Commentaria in Isaiam
Add that sign can here properly be taken in a new sense, as if to say: When you see a virgin bringing forth, then know from it as from a sure sign that the time of the redemption of the world is at hand, of which this redemption and deliverance of yours from the hand of Rasin will be the type. For a virgin bringing forth will bring forth no other than the redeemer of the world, whom in all these chapters I announce to you, now clearly and expressly, now obscurely and implicitly through shadow and figure. For since Achaz, a despiser of the signs of God, is unworthy of them; hence not to him but to his future faithful posterity God gives this sign of the Messias to be born, namely the bringing forth of a virgin, so that when they know that she has brought forth, they may know that the Messias is born of this birth. For neither is it fitting that the Messias be born except of a virgin, nor, conversely, that a virgin bear any other than the Messias. Finally, our Blasius Viegas on Apocalypse chap. 12, book 8, chap. 6, on the words: Behold a virgin: “Nor do we,” he says, “affirm that the bringing forth of the Virgin was a sign of the deliverance of Achaz. He promised the king a sign of deliverance, if he wished to ask. When he would not, he led the Prophet’s understanding from things present to things future, from the type to the truth.” He adds, “sign is taken not for a sign of deliverance but for a miracle, in this sense: The Lord will give you a sign, that is, the huge miracle of a virginal birth.” Symbolically St. Gregory, on Psalm 4, Penitential: “A sign,” he says, “to the peoples was that birth of Christ without the commingling of a man, because he was to give to those who believe in his name power to become sons of God: namely to those who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. For as Blessed Mary brought forth Christ as a virgin, and after the birth remained inviolate, so too Mother Church begets children to God without pain, and remains always an unspotted virgin. And these, in that they love God with their whole heart, show plainly that they have God for their Father.” Morally, note “therefore”: for from it see that the nature of God is other than that of men, who when they fall in with difficult, averse, hostile and impious men, draw back and withdraw, conceive hatreds and angers, desire vengeance, etc.; but God, who is of magnificent and most liberal spirit, vies by his own piety with the impiety of men, nor suffers himself to be conquered by it: wherefore then he shows himself most beneficent when he sees men most wretched and wicked, as here to the ungrateful and most wicked Achaz he freely promises the Incarnation of the Word. In like manner when Christ became incarnate, the world was most corrupt, and therefore needed the greatest physician, namely Christ, whom God by his wondrous clemency then sent to them, that where iniquity abounded, grace might more abound, as was accomplished through Christ, who by himself and the Apostles changed men living after the manner of beasts into men, indeed into Angels. To do good to the impious and to enemies is therefore divine. Let holy Religious and all Christians imitate this: so they will overcome evil with good, and will win to themselves the favour not only of God but of men, and by their goodness and beneficence will overcome the malice and evil-speaking of others. This new kind of conqueror is taught by the philosophy not of Aristotle but of God and Christ. So that holy woman used to say, when asked how she had come to holiness: “I was never injured by anyone without repaying him with a special kindness.”
The Emperor Sigismund was wont, when enemies had been overcome in war, not only to free them from the offence of their fault but even to adopt them among his familiars, and being rebuked for it by Laurence, Palatine of Hungary: “To you,” he said, “it seems useful to kill an enemy, because the dead do not stir up wars. But I kill my enemy by sparing him, and make him a friend by raising him.” He thought nobly that it is fairer and more glorious to conquer an enemy and make him a friend by doing him good than by fighting. So Æneas Sylvius, book 2, On the Deeds of Alphonsus: Alphonsus, king of Aragon, having overcome Stephen, received with wonderful humanity the centurions and soldiers who had cursed him; when others judged that they should be put to death, he said: “I would rather win praise by clemency and humanity toward enemies than by victory.”
David, driven from his kingdom by his son Absalom, when Absalom had been slain in battle, sent Sadoc and Abiathar the priests to the elders of Juda, saying: “You are my brethren, you are my bone and my flesh: why are you the last to bring back the king? And say to Amasa (who had commanded the enemy’s camp): Art not thou my bone and my flesh? So do God to me, and add more, if thou be not the chief captain of the army before me always in the place of Joab.” Hear the fruit and success of this clemency and beneficence: “And he bowed the heart of all the men of Juda, as of one man: and they sent to the king, saying: Return thou, and all thy servants.” This munificence of David, therefore, bent the minds even of all the rebels, so that they summoned him and restored his kingdom to him, 2 Kings 19:12.
The Emperor Theodosius, asked why he had put no one to death who had done him an injury, answered: “Would that I had rather the power to call back again to life those who are dead! for so I should imitate God, who alone raises the dead.” Witness Socrates, book 7, chap. 22.
