Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 56/87

But doubtless the entry of Jacob into Egypt, when the Scripture mentions him among seventy-five persons, was not one day or one year, but is that whole period for as long as Joseph lived, through whom it came about that they entered. For concerning Joseph himself the same Scripture thus speaks: And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he and his brothers and all the cohabitation of his father, and he lived a hundred and ten years, and Joseph saw Ephraim's children unto the third generation. He is that great-grandson of his, third from Ephraim. For by the third generation it means son, grandson, great-grandson. Then it follows: And the sons of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were born upon the thighs of Joseph. And this is that same grandson of Manasseh, great-grandson of Joseph.

But they were named in the plural, as Scripture is accustomed to do, which called even a single daughter of Jacob his 'daughters'; just as in the usage of the Latin tongue children are spoken of in the plural as 'sons,' even if there be no more than one. Since, therefore, the happiness of Joseph himself is proclaimed, in that he was able to see his great-grandchildren, by no means should these be supposed to have already existed in the thirty-ninth year of their great-grandfather Joseph, when Jacob his father came to him in Egypt. But that is what misleads those who consider these matters less carefully, namely that it is written: 'And these are the names of the sons of Israel, who entered into Egypt together with Jacob their father.'

For this was said because together with him they are reckoned as seventy-five, not because all were already together when he himself entered Egypt; but, as I have said, the whole span of his entry is taken to be that during which Joseph lived, through whom the entry is regarded as having taken place. CHAPTER XLI. On the blessing which Jacob promised to his son Judah. Therefore, on behalf of the Christian people, in whom the City of God sojourns upon the earth, if we seek the flesh of Christ in the seed of Abraham, with the sons of the concubines set aside, we meet with Isaac; if in the seed of Isaac, with Esau set aside (who is also Edom), we meet with Jacob (who is also Israel); if in the seed of Israel himself, with the rest set aside, we meet with Judah, since Christ sprang from the tribe of Judah.

And accordingly, when Israel, about to die in Egypt, was blessing his sons, let us hear how prophetically he blessed Judah: 'Judah,' he said, 'thy brethren shall praise thee. Thy hands shall be upon the back of thine enemies; the sons of thy father shall worship thee. Judah is a lion's whelp; from the sprouting, my son, thou hast gone up; lying down thou hast slept as a lion, and as a lion's whelp; who shall rouse him up? A prince shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until those things come that are laid up for him; and he himself is the expectation of the nations; binding his foal to the vine, and the foal of his ass to the cilice, he shall wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape. His eyes are tawny from wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.'

I have expounded these things in disputing against Faustus the Manichaean, and I judge it enough, in so far as the truth of this prophecy shines forth; wherein both the death of Christ is foretold by the word 'sleeping,' and not the necessity but the power in death by the name 'lion.' This power He Himself proclaims in the Gospel, saying: 'I have power to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it again. No one taketh it from me; but I lay it down of myself, and take it again.' Thus the lion roared, thus He fulfilled what He had said. For to that power belongs what is added concerning His resurrection: 'Who shall rouse him up?'—that is, that no man shall, except He Himself, who also said concerning His own body: 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.'

But the very manner of His death—that is, the loftiness of the cross—is understood in the one word which it says: 'Thou hast gone up.' And what it adds, 'lying down thou hast slept,' the evangelist expounds when he says: 'And bowing His head, He gave up the spirit'; or surely His burial is recognized, in which He reclined sleeping, and from which no man raised Him—as the prophets raised certain persons, or as He Himself raised others—but He rose as from sleep by His own power. Moreover His robe, which He washes in wine, that is, cleanses from sins in His own blood (the sacrament of which blood the baptized know), whence also it adds, 'and in the blood of the grape his garment,'—what is this but the Church? And 'his eyes tawny from wine'—His spiritual ones, made drunk with His cup, of which the psalm sings:

