Collected Works 6 part 3/4

But Christ, who spoke no deceit from his mouth and who displayed all righteousness and humility — and, as we recalled foretold of him above — was exposed to that kind of death not for his own deserts, but so that those things which were foretold by the prophets as coming upon him through you might be fulfilled; as in the Psalms the very Spirit of Christ was already singing, saying: 'They repaid me evil for good,' and: 'What I had not seized I then paid back,' and: 'They pierced my hands and my feet,' and: 'They put gall into my drink, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink,' and: 'Upon my garment they cast lots' — just as the other things which you were to commit against him were foretold.

All these things indeed he suffered, having endured them not for any evil deed of his own, but that the Scriptures from the mouth of the prophets might be fulfilled. And assuredly the mystery of his passion had to be prefigured in the prophecies, and the more incredible it was, the more it would prove a scandal if it were nakedly foretold, and the more magnificent, the more it had to be overshadowed, so that the difficulty of understanding might seek grace from God. And so, first of all, Isaac, when he was led by his father as a victim, himself carrying the wood, even then denoted the death of Christ, who was yielded up by his Father as a victim, carrying the wood of his own passion.

Joseph too himself prefigured Christ, even by this alone — that I may not delay my course — that he suffered persecution from his brothers and was sold into Egypt on account of the grace of God, just as Christ was sold by Israel, carnally by his brothers, when he was betrayed by Judas. For Joseph too is blessed by his father in these words: 'His is the beauty of a bull, his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them he shall winnow the nations together, even to the ends of the earth.' Certainly it was not a rhinoceros that was signified as the unicorn, nor a minotaur as two-horned, but Christ was signified in him — a bull on account of his twofold disposition, to some fierce as judge, to others gentle as savior, whose horns would be the extremities of the cross —

for on the yard-arm of a ship, which is part of a cross, its ends are so called — while the single horn is the central upright, the stake. By this power of the cross, then, and horned in this manner, he now winnows all the nations through faith, taking them from earth to heaven, and then shall winnow them by judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth. The same one will also be a bull elsewhere in the same Scripture. When Jacob extended his blessing upon Simeon and Levi, he prophesies concerning the scribes and Pharisees; for from those two is drawn their lineage. For it is interpreted spiritually thus: 'Simeon and Levi accomplished iniquity out of their sect' — namely, that with which they persecuted Christ;

'into their counsel let not my soul come, and upon their assembly let not my inward parts recline, for in their indignation they slew men' — that is, the prophets — 'and in their lust they hamstrung a bull' — that is, Christ, whom, after the slaughter of the prophets, they slew, and cruelly severed his sinews by fastening him with nails. Otherwise it would be pointless, if after the murders already committed by them he were reproaching them for a butchery of others and not of themselves.

Now indeed, why did Moses, precisely at that time when Joshua was fighting against Amalek, pray sitting with outstretched hands, when in matters so alarming he ought rather to have commended his prayer with knees bent and hands beating his breast and face rolling on the ground — unless it was because there, where the name of the Lord Jesus, who was one day to contend against the devil, was being spoken, the posture of the cross too was necessary, through which Jesus was to bear away the victory?

Again, why did that same Moses, after he had forbidden every likeness of anything, set up a bronze serpent placed on a pole in the posture of one hanging, as a saving spectacle for Israel, at that time when they were being destroyed by serpents after their idolatry — unless it was because here he was pointing to the Lord's cross, by which the serpent, the devil, was designated, and everyone who had been wounded by serpents of that kind — that is, by his angels — was, on account of the sinfulness of transgressions, made whole by being directed to the mysteries of that cross? For whoever then looked upon it was freed from the serpents' bite. Come now, if you have read in the prophet in the Psalms:

'The Lord has reigned from the tree,' I await what you understand, lest perchance you suppose some wood-cutter king to be signified and not Christ, who from that time reigned after death was overcome by the passion of the tree. Likewise Isaiah too: 'For a child,' he says, 'is born to us, and a son is given to us.' What novelty is there, unless he speaks of the Son of God? — 'And there is given to us one whose dominion has been made upon his own shoulder.' Who at all of kings bears the insignia of his own power upon his shoulder, and not either a diadem upon his head or a scepter in his hand, or the use of some new peculiar mark?

