Works (CSEL) 15 part 8/31

Rightly therefore did holy Matthew, about to call the nations to the Church through the Gospel, record that the Author Himself, the Lord of the gathering of the Gentiles, took to Himself according to the flesh a generation of foreigners, so that even then it might be a sign that that generation would bring forth the Caller of the nations, whom we all, gathered from among foreigners, should follow, leaving our ancestral things and saying to Him who would call us to the worship of the Lord — say, to Paul or to any bishop: 'Your people shall be my people, your God my God.' Therefore Ruth, like Leah and Rachel, forgetting her people and the house of her father, loosing the bond of the law, entered into the Church. But he looses his sandal who does not receive the Church. And it is said to Moses:

'Loose the sandal from your feet,' lest he himself should be believed to be the Bridegroom of the Church. He alone does not loose it who is the true Bridegroom. And therefore John says: 'Whose sandal-strap I am not worthy to loose.' Therefore this too is a type, and he built up the house of Israel. But how worthy of being inserted in the mention of the Lord's lineage she was, the expression of a deeper mystery declares, by which it was prophesied that of her stock Christ was to be begotten in Ephratha, when it is said: 'May the Lord grant you to do valiantly in Ephratha, and may there be a name in Bethlehem.' For what is the valor, except that which through Christ gathered the peoples of the nations? And what name, except that which Bethlehem became, the homeland of the Lord born according to the flesh?

Whence it is said through the prophet: 'And you, Bethlehem of Judah, are not the least among the princes of Judah; for out of you shall come forth a prince who shall rule my people Israel.' We see therefore that the history, the manners, and the mystery agree with the mention of the women. Nor yet do I deny, while I defend Tamar and Ruth, that sinners too were reckoned among the ancestors of the Lord's line — the mention of whom holy Luke, desiring to avoid, kept to a certain other order of successions, and thought that neither Ahab nor Jechoniah nor finally the wife of Uriah should be named, that he might set forth the line of the priestly race as unstained. But as the reason of his counsel holds good, so likewise the counsel of holy Matthew does not shrink from the justice of reason.

For when he was preaching that the Lord had been begotten according to the flesh, who would take upon Himself the sins of all, subject to injuries, subjected to suffering, he did not think that even this one should be asserted as exempt from devotion — namely, that He should not refuse the indignity even of a stained origin, and at the same time that the Church should not be ashamed to be gathered out of sinners, since the Lord was born of sinners. Finally, that He might begin the benefit of redemption even from His own ancestors, lest anyone should suppose that the stain of origin could be a hindrance to virtue, and lest one should insolently boast of the nobility of his lineage, or, too bashful, blush at the crimes of his parents, to whom there is given the means of overshadowing his origin by the flower of virtue.

Or was not holy David — although many things in him are figured as a mystery — the more exalted for this, that he acknowledged himself to be a man and judged that the sin committed concerning Uriah's wife, who had been seized, must be washed away by the tears of repentance, showing us that no one ought to trust in his own virtue? For we have a great Adversary, who cannot be conquered by us without God's favor. And for the most part you will find that grave sins were in illustrious and blessed men, that you may know that, as men, they lay open to temptation, lest they should be believed to be more than men because of their outstanding virtues. For if David, because, lifted up by presumption of virtue, he had said: 'If I have repaid those who repaid me evil,' and elsewhere: 'But I said in my abundance:

I shall not be moved forever,' immediately recorded that he had undergone the punishment of this insolence, saying: 'You turned away your face from me, and I became troubled' — if the very author of the Lord's line incurred the offense of insolence, how much more ought we, the rest of the sinners, for whom no privilege of merits pleads, to fear the rock of insolence, on which is the shipwreck of good men, especially since so great a man is to us both a teacher's authority and an example, who thought that a certain palinode, as it were, must be sung in his later years to propitiate the Lord again, saying: 'Lord, my heart is not exalted, nor are my eyes lifted up on high, and the Lord is at my right hand, that I be not moved'; for he knew that, when he trusted in himself, he had fallen.

Finally, he declared that there is nothing else in man except that he knows God; for thus you have it: 'What is man, that you have made yourself known to him, or the son of man, that you reckon him?' If therefore David condemns insolence, puts on humility, rightly in the history of Uriah's wife this lesson of cultivating humility is taken up. And yet, if of her was born that peaceful Solomon, let us see whether perhaps it be a mystery, that, when he was taken from the midst who before by his own marriage claimed the people of the nations, the Church should be wedded to another man, the true David. For Christ was called David, taken up into the name of His ancestor, according to what is written: 'I have found David my servant.'

