Isaiah — Chapter 3

The Lord of hosts shall take away from Jerusalem the strong and the valiant. God will remove from Judah: military strength, food supply, prophets, princes, counselors, architects, and men of mystical eloquence. Lapide argues the reference is to Rome's destruction, not Babylon, because the subsequent chapters (4-5) unmistakably concern Christ and the Church. In the Roman siege, mothers devoured their own children from famine (Josephus, Hegesippus). The allegory: God also removed from the Jews spiritual bread (understanding of Scripture, the Eucharist, baptism, all charisms) — as he has since done for schismatic Eastern churches.

The prophet and the diviner. In the Roman destruction the Jews had no true prophets; the 'Jesus son of Ananias' (Josephus BJ 7.12) who cried woes over Jerusalem was a portent, not a prophet. Lapide distinguishes: when prophets exist but are ignored, Scripture says they are 'absent,' for what is useless is as if it does not exist.

The prudent in speech and mystery. 'Ariolus' (diviner) can be taken in a good sense as a sage prognosticator, or in a bad sense as a diviner (Jerome). 'Prudens eloquii mystici' is the preacher who can heal souls through holy eloquence, secretly converting the lustful to chastity, the gluttonous to temperance, the miser to almsgiving (Jerome's definition cited at length). Lapide gives a political observation: five signs of a republic's health — church services, the senate, schools, the marketplace, and the clock.

And I will give children to be their princes. God will replace wise leaders with rash, senseless, effeminate boys — applied first to the factious zealots who destroyed Jerusalem more than the Romans (Josephus BJ 5-6); second, to Titus's pederastic and effeminate Romans; third allegorically to the Anglican schismatics who chose Henry VIII (lay man), Edward (a boy), and Elizabeth (a woman) as heads of Church and state — \"monsters which posterity will wonder at.\"

And the people shall rush one upon another. When the princes are boys, all social order breaks down — youth against elder, ignoble against noble. Fulfilled exactly under Titus when Jerusalem was split among three warring zealot factions (Josephus), each occupying different parts of the city. Lapide's moral: discord is the certain ruin of empires; even a small nation is unconquerable while united.

A man shall take hold of his brother... saying: Thou hast a garment, be thou our ruler. In the chaos of siege, men will grab any decently-clothed man as prince; he will refuse, saying 'I am no physician; there is no bread in my house.' Lapide draws on this: the prince must be a healer (physician/chirurgeon) of the republic, binding its wounds; a ruler without prudence is a Cyclops without eyes. Jerome warns against electing the rich rather than the wise.

For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen. The direct cause: their tongues and devices against God — specifically blaspheming Christ as demoniac, wine-bibber, and Samaritan, and persecuting and killing the Apostles. This is the second and deeper cause of the Roman destruction, beyond the first external cause (corrupt leaders).

The shew of their countenance hath answered them... they have declared their sin as Sodom. Their very faces testify to their guilt: a shameless, brazen countenance that does not blush. Lapide gives four Hebrew readings of 'haccarat': knowledge, alienation, simulation, and hardness/impudence. Tropologically: the face is the mirror of the soul — holy men in the Lives of the Fathers could read souls in faces (the Bishop who saw black-faced sinners and radiant just men at Communion). Ovidius and Seneca quoted on faces betraying hidden guilt.

Say to the just man that it is well. Antithesis to the wicked: the just will eat the good fruit of their works, whether in this life or the next. Lapide notes the Septuagint read 'bind the just man, for he is useless to us' — the voice of the Sanhedrin plotting against Christ (Jerome and Cyril).

The oppressors of my people are children, and women have ruled over them. The Scribes and Pharisees as exactors who strip the people to the last penny (racematio, gleaning the final grapes). 'Women ruled over them' refers to the effeminate leaders and pederastic Romans; or literally, the wives of Scribes who dominated their mulierish husbands and through them all Judah (Cato's quip quoted: 'Women rule us, we rule the Senate, the Senate rules Rome, Rome rules the world'). Lapide's long excursus on flattery, citing Plato, Diogenes, Plutarch: the flatterer is the enemy of the fatherland and virtue, a honey-trap (mel laqueus, per Diogenes).

