Works (CSEL) 15 part 7/31

'and to seeds,' as of many, but as of one: 'and to thy seed, which is Christ,' so that to the one the property of the generation, to the other the headship, might be assigned. To the latter it was granted that Jesus should be called his son; to the former, as to a prince of the family and of the nations, the prerogative is reserved, that from Abraham should flow the beginning of the Lord's generation; for he who is the author of faith, him ought Scripture also to assert to be the author of the divine generation. Hence Luke too thought that his origin was to be referred to God, because the true begetter of Christ is God, whether according to true generation as Father, or according to the regeneration of the laver as author of the mystic gift.

And therefore he did not begin to describe his generation from the first, but after he had set forth his baptism, desiring through baptism to show that God is the author of all things, he asserted that Christ too descended from God by the order of succession, weaving together the whole, so that he might show him to be the Son of God according to nature, according to grace, and according to the flesh. But what clearer token of the divine generation than that, being about to speak of the generation, he set the Father himself before, speaking: 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased'?

Here too some are wont to sow questions, that Matthew enumerated forty-two generations from Abraham down to Christ, but Luke fifty; and that Matthew described the generation as flowing through some persons, Luke through others. In which you can now prove that which we said, that, since Matthew wove together some ancestors of the Lord's lineage, but Luke others in the order of generation, both nevertheless marked out Abraham and David as the remaining authors of the lineage. But that Matthew thought the generation should be derived through Solomon, while Luke through Nathan, seems to show the one as the royal, the other as the priestly family of Christ.

This we ought not so to understand as though the one were truer than the other, but that the one accords with the other in equal faith and truth. For he was truly, even according to the flesh, of a royal and priestly family, a king from kings, a priest from priests. Although the oracle is expressed not of earthly but of heavenly things, since both the King rejoices in the power of God, to whom judgment is committed by the Father the King, and he is a priest for ever, according to what is written: 'Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.' Well therefore did each keep the faith, so that Matthew proved the origin to be led down through kings, and Luke, by deducing through priests the series of the lineage transmitted from God into Christ, declared that very lineage to be the holier.

At the same time, in this too is signified, by the figure of the calf, that he everywhere thinks the priestly mystery is to be preserved. And do not wonder if, according to Luke, there are more successions from Abraham down to Christ, fewer according to Matthew, when you confess that the generation was run through different persons; for it can happen that some passed a long life, but the men of another generation departed at an immature age, since we see very many old men living with their grandchildren, but others dying at once when sons have been received.

We notice this too, that holy Matthew recorded Jacob, who was the father of Joseph, to be the son of Matthan, but Luke described Joseph, to whom Mary was betrothed, to be the son of Heli, and Heli the son of Melchi. How can there be two fathers of one man, that is, Heli and Jacob? How also two paternal grandfathers, Matthan and Melchi? But if you follow it through, you will find that, according to the prescription of the old law, two brothers begot different sons of the same womb from one wife.

For it is handed down that Matthan, who traced his lineage from Solomon, begot Jacob as a son and departed this life while his wife survived, whom Melchi afterward took as wife, of whom Heli was begotten. Again, when Heli's brother died without children, he was joined to his brother's wife and begot a son, Joseph, who according to the law is called the son of Jacob, since by the prescription of the old law a brother raised up the seed of a deceased brother. Thus he was called the son of two men, not begotten by both, but because he became the son of the one according to generation, of the other according to the law. In which prescription of the law the people of the Jews did not understand the future perpetuity of the seed of the dead promised to us, but, taking it according to the letter, corrupted the grace of the oracle.

For there was another brother who was to raise up the seed of dead brothers—not a brother according to the kinship of the flesh, but according to the purity of grace. And therefore perhaps 'a brother does not redeem: shall a man redeem?'—because that one was not a natural brother, but the Lord and mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who propagated the grace of resurrection; although there is another interpretation of this verse, which we shall give in its own place. But it does not seem absurd that holy Matthew thought the generations should be divided four times ten, by a doubled mystic number, from Abraham down to David, from David down to the transmigration of Babylon, from the transmigration of Babylon down to Christ, in which he likewise designated the turns of changes.

