Commentaria in Isaiam
8. The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. From chapter 7 to here the Prophet has mingled the plundering of Samaria by the Assyrians with its spiritual plundering by Christ. For Christ he gave to king Achaz, chapter 7, verse 17, as it were the sign of the devastation of Syria and Samaria. Whence again and again he passes from one plundering and spoiling to the other, flies off and flies back. Here, then, from the little child Emmanuel he returns to his own times, that is, to the destruction of Samaria. The sense is, as if to say: As God foretold and threatened by word to Jacob, or Israel, that is, to the ten tribes, namely Samaria, so in fact it fell, that is, came to pass: for it was laid waste and perished on account of the pride with which it despised Juda, and on account of the idolatry of the golden calves in Dan and Bethel, which, though warned by so many strokes and disasters, it would not forsake. It is a metaphor from skilled archers, who with their arrows hit the mark they aim at: in like manner God aimed his threats like arrows at Jacob, and they reached Israel, that is, him at whom they were aimed. The Septuagint, for dabar, that is, word, read deber, that is, pestilence; for that word which the Lord sent into Jacob threatened him with pestilence and destruction, and in fact brought it. So Sanchez and other recent writers. This exposition is the plainest. Secondly, others say: God willed, he says, Jacob, that is, Juda, namely the descendants of David, to reign, Genesis 49:10; but Israel, that is, the ten tribes, under Jeroboam claimed the empire for themselves, and despised Juda as small and abject. Thirdly, others think that these threats are directed not against the Samaritans but against the Jews, who were not to receive Christ, and that these are called Jacob; and so their destruction by the Romans is here set forth. Israel is taken for spiritual Israel, that is, for the converted Gentiles and the remnant of the Jews. So St. Gregory, Morals 2, chapter 30: “What is signified by Jacob,” he says, “but the Jewish people? what by Israel, but the Gentile people? because him whom Jacob strove to supplant by the death of the flesh, the Gentiles saw through the eyes of faith. To Jacob, then, the word was sent, and it fell on Israel, because him whom the Jewish people rejected when he came to them, the Gentile people suddenly found.”
9. And all the people of Ephraim shall know. As if to say: The Ephraimites, that is, the Samaritans, are wont arrogantly to mock and hiss at these threats of the Prophets as vain and futile; but by the event itself and experience they will learn that they were true prophecies. He assigns the cause of the threats and of the destruction of Samaria: first, its pride; secondly, its hypocrisy and the fraud of the false prophets; thirdly, mutual hatred; fourthly, the plundering of widows, orphans and similar wretched persons.
10. The bricks are fallen, but we will build with hewn stones: they have cut down the sycamores, but we will change them into cedars. It is a double proverb signifying the same thing, as if to say: We Samaritans have received some disasters both from Juda and from others; but we say confidently and boldly that we do not care for them, because we shall easily repair them: for the enemies have destroyed our mean buildings; we shall restore more beautiful ones: they have cut down common trees, namely sycamores; we shall plant in their place precious cedars. So St. Jerome. Or, the enemies have burned houses built of frail sycamore; we shall build others of noble cedar; for the cedar is beautiful to look at, pleasant in smell, and everlasting in duration.
Note: The sycamore, says Dioscorides, is a tree of Syria, large, with leaves like the mulberry, otherwise like the fig, except that it puts forth its fruit not on the branches but on the trunk itself: these fruits are milky and sweet, without inner seeds, and do not ripen unless they are scratched with a nail or iron, and on account of the insipid fruit it is called sycomorus, that is, fool fig, that is, insipid. In Hebrew shikmim, which the Septuagint generally render sycaminus. Whence learned men hold that the sycomore is the same as the sycamine. Theophrastus seems to think the same, and Dioscorides, book 1 of the History of Plants, chapter 21, and book 4, chapter 2. Galen, however, thinks that the sycamine is the same as the mulberry, and the sycomore something between the mulberry and the fig, as I said. Palestine, in the time of St. Jerome, had ceased to bear these trees, as Libanus today the cedars.
