Kiswahili

Augustine of Hippo

Nicene & Post-Nicene · AD 325–500

7,530 passages across 62 books of the Bible · Who was this?

On Isaiah

20 of 145
  1. Isaiah 40:3
    There it is written, “a voice of one crying in the wilderness,” the Word is conceived in the virgin’s womb. If the voice is not the Word, it is then a loud clanging of metal. For one then would not be able to say that every word is a sound but not every sound is a word. For it is not unfitting to take “the way” as that which came up to the very heart and filled us inwardly. Indeed, the heart became his place to which he comes and remains.

    SERMON 289

  2. Isaiah 40:3
    John [the Baptist] was filled with the Holy Spirit; and he had a baptism from heaven, not from human beings. But how long did he have it? He said, “Prepare the way for the Lord.” But when the Lord was known, he himself became the way; there was no longer need for the baptism of John, by which the way was to be prepared for the Lord.

    TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 5:15.4

  3. Isaiah 40:6
    Both what is being thought of by intelligence and what is sounding out loud in speech is changeable and dissimilar. The first will not remain when you have forgotten it, nor will the second when you stop speaking. But “the Word of the Lord remains forever” and abides unchanged and unchangeable.

    SERMON 187:3

  4. Isaiah 40:6
    So those flourishing, wicked people are like grass, sprouting in winter, drying up in summer. Take care that you, though, fix your roots in the Word of God, which abides forever, and that you are a tree living in a hidden way. “For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” That is where your root is; that is where you are alive. That, you see, is where you have placed your hope.… So do not let the winter time get you down. In the winter many prolific fruit trees lack the ornament of leaves and without the grace of fruit are like withered trees, and yet they are not in fact withered. When the grass is flourishing, they haven’t even got leaves … the summer is the judge … the sun of justice is the judge.

    SERMON 25A.1

  5. Isaiah 40:6
    Wonder not that you will be a sharer of [Christ’s] eternity. For he first became a sharer of your flesh, which is like grass. Will he who assumed from you what was lowly deny to you what is exalted with respect to you?… How great, then, is the hope of the grass since the Word has been made flesh? He who abides forever has not disdained to assume grass, that the grass might not despair of itself.

    EXPLANATIONS OF THE PSALMS 103:19-21

  6. Isaiah 40:12
    God sits in heaven and measures the heaven with his palm. Does the same heaven become broad when God sits in it and narrow when he measures it? Or, when God is seated, is he no wider than the palm of his hand? If this is the case, then God has not made us to his own likeness, for with us the palm of the hand is much narrower than the bodily part on which we sit. So, if God is just as broad in the palm of his hand as when he is seated, he has made our members quite different. Not in this does the likeness consist. For shame!

    SERMON 53:14

  7. Isaiah 40:12
    Although these things seem illogical when heard by us according to our human capacity, nevertheless we are moved by them to think of spiritual things in an ineffable manner. Hence, even if we think that the body of the Lord, which when raised from the grave into heaven was not without human form and did indeed have bodily members, nevertheless he is not to be thought of as sitting on the right hand of the Father, as if the Father could be seen sitting on his left. In that blessedness indeed that surpasses all human understanding, “the right” is the name of that same blessedness.

    LETTER 120:3

  8. Isaiah 40:26
    He says, look at the sun, the moon, the movement of the stars, the cycle of the year, the changing of the seasons, the regular succession of night and day. For this is what he has added: “He who brings forth by number the order of the cosmos.” For He calls the setting in order of creation “the cosmos.” “He shall call them all by names.” He is ignorant of nothing, he says, but He knows all things with clarity, since it is He who has given a name equally to each and everything. “By means of the greatness of Your glory and by the power of Your might nothing has escaped You.” He has power above all, He is able to do all, He is ignorant of nothing that exits and He knows the very thoughts of men. (Theodoret of Cyrus) God, whose knowledge is simply manifold, and uniform in its variety, comprehends all incomprehensibles with so incomprehensible a comprehension, that though He willed always to make His later works novel and unlike what went before them, He could not produce them without order and foresight, nor conceive them suddenly, but by His eternal foreknowledge. (St. Augustine City o…
    He says, look at the sun, the moon, the movement of the stars, the cycle of the year, the changing of the seasons, the regular succession of night and day. For this is what he has added: “He who brings forth by number the order of the cosmos.” For He calls the setting in order of creation “the cosmos.” “He shall call them all by names.” He is ignorant of nothing, he says, but He knows all things with clarity, since it is He who has given a name equally to each and everything. “By means of the greatness of Your glory and by the power of Your might nothing has escaped You.” He has power above all, He is able to do all, He is ignorant of nothing that exits and He knows the very thoughts of men. (Theodoret of Cyrus) God, whose knowledge is simply manifold, and uniform in its variety, comprehends all incomprehensibles with so incomprehensible a comprehension, that though He willed always to make His later works novel and unlike what went before them, He could not produce them without order and foresight, nor conceive them suddenly, but by His eternal foreknowledge. (St. Augustine City of God)

  9. Isaiah 42:1
    The passage reads, “Jacob, my son, I will uphold him; Israel, my elect, my soul has assumed him.” … It is true, indeed, that the Vulgate text has “my servant” in place of “Jacob” and “Israel,” but the Septuagint translators preferred to make the meaning more explicit, namely, that the prophecy concerns the “Highest” insofar as he became the “lowliest,” in the form of a servant. Hence they placed the name of that man from whose stock the “form of a servant” was assumed. It was to him that the Holy Spirit was given.