For from Abraham down to David the people of the Jews was without kings—for the just kingdom began from David—then through the kings the whole lineage of the Jews was carried on, and their realms remained inviolate down to their transmigration; but after the transmigration the nobility of the degenerating people declined, cut off, into its setting. But concerning the fifty successions which Luke thought should be woven from Abraham, the grace of the mystic number is sufficiently clear, observed therein; for both the tenth and the seventh number is mystic, and each repeated a third time signifies a mystery; and Pentecost, whose grace Luke followed, and the forty, whose grace Matthew followed, have sufficiently and more than sufficiently set forth the mystic number.

Very many also wonder why Matthew thought the mention of Tamar—a woman notorious, as it seems to them—should be woven into the Lord's generation; why also Ruth; why also that woman who was the wife of Uriah and, when her husband was slain, passed into marriage with David; especially since he nowhere made mention of Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel, holy women. For thus you have it: 'Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and his brethren, and Judah begot Phares and Zara of Tamar.' Not idly, therefore, did the evangelist insert the name of this woman, concerning whom for the present it seems we must treat separately. For first, if you direct your mind to the truth, this woman is not so notorious as just;

for she did not seek the use of temporal lust, but coveted the favour of succession; for it was a disgrace to have no children, which was even punished by the authority of the civil laws. Judah had promised her to his son and had long deferred the covenants of the agreed marriage. Through the delay of the promise the betrothed died. Not yet was the grace of virginity, not yet of widowhood, blooming before the coming of Christ. Grieving that she remained without children, she devised a stratagem out of zeal for offspring and forestalled Judah by a plan, that she might offer herself to him adorned, after she had learned that his wife was dead. You see everywhere the woman's life approved, in that she did not snatch another's bed, that she was not adorned with harlot's zeal as a harlot;

for she did not pursue a wandering lust, but, long defrauded of her father-in-law's promises, wished, by turning the deceit, to gain the fruit of succession from that family which she had chosen. Who therefore was the more chaste? She who waited so long for the promise, or he who could not endure the love offered him? She who did not flee the family of her betrothed, or he who thought her a harlot? She who did not permit the hour of her body for union to the willing, or he who, what he began through the error of zeal, brought to completion for the favour of succession by the woman's chastity? She who had no children and feared to be shut out from the time of conception by the delay of marriage, she who chose the gravity of a more mature man, or he who fell in love with the age of a younger woman? Finally, he himself confessed, saying:

'Tamar is more justified than I, because I did not give her to Shelah my son.' And so she wished to put to the test the very exactor of her chastity. Finally, she never afterward knew a man, but took up the garb of widowhood from that union; while he, impatient of a single hour, who had demanded years of chastity from a young woman, drove out mourning, changed his garment, shaved his hair, deserted the funeral pyre, and as a lover ascended the bed. But we do not so defend her as to accuse him—rather let us excuse both, but not ourselves—but the mystery which the fruit of that union expressed; for the woman bore Phares and Zara as sons, she bore twins. Hence not idly did Matthew signify both, when the cause demanded the mention of Phares only;

for Phares begot Esrom, Esrom begot Aram, and then each in order. But why, when Isaac begot two and Jacob more, did the series of Scripture make mention only of the individuals whom it required for the cause of the Lord's succession, but here recorded both of these, unless because here in both there is a mystery? We have treated the moral topic, that she practised not the works of a harlot but chose the gifts of fruitfulness; let us treat the historical and ventilate the mystical; for it cannot be without mystery that she received the ring and the necklace and the staff. No lowly person is she who deserves to receive the ornament, the signet, the power: the signet of deeds, the ornament of the breast, the insignia of royal liberty.

Therefore, to begin the history: when Tamar was giving birth, you read that one of her womb put forth his hand, which the midwife, seizing, bound with a scarlet thread, saying, 'This shall come out first.' But when the child drew back his hand into the mother's womb, immediately his brother came forth. And the midwife said: 'Why is the hedge broken through by thee?' And she called his name Phares. And after him his brother came forth, in whose hand was the scarlet thread, and she called his name Zara. You see how great enigmas the mystery sets forth: the hand put forth, the scarlet bound, the hand drawn back, the twofold voice of the midwife—that the other should come out first, that the other should break through the hedge.