The Emperor Leo used to say: “As the sun imparts its heat to those on whom it shines, so let the Emperor also be merciful and beneficent to all on whom he has looked.” Witness Zonaras, vol. 3.
Spiridion, Bishop of Trimithus in Cyprus, a stranger to pride, fed sheep: at midnight thieves attacked the folds, and while they were eager to steal the flocks they were bound by an invisible force at the folds; and when day dawned, he came to the flock, and seeing them bound loosed them, exhorting the thieves much to seek a living by honest labour and not by injury, and dismissed them presented with a ram, adding cheerfully: “Lest you seem to have watched in vain.” So Socrates, book 2, chap. 8.
A youth suborned by the Arians, attempting to kill St. Gregory Nazianzen, when by the hidden power of God he had been so restrained that he detested so great a crime, and falling at Nazianzen’s feet with tears asked pardon, Nazianzen answered: “May Christ be merciful to thee, dearest! and may he himself pardon thee who has saved me too: this only I ask of thee for the purging of the crime, that thou execrate heresy, and become mine, and approach to God, and offer him sincere and voluntary service.” The same, to his fellow citizens who wished to afflict the heretics by whom they had been afflicted: “This I hold for vengeance,” he said, “that those by whom we were assailed with injury attain salvation, and confess true and divine the things which they not long ago persecuted.” Witness Gregory the presbyter in the Life of Nazianzen.
Apollonius, monk and martyr, when in prison Philemon the flute-player loaded him with all reproaches, sighing, said: “Son, may God have mercy on thee; and may he not reckon to sin any of these things which thou hast poured out upon me by speaking against me.” At these words he, pricked in heart, both embraced the faith which he was persecuting, and did not refuse martyrdom.
BEHOLD A VIRGIN SHALL CONCEIVE.—Symmachus the perfidious Ebionite, Aquila and Theodotion, who were Jewish proselytes, and our Jews, and recently Castalio and Œcolampadius, have rendered it, behold a young woman shall conceive. Which the Jews explain thus, as if to say: A young woman, namely the wife of Achaz, previously barren, now shall conceive and bear a son, either Ezechias or some other. But first, this is plainly false: for Ezechias was already born. For Achaz reigned only sixteen years: but Ezechias, succeeding to the kingdom, was 25 years old; therefore he was born before his father’s reign. Secondly, neither Ezechias nor any other son of Achaz was called Emmanuel, that is, God with us. Thirdly, foolishly and impiously they render the Hebrew alma, young woman: and what sign is it, what wonder, what new thing, if the young woman who bore Ezechias bears another son? And if she had already borne Ezechias, how was she barren? I say, therefore, that it is of faith that it must be rendered thus, “behold a virgin shall conceive;” and that these words are to be understood of the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, conceiving and bearing Christ the Lord with her virginity whole and intact; so that whoever denies this is a heretic, as was Helvidius, against whom St. Jerome wrote. This is clear. And it is proved, because the Hebrew alma, especially with the article he, haalma, as it is here, signifies not a young woman (for this is signified by naara, and again by betulah; which commonly signifies a virgin, though when joined with something it signifies a married woman, as is clear from Joel 1:8, where the Septuagint render betulah a bride), but a virgin; for so the Septuagint, the Chaldean, our Interpreter and the ancient Rabbis, in Galatinus, book 7, chap. 13, rendered it. For the root alam signifies to hide: hence alma is called a virgin hidden and unknown to man. Hence too in the Punic tongue, which is akin to the Hebrew, a virgin is called alma, says St. Jerome.
Secondly, ten Sibyls foretold that this virgin of Isaias should bring forth, and that Christ should be born of a virgin, among whom the Phrygian sings thus:
God himself willed to send his offspring down into the body of the Virgin, when the Angel announces to the gracious Mother that she will relieve the wretched, burdened with their stain.
Now the last age of the Cumaean song is come; the great order of the ages is born anew, Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new offspring is sent down from high heaven, Bright offspring of gods, great increase of Jove! He shall receive the life of gods, and shall see heroes mingled with the gods, and himself be seen by them.
Although Virgil either ignorantly or flatteringly transferred these verses of the Sibyl to Salonius, son of Pollio, the Roman Consul, in the time of Augustus Caesar, yet St. Augustine, in the City of God, and Eusebius, Life of Constantine, book 4, and others generally, take them as spoken of the Blessed Virgin and Christ, and this is clear from the very words and from the whole eclogue; for it foretells things so magnificent that they suit not Salonius, nor any other man, but Christ alone. For the oracles of other Sibyls see Canisius, book 2 On Mary, chap. 6.