Commentaria in Isaiam
By the sea. For Philistia lies on the Mediterranean. Vatablus renders, to the West, to be set against the children of the East. For Scripture by the sea, which is to the west of Juda, signifies the West; as if to say: The Apostles will subdue to Christ the peoples of the West as well as of the East.
They shall spoil the children of the East. These are the Idumeans, Ammonites and Moabites; or rather the Madianites and the other descendants of Abraham by Cetura. For these dwelt to the east of the descendants of Isaac and Ismael (who were the first sons of Abraham), and therefore in Scripture are called children of the East, as I said, Genesis 25.
Edom and Moab shall be the stretch of their hand; that is, they will follow, as if to say: they will obey the commands and nods of the Apostles. For princes and masters are accustomed to signify their commands to their subject disciples not only by mouth but also by hand or finger; but it stands against this that the Hebrew has: Edom and Moab shall be the putting forth of their hand, and the children of Ammon their obedience; that is, as the Septuagint and Chaldee have, the Apostles will put forth and lay hands on Idumea and the Ammonites, and will make many of them obedient and compliant, that is, will convert them to Christ. So Vatablus. This is what the Psalmist says in the person of Christ, Psalm 59:10: “Over Edom I will stretch out my shoe.” Again, they will lay hands on them by baptizing and confirming them. Was not this fulfilled, Acts 10:20, when Peter was sent to Joppa? and Acts 8:40, when Philip was carried off by the spirit to Azotus? for Azotus and Joppa are cities of Idumea, says Strabo. Otherwise St. Jerome, Rupert and Haymo attribute these things not to the conquerors but to the conquered and subdued; as if to say: the conquered and subdued Idumeans will, as the custom is, give their hands to the Apostles as conquerors. For the conquered are wont to stretch out suppliant hands to the victors, and to beg pardon. But the word “their” refers to the victors, not to the conquered, as is plain.
But why does our translator render “the putting forth” as “the command”? First, some give this reason, as if to say: The Idumeans and Moabites will be so pious, and will keep the Gospel law so holily, that they will be able to be a kind of rule, norm, law and precept of the hand of the Apostles, that is, of the grace of the Holy Spirit, which they received by the laying on of hands. Many explain it thus, rather forcedly.
Second, others say: They will show themselves ready and obedient to the Apostles, so as to be formed by their hands. This is better, but does not satisfy.
Third, therefore, the translator seems to use praeceptum in a new sense, for that which is taken beforehand, so that praeceptum is the same as ante captum, from the verb praecipio, that is, to anticipate, forestall, preoccupy: then our Version aptly answers to the Hebrew, Septuagint and Chaldee; as if to say: First the Apostles will put forth the hand, first they will take and subject to the faith the Idumeans and Moabites: for these are the nearest neighbours of the Jews. So Livy takes the word praeceptus and praeceptum, when he says, “at that time preoccupied”; and Cicero, Tusculans 3; and Virgil the word praecipio, in the third eclogue:
Drive the sheep together, boys, if summer shall have taken the milk beforehand;
and Cicero, Offices 2: “Let them anticipate (that is, preoccupy) the minds of the multitude by kind speech, let them allure soldiers to goodwill.” The translator uses this word praeceptum rather than “taken beforehand,” or, as it is in Hebrew, “the putting forth of the hand,” because this precept of the Apostles was also truly and properly a precept, that is, instruction, teaching, command, active in the Apostles, but passive in the Idumeans, because they received it into themselves and submitted themselves to it.
Verse 15. And the Lord shall lay waste the tongue of the sea of Egypt. The Jews expect all this literally, as to happen under the Messias, as it happened under Moses at the Red Sea.
Note: tongue of the sea in Hebrew signifies a gulf, a mouth, or an arm of the sea, which from the sea runs out into the bays of the land like a tongue, and washes it. The tongue of the sea of Egypt, therefore, is the gulf of the Red Sea, by which the Ocean insinuates itself into the land as far as the borders of Egypt.
