Commentaria in Isaiam
The Septuagint render it engastrimythoi, that is, ventriloquists, “because they often spoke through the breast or belly of a man”: whence in Hebrew they are called oboth, that is, wineskins: because through the belly, as through a wineskin, they often gave forth obscure, shrill, gaping, confused, ambiguous and perplexing voices: the manner in which the demon did this Aristophanes explains. They are called mutterers for this reason, or, as it is said in Hebrew, to whisper and murmur. Add that these enthusiasts, often driven by the demon as by furies, or like madmen, hissed and foamed. Again, the demon with a hiss and violence forced a voice out through their mouth or belly. Finally they themselves recited the incantation, the magical song, muttering and murmuring. It was otherwise in the oracles which the demon gave through idols: for those he gave through the mouth of the idol, or to the mouth, forming a clear voice, as if he were the soul, or the indweller and inhabitant, of the idol. Wherefore the makers of idols gave the idol a wide and huge mouth, many of which I have seen here in the palace of the Vatican, so gaping that a whole egg could be thrown into them.
Now the sense is, as if to say: Since in these straits of affairs, in which you Jews are pressed by Rasin and Phacee, some politicians and impious men urge you to inquire of pythons, diviners and magicians about the outcome of this siege, it is right to answer freely and boldly what I here teach and suggest, namely: Is not there a God in Israel, from whom the people may seek a vision, that is, an oracle about the future event? Will it consult dead idols or damned demons for the safety of the living, and ask of them prophecy and foreknowledge of things to come? Marloratus therefore impiously twists this against the invocation of the Saints. For they, though dead, yet live to God and enjoy him.
Rather we must have recourse to the law and to the ark and the mercy seat: there we shall hear the true oracle. For the law will teach us what to do and what to avoid, at other times and in time of war, namely that we must consult not a demon but God sitting on the mercy seat.
So then the darkness of ignorance, unbelief and sins will take hold of Judea, whence he adds in the next chapter, verse 2: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.” What Judea suffered, however, when it preferred pythons to God, darkness to light, and magicians to Isaias, he adds, saying: And he shall fall, and shall be hungry, and shall be angry, and curse his king and his God (not the light, as is plain, but it, namely Judea; for so the Hebrews often change the subject and leave it to the reader to change and understand it from the circumstances): etc. As if to say: Whether it looks up to heaven or down to the earth, it will find and see nothing but tribulation, darkness, sadness and misery, the dissolution of the strength of body and mind, and straits pursuing it on every side, which it cannot escape: for above it will see heaven closed and God angry and raging; below, the earth everywhere beset by enemies. So Sanchez. Otherwise Forerius: “and he shall pass,” namely, he says, each of the impious Jews, “through it,” namely the law of God, not caring for it and transgressing it: whence he shall fall, be hungry, etc. But the former sense is plainer and better connected. The Prophet speaks of the devastation of Juda by Sennacherib and by Nabuchodonosor: for then these evils came upon the Jews most fully.
Note: the ark is called the testimony because it contained the law or the tables of the Decalogue, which were the testimony of the divine will: for they bore witness to the Jews what God wished them to do.
Secondly, the diviners consulted the dead. First, because they often called up the shades and spirits of the dead, and asked them about the future, as the witch of Saul did, 1 Kings 28. Whence this magic is called necromancy, that is, divination from the dead. Secondly, because they consulted demons, who are dead with an eternal death, that is, are damned, and continually suffer pains and the extreme agony such as the dying here undergo: whence all, demons as well as damned men, are said to dwell in the region of the shadow of death. Thirdly, because at times they consulted idols, which are dead, that is, lifeless.
But if they shall not speak according to this word (if the Jews answer otherwise than I here teach and command, and think the oracle about the outcome of the Syrian war is to be asked of diviners and magicians and not of God), there shall not be (to them) a morning light, that is, truth, but they will live in the darkness of errors and false oracles. Secondly, “light” means joy and prosperity, as if to say: They shall have nothing bright, that is, happy, pleasant and prosperous, but all things unlucky, sad and adverse,
24. And he shall pass (namely this morning light) through it. That is, the house of Jacob, of which in verse 17, that is, Judea. As if to say: If you believe the diviners, the light of truth and happiness will pass and withdraw from Juda, both now and in the time of Christ: for then the light of the Gospel will pass from the Jews to the Gentiles, say St. Jerome and St. Thomas.
