Because I knew that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew, and your brow bronze;
All Commentaries on Isaiah 48:4 Go To Isaiah 48
Jerome
AD 420
Not, therefore, on account of your merit but through my mercy I have calmed my fury, lest you come near to death. For the sake of my name I will rein you in so that like a donkey you are made to follow behind the reins of a horse. Behold, I have dried you up, that is, I have tested you in the way one fires silver. Or it may be that I will test you, not in riches but in the furnace of poverty.… I predict to you that Babylon is to be overcome by the Medes and Persians. I will do quickly that about which I have given warning, lest when the events predicted take place, you think they have happened at the nod of the gods you worship or by fate. And I do not intimate mere knowledge of future things, but I speak for your benefit, whose heart I know to have been from the beginning unbelieving and whose neck is like iron and whose forehead like bronze. For look! You have heard all the things that are about to come, and yet you hide the truth by keeping quiet. So it does little good to relate things long gone by, like how I led you out of Egypt.