'And thy cup that maketh drunk, how excellent it is!' And 'his teeth whiter than milk'—which the little ones drink at the apostle's hand, namely the nourishing words, being not yet fit for solid food. He Himself, therefore, is the one in whom were laid up the promises made to Judah, until whose coming the princes—that is, the kings of Israel—never failed from that stock. And 'he himself is the expectation of the nations'—which is clearer by seeing than it becomes by expounding. CHAPTER XLII. On the sons of Joseph, whom Jacob blessed by the prophetic exchange of his hands. Now just as the two sons of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, presented a figure of two peoples among the Jews and the Christians (although, as far as pertains to the propagation of the flesh, neither did the Jews come from the seed of Esau, but the Idumeans;

nor did the Christian nations come from Jacob, but rather the Jews; for to this extent only did the figure hold good, in what was said: 'The elder shall serve the younger'): so it came about also in the two sons of Joseph; for the elder bore the type of the Jews, and the younger that of the Christians. When Jacob was blessing them, placing his right hand upon the younger whom he had on his left, and his left upon the elder whom he had on his right, it seemed grievous to their father, and he admonished his father, as it were correcting his error, and showing which of them was the elder. But Jacob refused to change his hands, but said: 'I know, my son, I know. And this one too shall be unto a people, and this one shall be exalted; but his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall be unto a multitude of nations.'

Here too he points to those two promises. For the one shall be 'unto a people,' the other 'unto a multitude of nations.' What is more evident than that by these two promises are contained the people of the Israelites and the whole world in the seed of Abraham—the one according to the flesh, the other according to faith? CHAPTER XLIII. On the times of Moses and of Joshua son of Nun, and of the judges, and thence of the kings, of whom Saul indeed is the first, but David is preeminent and is held so both by sacrament and by merit.

After Jacob had died, and Joseph also had died, throughout the remaining hundred and forty-four years, until the people went out from the land of Egypt, that nation grew to an incredible degree, even though worn down by such great persecutions that at one time the male children born were put to death, since the Egyptians, marveling and terrified at the excessive increase of that people. Then Moses, stolen by stealth from the slaughterers of the little ones, came to the royal house, while God was preparing great things through him; and being nourished and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter (which name belonged to all the kings in Egypt), he advanced into so great a man that he himself drew that marvelously multiplied nation out of the hardest and heaviest yoke of servitude which it bore there—nay rather, God did it through him, who had promised this to Abraham.

For he had previously fled from there, because, when defending an Israelite, he had killed an Egyptian and had become afraid; afterward, sent by divine command, in the power of the Spirit of God he overcame the resisting magicians of Pharaoh. Then through him ten memorable plagues were brought upon the Egyptians, when they refused to let the people of God go: water turned into blood, frogs and gnats, the dog-fly, the death of the cattle, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, the death of the firstborn. Finally the Egyptians, who, broken by so many and so great plagues, had at last for once let the Israelites go, were destroyed in the Red Sea while pursuing them. For when those were departing, the divided sea made a path; but these, following after, the wave, returning upon itself, submerged.

Then for forty years, with Moses as leader, the people of God was led in the desert, when the tabernacle was named 'of the testimony,' where God was worshiped with sacrifices that foretold things to come, since indeed the Law had already been given on the mountain very terribly; for the Godhead bore witness by most evident miraculous signs and voices. This took place soon after the exodus from Egypt, and after the people had begun to be in the desert, on the fiftieth day after the Passover had been celebrated through the immolation of the lamb;

which Passover is to such a degree a type of Christ, foretelling that He would pass over from this world to the Father through the victim of His passion (for Passover in the Hebrew tongue is interpreted 'passing over'), that, when the New Testament was now being revealed, after our Passover, Christ, was immolated, on the fiftieth day the Holy Spirit came from heaven, who in the Gospel is called the finger of God, in order to recall our remembrance to the memory of the first thing prefigured, since those tables of the Law also are recorded to have been written by the finger of God. After Moses had died, Joshua son of Nun ruled the people and led them into the land of promise, and divided it among the people.

By these two marvelous leaders wars also were waged most prosperously and marvelously, with God bearing witness that those victories came to them not so much on account of the merits of the Hebrew people as on account of the sins of those nations which were being subdued. After these leaders there were judges, the people being now settled in the land of promise, so that meanwhile the first promise made to Abraham—concerning one nation, namely the Hebrew, and the land of Canaan—might begin to be fulfilled, not yet that concerning all nations and the whole world; which the coming of Christ in the flesh, and not the observances of the old law but the faith of the Gospel, was to fulfill.

