They have not known nor understood: for he has shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand.
All Commentaries on Isaiah 44:18 Go To Isaiah 44
Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
The wise and eloquent people among the pagans are full of admiration for a well-turned phrase. One of their main preoccupations is with elegance of expression. They are filled with the greatest enthusiasm for good style and take great pride in verbal dexterity. The base material of their poets is merely lies fashioned in rhythms and meters for grace and harmony, but for truth they have little if any regard. I would say that they are sick from the lack of any true or proper notion of the nature and reality of God.… And God said of them through the voice of Isaiah, “Know that their hearts are dust and that they have erred.” … As for the inventors of impure heresies, those profaners and apostates who have opened their mouths against the divine glory, “those who have uttered perverted things,” we could accuse them of having slipped in their madness as low as the foolish pagans; perhaps they have slipped even lower, for it would have been better never to have known the way of sacred truth than once to have known it, to have turned away from the sacred commandment that was handed on to them.