But the sole new king of the ages, Christ Jesus, lifted up his new glory and power and majesty upon his shoulder — namely the cross — so that, according to the earlier prophecy, from that time the Lord should reign from the tree. For concerning this tree God also hints through Jeremiah what you were going to say: 'Come, let us cast wood into his bread and crush him from the land of the living, and his name shall be remembered no more.' Assuredly it was into his body that wood was cast. For thus Christ revealed it, calling the bread his body, whose body long ago the prophet announced in the bread. If you still seek proclamations of the Lord's cross, the twenty-first Psalm can now sufficiently satisfy you, containing the whole passion of Christ, who even then sang his own glory:

'They pierced,' he says, 'my hands and my feet,' which is the peculiar atrocity of the cross. And again, when he implores the aid of the Father: 'Save me,' he says, 'from the lion's mouth' — namely death — 'and my lowliness from the horns of the unicorns' — that is, from the points of the cross, as we showed above. This cross neither David himself suffered nor any of the kings of the Jews, lest you suppose that the passion of any other is prophesied than his who alone was so signally crucified by the people.

Now if the hardness of your heart shall spurn and mock all these interpretations, we shall prove that the mere death of Christ having been prophesied is sufficient, so that from the fact that it was not declared what kind of death it would be, it is to be understood to have come about through the cross, and that the passion of the cross was to be assigned to no other than to him whose death was foretold. For I wish to show his death and passion and burial by the single utterance of Isaiah: 'By the crimes of my people,' he says, 'was he led to death, and I will give the wicked for his burial and the rich for his death, because he did no wickedness, nor was deceit found in his mouth; and God willed to deliver his soul from death,' and the rest. He also says further: 'His burial has been taken away from the midst.'

For he was not buried unless he had died, nor was his burial taken away from the midst except through his resurrection. Then it adds: 'Therefore he himself shall have many for his inheritance, and shall divide the spoils of many' — who else but he who was born, as we have shown above? — 'because his soul was delivered up unto death.' For once the reason for his grace was shown, namely that the injury of death was to be recompensed, it was likewise shown that he would obtain these things on account of his death after his death, that is, after his resurrection. For as to what happened in his Passion, that midday grew dark, the prophet Amos declares, saying: 'And it shall be in that day, saith the Lord:'

'the sun shall set at midday, and the day of light shall grow dark upon the earth; and I will turn your feast days into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon your loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning for a beloved one, and those who are with him as a day of grief.' For this too Moses prophesied that you would do at the beginning of the first month of the new fruits, when the whole multitude of the children of Israel was to sacrifice a lamb at evening; and he foretold that you should eat this solemnity of that day, that is, the Passover of unleavened bread, with bitterness; and he added that it is the Passover of the Lord, that is, the Passion of Christ — which was fulfilled in this very way, that on the first day of unleavened bread you slew Christ.

And that the prophecies might be fulfilled, the day hastened to make evening, that is, to produce darkness, which came at midday; and thus God turned your feast days into mourning and your songs into lamentation. For after the Passion of Christ there befell you also captivity and dispersion, foretold beforehand by the Holy Spirit. XI. For on account of these deserts of yours Ezekiel too announces your coming disaster, and not only in this present age, which has already come to pass, but in the day of retribution which shall follow. From that disaster none shall be delivered, save he who shall have been sealed with the Passion of Christ whom you reject. For thus it is written: 'And he said unto me:'

'Son of man, hast thou seen what the elders of Israel do, each of them in darkness, each in his hidden chamber? For they said: The Lord seeth us not, the Lord hath forsaken the land. And he said unto me: Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations which these do. And he brought me to the doors of the gate of the Lord's house which looketh toward the north, and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. And the Lord said unto me: Son of man, hast thou seen? Is it a small thing to the house of Judah, that they do the abominations which they have done? And thou shalt yet see greater affections of theirs.'

'And he brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house, and behold, at the doors of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men: their backs were turned toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and these were worshipping the sun. And he said unto me: Seest thou, son of man? Is the house of Judah a little thing, that they do the abominations which they do here? For they have filled up their impieties, and behold, they are as it were mocking; and I will act in my indignation; mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and they shall cry in mine ears with a loud voice, and I will not hear them, neither will I have pity. And he cried in mine ears with a loud voice, saying: The vengeance of this city hath drawn near.'