    City of God 20.30

  10. Isaiah 42:14
    “Sweet and righteous is the Lord.” You love [him] because he is sweet. You fear [him] because he is righteous. In a gentle voice, he said, “I have kept silence.” But as a just person, “shall I always be silent?” “A Lord compassionate and merciful.” Yes, indeed. Yet add, patient; yet add, and very compassionate.

    TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 33:7

  11. Isaiah 42:14
    The one who speaks is now keeping quiet. He speaks in commandments; he keeps quiet in judgment.… How has he kept quiet, seeing that he spoke to say this very thing? He says, “I have kept quiet,” and yet he does not keep quiet, because just by saying “I have kept quiet,” God has not kept quiet. So then, Lord, I hear you speaking in so many commandments, as many sacred signs, so many pages, so many books. And then I hear you saying this, “I have kept quiet, will I keep quiet always?” So how have you kept quiet? Because I am not yet saying, “Come, you blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom.” And I am not yet saying to the others, “Go into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels.” And while I am not yet saying these things, I am already warning you that I am going to say them.

    SERMON 47:4

  12. Isaiah 43:25
    All truth is justice. In the confessing of what is the case, there is justice. He speaks the truth, that sinners who justify themselves by their faults cannot be justified. And in this way one is called truly just in that confessing one’s own sin, he asks them to be accounted to himself yet begs God for mercy. For he knows that it is stated in the law, “Confess your sins, and you will be justified.” What does it mean “to confess at the start of speaking” unless “to speak freely and not just when forced to”? For who (even one who fears God) is without sin, since faults get mixed into thinking and unconsciously we sin in so many ways?

    QUESTIONS ON THE OLD TESTAMENT 30

  13. Isaiah 45:7
    “I make good things and ‘create’ evil things.” For to “create” means to order and arrange. And so in most manuscripts it is written, “I make good things and order evil things.” To make is to give being to something that did not exist at all, but to order is to arrange something that already exists in such a way that it becomes greater and better. Thus, when God says, “I order evil things,” he means those things that fall away, that tend to non-being, and not those that have attained their end. For it has been said that, owing to the divine providence, nothing is permitted to reach a state of non-being.

    THE CATHOLIC AND MANICHAEAN WAYS OF LIFE 2:7.9

  14. Isaiah 45:11
    There is no doubt that human wills cannot resist the will of God, "who has done whatsoever he pleased in heaven and on earth," and who has even "formed the things that are to come." Nor can the human will prevent [God] from doing what he wills, seeing that even with human wills, he does what he wills, when he wills to do it.

    ADMONITION AND GRACE 14:45

  15. Isaiah 45:11
    How do we think, except as in the way that the prophet also foretells of God, that he has done the things that are going to be? For he does not say, "Who will do the things that are going to be, but "who did the things that are going to be." Therefore, [God] both did them and is going to do them. For neither have they been done if he did not do them, nor are they going to be done if he will not do them. Therefore, [God] did them by predestining them; he is going to do them by working.

    TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 68:1.2

  16. Isaiah 45:11
    By predestination God indeed foreknew that which he himself was going to do. Thus it was said, "He has made that which shall be." Furthermore, [God] can foreknow even those things that he himself does not do, such as whatever sins there may be. There are certain things that are sins and at the same time punishment for sins, so that it is written, "God delivered them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting." This is not the sin of God, however, but the judgment of God.

    PREDESTINATION OF THE SAINTS 10

  17. Isaiah 45:23
    For it is written, “As I live,” says the Lord, “every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. Let us not, therefore, judge one another any more, but judge this rather, that no one put a stumbling block, or occasion to fall, in his brother’s way.

    THE CATHOLIC AND MANICHAEAN WAYS OF LIFE 14:32

  18. Isaiah 46:4
    O Lord our God, under the shadow of your wings let us hope; defend us and support us. You will bear us up when we are little, and even down to our gray hairs you will carry us. For our stability, when it is in you, is stability indeed; but when it is in ourselves, then it is all unstable. Our good lives forever with you, and when we turn from you with aversion, we fall into our own perversion. Let us now, O Lord, return that we be not overturned, because with you our good lives without blemish—for our good is you yourself.

    Confessions 4.15.31

  19. Isaiah 46:4
    Woe to the audacious soul that hoped that by forsaking you it would find some better thing! It tossed and turned, on back and side and belly, but the bed is hard, and you alone give rest. Yet you are near. You deliver us from our wretched wanderings and establish us in your way. You comfort us and say, “Run, I will carry you. I will lead you home, and I will set you free.”

    Confessions 6.16.26

  20. Isaiah 46:8
    “Return, you transgressors, to the heart.” Return to the heart! Why do you go away from yourselves and perish from yourselves?… You go astray by wandering about. Return. Where? To the Lord. It is quickly done! First, return to your heart. You are wandering away. You are an exile from yourself. You do not know yourself. You ask by whom you were made!… Just return to your heart! See there what perhaps you perceive about God, because the image of God is there. In the inner person Christ dwells. In the inner person you are renewed according to the image of God.

    TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 18:10.1-2

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