Monday, April 1, 2024

Jerome on Isaiah 6:6

  

Septuagint: “And there was sent to me one (unum) of the seraphim.” Aquila and Theodotion have: “And one (unum) of the seraphim flew to me”; Symmachus has: “And one (unus) of the seraphim flew to me.” Daily a seraph is sent to us, daily the mouths are purged of those who groan and say: “O, I am wretched, for I pricked”; and when they have been delivered from sins, they prepare themselves for God’s service. But as for what the other translators said, that it “flew” in place of “was sent,” understand this of the swift advent of the divine word upon us who are judged worth of fellowship with him. There is also a difference in the gender. The Septuagint, Aquila, and Theodotion translated “seraphim” in the neuter gender, Symmachus in the masculine. One must not think that there is sex among the powers of God, since even the Holy Spirit himself is set forth as ruach in the feminine gender, in accordance with the properties of the Hebrew language. In Greek this is expressed in the neuter as το πνευμα, in Latin by the masculine word spiritus. From this one must understand that when there is a discussion about the things mentioned above, and something is recorded in the masculine or feminine gender, it is not so much their sex that is being indicated as the unique properties of the language. For indeed God himself, invisible and incorruptible, is set forth in nearly all languages in the masculine gender, even though sex does not apply to him. The error (I grant that it is a pious error) needs to be exposed of those, too, who in their prayers and oblations dare to say, “You who sit above the cherubim and seraphim.” For it is written that God sits above the cherubim, as for instance in this passage: “You who sit above the cherubim, show yourself”; but no Scripture records that God sits above the seraphim. Moreover, we have not even found the seraphim themselves standing around God in any Scripture with the exception of the present passage. (Jerome, “Epistle 18B to Damasus,” c. A.D. 380-382, in St. Jerome: Exegetical Epistles, 2 vols. [trans. Thomas P. Scheck; The Fathers of the Church 147; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023], 1:81-82)

 

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