11. And the Lord shall set up the enemies of Rasin (as if to say: God will make the enemies of Rasin, king of Syria, namely the Assyrians, superior and victorious) against him (that is, first against Rasin; for the word “him” properly regards him: and then presently against Ephraim and Israel, and them) he shall bring in a crowd. So that they overthrow Rasin, the ally and confederate of the Israelites; whom having been overcome, he will bring it about that the Assyrians, with all the weight and tumult of war, the Syrians (who are to the east of Israel) and the Philistines (who are to the west) now joined to them having been defeated, shall come against Israel, and, as it were gaping with open mouth, devour it most greedily and cruelly. So St. Jerome.
12. For all this his wrath is not turned away (not the king of the Assyrians’, but the Lord God’s: because by this devastation of the Assyrians the Israelites did not repent, did not forsake the golden calves, nor return to their God: whence) his hand is stretched out still, that is, to strike them and to punish them with a heavier blow.
14. And the Lord will destroy out of Israel the head and the tail, the highest and the lowest. For he calls the old men and the chiefs the head, and the false prophets the tail, as Isaias presently explains: because as the tail is a vile member, with which a dog fawns and hides its shame, namely its hind part, so the false prophets were the vilest of men, who by their false promises and flatteries fawning on the people covered over its vices and their own alike, and weakened the threats of God and of the Prophets. It is therefore a metaphor from dogs, or from serpents, which fawning with the tail slip in by degrees and spew out their venom.
Him that bows down and him that holds the reins; so the Roman edition. The Hebrew is kippah ve-agmon, that is, branch and rush; for a branch in Hebrew is called kippah, that is, bending itself and the leaves and fruit subject to it: from rushes are made ropes and reins, but of rush, with which boys and rustics bridle their cattle. It is a proverb signifying the same as “head and tail” (but this is taken from animals, that from plants), that is, nobles and commoners, strong and weak, as if to say: All, the highest as well as the lowest, old men as well as boys, princes as well as plebeians, like to which is that saying: “Let us hasten, small and great.” So the Hebrews, Vatablus, and the Septuagint, who render: great and small out of Israel will God destroy.
The one who bows down, then, is a spreading branch which bends itself; and by this is proverbially denoted an old man, a bearer, a strong man, who spreads his strength and rule over others and bends and rules them. The one who holds the reins is the rush, with which boys and poor people are wont to bridle beasts of burden. For from rush, as from hemp and esparto, ropes are plaited, which the poor use for bridles. Whence Job 41:2: “Wilt thou put a ring in his nose?” where for “ring” the Hebrew is agmon, that is, rush. For fishermen are wont to pass a rush through the nostrils of the larger fish so that they can be carried hanging, says Pineda there. Hence also the rush (juncus) is so called from joining (jungere), because its use is for joinings, such as ropes, hurdles, baskets, etc.
So Ovid, in the fourth Pastoral, calls them “bonds of rush.” Here it proverbially denotes a youth, tender and weak (for such is the rush: whence a girl who is soft and pliant is called rush-like), who ought to rein and bridle his passions by the law of his superiors, as by a bridle.
Again, our Interpreter, more generally and nearer to the thing signified, for branch and rush renders “bending,” and “bridling.” The stableman, or camel-driver, or groom is called the one who bridles, because it is his to bridle, tend, rub down and manage horses or camels. Thus Mahomet, the false prophet, founder of Saracenism, was a camel-driver.
There is here, then, a threefold proverb signifying the same thing: first, head and tail; secondly, branch and rush; thirdly, the one who bows down and the one who holds the reins. Moreover in this place the head, branch and one who bows down is properly the old man, the senator, the ruler; but the tail, the rush and the one who holds the reins, or stableman, is the false prophet. For Isaias so explains it when he adds: “The ancient (that is, the old man, and therefore the senator) and honourable, he is the head: and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail.” The old man and senator, then, is called the head, because he is honored above the rest whom he rules by counsel or authority, as the head rules the other members. The same is called the one who bows down: because he ought to be bent over not less by the fruits of the works of his past life than in breast and back, and to bend and direct others by example, counsel and laws. Here, however, the one who bows down marks these old men and counsellors as having bent right and equitable judgments, and perverted the causes of the poor for favors and gifts. So Adam. The same is called the branch, both because he is loftier than the rest, and because he is bowed down, and because he ought to abound in the leaves and fruits of piety and justice, and with them rule and shade the young and subjects.