Commentaria in Isaiam
St. Bernard says excellently in his Sentences: “The words of God’s consolation are the washing away of guilt, the restoration of grace, escape from exile, attainment of the kingdom, fellowship of the divinity, the winning of eternity.” So our St. Xavier, in his Indian labors and very great hardships, abounded in heavenly joys, so that he cried out: “It is enough, Lord, it is enough: either lessen the joys, or take me from this life: for a mortal heart cannot hold such joys.” This is what the Psalmist foresaw in spirit when he said, Psalm 30: “O how great is the multitude of thy sweetness, O Lord, which thou hast hidden for them that fear thee!” Great, but hidden, and known only to those who fear God; and Psalm 117: “The voice of rejoicing and of salvation is in the tabernacles of the just”; and Psalm 34: “All my bones shall say: Lord, who is like to thee?” and Psalm 35: “They shall be inebriated with the plenty of thy house, and thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure.” He calls it a torrent because of its abundance, and because it is sent down plentifully from heaven; and because those filled with such consolations, as if estranged from the life of the world and from themselves, see and care for nothing on earth; but within they burn with a spiritual heat, and this fervor impels to many things which seem unfit, or even foolish, to the worldly. So St. Francis, as if drunk with this heat, made himself the laughing-stock of the world; because he had nothing else in heart and mouth than “My God and my all.” Isaias foresaw the same, chapter 51: “He will make her desert as a place of pleasure, and her wilderness as the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of praise.”
Abbot John tasted this oil as manna; of him Cassian, Conference 19, relates that he was wont to be so flooded with inner sweetness that he did not even remember whether he had eaten the day before; and St. Ephrem, when his heart was almost bursting with heavenly joy, used to say: “Depart from me, Lord, a little, for the weakness of this vessel cannot bear it.” St. Bernard also was so absorbed in the same joys that riding all day beside a lake he never saw it, and living a whole year in one cell he still did not know whether it had a ceiling; who therefore says, letter 114: “In truth that is the true and only joy which is received not from the creature but from the Creator, and which, when you have it, no one shall take from you; compared with which every pleasantness from elsewhere is grief, all sweetness is pain, everything sweet is bitter, everything comely is foul, finally everything else that can delight is irksome.”
Come then, O servant! O athlete of Christ! do not flee the yoke, the discipline and the cross of Christ; for it is anointed with the oil of wonderful sweetness and heavenly consolation. Know well the law fixed by God: the greater the yoke, the greater the cross taken up for God, the greater the consolation poured in by God, and so the measure of the cross is the measure of consolation; indeed the latter not only equals the former but far surpasses it. This I do not assert, but the Psalmist, but Paul, but the Holy Spirit, Psalm 93:19: “According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, thy comforts have given joy to my soul”; and 2 Corinthians 1:5: “For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also by Christ doth our comfort abound.” This the Martyrs, Religious and all who enter on the arduous and austere life of perfection have experienced, and experience today, who do not shrink from this yoke and cross of Christ, but love and seek it, on account of the inner sweetness they feel in it. Therefore “in the cross is refreshment.”
He describes the march of the proud Sennacherib, and the pomp of his return from Egypt, with how much noise and how great speed he came to attack Jerusalem. Therefore, to show the certainty of his prophecy, he names the cities which he was either to take or to pass through, passing through everything with such sudden victories that at Machmas he left his baggage, and from there went on at a quick pace to other places. 29. They have passed in haste. The victorious Assyrians, saying: There is need of haste; for in the evening we shall lodge at Gabaa. It is a mimesis, for he imitates the voices of the enemies. Whence Rama was astounded at so quick a return of the enemy, and the citizens of Gabaath, which was once the royal seat of Saul, fled.
Let Rama tremble. That is, the high and lofty place. The name Rama was given to many cities in Judah, doubtless because they were built on hills or elevated ground. In our passage the Rama meant is the one that lay midway between Geba and Gibeah, to the north of Jerusalem and of the Gibeah of Saul. It is not to be confused with the Rama of Samuel, or Ramathaim Sophim, which lay in the western tract of the mountains of Ephraim. This Rama is mentioned in the history of the Levite, Judges 19:11, 13, 14, in which the Levite refused to spend the night at Jerusalem.
Verse 30. Daughter of Gallim. (Another reading: of the heap of waves; for the Hebrews call fair cities daughters.) That is: O Gallim, cry out as loudly as you can, call your friends and neighbours to your aid; but in vain, for certain devastation hangs over you. And you, Laisa, give heed, and Anathoth also; for the enemy threatens you too.