'And each one had the weapons of destruction in his hand; and behold, six men came from the way of the high gate which looketh toward the north, and each one's axe of dispersion was in his hand. And one man in the midst of them was clothed with a long robe, and a girdle of sapphire about his loins; and they went in and stood beside the brazen altar; and the brightness of the God of Israel went up from the Cherubim which was over them under the open sky of the house. And he called the man who was clothed with the long robe, who had upon his loins the girdle, and the Lord said unto him: Pass through the midst of Jerusalem, and mark a sign upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and grieve over all the abominations that are done in the midst of them. And to these he said, while I was listening:'

'Go after him into the city and smite, and let not your eyes spare, and have no pity on old man or young man or virgin; and slay the little ones and the women, all of them, that they may be utterly destroyed; but touch not any upon whom is the sign [Tau], and begin at my sanctuary.' Now the sacrament of this sign, foretold in various ways, is that in which life was prepared beforehand for men, in which the Jews were not to believe, just as Moses formerly announced in Exodus, saying:

'You shall be cast out of the land into which you enter, and among those nations you shall have no rest, and there shall be no stability for the sole of thy foot; and God shall give thee a fainting heart, and a wasting soul, and failing eyes so that they see not; and thy life shall be hanging on the wood before thine eyes, and thou shalt not believe thy life.' Therefore, since the prophecies were fulfilled through his coming — that is, through the Nativity which we mentioned above, and the Passion which we have plainly set forth — for this reason Daniel too said that the vision and the prophet should be sealed, because Christ is the seal of all the prophets, fulfilling all things that had aforetime been announced concerning him; for after his coming and his own Passion there is no longer vision nor prophet.

Whence he says most firmly that his coming seals up vision and prophecy. And so, having shown both the number of years and the time of the fulfilled sixty-two and a half weeks, we have proved that Christ then came, that is, was born; and of the seven and a half weeks, which are subdivided in the cutting off of the former weeks — within which times we have shown that Christ suffered; and thus, the seventy weeks being concluded and the city destroyed, sacrifice and anointing thereupon ceased. Let it suffice thus far to have traced meanwhile the order of Christ concerning these matters, since he is proved to be such as he was announced to be — from this very harmony of the Scriptures, which we have set forth against the Jews on the basis of the prejudgment of the greater part;

for let them not call into doubt or deny the things we bring forward as written, so that from this too they cannot deny that these are on a par with the divine Scriptures, so that the things which were foretold as future after Christ may be recognized as fulfilled. Nor, unless he had come, after whom the things announced were to be blotted out, would even the things that are fulfilled be proved. XII. Behold all the nations emerging thenceforth from the abyss of human error unto the Lord God the Creator and his Christ; and, if thou darest to deny that this was prophesied, at once the promise of the Father meets thee in the Psalms, saying: 'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee; ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and thy possession the ends of the earth.'

Nor wilt thou be able to call any other the Son of God than Christ, nor to say that the ends of the earth were promised rather to David — who reigned within Judaea alone — than to Christ, who has now taken the whole world by the faith of his Gospel, as he says through Isaiah: 'Behold, I have given thee for a covenant of my people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the eyes of the blind' — namely of those who err — 'to loose the bound from their chains' — that is, to free from sins — 'and those who sit in darkness' — namely of ignorance — 'from the prison house,' that is, of death. And if these things come to pass through Christ, they will have been prophesied of none other than of him through whom we behold them accomplished. XIII.

Therefore, since the children of Israel affirm that we err in receiving the Christ who has already come, let us prescribe to them from the Scriptures themselves that the Christ who was foretold has already come — although from the times of Daniel's prophesying we have proved that the Christ who was announced has already come. For it behoved him to be born in Bethlehem of Judah. For thus it is written in the prophet: 'And thou, Bethlehem, art not the least among the leaders of Judah; for out of thee shall come forth a leader who shall feed my people Israel.' But if he is not yet born, who was announced as the leader to proceed from the tribe of Judah out of Bethlehem? For it behoved him to proceed from the tribe of Judah and from Bethlehem.

But we now observe that no one of the race of Israel has remained in the city of Bethlehem, ever since it was forbidden that any of the Jews should tarry within the confines of that region — so that this too might be fulfilled, namely the prophet's word: 'Your land is desolate, your cities are burned with fire' — that is, what befell them in the time of war — 'strangers shall devour your region in your sight, and it shall be desolate and overthrown by alien peoples,' that is, by the Romans. And in another place the prophet says thus:

'You shall see the King with glory,' that is, Christ working mighty deeds unto the glory of God the Father, 'and your eyes shall behold the land from afar' — because to you, for your deserts, after the storming of Jerusalem, being forbidden to enter your land, it was permitted only to behold it from afar with the eyes; 'your soul,' he says, 'shall meditate fear,' namely what they suffered at the time of their overthrow. How then shall a leader be born of Judah, and how far shall he proceed from Bethlehem, as the divine volumes of the prophets announce, when there is absolutely none left there this day of Israel from whose stock Christ could be born? For if, according to the Jews, he has not yet come, when he shall have begun to come, whence shall he be anointed?

