Bernard of Clairvaux

In his own words on Isaiah

• Isaiah 14:14

  Both meditated iniquity, affecting height: the one, of power; the other, of knowledge. For the foolish woman believed him who promised, but who was deceiving: "You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Had he not already first deceived himself, he who had persuaded himself that he would be like the Most High? For he who thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, deceives himself. Therefore the devil was judged in fury, because his iniquity was found to be unto hatred; but man's unto wrath, and therefore he is chastised in wrath. Thus every height has been crushed, both that which puffs up and that which casts down, the Father indeed being zealous for the Son. For in both cases there is an injury to the Son: both from the usurped power against the power of God, which he himself is; and from the knowledge presumed from elsewhere than from the wisdom of God, which he no less is.

  Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 69

• Isaiah 51:23

  Why does he not know, unless because, bending himself down to these lowest and earthly things, he heaps up earth for himself? Assuredly he does not know, concerning those things which he commits to the earth, for whom he gathers them: whether for the moth that destroys, or for the thief that digs through; for the enemy that plunders, or for the fire that devours. And thence that lamentable voice from the psalm belongs to the wretched man bending himself down and brooding over the things that are upon the earth: "I am made wretched and bowed down utterly; all the day long I went about in sadness." In himself indeed he experiences the truth of that sentence of the Wise Man: "God made man upright, but he has entangled himself in many sorrows." And immediately the voice of mockery comes to him: "Bow down, that we may pass over."

  Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 80