Enter Into Thy Chambers: The Hiding Place From the Wrath and the Room of Prayer
Old Testament: Isaias 26:20
Go, my people, enter into thy chambers, shut thy doors upon thee, hide thyself a little for a moment, until the indignation pass away.
Old Testament, also: Genesis 27:43-44
Now therefore, my son, hear my voice: arise and flee to Laban my brother to Haran: And thou shalt dwell with him a few days, till the wrath of thy brother be assuaged,
New Testament: Matthew 6:6; Apocalypse 3:20; Apocalypse 18:4
But thou when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret: and thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee. ... Behold, I stand at the gate, and knock. If any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. ... And I heard another voice from heaven, saying: Go out from her, my people; that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues.
The connection
Isaias saw a day of wrath coming on the earth and told God's people what to do: "Go, my people, enter into thy chambers, shut thy doors upon thee, hide thyself a little for a moment, until the indignation pass away" (Isaias 26:20). It is the Passover again, when Israel stayed behind a marked door, "let none of you go out of the door of his house till morning", while the Lord passed over the door and kept the destroyer out (Exodus 12:22-23), and it is Noe, whom "the Lord shut ... in" the ark before the flood (Genesis 7:16). Christ takes the prophet's words for His teaching on prayer: "But thou when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret" (Matthew 6:6). In the Greek the lines are almost the same, enter into thy chamber and shut thy door. The room where God's people once hid from His anger becomes the room where a son speaks with his Father. And there is another voice at that door: "Behold, I stand at the gate, and knock. If any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him" (Apocalypse 3:20). St Jerome sets the three together, writing to Eustochium: "hear the words of Isaiah: Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation of the Lord be overpast." Then: "if you shut your door, and, according to the precept of the Gospel, pray to your Father in secret, He will come and knock, saying: Behold, I stand at the door and knock." The Catechism counts this among Christ's first lessons: "prayer to the Father in secret" (CCC 2608).
Moral sense
Scripture gives God's people two commands when the wrath is coming, and they sound like opposites. Isaias says, "Go, my people, enter". The Apocalypse says of Babylon, "Go out from her, my people". Lot was told to flee the city and not look back; Noe was shut in. But they are one movement. To go into the inner room and shut the door is to go out of Babylon: out of the noise, the display, the praying "that they may be seen by men" that Christ warned against a few verses earlier. Nobody needs to leave town to obey the Apocalypse. The door of a quiet room is enough, if it is shut on the world and open to the Father. Jacob was sent away to hide "a few days, till the wrath of thy brother be assuaged"; we hide in prayer not from a brother's anger but in the arms of a Father.
Anagogical sense
"Hide thyself a little for a moment." St Augustine hears in it the rest of the faithful dead, hidden until the resurrection: "In death is that rest of which the prophet speaks." The chamber of prayer on earth is a rehearsal for that hiding place, and both end the same way. The indignation passes, the door opens, and the One who stood knocking comes in to sup, as He promised, at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
The Fathers
St Jerome, Letter XXII, to Eustochium: "hear the words of Isaiah: Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation of the Lord be overpast", and "if you shut your door, and, according to the precept of the Gospel, pray to your Father in secret, He will come and knock". St Augustine, Letter XXXVI: "In death is that rest of which the prophet speaks."
Warrant
Patristic because Matthew does not name Isaias, though the Greek is nearly the same: the Septuagint of Isaias 26:20 has eiselthe eis ta tameia sou, apokleison ten thyran sou, and Matthew 6:6 eiselthe eis to tameion sou kai kleisas ten thyran sou. St Jerome joins the two and adds Apocalypse 3:20 (Letter XXII, to Eustochium, 26), and St Augustine reads Isaias 26:20 of the rest of the dead before the resurrection (Letter XXXVI). The inversion with Apocalypse 18:4 is the entry's own, though the Greek marks it: eiselthe, go in, in Isaias, and exelthate, go out, in the Apocalypse, both to "my people"; Apocalypse 18:4 itself echoes Jeremias 51:45. Genesis 27:44-45 is joined by a shared word, not a Father: the Septuagint of 27:45 speaks of the orge, wrath, of Esau, as Isaias does of the wrath of the Lord.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2608.
The verses
Isaias 26:20 · Genesis 27:43 · Genesis 27:44 · Matthew 6:6 · Apocalypse 3:20 · Apocalypse 18:4