For the Law prescribed that in captivity it is not lawful to prepare the anointing of the royal chrism. But if there is now no longer even anointing there, as Daniel prophesied — for he says 'it shall be exterminated' — then there is no longer anointing there, because there is not even the temple where was the horn from which the kings were anointed. If therefore there is no anointing, whence shall the leader be anointed who is to be born in Bethlehem, or how shall he proceed from Bethlehem, when of the seed of Israel there is absolutely none in Bethlehem? Let us, then, show once more, both that Christ has already come according to the prophets, and has suffered, and has already been received in the heavens, and is to come thence again according to the preachings of the prophets.

For after his coming, according to Daniel, the city itself was to be destroyed; and we read that it was so done, and we recognize it. For the Scripture says thus: 'the city and the sanctuary shall be destroyed together with the leader.' What leader? Undoubtedly he who was to proceed from Bethlehem and from the tribe of Judah. Whence it is also manifest that the city was to be destroyed at that same time when its leader was to suffer within it, according to the Scriptures of the prophets who say: 'I have stretched out my hands all the day long to a rebellious people that contradicts me, who walk in a way that is not good, but after their own sins.' Likewise in the Psalms: 'They have destroyed my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones; and they themselves have looked and gazed upon me,' and:

'In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.' These things David did not suffer, so that he might seem to have said them deservedly of himself, but Christ who was crucified: for the hands and feet are not destroyed save of him who is hanged upon the wood. Whence David himself said that the Lord would reign from the wood; for elsewhere too the prophet proclaims the fruit of this wood, saying: 'The earth hath given her blessings' — namely that virgin earth, not yet watered by rains nor made fruitful by showers, from which man was then first fashioned, from which Christ has now been born according to the flesh from a virgin; 'and the wood,' he says, 'hath borne its fruit' — not that wood in paradise which gave death to the first-formed, but the wood of Christ's Passion, from which the life that hangs was not believed by you.

For this wood was then in a mystery, when Moses sweetened the bitter water, whereby the people who were perishing of thirst in the wilderness were revived by drinking — even as we, drawn forth from the calamities of the world in which we dwelt, perishing of thirst (that is, tried by the divine word), drinking through the water of baptism by the wood of Christ's Passion, revived the faith that is in him. From which faith Israel fell away, according to Jeremiah the prophet, who says: 'Send, inquire diligently, whether such things have been done, whether the nations change their gods — and these are no gods; but my people hath changed its glory, from which nothing shall profit them; the heaven was astonished at this.' And when was it astonished? Undoubtedly when Christ suffered. 'And it shuddered,' he says, 'exceedingly greatly.'

And when did it shudder exceedingly, save at the Passion of Christ, when the earth also trembled, and the sun grew dark at midday, and the veil of the temple was rent, and the tombs were torn open? 'For,' he says, 'my people hath done these two evils: they have forsaken me the fountain of the water of life, and have dug themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water.' Undoubtedly, by not receiving Christ the fountain of the water of life, they began to have broken cisterns, that is, synagogues in the dispersions of the nations, in which the Holy Spirit no longer abides, as in time past he abode in the temple before the coming of Christ, who is the true temple of God. For the prophet foretells that they should suffer this very thirst of the divine Spirit, saying:

'Behold, they that serve me shall eat, but ye shall hunger; they that serve me shall drink, but ye shall thirst, and from the affliction of your spirit ye shall howl; for ye shall leave your name for a satiety unto mine elect, but the Lord shall slay you; and to them that serve me a new name shall be named, which shall be blessed upon the earth.' Furthermore we read that the mystery of this wood was celebrated also in the Kingdoms. For when the sons of the prophets were felling wood with axes upon the river Jordan, the iron leaped off and was sunk in the river; and so, when the prophet Elisha came up, the sons of the prophets besought him to draw out the iron which had been sunk in the river.

