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The Motif Searcher: one word across the Douay, the Latin, the Greek and the Hebrew.

Isaias 29:9

Be astonished, and wander, waver, and stagger: be drunk, and not with wine: stagger, and not with drunkenness.

Open Isaias 29:9 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →

The verse in its languages

Vulgate (Clementine)
Obstupescite et admiramini ; fluctuate et vacillate ; inebriamini, et non a vino ; movemini, et non ab ebrietate.
Septuagint (Swete)
Ἐκλύθητε καὶ ἔκστητε, κραιπαλήσατε οὐκ ἀπὸ σίκερα οὐδὲ ἀπὸ οἴνου·
Hebrew (WLC)
הִתְמַהְמְה֣וּ וּתְמָ֔הוּ הִשְׁתַּֽעַשְׁע֖וּ וָשֹׁ֑עוּ שָֽׁכְר֣וּ וְלֹא יַ֔יִן נָע֖וּ וְלֹ֥א שֵׁכָֽר

Haydock's commentary

Be, &c. Though God spared the city, for the sake of the good, He will not fail to punish scoffers, in due time, as He now declares. (Haydock)

Drunkenness. You shall suffer for your crimes, (chap. xxviii. 7.) or be affrighted.

From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.

The Fathers on this verse

Origen Origen's Commentary on Matthew, Chapter XI

And, after this, wishing to refute completely from the words of the prophets all these traditions of the elders among the Jews, He brought before them a saying, from Isaiah, which in the exact words is as follows: “And the Lord said, This people draws nigh to Me with their mouth,” etc.; and, as we said before, Matthew has not written out the prophetical saying in the very words. And, if it be necessary because of its use in the Gospel to interpret it according to our ability, we will take in addition the preceding passage which is, in my judgment, noted with advantage by us for the exposition of that passage in the Gospel which was taken from the prophet. …

St Gregory Nazianzen On His Father's Silence, Because of the Plague of Hail

10. What are we to do now, my brethren, when crushed, cast down, and drunken but not with strong drink nor with wine, which excites and obfuscates but for a while, but with the blow which the Lord has inflicted upon us, Who says, And thou, O heart, be stirred and shaken, and gives to the despisers the spirit of sorrow and deep sleep to drink: to whom He also says, See, ye despisers, behold, and wonder and perish? How shall we bear His convictions; or what reply shall we make, when He reproaches us not only with the multitude of the benefits for which we have continued ungrateful, but also with His chastisements, and reckons up the remedies with which we have refused to be healed? Calling us His children indeed, but unworthy children, and His sons, but strange sons who have stumbled from lameness out of their paths, in the trackless and rough ground. …

St John Cassian The Conferences of John Cassian. Part I. Containing Conferences I-X, Chapter V. Of the ways in which our soul is weighed down

But we should notice the ways in which the Lord points out that the soul is weighed down: for He did not mention adultery, or fornication, or murder, or blasphemy, or rapine, which everybody knows to be deadly and damnable, but surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares or anxieties of this world: which men of this world are so far from avoiding or considering damnable that actually some who (I am ashamed to say) call themselves monks entangle themselves in these very occupations as if they were harmless or useful. And though these three things, when literally given way to weigh down the soul, and separate it from God, and bear it down to things earthly, yet it is very easy to avoid them, especially for us who are separated by so great a distance from all converse with this world, and who do not on any occasion have anything to do with those visible cares and drunkenness and surfeiting. …

The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).