So Merovech, son of Chilperic king of the Franks, aspiring to the kingdom, spoke many accusations against his father and stepmother; one day he invited to a banquet Gregory, Bishop of Tours, asking for some instruction for his soul. Gregory, opening the book of Proverbs, came upon that text, chapter 30, verse 17: “The eye that mocketh at his father, shall the ravens of the torrents pick it out.” Merovech then consulted a sorceress in the year of Christ 580, who answered that Chilperic would die that year, and that Merovech alone, to the exclusion of his brothers, would succeed to his whole kingdom. And when he told this, Gregory, Bishop of Tours, rebuked him, saying that these things must be asked of God, for the demon is a liar. Merovech therefore went to the sepulchre of St. Martin, placed on it three books, namely of the Psalter, of Kings and of the Gospels, and watching all night he begged that St. Martin would show him what would befall him concerning the kingdom: after three days of fasting, vigils and prayers he approached the tomb and opened the book of Kings; the first verse of the page he unrolled was this: “Because you have forsaken the Lord your God, and have walked after strange gods, and have not done right in his sight, therefore the Lord your God hath delivered you into the hands of your enemies,” 2 Paralipomenon 7. In the Psalter this verse was found: “But for deceits thou hast set evils for them: thou hast cast them down when they were lifted up. How are they brought to desolation? they have suddenly ceased to be; they have perished by reason of their iniquity,” Psalm 72. In the Gospels this was found: “You know that after two days shall be the pasch, and the Son of man shall be delivered up to be crucified.” At these answers he departed confused and weeping. Rightly, for these things befell him; in the same year Merovech, pressed by enemies, died by his own hand, to avoid falling into their hands, through the arts of Fredegund, as Gregory of Tours relates, book 5 of the History of the Franks, chapters 14 and 16.
In the same place, chapter 49, Gregory tells of himself that when the slanderer Leudastes, a powerful man, had thrown into chains at Tours the Archdeacon Plato and Galienus, he himself, sad and troubled, went to the oratory, and there, opening the Psalter, found Psalm 77: “He brought them out in hope, and they feared not: and the sea overwhelmed their enemies.” Meanwhile, as they entered the river, the boat that carried Leudastes was sunk; but another boat, which was tied to it and held the prisoners, was borne up on the waters by the help of God. Hear a third example.
When the people wished St. Martin for their Bishop, a certain man named Defensor with his party cried out that he was simple and of little learning; but he was put down: for when a lector, taking the Psalter, was consulting the sacred Letters in the usual way, the book opened at that text in Psalm 8: “Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise, that thou mayest destroy the enemy and the defender” (for so the ancient reading of the Gauls had it). On the reading of this a shout went up, and the opposite party was confounded, and St. Martin received the chair, confirmed by the oracle of the Holy Spirit through infants and sucklings, says Sulpicius in his Life of him.
So St. Antony, St. Francis and others in their lives, namely that they might serve God religiously in poverty and the following of Christ, took their direction from the reading or inspection of Holy Scripture.
Finally Gregory of Tours, book 2 of the History of the Franks, chapter 37, relates that Clovis, setting out on a campaign against Alaric, sent his men to the church of St. Martin to seek from it an omen of victory or defeat. As they entered the church, the precentor began: “Thou hast girded me, O Lord, with strength unto battle; thou hast subdued under me them that rose up against me. Thou hast made my enemies turn their back upon me, and hast destroyed them that hated me,” Psalm 17. Therefore, encouraged, with a hind as guide, he went on to Poitiers, and there conquered Alaric by the help of St. Hilary: “For a beacon of fire, issuing from the basilica of St. Hilary, was seen by him as if