthly, this child will bring the light of faith to the shepherds, whom he will call by an Angel to the manger, and likewise to Simeon, Anna and the other elect, when he is presented in the temple.
Finally, before he is born, he will put to flight unbelief, sin and the demon from the hearts of many; and by grace and faith in him, as the one and only mediator, he will make all the Saints, both under the law of nature and under the Mosaic law, conquer the devil by his merits foreseen, which God in his foreknowledge had already accepted and rewarded, giving on that account grace to all the just who preceded Christ. So St. Athanasius, in his book On the Incarnation of the Word, chapter 1. You see, then, how this child began to despoil and plunder from the womb, indeed before the womb.