Note: these cities had various names; they are called differently in the book of Josue and by the Septuagint. Hence Aiath is Hai, which Josue stormed, chapters 7 and 8. Machmas, too, in the time of St. Jerome was a large village, only nine miles from Jerusalem. Laisa, or Lais, or Lesem, is Dan, which was afterwards called Paneas and Caesarea Philippi. The Prophet therefore sets down cities lying along the route, which Sennacherib captured, and some more remote ones as well, which he filled with terror, perhaps by sending part of his army there. Moreover, he seems to have advanced from Egypt through Juda and Benjamin by almost the same road by which the Israelites of old, having crossed the Jordan from the plains of Moab, led their army to Galgal and Jericho, and from there advanced and took Hai, and afterwards, joined by the Gabaonites, overcame the king of Jerusalem and the others.
Verse 31. Mademena is removed, that is, the inhabitants abandoned the city in fear. Mademena is Bersabee, says Adrichomius, which was afterwards called Gibelina, according to St. Jerome.
Inhabitants of Gabim, take courage. That is: you have fled for fear of the enemy, but take heart again, for your danger is slight. He gives the reason, saying: “As yet it is day,” and so on. That is, Sennacherib will pass by you only in haste; for he hurries to Jerusalem, which he has devoured in confident hope, and before twenty-four hours he will reach Nobe, which was a city of priests, from which Jerusalem could be seen, says St. Jerome.
Unless God fights for you against him, it is all over with you.
Verse 32. He shall shake his hand. Sennacherib, standing at Nobe, shaking his hand, will threaten Jerusalem with destruction. So St. Jerome.
Verse 33. Behold the Lord, the Lord of hosts, shall break the earthen vessel with terror, and so on. That is: when you seem to yourself, O Sion, to be lost and set on the edge of a razor, then the Lord will show you His power and protection; for He will break the forces of Sennacherib as easily and as forcefully as an earthen vessel is broken by someone when it is dashed against a stone.
He alludes to the victory of Gedeon, who by breaking pitchers struck down and overthrew the Madianites; these pitchers are therefore a symbol of a famous, brilliant, bloodless and miraculous victory. Allegorically, the victory of Christ is signified here, and in several ways. For the Hebrew word for “pitcher” first signifies a pitcher; the sense concerning Christ is then this: God will give Christ over to death, in whose human body, as in an earthen and fragile vessel, the treasure of the Godhead is contained, so that when it is broken the radiance of the Godhead may shine forth and overthrow the devil; just as, when the pitchers were broken, the lamps of Gedeon shone forth, which struck down and overthrew the Madianites. St. Augustine in the same place holds that Christ is signified by this name in Psalm 21:16.
Second, the word comes from a root meaning glory; hence arises another excellent sense. For what precedes it also signifies “branching,” from a root meaning a branch or the top of a tree; so you may render it thus: The Lord will branch out, or will exalt, the glory to the top of the tree. What could be said more clearly of Christ’s exaltation upon the cross, and of the exaltation of the holy Cross?
Third, if with Theodotion and Symmachus you render the word as a winepress, who, I ask, trod the winepress of the passion alone, if not Christ the Lord?
Finally, if with Aben-Ezra and Kimchi and all more recent writers you render the word as a branch, was not Christ that most tender and smallest little branch, which God tore from the huge cedar of the Jewish people and grafted into the true Israel; who grew into so great a tree that all the birds take refuge under his branches? Hence there follows: “And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse.”
And the lofty shall be cut down. The strongest and greatest soldiers of Sennacherib shall be cut down by the Angel.
Verse 34. And the thick woods shall be cut down. He compares the numerous and powerful forces of Sennacherib to a forest and to wooded Libanus, in which the trees are spear-bearing soldiers. See what was said at verse 7.
Allegorically and tropologically, Gregory of Nyssa, homily 14 on the Canticle, notes that there are two Libani: one chosen and precious, whose beauty is divine, which is Christ the Lord; the other evil and base, to be rejected with its cedars and burned, which is the devil. Hence it happens that in Scripture Libanus is sometimes taken in a good sense for the just, sometimes in a bad sense for the proud; here Libanus is anyone glorious and proud. Isaias therefore signifies allegorically that the arrogance and malice of the devil, with all its heights, will fall against the truth at the birth of Christ the Lord.