So Forerius, Vatablus, Sanchez here, Masius and Serarius on Josue 15:2. This gulf the Hebrews, going out of Egypt, crossed dry-shod, as follows. “The river” is the Nile, which runs down into the sea by seven streams and mouths.
Now this is a continuous allegory, which signifies only that no river, no sea, no obstacles of the roads or of men will be a hindrance to the Apostles and others preaching Christ; because God will either remove all these things or make them surmountable: as the waters of the Red Sea did not stand in the way of the Hebrews in their passage, but yielded at God’s nod; for this was the type of that. So St. Jerome, Cyril, Procopius, Theodoret and others, whom Leo de Castro cites.
Second, tongues of the sea are called rocks and promontories, which jut out and run from the land into the sea like tongues. So Pliny, book 37, and Caesar, book 3, On the Gallic War. The tongue of the sea of Egypt, then, is called the promontory, or rock, on which Pelusium is situated, so that Isaias may look to the things that were done there by Augustus Caesar, under whom Christ was born. For he, waging war against Antony and Cleopatra, moved his army up on that side where Egypt is almost inaccessible, namely to the promontory of Pelusium, which is surrounded on every side by marshes, mud and quagmires, as Strabo testifies, book 17. These barriers of Egypt, however, Augustus occupied so easily and quickly that the report was that it happened by Cleopatra herself, Seleucus betraying her, as Plutarch relates in his Antony, and Dio Cassius, book 51. In truth it had happened because at that time, by the will of God, a most violent south wind had driven the waters of the marshes and of the Nile into the sea, and so had dried the marshes; whence it came about that the soldiers of Augustus could cross dry-shod, and Augustus, having conquered and slain Antony, his partner in empire, occupied Egypt and became monarch: and this was done by the counsel of God, that thereby the way for the Gospel of Christ might lie open, both in Egypt and throughout the whole world, as being peaceful and brought under one monarch. And thus plainly according to the letter take these words of Isaias as they sound: St. Jerome, Procopius, and others.
The sum of this prophecy, therefore, is that God will remove all the hindrances which could stand in the way of the spread of the faith, and will even make them help it.
Tropologically, Gregory, Morals, book 33, chapter 9, understands by the tongue of Egypt the worldly learning of the world, which the Lord destroyed by his incarnation.
And he shall lift up his hand over the river. I have already said that this river is the Nile; for God struck it, that is, with a blowing wind dried it up for the Apostles as they passed, as he dried up the Red Sea for the Hebrews as they passed, namely in the sense I have explained. Sanchez thinks otherwise; for he thinks that here the Prophet continues to treat of the return of the Jews from Babylon: the river, therefore, he says, with the Chaldee, is the Euphrates, which was divided into seven ditches and streams and diverted by Cyrus in favour of the Jews, who saw liberty under his empire, as Herodotus in Clio, Xenophon, book 9, and Orosius, book 2, chapter 7 hand down. For at the place where the Euphrates flows into the city of Babylon, Cyrus made deep and wide ditches, and when the Babylonians were given up to games and drinking, he diverted the Euphrates into these ditches, and thus sent his soldiers dry-shod into the city, and, the unwary being stupefied, overcame them. But, as I said, these oracles of Isaias are more sublime, and look not to the Jews returning from Babylon but to Christ and Christians; and that the Nile is here meant by the river is plain from the seven streams; for these are found only in the Nile. The same drying of the Nile is foretold below, chapter 19. As to what St. Jerome indicates, that the Nile, before flowing in one bed, was then first divided into seven beds, this does not agree with the ancient histories.
Theodoret understands by the river the kingdom and empire, which, though before it was one, he says was cut up by the Romans into seven provinces; but that this is said tropologically, St. Jerome had already noted before Theodoret.
Which shall be left by the Assyrians. See what was said at verse 11.