A prefiguration of this matter was made, in that not Moses, who had received the Law for the people on Mount Sinai, but Joshua—whose name too had been changed by God's command so that he should be called Joshua (Jesus)—led the people into the land of promise. In the times of the judges, however, as the sins of the people and the mercy of God stood, prosperous and adverse outcomes of wars alternated. From there it came to the times of the kings, of whom Saul reigned first; and when he had been reprobated and laid low by defeat in war, and his stock cast off lest kings should arise from it, David succeeded to the kingdom, whose son especially Christ is called. In him a certain turning-point was made, and as it were the beginning of the youth of the people of God;

of which kind, as it were, an adolescence was conducted from Abraham himself down to this David. For not in vain did the evangelist Matthew so recount the generations as to commend this first interval by fourteen generations, namely from Abraham down to David. For from adolescence a man begins to be able to beget; therefore he took the beginning of the generations from Abraham, who also was constituted father of nations when he received his changed name. Before him, then, there was as it were the boyhood of this race of the people of God, from Noah down to Abraham himself; and therefore it was found in a language, that is, the Hebrew. For from boyhood a man begins to speak, after infancy, which is so called because it cannot speak.

That first age oblivion indeed swallows up, just as the first age of the human race was wiped out by the Flood. For how few there are who remember their own infancy? Wherefore in this advance of the City of God, just as the preceding book contained one and the same first age, so let this book contain the two ages, the second and the third; in which third age, on account of the three-year-old heifer, the three-year-old she-goat, and the three-year-old ram, both the yoke of the Law was imposed and an abundance of sins appeared, and the beginning of the earthly kingdom arose, where spiritual men were not lacking, whose sacrament was figured in the turtledove and the pigeon. On the times of the prophets.

The promises of God which were made to Abraham—to whose seed we have learned, as God promises, that both the Israelite nation according to the flesh and all nations according to faith are owed—how they are fulfilled, the City of God, running through the order of the times, will show. Since, therefore, the preceding book was brought to an end at the kingdom of David, now from that same kingdom, as far as seems sufficient for the work undertaken, we touch upon the rest that follows. This time, then, from when the holy Samuel began to prophesy, and thenceforth, until the people of Israel was led captive into Babylon, and thence, according to the prophecy of the holy Jeremiah, after seventy years the Israelites being returned the house of God was restored—this whole time is the time of the prophets.

For although we may not undeservedly call prophets even the patriarch Noah himself, in whose days the whole earth was washed away by the Flood, and others both before and after, down to this time when kings began to be among the people of God—on account of certain things future through them, whether in any way signified or foretold, which pertained to the City of God and the kingdom of heaven (especially since we read that some of them were more expressly so named, like Abraham, like Moses)—nevertheless the days of the prophets were chiefly and most properly said to be those from when Samuel began to prophesy, who both anointed Saul first and, when he had been reprobated, anointed David himself as king by God's command, from whose stock the rest should succeed, as long as it behooved them so to succeed.

Therefore, what things were foretold by the prophets concerning Christ, while the City of God—with its members departing by dying and succeeding by being born—was running through these times: if I should wish to record them all, it would proceed into the immeasurable; first because that very Scripture which, setting out in order the kings and their deeds and outcomes, seems as it were occupied with historical diligence in narrating things done, if it be considered and treated with the aid of God's Spirit, will be found bent upon foretelling things future either more, or at any rate not less, than upon announcing things past;

(and to trace this out by close investigation and to demonstrate it by discussion—how laborious and lengthy it is, and how needful of many volumes—who is ignorant, who considers these things even moderately?); next, because those very things which are not doubted to pertain to prophecy are so many concerning Christ and the kingdom of heaven, which is the City of God, that to lay this open a greater disputation would be necessary than the measure of this work demands. Accordingly, if I shall be able, I will so govern my pen that, in carrying out this work according to God's will, I may neither say the things that are superfluous nor pass over the things that are sufficient. CHAPTER II. At what time the promise of God concerning the land of Canaan was fulfilled, which even carnal Israel received into possession.

In the preceding book we said that from the beginning two things were promised to Abraham in God's promises: one, namely, that his seed would possess the land of Canaan (which is signified where it is said: 'Go into the land which I shall show thee, and I will make thee into a great nation'), and the other, far more excellent, not concerning carnal but spiritual seed, through which he is father not of one Israelite nation, but of all nations which follow the footsteps of his faith; which began to be promised in these words: 'And in thee shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed'; and thereafter, by very many other testimonies, we showed these two things to have been promised.

