Fathers

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What the Fathers say

Isaiah 64:6

Eastern Fathers

Cyril of Alexandria

Some translators try to alter the meaning of this passage.… For it is not, they say, that the divine anger was the cause of their misdeeds, but that because they misbehaved, God was angry. For they are afraid lest God's anger be thought of as the effector of sins. I think it ought to be said that there is no condemning the divine anger, if those receiving it were insufficiently motivated to flee the attack of sin. …

Commentary On Isaiah 5:6.64:6-7 ↗

Western Saints

Jerome

Behold, you are angry, and we have sinned; we have always been in them, and we shall be saved. And we have become like the unclean, all of us, like the soiled cloths of our entire righteousness. And we have fallen like leaves, and our iniquities have swept us away like the wind. …

Commentary on Isaiah ↗

Gregory the Dialogist

It is hence that Isaiah laments bitterly, saying, And we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon Thy Name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of Thee. Now any of the righteous may sometimes be able to resist the visitations of a present judgment, by the merits of a derived innocency, but they have no power by their own goodness to rid mankind of the woes of the death to come. …

Morals on the Book of Job, Book 9.38 ↗

Thomas Aquinas

And as to the imperfection of their good deeds: "and we are all become as one unclean, and all our justices," because they are wrapped up in other sins: "if I be washed, as it were, with snow waters, and my hands shall shine ever clean, yet you shall plunge me in filth, and my garments shall abhor me" (Job 9:30-31). …

Commentary on Isaiah ↗