To whom the Church was wedded, who, full of the seed of the Word and of the Spirit of God, poured forth the body of Christ, namely the Christian people. There is therefore a woman who, while her husband lives, is bound by the law, and therefore her husband died, that she might not be an adulteress if she were with another man. The mystery, then, is in the figure, the sin in the history; the fault through the man, the sacred mysteries through the Word. Of which history, since we have spoken more fully elsewhere, here it seems we must pass over it quickly. And deservedly holy David wrote of this history the mystical fiftieth psalm on account of the marriage with Bathsheba, saying: 'Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.'

If God's friend acknowledges his own iniquity and that his fault stands against his merits, if finally he confesses that he has sinned against God, why should you blush at the confession of a crime, since the contriving of the crime, not the confession, is for shame? Therefore, since David did not pass over the history of Bathsheba in his psalms, that in it he might teach us either the mystery or the act of perfect repentance, we rightly see that it was not passed over even in the Lord's generations, because David himself, who took her as wife to himself, is asserted to be a forefather of the Lord's generation according to the flesh — whose special merit, as we have said, was that he should see in this mystery the rising of the Church and receive the oracle that of his lineage Christ would be born.

For one thing pertains to the Church, which he said: 'Behold, we heard of it in Ephratha, we found it in the fields of the wood'; another pertains specially to the pledge of the Lord's body, which is revealed by a most manifest oracle, when it is said: 'Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon my throne.' Yet do not be careless of so great a promise; for it was not given without a condition, but, 'if you keep the testament and observe the testimonies of the Lord' which He promises in the Gospel that He will speak, to you also shall the abundance of the eternal seat lie open. So much concerning the wife of Uriah. But concerning Ahab it is plain enough, whose wife was Jezebel; and concerning Jechoniah, of whom Jeremiah is a sufficiently competent author that he was guilty of the greatest fault, from whom He even took away the name he had.

And therefore he who in the books of Kings is called Joachim was named Jechoniah by Jeremiah, who said: 'Jechoniah is cast off like a vessel, there is no use in him, wherefore he and his seed are cast away. O earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord: write this man down as disinherited, for none of his seed shall arise sitting on the throne of David, a prince any longer in Judah.' For while he reigned, the Babylonians laid waste Judaea, nor afterward could anyone of his seed ever obtain the kingdom in Judaea; for afterward the people, released from captivity, were under priests and tetrarchs. Whence the tetrarchs remained even down to the generation of Christ, not even they, as far as the history teaches, retaining the dignity of a royal line.

For it is reported by those who — whether arguing, or teaching simply, or truly establishing the matter — have handed it down to us, that Idumean robbers, having entered Ascalon, a city of Palestine, carried off captive from the shrine of Apollo, which was near the walls, among others Antipater, the son of a certain Herod, a temple-servant, whom his father could not redeem on account of poverty. He therefore, imbued with the disciplines and mysteries of the Jews, was joined in friendship to Hyrcanus, king of Judaea, whom Hyrcanus sent as a legate on his own behalf to Pompey; and because he obtained the fruit of the legation, through that favor he aspired to a part of the kingdom.

But when Antipater had been slain on account of envy of his prosperity, his son Herod afterward under Antony, by a decree of the senate, was commanded to reign over the Jews — Herod, whose son and the other tetrarchs were. We thought this should be transferred from the histories of the Greeks for this reason, that it might be plain that Herod, related by no kinship to the race of the Jews, sought the kingdom by adulterous fraud. Finally, conscious of his own ignobility, lest any question should be raised among his posterity from the ancient record, he burned their scriptures, supposing that, if he removed the evidences from public keeping, by no other testimonies could it be made clear that he did not descend from the race of the patriarchs or of the ancient proselytes.

But, as most things of human care are, he could not prejudge against the knowledge and the searching out of the truth. Yet, lest he be able to prejudge against us, let us see — we who say that Christ is of the true and royal line, and that the Lord's race was carried on through true and noble kings. But where the adulterous offspring aspired to the kingdom, the order of generation, not of power, preserved the succession of His nobility; yet that king himself, according to the honor of the age, we did not receive as Christ. How then, 'of the fruit of your womb will I set upon my throne'? How does the angel also say of Him that 'the Lord God shall give Him the throne of David His father, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob'? How is He promised to reign, and is not shown to reign?

Or how is it said through the prophet that none of the seed of Jechoniah shall reign? For if Christ reigned, and Christ is of the seed of Jechoniah, the prophet lied, and the oracles too lied. But it is not denied that there in the future there would be descendants of the seed of Jechoniah, and therefore Christ is of his seed; and that Christ reigned is not against the prophecy; for He did not reign with worldly honor, nor sat on the seats of Jechoniah, but reigned on the seat of David. But since Jechoniah himself sat on the seat of David, how is it resolved what was said, that the posterity of David shall not sit on the seat of Jechoniah, since the same seat seems to have been of both?