Therefore Abraham's seed, that is, the people of Israel according to the flesh, was now in the land of promise, and there it had now begun to reign, not only by holding and possessing the cities of its adversaries, but even by having kings—the promises of God concerning that people being now fulfilled in great part, not only those which had been made to the three patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and whatever others in their times, but also those which had been made through Moses himself (through whom that same people was freed from Egyptian servitude, and through whom all things past were revealed) in his times, when he led the people through the wilderness.

But neither through the distinguished leader Joshua son of Nun—through whom that people was brought into the land of promise, and who, after the nations had been conquered, divided it among the twelve tribes to whom God had commanded, and died—nor after him throughout the whole time of the judges, had the promise of God concerning the land of Canaan, from a certain river of Egypt as far as the great river Euphrates, been fulfilled; nor yet was it foretold as future, but it was awaited as to be fulfilled. But it was fulfilled through David and his son Solomon, whose kingdom was extended over as great a space as had been promised; for they subjected all those peoples and made them tributary.

Thus, therefore, in the land of promise according to the flesh, that is, in the land of Canaan, under these kings the seed of Abraham had been so established that nothing thereafter remained for that earthly promise of God to be fulfilled, except that in that same land, as far as pertains to temporal prosperity, through the succession of posterity, in an unshaken state until the end of this mortal age, the Hebrew nation should remain—if it obeyed the laws of the Lord its God.

But since God knew that it would not do this, He used even temporal punishments of it, both to exercise in it His few faithful ones and to admonish those who were afterward to be in all nations—those whom it behooved to be admonished—in whom He was to fulfill the other promise, the new testament being revealed through the incarnation of Christ. CHAPTER III. On the threefold significations of the prophets, which are referred now to the earthly, now to the heavenly Jerusalem, now however to both.

Wherefore, just as those divine oracles to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and whatever other prophetic signs or sayings were made in the sacred letters of the preceding times, so also the other prophecies from this time of the kings onward partly pertain to the nation of Abraham's flesh, but partly to that seed of his in whom all nations are blessed as coheirs of Christ through the new testament, for the possession of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven; partly therefore to the handmaid, who generates into servitude, that is, the earthly Jerusalem, which serves with her children, but partly to the free City of God, that is, the true Jerusalem eternal in the heavens, whose children—men living according to God—sojourn upon the earth;

but there are among them certain things which are understood to pertain to both—to the handmaid properly, to the free figuratively. The utterances of the prophets are therefore found to be threefold, since some indeed look to the earthly Jerusalem, some to the heavenly, and several to both. I see that what I say must be proved by examples. Nathan the prophet was sent to reprove King David for a grave sin and to foretell to him the evils that followed. These things and the like, whether publicly—that is, for the salvation or benefit of the people—or privately, when anyone earned the divine utterances for his own affairs, by which something future might be known for the use of temporal life—who would doubt that they pertained to the earthly city? But where it is read:

'Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, and I will complete for the house of Israel and the house of Judah a new testament, not according to the testament which I disposed for their fathers in the day when I took hold of their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they themselves did not remain in my testament, and I neglected them, saith the Lord. Because this is the testament which I will establish for the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord, giving my laws into their mind, and upon their hearts I will write them; and I will see them, and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people'—without doubt the Jerusalem above is prophesied, whose reward is God Himself; and to have Him, and to be His, is there the highest and the whole good.

But this very thing pertains to both: that Jerusalem is called the City of God, and that in it the house of God is prophesied as future, and that prophecy seems to be fulfilled when King Solomon builds that most noble temple. For these things both happened in the earthly Jerusalem according to history, and were figures of the heavenly Jerusalem.

This kind of prophecy, as it were compacted and intermingled from both, in the old canonical books which contain narratives of things done, prevails very greatly, and has exercised and does exercise the minds of those who search the sacred letters, so that what is read as historically foretold and fulfilled in the seed of Abraham according to the flesh is inquired into as to what it allegorically signifies as to be fulfilled also in the seed of Abraham according to faith; to such a degree that it has seemed to some that there is nothing in those same books, whether both foretold and effected, or effected though not foretold, which does not insinuate something to be referred, by figurative signification, to the heavenly City of God and its children, pilgrims in this life.

But if this is so, then the utterances of the prophets—or rather of all those scriptures which are reckoned under the name of the Old Testament—will be twofold, not threefold. For there will be nothing there which pertains only to the earthly Jerusalem, if whatever is said and fulfilled there concerning it or on account of it signifies something which is also to be referred, by allegorical prefiguration, to the heavenly Jerusalem; but there will be only two kinds: one which pertains to the free Jerusalem, the other which pertains to both.

