游斯丁護教辭與對話 第 3-130 章

And when all assented, I said: And I will also say certain words now which I did not recall before; they were spoken by the faithful servant Moses in a veiled manner. And it is said thus: 'Rejoice, O heavens, together with Him, and let all the angels of God worship Him'; and I added the following words of the passage thus: 'Rejoice, O nations, with His people, and let all the angels of God be strong in Him; for He avenges the blood of His sons, and will avenge, and will render vengeance to His enemies, and will recompense those who hate Him; and the Lord will cleanse the land of His people.'

And having said this, He says that we, the nations, rejoice with His people—I mean Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the prophets, and in short all of that people who are well-pleasing to God, according to what we have agreed upon before; but we shall not understand it of all those of your race, since we have learned also through Isaiah that the limbs of the transgressors are to be devoured by a worm and unceasing fire, remaining immortal, so as to be a spectacle to all flesh.

And I wish to add to you, besides these, O men, I said, certain other words from the very words of Moses, from which you can also understand that from of old God scattered all men and the races and the tongues; but having taken to Himself your race out of all the races—a race useless and disobedient and faithless—He showed that those from every race who choose to be persuaded of His counsel through Christ, whom He also calls Jacob and names Israel, must be, as I said before in many places, both Jacob and Israel.

For in saying, 'Rejoice, O nations, with His people,' He assigns them a like inheritance, and gives them a like name; but in calling them nations, and rejoicing with His people, He speaks it to the reproach of your nation. For in the same manner that you provoked Him by practising idolatry, so He has deemed them also, who were idolaters, worthy to know His counsel and to inherit the inheritance that is with Him.