But why did the one put forth his hand from the womb, while the other came before by his birth into being, unless because through the mystery of the twins is described the twofold life of the peoples—one according to the law, the other according to faith; one according to the letter, the other according to grace? Grace is prior to law, faith prior to the letter. And therefore the figure of grace put forth its hand first, because the act of grace went before, which was in Job, Melchizedek, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, who lived by faith without the law; for 'Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.' Melchizedek too, by the figure of his sacrifice, displayed the grace going before the holy.

For the holy patriarchs, coming before the law, freed from the bonds of prescriptions, shone with the free grace of the Gospel like to ours. The younger of these brothers is the second order of piety; for the first is in the patriarchs, the second in the kings and priests. For each life is according to God, since those too who, according to the law of Moses, waged a religious and pious warfare are not without a share of grace and honour; but the fruit of piety is prior in the authors than in the heirs—for Zara is prior, who by interpretation signifies the rising. For the light of piety is the true splendour of the rising, even of him who said, 'The Rising is my name,' whose ray of light first shone in the patriarchs.

For these first sent forth the act of their life in this age, in whose hand also our acts went before as a figure of the fuller body—we who were still held in a certain womb of generating nature. But interposed as a middle hedge is the observance of the law, and in a manner the life of our elders seems to be cut through; concerning which, in the figure, that midwife—perhaps justice, who received us sent forth from the womb of mother nature—is reported to have said, 'This shall come out first.' And in very truth that order of piety was wonderful, imprinted not by Moses nor by any man nor through a man, but by a certain gift of wisdom pouring itself in of its own accord.

Therefore the first discipline of piety is according to the Gospel, because through the cross and blood of Christ we believe—whose day Abraham saw and was glad; whose grace, figured in the type of the Church, Noah foresensed by spiritual knowledge; whose stead Isaac did not refuse in the sacrifice; whom Jacob worshipped as he prevailed; whose redness of garments Isaiah saw—for according to the Gospel is the life even of the prophets—in whose blood, amid the destructions of the world, Rahab, by type a harlot, by mystery the Church, foreshowed the future sign of public salvation; she who does not refuse the union of many comers, and the more joined to the many, the more chaste: an undefiled virgin, without wrinkle, whole in modesty, common in love, a chaste harlot, a barren widow, a fruitful virgin:

a harlot, because she is frequented by many lovers with the enticement of love and without the filth of sin—for 'he who cleaves to a harlot is one body'—a barren widow, who knows not how to bear to a husband who is absent—the husband came and begot this people and folk—a fruitful virgin, who bore this multitude with the fruit of love, without the use of lust. But, to return to the history, what do the words of the midwife mean, saying 'This shall come out first,' unless because she bore the type of him who, later in the birth of the body, yet first in virtue and truth, claimed for himself the headship of all? Hence John too: 'After me comes a man who was made before me.'

What does it mean that she bound the scarlet thread on his hand, unless because he was the type of him who by the sign of his cross and the shedding of his blood illumined human action? And so, after he drew back his hand, his brother came forth as if by a cutting made in the hedge, whom the Apostle named as a kind of middle wall of the hedge or of the partition, and he himself received his name from the cutting; for Phares is 'division.' Hence also the Pharisees are so called, because they separated themselves from the unions of the many. But it would have been more blessed and far better that the hedge should not be cut through, but should remain one and the same and undivided—which could have come about if the warfare of that life which followed had been consequent upon that life which first put forth its hand, that is, displayed its act.

For it would have been much better if the circumcised people had wished to imitate the life of the elders; for thus there would have been one hedge, one partition, one building of the former and the later. But because the weakness of the later could not fulfil that first act of life, a cutting being doubtless made in the hedge or partition which had been built according to God, it was interposed as a kind of middle wall, so that that hedge—that is, the perpetual and continuous building of good morals—should be broken. For a hedge is that by which a fruitful field is surrounded, the assault of the thief is removed, which encloses the cultivated and separates off the deserted. A partition too closes a house. If this remain, the house is safe. Finally, 'I will take away,' he says, 'its partition, and it shall be for plundering.'

Let us pray that this partition of our house may remain whole—the spiritual house which is in us; for it cannot be built up by man, but by the living God, who says, 'And I surrounded it with a wall.' They therefore lost salvation who lost the wall. Let the wall remain, then, let this hedge remain. Do you wish to know how useful a hedge is? Hedge your ears with thorns and briars, and do not listen to the wicked tongue; for that hedge defends you from fault. Therefore the Lord Jesus, who afterward came according to the flesh into the light, restoring the fortification of that ancient hedge, reformed us into the act of the elders and the ancient simplicity of faith. Hence the prophet too said of him: 'Thou shalt be called the builder of the hedge.'

For he took away that obstacle which divided the unity of mind and body and the series of the simple life, and he himself became our peace, who made both one and loosed the middle wall of the hedge. Which wall the Apostle explains to be the enmities in the flesh. These enmities therefore the Lord took away and poured back peace, and abolished the law of commandments in ordinances, that he might create the two in one new man, in whom he signifies not only the outer and inner man, but also the Jew and the Greek, so that Christ might be all and in all. For the Lord took away the superstition of the Sabbath, of the bodily Sabbath, and loosed as it were the middle wall of the law.

That law was forbidding us, by the difficulty of its ordinances, from that piety which is according to God, because, according to the law of Moses, it was not easy nor possible for the Gentiles to do warfare for God, since the empty superstition of the Jews called back the pure affection of the Gentiles from undertaking the observance. What then? Is the law useless? Far from it; but it is useful for the unbelieving, necessary for the weak, which would restrain the slippery and erring by the austerity of the saving precept and enclose them by the attention of observances. But the law is good, because it is spiritual. To him therefore it is not good who does not deem it spiritual, who, made small and lowly in mind, could not see that majesty which is above the law, namely of Christ.

Looking upon which, as it were above that wall, Isaiah, lofty of mind, saw the glory of God, which is seen on the mountains, not on the hills. And so the Church taught us in the Song of Songs that this wall could not stand in the way of our Lord Jesus Christ, nor of him who followed Christ, saying: 'The voice of my brother; behold, here he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My brother is like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bethel. Behold, here he is behind our wall, looking through the windows, looking through the nets. My brother answered and said to me: Rise up, come, my neighbour, my fair one, my dove, for behold, the winter is past, the rain is gone. It has departed.'

'The flowers have appeared on the earth, the time of pruning is come, the voice of the turtledove is heard.' The flowers are the apostles, the time of harvest is the fruit of Christ, the voice of the turtledove is the voice of the Church. Rightly therefore the Son of God, after he beheld earthly men neither walking toward the things above and straitened by bodily constraints—for 'there was none that did good, there was not even one'—himself deigned to descend into the earth, that he might take away that wall of the law, that is, a certain mass and superstition of the bodily understanding, which as it were pressed upon and overshadowed the hearts of the peoples. Better therefore is the partition than the wall.

Finally, the whitened bread is not good—which was not idly said to the prince of the priests, because he kept the impediments of the middle wall, which the Lord Jesus took away as a kind of harsh warfare, that he might pour in a clearer observance of religion, so that now not one race of the Jews, as if shut up by a certain bodily prescription of the law, but all the nations might be called to the worship of God through the Gospel. Therefore there are two twins, two twin lives, two twin warfares, such that the former is better than the latter that follows. And therefore that which is better has been reformed. But who would deny that the Gospel excels the law? Yet the law is good, if above the letter you raise the mind; for 'the letter kills.'

But what grace would this history have, unless we saw the light of so great a mystery? For the holy Apostle taught us to seek the secret of truth in the simplicity of the history, and to refer the meaning to certain disputations not intelligible according to the letter, writing: 'Tell me, you who have read the law, have you not heard the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one of the handmaid and one of the free woman; but he who was of the handmaid was born according to the flesh, while he who was of the free woman according to the promise. Which things,' he says, 'are spoken by allegory. For these are the two testaments'; and below: 'But that Jerusalem which is above is free.'

Let us therefore strive with elevation of mind toward that house which the dividing wall in the midst could neither break into nor sunder. For, according to spiritual understanding, that ancient wall of the testament has been dissolved; the bondwoman has been cast out, the freewoman is retained. From the freewoman we are free; for the Church is free, while the synagogue has been expelled — for the people of the Jews was in bondage. The yoke of servitude has been removed, which used to press hard upon the necks of our souls, so that we could not look beyond the wall of our former life. We have a yoke that is good and light, which by the reins of peace and the bonds of grace rather lifts up than weighs down those who are joined together.