But to me, just as those seem to err greatly who think that no things done in that kind of literature signify anything beyond that which they were done in that manner, so do those seem to dare greatly who contend that absolutely all things there are wrapped in allegorical significations. Therefore I have said that they are threefold, not twofold. This indeed I judge, not however blaming those who have been able there to carve out, from any matter done, a sense of spiritual understanding—provided at least that the truth of the history be preserved first. But as for those things which are said in such a way that they cannot be congruous with things done, humanly or divinely, or to be done—what faithful person would doubt that they are not said in vain?

Who would not recall them to spiritual understanding, if he can, or confess that they ought to be recalled by one who is able? CHAPTER IV. On the prefigured exchange of the Israelite kingdom and priesthood, and on those things which Hannah, the mother of Samuel, bearing the person of the Church, prophesied. The advance of the City of God, then, when it came to the times of the kings—when David, Saul having been reprobated, first so obtained the kingdom that his posterity thereafter reigned in the earthly Jerusalem in long succession—gave a figure, by the deed done signifying and foretelling what must not be passed over in silence, concerning the change of things to come, which pertains to the two testaments,

the old and the new, wherein the priesthood and the kingdom were changed through a new and everlasting priest who is at the same time king, who is Christ Jesus. For both Samuel, substituted into God's ministry when the priest Eli was reprobated, discharging at once the office of priest and judge, and David, when Saul was cast off, established king in the kingdom, figured this which I am saying. Hannah too, the very mother of Samuel, who was formerly barren and was gladdened by a later fecundity, seems to prophesy nothing other, when she pours out her thanksgiving to the Lord, exulting, when she rendered to God that same boy, born and weaned, with the same piety with which she had vowed him. For she says: 'My heart is confirmed in the Lord, my horn is exalted in my God.'

'My mouth is enlarged over my enemies, I have rejoiced in thy salvation. For there is none holy as the Lord, and there is none righteous as our God; there is none holy beside thee. Do not glory, and do not speak lofty things, nor let great-speaking proceed from your mouth. For the Lord is a God of knowledge, and a God preparing his own devices. He has made the bow of the mighty weak, and the weak are girded with strength. They that were full of bread are diminished, and the hungry have passed over the earth. For the barren has borne seven, and she that had many children is made weak. The Lord killeth and maketh alive, he bringeth down to the lower regions and bringeth back. The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich, he humbleth and exalteth.'

'He raiseth up the poor from the earth, and lifteth the needy from the dunghill, that he may set him with the mighty of the people, and giving them a seat of glory as an inheritance; giving the vow to him that voweth, and he hath blessed the years of the righteous, for a man is not mighty by his own strength. The Lord shall make his adversary weak, the Lord is holy. Let not the prudent glory in his prudence, and let not the mighty glory in his might, and let not the rich glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, to understand and to know the Lord, and to do judgment and righteousness in the midst of the earth. The Lord hath ascended into the heavens and hath thundered; he himself shall judge the ends of the earth, for he is righteous; and he giveth strength to our kings, and shall exalt the horn of his Christ.'

Will these words, then, truly be thought to be those of one little woman giving thanks for the son born to her? Is the mind of men so turned away from the light of truth that it does not perceive that the words which she poured forth surpass the measure of this woman? Moreover, whoever is fittingly moved by the very things which have now begun to be fulfilled even in this earthly pilgrimage—does he not attend and behold and recognize, through this woman, whose very name, that is, Hannah, is interpreted 'her grace,' the Christian religion itself, the City of God itself, whose king and founder is Christ, in short the grace of God itself thus speaking by the prophetic spirit—from which the proud are estranged so that they fall, by which the humble are filled so that they rise—which this hymn especially resounded?

Unless perhaps someone is going to say that this woman prophesied nothing, but only praised God with exulting proclamation on account of the son whom, having prayed, she obtained. What then does she mean by saying: 'He hath made the bow of the mighty weak, and the weak are girded with strength; they that were full of bread are diminished, and the hungry have passed over the earth; for the barren hath borne seven, and she that had many children is made weak'? Had she herself borne seven, although she had been barren? She had only one when she said these things; but neither afterward did she bear seven, or six (of whom Samuel himself would be the seventh), but three males and two females. Then, among that people, when as yet no one reigned, what she put at the end: