This is He who was immolated to God in place of Isaac. This one Abraham offered: this one he was bidden to immolate. TRACTATE XI. On Abraham, II. (The beginning is wanting.) I. For virginity is not provoked by precept, nor yet is continence, when left aside, rejected. As an author for whose faith, dearly beloved, we have, namely, the holy Abraham, who once had a son, Isaac. A simple name indeed, but a manifold pronouncement. For this one, dearly beloved, despaired of by his parents, but received by the foreknowing God, is conceived in the flower of an age already past and of generating power:
not so much from his parents as by divine command did he merit to be procreated, and in the last courses of life a son opened Sara's womb by the first name, to whom an aged and modest old age had already paid the reverence of a grandmother. Under this despair of birth, therefore, dearly beloved, and being born to admiration, in the first rudiments of his infancy, the innocent martyr is offered to God who commands and demands, an immaculate host, nor an unprepared victim: who as a witness of divine fear is asked for unto faith by the Lord, is led forth by his parent; but a host not of blood, but of salvation. To this glory, therefore, the abundance of a late birth and a despaired-of fruitfulness is brought forth. II.
Abraham's wife, ignorant of childbearing, when, her old age being cold, she could neither hope for offspring nor was confident to carry it, took up the offices of a mother, she who already knew not the duties of a wife. And at that time the birth is brought forth, when warmth was already leaving her generative parts. A thing wholly wondrous, dearly beloved, and not to be hoped for by ages to come, the offspring of the divine ordinance is formed: an age that is spent is recalled to its beginning: fruitfulness is girded up out of barrenness, that what was written through the Prophet might be fulfilled: 'Rejoice, O barren one, that didst not bear; break forth and cry out, thou that travailest not: for many are the children of the desolate' (Isaiah 54:1).
For behold, dearly beloved, in Sara, with the sinews drawn tight by age, and the juice of blood failing, the veins drying up, the skin hard along with the inward parts, a deformed and wan pallor now had almost lost the human features, nor was there any motion in the members for pleasure. Nothing had remained in the substance of the body; yet nothing was denied to the infant in the womb: and she whose age testified her a grandmother, the birth adorned as a mother, when, under an uncertain name of affection, tenderness wavered, and while the womb brought forth a son, old age might have hoped for a grandson. Thus at last, the babe being born against expectation by the discord of time and nature, the Angel imposed on Isaac his name: that gladness might confirm what the weakness of age had despaired of.
And indeed the parents' affection toward their son increases anew: who was deemed the more certain from the promise, the sweeter from the lateness, the more blessed from the despair. The only one in number, and now first in the solidity of love, had occupied the whole breast of maternal tenderness: nourished with hastened rearing, about to provide a victim to God, and to his parents a pious parricide. III. Behold, dearly beloved, as the Apostle says, the son born against hope, Abraham leads to the altar to immolate to the Lord by the Lord's own authority (Romans 4:18): nor is the sword lacking for the ministry, that the father might be at once also a priest. Like is the son's security too, from the divine will: who, when he saw not the host in whose place he had been chosen, kept inquiring.
But the tender hands, still soft, are bound with fetters: and lest anything seem less than belongs to a host, the binding constrains his feet, lest the goaded victim should displease. Let then, dearly beloved, the abominable suspicion of impiety cease here. Abraham preferred the Lord to his son, the priest to the father; nor did he deem himself pious, unless he had proved himself faithful. In short, dearly beloved, undaunted, he is armed for the ministry of immolation; his mind, secure for the stroke of the wound, gropes, but more secure his hand; the sword, raised for immolating, is poised; nor does the near death sadden the boy, lest trepidation should betray a feeble faith. Under this constancy, then, of the one immolating and the one to be immolated, he merited to be absolved, while he lays aside human fear from himself;
and as far as pertains to faith, the father fulfilled the things promised, while the Lord, His will being proven, forbade the parricide. IV. To His person, therefore, the modest nativity of Christ is referred, but the hall of the virginal womb more secret: a body formed by the art of the divine word, the womb of an inwardly-melting body bore Him within itself. But against the heavenly offspring, begotten not of seed, the most certain Lord, the impious counsels of the Jews blazed up: whom, being silent, as one liable, and grieving only for their blindness, just as Isaac, not to perish at the altar, so to the cross the wicked men led Christ to be uplifted.
But because eternity knows not how to die, the Lord came alive again after the tomb, and to the Jews there remained only the envy of a condemned will, since they were unwilling even to acknowledge the Lord, and believed they were punished by their thought alone, whom it had been wicked even too tardily to adore. At the savagery of this monstrous deed the dread form of the elements is changed, and nature betrays God's injury sooner than the people of the Jews understands it. From the perpetrator, therefore, the horror of fury began. The deadly throng is girded, and against the invisible One hung up the point of the swords is turned. Nor thence, as I said, did the cruelty obtain the fruit of its crime: because, just as in Isaac one thing is offered and another immolated;
so also in the passion of Christ, that which had transgressed through Adam is set free through Christ. TRACTATE XII. On Abraham, III. I. Abraham, that he might be the father of many nations, did not here learn righteousness, but begot it. The approach of cities had not infected him. He had not the law, whose manner of life was a law. He hears exile commanded him by God, that he should at once dismiss his kindred and his land. And then Abraham, looking up with his eyes, saw three; he ran, he adores, prostrate on his face, he offers a host. 'Refresh yourselves,' he says, 'under this great tree' (Genesis 18:4). He sprinkles fine flour, he slaughters a calf. After this a son is promised to him of lawful matrimony, of faith, not of age. Sara conceives:
she bears without labour the burden of the womb, she who was not able to walk about: then she learns to be a mother, when she ceases to be one. The withered breasts show an abundance of milk, and from a fasting age the boy is fattened the more robustly. Nothing is difficult to faith, which has as much as it believes. II. Isaac therefore, the only son, the hope of peoples and nations, the origin of so many kings, clung to the embraces of his dear begetter. He had bound to himself the father's tenderness, in that he was the only one, that he was late, that he was promised, that he alone, the sole hope, should repair the losses of all the past barrenness. A cause was found, where Abraham's faith might do battle, stronger than temptation. The dear limbs, which he was wont to press with kisses, armed with the sword he is bidden to slay. What should tenderness do?
The precept cannot be deferred. You had proved it, O mother, when you were barren; for the sword the boy is born. Such a misfortune none lamented, save the mother who had borne him. None bewails a living funeral, and the obsequies of an innocent man none first bedews with tears; lest the father seem to have doubted, had he wept. Devout, with set countenance, he leads the boy to the altar: he draws the sword; the midst of his breast did battle for faith: his countenance did not pale, his hand did not tremble. The boy asks where is the victim: which soon, that thus the tender age should be smitten, presented itself; whom neither could the father strike, because neither would the Lord demand human blood. The religious slaughterer draws the sword. It belonged to the father, that he raised it:
that he spared, belonged to God. Neither did he who was being smitten fear: nor did he who was smiting take fright. The Lord's sacrifice is not dismissed, but changed. He better preserved his son, while he did not spare him: for faith alone walks safe amid swords, friendly amid the hungry beasts, cold amid fires; faith alone is to be preferred. By this let us, who through faith have been made sons of Abraham, believe that we come into his very bosom. TRACTATE XIII. On the Dream of Jacob. I. Truly, dearest brethren, his heart sleeps not, who knows the dream and secrets of this man (Genesis 28): for prophecy ever speaks with varying figures; but one reality is found in all of them. Therefore Jacob holds the image of Christ;
but the very stone also, which he is known to have placed under his head (Acts 4:11); since the head of the man is Christ (Ephesians 5:23), who has sometimes been called a stone. But the ladder signifies the two Testaments, which, interwoven also with evangelical precepts, are wont to raise into heaven, as by certain steps of observance, men who believe and do the will of God. This same John in the Apocalypse called a sword twice sharp with one hilt, which he described as proceeding from the mouth of the Lord (Apocalypse 1:16). For the sword is the Holy Spirit, having one hilt, that is, one substance, power, deity, majesty, and will of the Father and of the Son;
attesting two edges, that is, bearing the two Testaments; by whose kingly admonitions both the believing and devout are preserved, and the unbelieving and deserters are punished. This Isaiah saw in the manner of tongs (Isaiah 6:6): with which he related in his vision that a coal was lifted by one of the Seraphim from the altar of God for the melting-clean of his defiled lip. For by the defiled lips we ought to understand the two peoples, of the Jews and of the Gentiles: who, since they were defiled by the crimes of their former life;
the one by blaspheming and persecuting Christ, the other by asserting gods and worshipping abominable idols, are known, by the touch of the coal, to have been fused into one people through the confession of the name of Christ. For the fusing designates both purity and unity: for the coal is the word of God, the altar the Law, the tongs the two Testaments, which the believing hold, the unbelieving cut. II. But David too called this a reed-pen, saying: 'My tongue is the pen of a scribe writing swiftly' (Psalm 44:2). The reed is cleft, brethren, and bears two points arranged in the fineness of one nib, joining one letter with both; from which, if you take away one, the use thereof is henceforth empty.
Whence rightly there are two Testaments, which likewise with two heads lick out one letter, that is, by the two edicts of the sacred Law write up one Christ, the Son of God, with a spiritual tempering. These cannot be useful without each other; because as the new affords faith to the old, so the old gives testimony to the new: as it is written: 'Once has the Lord spoken: and these two things have we heard' (Psalm 61:12). But the Lord Himself too in the Gospel expresses this principle, saying to Peter: 'Cast a hook into the sea: and the fish which shall first come up, take; and opening its mouth thou shalt find two denarii, give for Me and thee' (Matthew 17:23). The fish first coming up from the dead we ought to understand to be Christ;
from whose mouth two denarii, that is, the two Testaments, were brought forth, which profited unto salvation, with the Lord's glory and Peter's felicity, inasmuch as upon him He built the Church, two peoples. But that the sea signifies the world, there is no doubt. The hook indeed signifies preaching, because just as the hook cast into the sea shows the death of the fish; so the evangelical preaching, sent through the world, attests the death and coming of the Lord: as it is written to the Corinthians: 'You shall announce the death of the Lord, until He come' (1 Corinthians 11). 'You shall open the mouth of the fish'; that is, the mystery: or, 'what I have spoken in proverbs, you shall explain to those who do not understand.' Finally He says this more manifestly elsewhere to all the disciples:
'Go therefore, and teach all nations, dipping them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you' (Matthew 28:19-20). 'And you shall give for Me and for you'; that is, 'you shall preach My cross, but you too shall likewise rejoice in the dignity of your own cross.' III. Therefore, of what material this ladder was, upon which the Lord was leaning, we learn from the saying of David, who says: 'Thy rod and Thy staff, they have comforted me' (Psalm 22:4).
The rod and the staff are assuredly the two Testaments, which are therefore compared to the material of wood, either because in its use, both perpetually and of the whole, the will of the testator remains inscribed, or because, as it were running together crosswise into one faith, they announced that the Son of God was to be crucified: whom they confirm to be most rightly placed on the ladder, because the history of all Scripture both for His sake and through Him its author was fulfilled. Finally He says thus to the disciples: 'Every scribe learned in the kingdom of heaven is like to a householder bringing forth from his treasures things new and old' (Matthew 13:52). The scribe, brethren, is the preacher: the householder is Christ;
His treasures are the paternal substance and paternal will of His undiminished deity: things new and old are the two Testaments, which you see are rightly here too, without ambiguity, clothed by the Lord under the figure of the two denarii, namely for this reason, because in His treasures He willed the two Testaments to be understood by newness and oldness. These two denarii He records to have been given by the Samaritan to the innkeeper for him who had suffered assault from robbers (Luke 10:35), which parable, all doubt being removed, laid open the mystery of the ladder to those spiritually beholding it.
For the man who suffered the assault is understood to be Adam; the robbers, the devil; Eve, concupiscence; the Samaritan, the Lord, to whom the Jews said: 'This man is a Samaritan, and hath a devil' (John 8:48). The innkeeper is the teacher of the law, who, having received the two denarii — that is, the saving admonitions of the two Testaments — heals with the daily medicines of his preaching the man who suffered the assault from the brigandage of the devil and his angels and of this world, once that man has been taken up in the stable, that is, in the Church, into which the divine flock comes, and received with the venerable sacrament. IV. As to His saying that the angels ascend and descend, some think that the ascending ones are the angels of light, but the descending ones the angels of darkness.
But I perceive, most dear brethren, that this is quite absurd and unfitting; for neither do the apostate angels descend, since after their sin they are known never to have been received back into heaven, nor do the angels of light descend, since they have never remained on earth but always in heaven. Hence I rightly judge that men are here called angels, to whom the Lord says by His Holy Spirit: 'I have said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High; but you shall die like men' (Ps. 81:6-7). And we recall that of John the Baptist it was likewise said: 'Behold, I send My angel before Your face, who shall prepare Your way' (Mal. 3:1; Luke 7:27; Mark 1:2; Matt. 11:10).
Therefore it is manifest that, after the manner of prophecy, men both just and unjust are quite generally called angels. But who the ascending and the descending ones are, we recognize from examples. The descending are those who, having renounced the world, turn back again to the world, of whom the Lord says: 'No man, looking back and putting his hand to the plough, is fit for the kingdom of God' (Luke 9:62). And again: 'Remember Lot's wife' (Luke 17:32). And the Apostle likewise: 'How do you turn again to those weak and beggarly elements?' (Gal. 4:9). But the ascending are the just, who by upright conduct, through the steps of observance of the divine precepts, are daily borne in the glory of their spiritual journey into heaven,
whom the Apostle Paul exhorts and admonishes, saying: 'If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God' (Col. 3:1). We can also, brethren, understand this as said of the ministers and of the angels, whom we find to have performed their service to the Lord while He was on earth, He Himself saying: 'Amen, amen I say to you, you shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man' (John 1:51); as indeed it came to pass, the Evangelist saying: 'Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him' (Matt. 4:11). Hence there is no doubt that there is one road of the airy height for the angels of light and for just men. V.
All these things, therefore, joined together, are brought into the sum of one fruit, since, although they are all known to be genuine in themselves, yet they all spring from one root. The Testaments are two, but the testator is one. And in writing the reed is split, but the pen is one. And the shears are drawn out into two blades, but their bite is one. And the sword bears two edges, but they are the sides of one body. And the denarii are two, but stamped with one coinage. And the ladder has two side-rails and very many rungs, but its ascent is one. But the rungs of it, most beloved brethren, if you wish to know what they are called, hear.
Conversion, hearing, understanding, belief, fear, wisdom, sobriety, gentleness, temperance, chastity, piety, charity, faith, truth, humility, grace, honesty, modesty, patience, perseverance, consummation. The names of the two side-rails are the two Testaments. But the ladder by its proper name is called the cross, because through it the Lord Jesus Christ, accomplishing and concluding all the mysteries, bore them back to the Father and to Adam, and laid open the way to heaven for all who follow Him. TRACTATE XIV. On Judah. I. Judah had three sons, Er, Onan, Shelah (Gen. 38). He took a woman whose name was Tamar as wife for his eldest son.
Since this son conducted himself wickedly before the face of the Lord, Scripture being witness, he is reported to have been slain by God. He commands the second to go in after the manner of his brother, and to raise up seed for his brother; but he, having gone in, spilled his seed upon the ground. Since this also seemed wicked to God, He condemned him with a like death. But he excuses the union of the third son with his daughter-in-law on account of his age, being afraid lest he too should likewise die, and he commanded the woman to remain a widow in the house of her father and to await a marriage in due time. While matters stood thus, his wife dies.
When, having been comforted, he set out to shear his sheep, and this was announced to Tamar — who had seen that Shelah was now grown, yet she had not been given to him in marriage — she lays aside the garment of widowhood, puts on summer attire, adorns herself becomingly, and stations herself in the place where Judah was about to pass. But he, seeing the woman, thinks her a harlot, since she displayed the integrity of her modesty by veiling her face. He accosts her, asks for entrance, and promises to send a kid. But she demands a pledge for what is promised, content with him rather than with the reward. And she received from him his necklace, ring, and staff. And then, the business done, marked with conception — which the true harlots hold in abhorrence and always avoid — she again took up the garment of widowhood.
Intereasecundumcondictumhædusmittitur, fornicariaquæritur, nullaqueibidemumquamfuisseabincolisrenuntiatur. AtThamaris (12) nostræcumprocessutemporisproceditetuterus. Mirumprofecto (13) videtemysterium. Quæcelaveratfaciem, noncelatventreni. Deferturfornicationisreasinelaboreaccusatorisviduapraguans. Irascitursocer, eamproducijubetatqueincendioconcremari. At (14) illaconstanteradest, sibiquænonimpudicitiæ, sed (15)futurisinsejamnegotiumprocuraverat, 194 dlcitquceise (16) debereconceptum, cujusmonile, anulumteneret, etvirgam. QuarecognitaJudasnontantumabeasefefrenavit; sedinsupereametjustificavit. II.
Meanwhile, according to the agreement, the kid is sent, the harlot is sought, and it is reported by the inhabitants that none had ever been there. But the womb of our Tamar advances with the advance of time. Behold, mark the wondrous mystery. She who had concealed her face does not conceal her belly. The widow is denounced as guilty of fornication, with child, without the labour of any accuser. The father-in-law is angered, orders her to be brought forth and burned with fire. But she steadfastly presents herself, she who had procured for herself a business not of unchastity but of things to come within her, and she says to him that she owes her conception to him whose necklace, ring, and staff she held. When this was known, Judah not only restrained himself from her, but moreover justified her. II.