This is the Lord, whose type went before in Zara, in that from the tribe and from the seed of that Zara the Lord Jesus was begotten according to the flesh — not only of a woman, but also under the law — that He might redeem with the price of His own blood those who were under the law. His figure therefore went before in the hand of that Zara, that it might promise us that He was to come who would call back the practice of the ancient life and would restore in the last Adam the liberty which He had bestowed upon that first Adam — so that now the race of men might be without the law of bondage.

If, then, we have understood that Tamar was recorded among the Lord's generations on account of a mystery, we ought without doubt to judge that Ruth likewise was by no means passed over for a like reason. Concerning her the holy Apostle seems to have had insight, when in the Spirit he foresaw that the calling of the foreign nations was to be celebrated through the Gospel, saying that the law is not made for the just, but for the unjust. For how did Ruth, although she was a foreigner, marry a Jew? And on what ground did the evangelist judge that mention should be made in the generation of Christ of a union which was forbidden by the series of the law? Did not, then, the Savior flow from a lawful generation?

It seems unseemly, unless you return to the apostolic sentence, that the law is not made for the just but for the unjust. For this woman, since she was a foreigner and a Moabitess — especially since the law of Moses forbade these marriages and excluded the Moabites from the assembly, for thus it is written: 'The Moabites shall not enter into the assembly of the Lord, even to the third and fourth generation, and even forever' — how did she enter into the Church, except because she was made holy and unstained in her conduct above the law?

For if the law is laid down for the impious and for sinners, then surely Ruth, who passed beyond the definition of the law and entered into the Church and became one of Israel and merited to be reckoned among the ancestors of the Lord's line — chosen on account of the kinship of mind, not of body — is a great example to us, because in her there went before a figure of us all who, gathered out of the nations, are to enter into the Church of the Lord. Let us therefore imitate her, so that, as she by her conduct merited this privilege of being admitted into His fellowship, as the history teaches, we too on account of our choice of character may be admitted into the Church of the Lord, with merits pleading for us.

For indeed when in the days of the earlier judges a famine pressed the Israelites in those times, a man went forth from Bethlehem, a city of Judah — in which Christ was born — to till the ground in Moab, with his wife and two sons; the man's name was Elimelech, the woman's Naomi. His sons took for themselves Moabite wives — the name of the one was Orpah, the name of the second Ruth — and they dwelt there about ten years and died. But the woman, left by her two sons and bereft of her own husband, when she learned that God had visited Israel, preparing to return home, began to urge that the wives of her sons should go back to their own home. The one consented, but Ruth remained with her mother-in-law. And when her mother-in-law said to her:

'Behold, your sister-in-law has now returned to her own people and to her own gods; return you also together with your sister-in-law,' Ruth answered: 'Let it not befall me to forsake you and to return to my own god; for wherever you go I will go with you, and where you dwell I will dwell. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. And where you die, I will die, and where you are buried, I will be buried.' And so the two came to Bethlehem. When therefore Boaz, the great-grandfather of David, had come to know these manners and this holiness toward her mother-in-law, this devotion toward the dead, this piety toward God, according to the law of Moses — that he might raise up seed for his dead kinsman — he chose her for himself as wife.

It is worth noting, moreover, that even in the field full of harvest, found gathering the sheaves, as it is written, and reserving the fruits for her mother-in-law, she did not go after a young man, but followed a perfect man, whence also she merited to hear: 'You are a woman of virtue,' or: 'You have done your latter kindness better than your former'; for the latter kindness of the Church, when gathered, surpasses the former. This we say here more briefly, because we have treated it more fully in the books which I wrote concerning the faith. And he that was far off drew near, because he that was near withdrew, and the kinsman acquired the woman with the sandal once received.

For it was the custom that he who was nearest of kin, if he were unwilling to take his near kinswoman in marriage, should loose his sandal and yield to another. In which there is no slight mystery, in that he who took the foreigner in figure received the faculty of preaching the Gospel. Finally, that these nuptials were in a figure the blessing of the elders attests, who said: 'May the Lord give a woman who may enter into your house like Rachel and like Leah, who built up the house of Israel, and to do valiantly in Ephratha, and may there be a name in Bethlehem. And may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, of your seed may the Lord give to you from this maiden.' And Boaz took Ruth and she became his in marriage and bore Obed, the father of Jesse, the grandfather of David.