And so we too cannot deny that it was the seat of David; yet not the same seat of king David did Christ occupy which Jechoniah sat upon — nay, no one else of the line of David could sit upon his seat save Christ, because in no other is his seed eternal, but in Christ, as God Himself disclosed, saying: 'Once have I sworn by my holiness, if I lie to David: his seed shall abide forever, and his seat as the sun in my sight.' Whom then does He mean here? Not Solomon, surely, not Rehoboam, not Nathan, but Him of whom alone He can say: 'I will set his hand in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers. He shall call upon me, You are my Father'; and: 'I will set his seed for ever and ever, and his throne as the days of heaven.'

Surely Solomon did not sit on this throne, nor Rehoboam, nor Jechoniah. Do you wish to know who sat upon it? It is He of whom the angel says to Mary: 'Behold, you shall conceive in your womb and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give Him the throne of David His father, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there shall be no end.' If you do not believe the angel, you will at least believe the Lord Himself, who says: 'You say that I am a king.' Did He then also lie, in that He said He reigned, who did not reign on earth? How is the Scripture resolved, which says that He reigns and does not establish that He reigns?

We have come to a steep place in the discussion, we stick fast in the shallows and toss in a certain shipwreck of truth. Let us therefore rouse up Christ, let us question Him Himself, let Him Himself answer. Let us question the Scriptures. We find that the kingdom of the Lord is not of this world; for He Himself said: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' He who says that His kingdom is not of this world shows that it is above the world. So both was His kingdom, and was not: it was not in the age, it was above the age. There was therefore another kingdom of the true David, which Christ alone received, and there was another seed of David, which abides forever, of which Christ alone was begotten, who alone is the true Son of David, whose name alone too He received, according to what is written:

'I have found David my servant, with my holy oil have I anointed him.' Which surely the preceding words declare to be said not of the prophet David, but of the Lord; for it is written: 'I have laid help upon one that is mighty, and have exalted one chosen out of my people'; for Christ alone is mighty, Christ alone is the chosen. For the seed of the saints is greater in faith than in generation; and therefore the Apostle says: 'For if those who are of faith, these are the sons of Abraham.'

This too we think must not be passed over, that from the times of David down to Jechoniah — that is, down to the captivity — although there were seventeen kings of Judaea, holy Matthew set down fourteen generations; and again, from Jechoniah down to Joseph, although the generations counted man by man are twelve, he afterward recorded that fourteen generations were described. For thus you have it: 'All the generations from Abraham to David, fourteen generations; and from David to the carrying away into Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon to Christ, fourteen generations.' And first it is necessary to recognize, what we have already said before, that there can be more successions and fewer generations;

for some can live longer and beget later, or certainly some can exist altogether without offspring. And so the times of the kings are not the same as those of the generations. Whence Matthew passed over those whom he did not think to pertain to the generation. For if his purpose had been to describe the successions, we should reasonably be moved as to why, since in the books of Kings and Chronicles it agrees that after Joram, Ahaziah reigned, and Joash, and Amaziah, and that Uzziah succeeded Amaziah, holy Matthew passed over those three kings, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah, and after Joram set Jehoshaphat — wait, after Joram set Uzziah. But he set him not in the succession of the kings, but in the generation; in short, he recorded that he was a relator of the generations.

It could happen, moreover, that both Joram begot later and Jehoshaphat received the kingdom later, and so Joram, to whom he did not succeed in power, succeeded his father in generation. But as for the fact that after Jechoniah the evangelist seems to have enumerated twelve generations, if you attend diligently, here too you will be able to find the reckoning of fourteen generations; for twelve are counted down to Joseph, not down to Christ — the thirteenth is Christ, of Joseph. But it makes no difference whether the falsehood be in two generations or one; yet not even here will you find any Caphareus rock and shipwreck of truth.

For the history indicates that there were two Joachims, that is, two Jechoniahs — one begotten before the carrying away, the other in the very carrying away, that is, father and son. Therefore the father is reckoned among the earlier generations, he who succeeded Josiah; the son among the later, he who succeeded his father, that is, the grandson of Josiah. And that there were two, the books of Kings indicate. For thus it is written: 'And Pharaoh set over Israel Joachim the son of Josiah, reigning in Judaea in place of Josiah his father, and changed the name of Joachim in his reigning, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem.' To which they subjoined: 'And the rest of the words of Joachim, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the words and in the days of those who reigned in Judaea?'

'And Joachim slept with his fathers, and Joachim his son reigned in his place. Joachim was a son of eighteen years, and when he reigned, he reigned three months in Jerusalem; his mother's name was Mesola. And all that his father did under the eyes of the Lord, he also did. And in his days came up Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, against Jerusalem.' You see therefore that the son of Josiah was one, the grandson another: the son that one on whom Jeremiah imposed the name, the grandson this one who was called by his father's name. And rightly holy Matthew did not wish to differ from the prophet, so as to name not Joachim, but Jechoniah.

At the same time, as we said above, he established the greater fruit of the Lord's devotion, in that the Lord did not require nobility of lineage in all things, but willed fittingly to be born of captives and sinners, He who came to preach remission to captives. The evangelist therefore did not suppress the one, but marked both, that each was called Jechoniah. Thus, with the younger Jechoniah added, fourteen generations are counted. Such, then, are the matters of Matthew.

But Luke beautifully, since he could not include the more numerous sons of Jacob, lest he should seem to wander outside the generations with a superfluous series, judged that, although in others — that is, in those far later — yet by no means in the case of the patriarchs should the names be passed over, but that before the rest there should be chosen Joseph, Judah, Simeon, and Levi. For we recognize that there were four kinds of virtues in these whose descendants these are: in Judah — that is, that elder one — the mystery of the Lord's passion prophesied by a figure; in Joseph that the example of chastity went before; in Simeon the vindication of outraged modesty; in Levi the office of the priest. Through Nathan too we perceive the dignity of prophecy expressed, so that, since Christ is all things in one—

—Christ Jesus, the diverse kinds of virtues might also go before in His individual ancestors. The mention of righteous Noah too among the Lord's generations ought not to have been passed over, that, since the Founder of the Church was being born, He might be seen to have sent before as the author of His own line one who had earlier founded her in figure. For of Methuselah what shall I say, whose years are reckoned beyond the flood, so that, since Christ alone is He whose life felt no age, He might in His ancestors too be seen to have felt no floods? But Enoch — is it not a manifest sign both of the Lord's devotion and of His divinity, in that the Lord neither felt death and returned to heaven, whose ancestral author was caught up to heaven?

Whence it is manifest that Christ also could have not died, but was unwilling, that that death might profit us. And he indeed was caught up, lest malice should change his heart; but the Lord, whom the malice of the age could not change, returned by the majesty of His own nature to that place whence He had come. The brother's murderer is rightly passed over in silence; for it was not reasonable that he who had struck his brother should be numbered among the Lord's authors, since this one preserved His little servants, that He might honor them with the dignity of a brother's name. But neither is this idle, that Seth was not passed over, whom Adam received in a later generation, so that, since there are generations of two peoples, it might be signified in a figure that the Lord Jesus Christ is to be numbered rather in the later than in the earlier generation.

Now concerning Adam himself, who according to the Apostle received the figure of Christ, what more beautiful could fit than that the most sacred generation should begin from the Son of God and be carried down to the Son of God, and that the created one should go before in figure, that the born One might follow in truth; that he made to the image of God should go first, on whose account the image of God should descend? And if we examine the mystery of the first error: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — the devil deceiving, Eve persuading — he tasted, that this One might choose for us the good before He knew evil, and might empty the snares of the dread serpent, the Church persuading, according to what is written: 'For before the child knows good or evil, he does not believe in malice, that he may choose what is good'; and:

'before he knows to call father or mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria.' For this is the child, whose cradle the Magi crammed with eastern spoils, because the nation that before Christ was unbelieving, now changed in faith, offered to the Lord triumphal spoils from the trophies of idols. These things, brother, concerning the generation of Christ, which are not unknown, I thought worth pursuing at some length, lest anyone who reviewed these things in the Gospel with too inattentive a mind should waver to some extent — things which the holy evangelists, hastening to the greater miracles and more divine deeds of the Lord, thought should be touched on more briefly than poured out more abundantly.

Therefore in the manner of those who think it enough to point out to those ignorant of the ways, as it were certain marks of the journey and the paths, gathering up the paths of the spiritual way — I shall see whether by a second success of truth, certainly by a religious guidance of faith — we press on into the secrets of the mysteries, fearing lest anyone, when he has read these things, should, as is said proverbially, 'like a boy handling a sword,' through his childishness not know the strong weapons, and should rather feel a wound from his own imprudence than health from the reading. For the weak their own darts wound, nor can he use arms well who has not learned to bear them.

