Isaias 30:17
A thousand men shall flee for fear of one: and for fear of five shall you flee, till you be left as the mast of a ship on the top of a mountain, and as an ensign upon a hill.
Open Isaias 30:17 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Mille homines a facie terroris unius ; et a facie terroris quinque fugietis, donec relinquamini quasi malus navis in vertice montis, et quasi signum super collem.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- χίλιοι διὰ φωνὴν ἑνὸς φεύξονται, καὶ διὰ φωνὴν πέντε φεύξονται ⸂⸆⸃ πολλοί, ἕως ἂν καταλειφθῆτε ὡς ἱστὸς ἐπ᾽ ὄρους, καὶ ὡς σημαίαν φέρων ἐπὶ βουνοῦ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- אֶ֣לֶף אֶחָ֗ד מִפְּנֵי֙ גַּעֲרַ֣ת אֶחָ֔ד מִפְּנֵ֛י גַּעֲרַ֥ת חֲמִשָּׁ֖ה תָּנֻ֑סוּ עַ֣ד אִם נוֹתַרְתֶּ֗ם כַּתֹּ֨רֶן֙ עַל רֹ֣אשׁ הָהָ֔ר וְכַנֵּ֖ס עַל הַגִּבְעָֽה
Haydock's commentary
Five. A small number shall put you to flight. (Menochius)
Mast, set up after a shipwreck, to warn others, or as a signal, chap. xxxiii. 23.
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
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Heliodorus
17. Nepotian is happy who neither sees these things nor hears them. We are unhappy, for either we suffer ourselves or we see our brethren suffer. Yet we desire to live, and regard those beyond the reach of these evils as miserable rather than blessed. We have long felt that God is angry, yet we do not try to appease Him. It is our sins which make the barbarians strong, it is our vices which vanquish Rome’s soldiers: and, as if there were here too little material for carnage, civil wars have made almost greater havoc among us than the swords of foreign foes. Miserable must those Israelites have been compared with whom Nebuchadnezzar was called God’s servant. Unhappy too are we who are so displeasing to God that He uses the fury of the barbarians to execute His wrath against us. …
St Gregory Nazianzen The Last Farewell in the Presence of the One Hundred and Fifty Bishops
4. To return to my original startingpoint. This was my field, when it was small and poor, unworthy not only of God, Who has been, and is cultivating the whole world with the fair seeds and doctrines of piety, but, apparently, even of any poor and needy man of slender means. Nay it did not deserve to be called a field, requiring neither barn nor threshing-floor, and not even worthy of the sickle; with neither heap nor sheaves, or small and untimely sheaves, like those on the housetop, which do not fill the hand of the reaper, nor call forth a blessing from them which go by. …