And when the Scripture says, 'I am the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, who appointed Israel your king,' will you not in truth understand it of Christ the eternal King? For you know that Jacob, the son of Isaac, never became a king; and therefore the Scripture, again expounding to us what king it means by Jacob and Israel, thus said:
'Jacob is my servant, I will uphold him; and Israel is my chosen, my soul shall accept him. I have put my Spirit upon him, and he shall bring forth judgement to the nations. He shall not cry, nor shall his voice be heard outside; a bruised reed he shall not break, and smoking flax he shall not quench, until he bring forth victory; he shall take up judgement, and shall not be broken, until he set judgement on the earth; and in his name shall the nations hope.'
Do those from the nations, then, hope in Jacob the patriarch, and not in Christ?—and do you yourselves? As, then, He calls Christ both Israel and Jacob, so also we, hewn out of the womb of Christ, are the true Israelite race. But let us rather give heed to the very text.
'And I will bring forth the seed out of Jacob and out of Judah; and it shall inherit my holy mountain, and my chosen and my servants shall inherit it, and shall dwell there; and there shall be folds for flocks in the wood, and the valley of Achor shall be for a resting-place of herds for the people who have sought me. But you, who forsake me and forget my holy mountain, and prepare a table for the demons and fill up a mixed drink for the demon, I will deliver you to the sword; you shall all fall by slaughter, because I called you and you did not obey, I spoke and you did not listen, and you did the evil before me, and chose what I did not will.'
And these are the words of the Scripture; but understand for yourselves that the seed out of Jacob now spoken of is something other, not, as one might suppose, said concerning the people. For it is not possible that the seed sown from Jacob should leave behind, as an importation, those born from Jacob; nor, while reproaching the people as unworthy of the inheritance, should He again, as one might suppose, promise to those same ones.
But in the same manner that the prophet there says, 'And now, O house of Jacob, come, and let us walk in the light of the Lord'—for He had abandoned His people, the house of Jacob, because their land was filled, as from the beginning, with divinations and soothsayings—so also here we must understand two seeds of Judah and two races, as two houses of Jacob: the one born of blood and flesh, the other of faith and Spirit.