And therefore in matters of faith a perfect man is required, in whom infancy may not crawl upon the ground of knowledge, in whom no feeble age, lacking the senses of mystical understanding, may totter — an age which, having lost the vigour of youth, would not seek the crown of the glorious contest; like an aging eagle which, once accustomed to seize a hare or a goose with its talons, now worn out with age seeks the unfledged broods of lesser birds, which cannot bring it the more solid food. BOOK FOUR. It was not, I think, an absurd labour that we accomplished concerning the Lord's generation; certainly it was not unfruitful to dwell at greater length upon the Lord's ancestry.

For if those who set out to cross the great sea by coasting navigation, a shorter route than the deeper course, just as we do — avoiding the open sea out of weakness of confidence — frequently visit the fields and the cities set along the shore, captivated by the beauty of the places, how much more ought we, set in so great a depth — not of the elements, but of heavenly deeds — to choose harbours that are nearer and to love frequent landings, lest anyone wearied by the tedium of a long voyage be unable to hold back the vomit of disgust. Surely if anyone has perceived the treacherous defects of an unsafe vessel, then, with the frequent harbour of books set before him, he may, so to speak, lower the sails of his ears and fix the anchor of reading. He who has gone down into harbour seems not to have abandoned the voyage but to have completed his course.

And in very many places perhaps the very pleasantness of the spots may invite the passer-by to linger. For if that famous Ulysses — as the fables tell, though even a prophet has said:

'The daughters of the Sirens shall dwell in it' — and even had the prophet not said it, no one would rightly find fault, since Scripture has comprised both giants and the valley of the Titans — if then that famous Ulysses, after the ten years of exile in which the war was waged at Ilium, and the ten years of wandering, as he hastened toward his fatherland, the Lotus-eaters could detain by the sweetness of their berries, if the gardens of Alcinous delayed him, if at last the Sirens, having enticed him by the song of their voice, had almost led him to that notorious shipwreck of pleasure, had he not stopped the ears of his companions with inserted wax against the sound of the enticing melody — how much more does it befit religious men to be soothed by admiration of heavenly deeds! And here now it is not the sweetness of berries that must be drunk in, but that Bread which came down from heaven; not the vegetables of Alcinous that must be gazed upon, but the sacraments of Christ.

For let him who is weak eat vegetables. The ears, therefore, are not to be closed but to be opened, that the voice of Christ may be heard; and whoever has received it will not fear shipwreck. He is not, like Ulysses, to be bound with bodily fetters to a mast, but the mind is to be bound to the wood of the cross with spiritual bonds, lest it be moved by the enticements of wantonness and turn aside the course of nature into the peril of pleasure. For the fable is coloured with poetic fictions, that certain maidens are reported to have dwelt on the rocky shore of the sea, who, if by the sweetness of the ears they had with their sweet voice driven any to turn their ship aside, would carry them down into hidden shoals and, deceived at a treacherous mooring, would consume them in the lot of a pitiable shipwreck.

This has been composed with show and embellished with ambitious comparison, so that the sea, the voice of a woman, and shoaling shores are feigned. But what sea is more abrupt than this age — so treacherous, so unstable, so deep, so storm-tossed by the blasts of unclean spirits? What does the figure of the maidens mean but the enticement of emasculated pleasure, which unmans the steadfastness of the captured mind? And what are those shoals but the rocks of our salvation? For nothing is so blind as the peril of worldly sweetness, which, while it soothes the soul, overwhelms life and dashes the perception of the mind against certain rocks of the body.

Deservedly, therefore, our Lord Jesus forms us by His fasting and by the desert against the enticements of pleasures, and the Lord of all suffers Himself to be tempted by the devil, that in Him we might all learn to conquer. Let us therefore observe that the evangelist has described three things not idly but as principally ordained by the Lord. For there are three things that profit toward the use of human salvation: the sacrament, the desert, the fast; for no one is crowned unless he has lawfully contended, and no one is admitted to the contest of virtue unless first, washed from all stains of his offences, he is consecrated by the gift of heavenly grace. The Lord therefore came to the washing, that the grace of the mystery might be proved to us both by sight and by sense.

And since the Law is promulgated with heaven and earth as witnesses — so that you might believe that the mystery of the Godhead, hidden in God from the ages, is something greater than the Law — now heaven is not called to bear witness, but it performs the office of a witness, when the voice of God is borne down from heaven. At the same time, lest you stumble at the mystery of faith through any doubt of mind, things invisible are visibly declared to you as at work. The Lord came to the washing; for He became all things for your sake. To those who are under the Law, as though He were under the Law (though He Himself was not under the Law), He was circumcised, that He might gain those who are under the Law; with those who were without the Law He was joined in the fellowship of the table, that He might gain those who lived without the Law.