And so [Elisha], having taken wood and cast it into the place where it had been submerged, the iron at once floated up, which the sons of the prophets recovered, and the wood sank. From which they understood that the spirit of Elijah was represented in him. What is more manifest than the mystery of this wood, namely that the hardness of this world, sunk in the depth of error, is set free by the wood of Christ, that is, of his Passion, in baptism — so that what once perished through the wood in Adam might be restored through the wood of Christ; namely to us who have succeeded in the place of the prophets, enduring today in the world those things which the prophets ever suffered for the sake of the divine religion;

for some they stoned, others they drove into flight, and very many indeed they delivered up to death — which they cannot deny. This wood Isaac too, the son of Abraham, himself carried for the sacrifice, when God had commanded that he himself be made a victim. But because these were mysteries which were being kept to be accomplished in the times of Christ, Isaac too was preserved, when the ram was offered that was caught by the horns in the thicket; and Christ in his own times carried the wood upon his shoulders, clinging to the horns of the cross, with the crown of thorns placed around his head. For it behoved him to be made a sacrifice for all the nations, who 'was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.'

For he spoke nothing to Pilate who questioned him; for in his humiliation his judgment was taken away. 'But who shall declare his generation?' Wherefore? Because absolutely no man was privy to the generation of Christ at his conception, when the Virgin Mary was found with child by the word of God; and because his life should be taken from the earth. Why so? Because after his resurrection from the dead, which was accomplished on the third day, the heavens received him, according to the prophecy uttered in this manner: 'Before the light they shall rise unto me, saying: Let us go and return unto the Lord our God, for he himself shall rescue and deliver us after two days, on the third day' — which is his glorious resurrection — whose neither nativity nor Passion the Jews acknowledged:

from the earth into the heavens he received him, whence the Spirit himself had also come to the Virgin. Therefore, since the Jews still contend that their Christ has not yet come — whom we have proved in so many ways to have come — let the Jews acknowledge their own downfall, which they were foretold to bring upon themselves after the coming of Christ, on account of the impiety by which they both despised him and slew him. For first, from the day on which, according to the saying of Isaiah, 'a man cast away his abominations of gold and silver, which they had made to be worshipped, vain and hurtful things' — that is, from the time when we the Gentiles, our hearts enlightened, cast away idols through the truth of Christ — the Jews behold that too accomplished which follows.

For the Lord of Hosts took away from the Jews and from Jerusalem, among other things, also the wise architect who builds the Church, the temple of God, and the holy city, and the house of the Lord. For from then the grace of God ceased among them, and it was commanded to the clouds that they should not rain rain upon the vineyard Sorech — that is, upon the house of Israel, that the heavenly benefits should not come forth for it. For it had produced thorns, from which it had crowned Christ, and not righteousness but the clamour with which it had wrung him out unto the cross. And thus, the former graces being withdrawn, the Law and the prophets were until John, and the pool of Bethesda until the coming of Christ:

[the healing of diseases from Israel] ceased thereafter from its benefits, when, out of the persistence of their fury, the name of the Lord was blasphemed through them, as it is written: 'On your account the name of the Lord is blasphemed among the Gentiles.' For from them the infamy began, and the intervening time was from Tiberius until Vespasian. And when they had committed these things, and had not understood Christ coming in the time of their visitation, their land was made desolate, and their cities burned with fire;

their region, under their own gaze, was left over to strangers devouring it; the daughter of Zion was as a watchtower in a vineyard, as a little hut in a cucumber field — namely from the time that Israel knew not the Lord, and the people understood him not, but rather forsook him and provoked the Holy One of Israel to indignation. Thus also the conditional threat of the sword: 'If ye will not, nor obey, the sword shall devour you.' Whence we prove that the sword was Christ, by not hearing whom they perished; who also in the Psalm demands their dispersion from the Father, saying: 'Scatter them in thy power.' Who again, pleading through Isaiah for their burning: 'For my sake,' he says, 'these things have been done to you; in anguish shall ye sleep.'

Therefore, since these things were foretold that the Jews should suffer on account of Christ, and since we find that they have suffered them, and behold them lingering in dispersion, it is manifest that these things befell the Jews on account of Christ, the sense of the Scriptures conspiring with the outcome of events and the order of the times. Or if Christ, on whose account these things were foretold that they should suffer, has not yet come, then when he shall have come, they shall suffer them. And where then is the daughter of Zion to be abandoned, who is not in Judaea today? Where the cities to be burned, which are already in heaps of ruins? Where the dispersion of the nation, which is already exiled? Restore the state of Judaea which Christ may find, and contend that another is to come. XIV. Learn now, from the abundance of your error, his leadership.

We say that two states of Christ were demonstrated by the prophets, and just as many of his comings were foretold: one in humility — the first, of course — when he was to be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer, dumb, so opening not his mouth, not even comely in appearance. 'For we announced,' he says, 'concerning him:'