Interpretation of the book of the prophet Isaiah

The greatest exegetical work of Bl. Jerome of Stridon "Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah" (18 chapters) was written in the period 393-409. This work uses the detailed commentary method. Blzh. Jerome writes about the inspiration of Holy Scripture. All books of the Bible are considered by him as a single creation of the Holy Spirit: “The Lion of the tribe of Judah is the Lord Jesus Christ, who opened the seals from the book, and not from one of the psalms of David, as many people think, but from all the Scriptures, which serve as the writings of one Holy Spirit and therefore are called one book” (Book 8, Chapter 29, Art. 9 et seq.). Blzh. Jerome refutes the opinion of the Montanists about the ecstatic and unconscious nature of the act of inspiration. He notes that the prophets retained free will, the “prophetic spirits” were subordinate to them, and they had the power to remain silent or speak (see: Prologue). According to the author of the interpretations, in the story from the Apocalypse one should see an indication either of those events that have already partially taken place during the period of the Incarnation (“mysteries of our time”), or of those that will take place during the Second Coming (for example, book 5, chapter 23, art. 18). Blzh. Jerome recognized the possibility of salvation for Christians who committed sins and were overtaken by death. Their works will be tried and purified by fire: “It will be in the spirit of judgment at the judgment: for the Lord will wash away the uncleanness of the sons and daughters of Zion in the spirit of judgment. And if anyone has blood on him, he will be cleansed not by the spirit of judgment, but by the fire of burning” (Book 9, Chapter 28, Art. 5-8). This fire is repentance, which “will torment the hearts” (Book 8, Chapter 26, Art. 11) (the influence of Origen’s ideas about universal salvation and the purifying nature of fiery punishments). *The title of the work in Latin is Commentarii in Isaiam, or Explanationes in Esaiam. For a long time I had scarcely finished twenty books of explanations on the twelve prophets and interpretations on Daniel, when you, the Virgin of Christ Eustochia, force me to go to Isaiah and fulfill for you what I promised to your holy mother Paula when she was still alive. This, I remember, I promised to the most learned man, your brother Pammachius, and although you are equal in disposition, you win with perseverance. So, both to you and to him through you I pay my debt, obeying the commandments of Christ, who says: try the scriptures (John 5:39), and: seek and you will find (Matthew 7:7), lest you hear it with the Jews: you are deceived, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God (Matthew 22:29). For if, according to the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 1:24), Christ is God's power and God's wisdom, and if anyone does not know the Scriptures, he does not know the power of God and His wisdom, then ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. Therefore, supported by the help of your prayers, which day and night you learn in the law of God and serve as a temple of the Holy Spirit, I will imitate the householder who brings out new and old from his treasure, and the bride who says in the Song of Songs: “I have stored up new and old for you, my brother” (Song. 7:13), and I will explain Isaiah in such a way as to teach that he is not only a prophet, but an evangelist and the apostle. For he himself says about himself and about the other evangelists: since the feet of those who bring good news are red, those who bring good news of peace (Isa. 52:7). And to himself, as to the apostle, God says: “Whom will I send, and who will go to this people?” And he answers: “Here am I, send me” (Is. 6:8). Let no one think that I wish to cover in a short speech the contents of this book, when the present scripture contains all the sacraments of the Lord, and it preaches both Emmanuel, born of the Virgin, and the Performer of glorious deeds and signs: who died and was buried, and who rose from hell, and the Savior of all nations. What can we say about physics, physics and logic? Whatever is characteristic of the Holy Scriptures, whatever can be expressed in human language, and whatever the mind of mortals can perceive, all this is contained in this book. The one who wrote himself testifies to its mysteries: “and you will see everything as the words of a sealed book, which when they give it to someone who knows the writing and say: “Read it”; then he will answer: “I can’t, because it is sealed.” And a book will be given to someone who does not know the writing, and they will say to him, “Read it,” and he will answer, “I do not know the writing” (Is. 29:11, 12). So, if you give this book to a pagan people who do not know writing, they will answer: I cannot read, because I have not learned the writing of the Scriptures; If you give it to the scribes and Pharisees, who boast that they know the writings of the King, they will answer: we cannot read, because the book is sealed. Why is it sealed to them? Because they did not accept Him on whom the Father had set the seal (John 6:27), Who has the key of David, Who opens and no one closes; shut, and no one will open (Apoc. 3:7). And the prophets did not speak, as Montanus raves with extravagant women, in ecstasy, so that they did not seem to know what they were saying, and while teaching others, they themselves did not understand what they said, like those of whom the Apostle says: they do not understand, neither what they say, nor what they affirm (1 Tim. 1:7); but, according to Solomon, who says in Proverbs: “a wise man understands what he expresses with his lips, and will bear knowledge on his lips” (Proverbs 16:23), and the prophets themselves knew what they said. For if the prophets were wise, which we cannot deny, if Moses, taught in all wisdom, spoke to the Lord and the Lord answered him, and about Daniel it is said to the prince of Tire: Thou art wise in Daniel (Ezek. 28:3), and if David was wise, who boasted in the Psalms: Thou hast revealed to me Thy unknown and secret wisdom (Ps. 50:8); then how come the wise prophets, like foolish animals, did not know what they were saying? And elsewhere in the apostle we read: the spirits of prophecy are subject to the prophet (1 Cor. 14:82), so that they have in their power when to remain silent and when to speak. If this seems unproven to anyone, let him hear the same from the apostle: let two or three prophets speak, and let friends reason; If the one who sits is revealed to another, let the first one remain silent (1 Cor. 14:29, 30). How can they remain silent if silence or speaking is in the power of the spirit speaking through the prophets? So if they understood what they said, then everything is full of wisdom and understanding. And it was not the air, shaken by the sound, that reached their ears, but God spoke in the spirit of the prophets, but to him, that another prophet says: the angel speaks in me (Zech. 1:9) and: “crying in our hearts: Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6), and: “I will listen to what the Lord God says in me” (Ps. 84:9). Therefore, after historical truth, everything must be understood spiritually, and in this way Judea and Jerusalem, Babylon and the Philistines, and Moab and Damascus, Egypt and the seaside desert of Idumea and Arabia, and the Valley of the Vision, and, finally, Tire and the Valley of the Four-footed Ones should be understood; so in everything we must look for meaning, and in all this the Apostle Paul, like a wise architect, lays down the foundation, which is none other than Christ Jesus. And it takes a lot of work and effort to undertake an explanation of the entire book of Isaiah, on which the minds of our ancestors worked. I mean the Greeks; The Latins have great silence, except for the sacred memory of the martyr Victorinus, who could say with the apostle: even more, he is ignorant in word, but not in mind (2 Cor. 11:6). For Origen wrote about this prophet in four editions, before the vision of the quadrupeds in the desert, thirty books, of which the twenty-sixth is lost. Also known under his name are other books about the vision of τετραπόδων (quadrupeds), two books to the Grata, which are considered forged, twenty-five Discourses and Σημειώσεις, which we can call Extracts. Also, Eusebius Pamphilov published fifteen books of explanations according to the historical method, and Didymus, whose friendship we recently enjoyed, published eighteen volumes from the place where it is written: comfort, comfort my people, priests, speak in the heart of Jerusalem (Isa. 40: 1-2), to the end of the book. Apollinaris, as is his custom, lays out everything in such a way that he skims over everything in passing, flying along the shortest roads along a huge path with only a few stops and rests, so that one might think that we are reading not so much an interpretation as an index of the contents of the chapters. From this you see how difficult it is for our Latins, whose ears are dull, for whom the understanding of the Holy Scriptures is abhorrent, and who find pleasure only in applauding eloquence, to excuse me if I speak at some length, since Isaiah in the number of verses is either equal to the twelve prophets, or more than them. If somewhere, omitting LXX, I interpreted from the Hebrew text, it was for the reason that they either had the same thing, or were mostly similar to the others, and I did not want, by citing two editions, to expand the books of interpretation, which, even when explained from one edition, exceed the measure of brevity. But let's get down to business. You might be interested in: