Commentary upon the Prophecy of Isaiah

The Prophet useth the like words in a manner touching Babylon in Chap. 47. These two things shall come to thee suddenly in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood. But here the Prophet promiseth a better issue and end to the Church,¹ because the Lord will draw her out of this bottomless gulf of miseries: yet he threatens an extreme misery, that he might fit the faithful for patience, and that in the midst of their anguishes they should not cease to lift up their prayers and supplications unto God. The sum is, that the Church shall be so oppressed under all sorts of calamities, that she shall seem even to be overwhelmed with them. How so? §1Without, she was to look for many sharp afflictions: secondly, she should receive no §2comfort nor relief from her own children, vers. 18. These are the two great evils whereof the Prophet speaks. But yet this division seems not to agree, for after he hath mentioned one evil, to wit, that none shall give the Church comfort or consolation, he names four kinds of evils, desolation, sorrow, or breaking, sword, and famine. Some expound that the Church was famished within, and vexed wit by her enemies. But I am of another opinion, as I have already showed. For it is a phrase of speech (to speak by an interrogation) much frequented among the Hebrews, when they purpose to deny a thing absolutely. And this hath its elegance among them, though it hath not so much grace in another language. Isaiah then mentions these two evils, the one outward, in regard she was wasted and destroyed with war and famine, which he hath signified by the four former kinds. The other inward, in that she shall be left destitute of consolation, and none would lament her. For by the interrogation he shows that she should have no consolation. This verse then answers to the former, where we have already told you to what end the Prophet describes this so lamentable and woeful an estate of the Church.