For it shall be, that, as a wandering bird cast out of the nest, so the daughters of Moab shall be at the fords of the Arnon.
All Commentaries on Isaiah 16:2 Go To Isaiah 16
Jerome
AD 420
Then, as for Job, that pattern of patience, what mysteries are there not contained in his discourses? Commencing in prose the book soon glides into verse and at the end once more reverts to prose. By the way in which it lays down propositions, assumes postulates, adduces proofs and draws inferences, it illustrates all the laws of logic. Single words occurring in the book are full of meaning. To say nothing of other topics, it prophesies the resurrection of humankind’s bodies at once with more clearness and with more caution than anyone has yet shown. “I know,” Job says, “that my redeemer lives, and that at the last day I shall rise again from the earth; and I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh shall I see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another. This my hope is stored up in my own bosom.” I will pass on to Joshua, son of Nun—a type of the Lord in name as well as in deed—who crossed over Jordan, subdued hostile kingdoms, divided the land among the conquering people and who, in every city, village, mountain, river, hill-torrent and boundary which he dealt with, marked out the spiritual realms of the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, of the church. In the book of Judges every one of the popular leaders is a type. Ruth the Moabite fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah: “Send you a lamb, O Lord, as ruler of the land from the rock of the wilderness to the mount of the daughter of Zion.” Under the figures of Eli’s death and the slaying of Saul, Samuel shows the abolition of the old law. Again in Zadok and in David he bears witness to the mysteries of the new priesthood and of the new royalty. The third and fourth books of Kings called in Hebrew Malachim give the history of the kingdom of Judah from Solomon to Jeconiah, and of that of Israel from Jeroboam the son of Nebat to Hosea, who was carried away into Assyria. If you merely regard the narrative, the words are simple enough, but if you look beneath the surface at the hidden meaning of it, you find a description of the small numbers of the church and of the wars that the heretics wage against it. The twelve prophets whose writings are compressed within the narrow limits of a single volume have typical meanings far different from their literal ones. Hosea speaks many times of Ephraim, of Samaria, of Joseph, of Jezreel, of a wife of whoredoms and of children of whoredoms, of an adulteress shut up within the chamber of her husband, sitting for a long time in widowhood and in the garb of mourning, awaiting the time when her husband will return to her. Joel the son of Pethuel describes the land of the twelve tribes as spoiled and devastated by the palmerworm, the cankerworm, the locust and the blight. He predicts that after the overthrow of the former people the Holy Spirit shall be poured out upon God’s servants and handmaids; the same spirit, that is, which was to be poured out in the upper chamber at Zion upon the 120 believers. These believers rising by gradual and regular gradations from one to fifteen form the steps to which there is a mystical allusion in the “psalms of degrees.” Amos, although he is only “a herdsman” from the country, “a gatherer of sycamore fruit,” cannot be explained in a few words.