The Lord standeth up to judge, and he standeth to judge the people. God's judgment upon Judah's elders (senators = senes) and princes for devouring His vineyard (Jerusalem). This judgment was executed through the Romans; the elders were justly punished for oppressing the people and deceiving them. Lapide gives a secondary reading: God will judge 'with' the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles standing as witnesses.

Why do you consume my people, and grind the faces of the poor? The poor of Christ — His disciples and apostles — were beaten by the Sanhedrin (Acts 5:41). Applied also to prelates and ecclesiastics who consume church goods in luxury. Lapide draws the general principle: those entrusted with the flock who fleece it rather than feed it will answer to God's tribunal.

Because the daughters of Sion are haughty, and have walked with stretched out necks and wanton glances of their eyes. Three vices in the women of Sion: (1) pride in dress and deportment (elevated on buskins to appear queenly); (2) wanton gait — stretched necks like swans, oblique winking at young men (Chrysostom, Basil: like basilisks whose gaze infects and kills); (3) lewd bearing and swishing of garments. Lapide devotes extensive comment to the wanton female display, citing Juvenal, Chrysostom, and Basil's comparison of such women to basilisks.

The Lord will make bald the crown of the daughters of Sion. Three modes of the prophesied baldness: (1) through the Chaldeans and Romans who shaved captives; (2) through God directly via alopecia, ringworm, and leprosy; (3) through the burden of loads carried in captivity. Lapide cites Apuleius and Ovid on the supreme female ornament of the hair, and its extreme deformity when lost.

In that day the Lord will take away the ornaments of shoes. Lapide gives a detailed lexical commentary on the entire catalogue of ornaments in vv.18-23: lunulae (crescent moon jewelry worn at neck or head), torques, armillae (bracelets), mitrae (byssine hair-veils), discriminalia (hair-parting tools or crinal bands), periscelides (ankle-bracelets), murenulae (gold chain necklaces), olfactoriola (perforated perfume boxes), inaures (earrings — originally worn as amulets against enchantments), annuli, gems hanging on the forehead or through the nose. The ornaments mimic sacerdotal vestments (Basil).

The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins. Continuation of the ornament list: mutatoria (costly garments worn only for public display), palliola (precious travelling mantles), linteamina (transparent Laconian-style linens lasciviously worn at banquets), acus (gold and silver hairpins, not curling-irons), speculum, sindones (fine linen veils, purple or scarlet — imitating the priestly ephod), vittae/tseniphot (tiaras and cidaris, imitating priestly headgear), theristra (light summer veils or head-coverings, redidim, used by Rebecca).

Instead of a sweet smell there shall be stench. All their beauty will be replaced by its opposite in captivity: stench for perfume, rope for gold girdle, baldness for curled hair, sackcloth for breast-band. Lapide notes: Jews have an hereditary fetor that baptism washes away (citing Ammianus Marcellinus, Martialis, the Council in Trullo). The Chaldean Targum: 'This punishment is taken from them because they fornicated in their beauty.'

Thy beautiful men also shall fall by the sword. The handsome young men of Jerusalem — the pederasts' objects of passion — will themselves perish in the Roman war. The punishment fits the crime: those who prided themselves on beauty and lust will be slain.

And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she shall be desolate and shall sit on the ground. Jerusalem is personified as a mourning matron sitting on the earth, lamenting her desolation — as in Lamentations 1:1. Lapide notes Vespasian's coin depicting 'Judaea capta' with a woman sitting under a palm-tree. The whole chapter is applied against female luxury: Cyprian, Basil, Nazianzus, Ambrose, and Peter's first epistle all quoted against extravagant feminine ornament.