Judah, as far as can be understood, was a type partly of the prophets, partly of the patriarchs and fathers, who, for the sake of the justice of God, reckoned all men as their sons. Therefore Er, the firstborn son, is the firstborn people, that is, the giants — all the mightiest ones and kings, who, contending with ferocity of strength and madness of lust, had corrupted the whole circle of the lands; moreover decreeing temples for themselves in place of houses, erecting altars to their own name, who knew not what tombs they were to have, yet promising themselves heaven; for whose deeds, if it could, the very earth would blush; and finally asserting themselves to be gods against God:
who by men of sound mind would not be judged worthy even of the name of men. For which causes they were by God not only utterly destroyed, but also destined to perpetual penal punishment. III. But Onan, the second brother, is the Jewish people, who are commanded to raise up seed for the brother — not indeed that which seemed justly condemned by God, but that they should rouse the remaining nations, whom the poisons of idolatry of which we have spoken, once disseminated, had infected, to the worship of God by examples of a good life and by the religious exhortations of the sacred law. But he spilled his seed upon the ground. The seed signifies not that of creation, but of the heart.
For indeed the seed of the heart is the word of God, the Lord saying thus according to Luke (now this is the parable): 'The seed is the word of God.... But they that are by the wayside are those who hear the word, and then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their heart, lest believing they should be saved' (Luke 8:11-12). But the earth signifies man and the idol, since God both formed man out of earth, and man composed an idol out of earth. Therefore he spilled his seed upon the ground, that is, he neglected the commandments of God and poured them out upon idols; on account of which he likewise received from God the present sentence of damnation, since just as he is detestable who, being a man, feigns himself God, so the more detestable is he who worships as God that which he himself has fashioned.
IV. But Shelah, the youngest of the aforesaid three brothers, depicted the image of the new people coming from the Gentiles: Tamar, of the Church, who was not rightly married to him, because at the coming of Christ, reborn in her bosom by the spiritual water of baptism, he was to be her son, not her husband. Judah loses his wife (Gen. 38:12), that is, the faith of the synagogue dies in us. But where it says he was comforted, this is certainly understood of the hope of Christ's coming, who not only gave consolation to the prophets desolate at the fall of the synagogue, but was wont also to refresh all of us set in any distress. He goes to shear his sheep, that is, he demands from just men the fruit of good works.
Hearing this, Tamar, while she was in her father's house — that is, in the temples and the infamous places of all the spectacles (for the father of all who live corruptly is designated as the devil, the Lord thus rebuking the Jews: 'You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you wish to do' [John 8:44]) — laid aside the garment of widowhood, that is, she cast off the squalid rites of a squalid religion. She put on summer attire. The summer garment, brethren, is both clean and well-fitted, with which work can easily be done and the heat of summer borne — that is, of temptation, which it cannot be doubted is belief; for whoever has it, must needs live unencumbered and pure.
Therefore, lest she be recognized, she of necessity obscures her face with a veil, because Christ, the champion of her modesty, had not yet come. She is not recognized by her father-in-law: for the prophets had been sent to the Jews, not to the Gentiles. He rightly thinks her a harlot, because she served the people of the gods. He desires to be joined with her, because the Gentiles rather than the Jews were to believe the prophecy, the Lord saying: 'Amen I say to you, that the publicans and the harlots shall go before you into the kingdom of God' (Matt. 21:31). He promises her a kid, that is, he shows what is the wage of sin for the sinner. She avoided receiving it, because whoever has received the pledge of the Trinity is reckoned in the time to come among the lambs, not among the kids.
Finally she is described as having demanded and received the necklace, the ring, the staff. To what does this signification fit? The necklace, most beloved brethren, is the law, which by saving admonitions, with diverse virtues and diverse gifts of grace, is wont to adorn not the necks but the hearts of all believers. The staff, through the wood, announced the sacrament of the Lord's Passion, as a clear example declares, which is found thus in the book of Psalms: 'Thy rod and Thy staff, they have comforted me. Thou hast prepared a table before me against them that afflict me. Thou hast anointed my head with oil; and my chalice which inebriates, how excellent it is!' (Ps. 22:4-5).
Surely, brethren, the cup signifies the blood, the table the body, the oil the gift of the Holy Spirit, the staff with the rod the cross, on which God deigned to hang for man, that He might transform into God the man whom He had put on. The ring also is the seal of faith, which is Christ, by the illumination of whose majesty being stamped and sealed — we who live sincerely, for the keeping of our salvation, through the Holy Spirit bear back the image which we hold. Which agrees with this, that it signified the sacrament of the holy communion of the faithful. Tamar conceived in the womb, the Church conceived in the heart: she by seed, this by the word. A kid is sent to her, namely the sign of temptation: