But these verses, whose first letters yield that meaning which we have stated, as a certain person rendered them into Latin verses that both scan, contain this: 'A sign of judgment: the earth shall grow moist with sweat. From heaven shall come the King who is to be through the ages, present, that is, to judge the world in the flesh. Whereupon both unbelieving and faithful shall behold God the Most High with His saints at the very end of the age. So shall souls be present with their flesh, whom He Himself judges, when the world lies unkempt amid dense thickets. Men shall cast away their idols and all their treasure too. Fire shall burn up the lands and search out the sea and sky, and shatter the gates of foul Avernus. But to all the flesh of the saints free light shall be given, while the eternal flame shall consume the guilty.'
'Uncovering hidden deeds, then shall each one tell his secrets, and God shall lay bare hearts to the light. Then shall there be mourning too; all shall gnash with their teeth. The sun's radiance is snatched away and the chorus of the stars perishes. Heaven shall be rolled up, the moon's splendor shall depart; He shall cast down the hills, He shall raise up the valleys from the depths. There shall be nothing lofty or high in the affairs of men. The mountains are now made level with the plains and the blue expanses of the sea; all things shall cease; the shattered earth shall perish. So likewise the springs and rivers shall be scorched by fire. But then the trumpet shall send down a mournful sound from the height of heaven, lamenting the wretched crime and the manifold toils, and the earth yawning open shall reveal the chaos of Tartarus. And here before the Lord shall the kings be set together, one and all. There shall fall from heaven a river of fire and of brimstone.'
In these Latin verses translated somehow from the Greek, that meaning could not there be preserved which arises when the letters at their beginnings are connected, in the place where the letter Y is set in the Greek; because Latin words could not be found which began with the same letter and fitted the sense. Now these are three verses: the fifth, the eighteenth, and the nineteenth. Finally, if in connecting the letters at the beginnings of all the verses we do not read those which are written in these three, but in their stead recall the letter Y, as though it were set in the same places, it is expressed in five words: 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior'; but when this is said in Greek, not in Latin.
And there are twenty-seven verses, which number yields the solid square of three. For three multiplied three times becomes nine; and that nine, if multiplied thrice, so that the figure may rise from breadth into height, arrives at twenty-seven. But of these five Greek words, which are 'Iesous Chreistos Theou Yios Soter'—which is in Latin 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior'—if you join the first letters, it will be 'ichthys,' that is, 'fish,' in which name Christ is mystically understood, because in the abyss of this mortality, as it were in the depth of the waters, He was able to be alive, that is, without sin.
But this Sibyl, whether the Erythraean or, as some rather believe, the Cumaean, has nothing in her whole poem—of which this small portion is a part—that pertains to the worship of false or man-made gods; nay rather she so speaks against them and against their worshipers, that she seems to be reckoned in the number of those who belong to the City of God. Lactantius too inserts into his own work certain prophecies of the Sibyl concerning Christ, though he does not express whose. But the things which he set down piecemeal I have thought should be set together, as though it were one continuous passage, which he mentioned as many and brief. 'Into wicked hands,' she says, 'He shall afterward come, of unbelievers;
and they shall give God buffets with unclean hands and with impure mouth shall spit out venomous spittle; but He shall simply give His holy back to the scourges. And receiving blows He shall be silent, lest anyone recognize what the Word is, or whence it comes, so that it may speak to those in the world below, and He shall be crowned with a crown of thorns. And for food they gave gall, and for His thirst vinegar; this table of inhospitality shall they display. For you yourself, foolish one, did not understand your God, mocking the minds of mortals, but you crowned Him with thorns and mingled the dread gall. But the veil of the temple shall be rent; and at midday there shall be night, exceedingly dark, for three hours. And He shall die by death, having taken on sleep for three days;
and then, returning from the world below, He shall come to the light, the first, in the beginning of the resurrection, having shown the way to those recalled.' These Sibylline testimonies Lactantius adduced piecemeal, at intervals of his own discussion, as the matters seemed to require which he was endeavoring to prove; but we, interposing nothing, but setting them down connected in one series, have taken care to mark them off by their beginnings only—if only the copyists thereafter do not neglect to preserve them. Some indeed have written that the Erythraean Sibyl was not in the time of Romulus, but in the time of the Trojan war.
[XXIV] While the same Romulus was reigning, Thales of Miletus is reported to have lived, one of the seven sages, who after the theological poets—among whom Orpheus was the most renowned of all—were called 'sophoi,' which is in Latin 'wise men.' About the same time the ten tribes, which in the division of the people were called Israel, were vanquished by the Chaldeans and led captive into those lands, there remaining in the land of Judah those two tribes which were called by the name of Judah and had the seat of their kingdom at Jerusalem. When Romulus was dead, since he too had disappeared, the Romans placed him among the gods, as is very well known even among the common people;
but this had by then so far ceased to be done (nor was it afterward done save by flattery, not by error, in the times of the Caesars), that Cicero ascribes it to Romulus's great praises, that not in rude and unlearned times, when men were easily deceived, but in times already polished and cultured, he deserved these honors—although the subtle and sharp loquacity of the philosophers had not yet boiled up and sprouted forth. But even though later times did not institute dead men as gods, yet they did not cease to worship as gods those instituted by the ancients and to hold them so;
nay, they even increased the allurement of vain and impious superstition with images, which the ancients did not have—unclean demons in their hearts bringing this about, and by deceitful oracles too deceiving them—so that even the fabled crimes of the gods, which in a now more refined age were not being invented, might nevertheless be shamefully performed through the games in homage to those same false deities. Then, after Romulus, Numa reigned, who, since he supposed that city was assuredly to be fortified by a multitude of false gods, did not himself, when dead, deserve to be reckoned into that same throng—as though it was thought that he had so crammed heaven with a multitude of deities that he could find no place there.
While he was reigning at Rome, and among the Hebrews at the beginning of the reign of Manasseh—by which impious king the prophet Isaiah is reported to have been slain—they say there was a Samian Sibyl. [XXV] But while Zedekiah was reigning among the Hebrews and Tarquinius Priscus among the Romans, who had succeeded Ancus Marcius, the people of the Jews were led captive into Babylonia, Jerusalem and that temple built by Solomon having been overthrown. For the prophets, rebuking them for their iniquities and impieties, had foretold that these things would come upon them, especially Jeremiah, who also fixed the number of the years. At that time Pittacus of Mytilene, another of the seven sages, is reported to have lived.
And Eusebius writes that the other five, who are added to Thales (whom we mentioned above) and to this Pittacus so as to make up the number seven, lived at that time when the captive people of God was held in Babylonia. Now these are: Solon of Athens, Chilon of Lacedaemon, Periander of Corinth, Cleobulus of Lindus, Bias of Priene. All these, called the seven sages, became illustrious after the theological poets, because they excelled other men by a certain praiseworthy manner of life and comprised certain precepts of morals in brief maxims. But they left to posterity no monuments so far as pertains to letters, except that Solon is reported to have given certain laws to the Athenians;
but Thales was a natural philosopher and left books of his own doctrines. At that time of the Jewish captivity Anaximander and Anaximenes and Xenophanes, natural philosophers, also became illustrious. Then too Pythagoras, from whom they began to be called philosophers. [XXVI] About the same time Cyrus, king of the Persians, who also ruled over the Chaldeans and Assyrians, having somewhat relaxed the captivity of the Jews, caused fifty thousand men of them to return for the restoring of the temple. By these only the first foundations were begun and the altar constructed. But as enemies made incursions, they were by no means able to proceed with the building, and the work was deferred until the time of Darius. About the same time also those things were done which are recorded in the book of Judith;
which book indeed the Jews are said not to have received into the canon of the scriptures. Under Darius, then, king of the Persians, the seventy years being fulfilled which the prophet Jeremiah had foretold, liberty was restored to the Jews, the captivity being loosed, while Tarquinius, the seventh king of the Romans, was reigning. When he was expelled, they too began to be free from the domination of their kings. Up to this time the people of Israel had prophets; and though these were many, the canonical writings of but a few are retained both among the Jews and among us. Concerning these I promised, when I was closing the previous book, that I would set down some things in this book, which I now see must be done. [XXVII] In order, then, that we may note their times, let us run back a little into earlier matters.
In the heading of the book of the prophet Hosea, who is placed first among the twelve, it is thus written: 'The word of the Lord which came to Hosea in the days of Uzziah and Jotham and Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.' Amos also writes that he prophesied in the days of king Uzziah; he adds too Jeroboam, king of Israel, who lived through those same days. So likewise Isaiah, the son of Amos—whether of the aforesaid prophet or, as is more commonly reported, of another who was not a prophet, called by the same name—places at the head of his book those same four kings whom Hosea set down, in whose days he declares beforehand that he prophesied. Micah too mentions the same times of his prophecy, after the days of Uzziah.
For he names the three kings that follow, whom Hosea also named—Jotham and Ahaz and Hezekiah. These are they whom, from their writings, it is found to have prophesied together at the same time. To these is joined Jonah, in the reign of the same king Uzziah, and Joel, when Jotham, who succeeded Uzziah, was already reigning. But the times of these two prophets we have been able to find in the chronicles, not in their own books, since they are silent concerning their days. Now these days are extended from Procas, king of the Latins, or from the earlier Aventinus, up to Romulus, now a Roman king, or even up to the very beginnings of the reign of his successor Numa Pompilius (for Hezekiah, king of Judah, reigned up to that point);
and thus, through those times, these prophets burst forth together as it were like fountains of prophecy, when the Assyrian kingdom failed and the Roman began; so that, forsooth, just as in the first time of the Assyrian kingdom Abraham arose, to whom the most manifest promises were made that in his seed all nations should be blessed, so at the beginning of the western Babylon, under whose empire Christ was to come, in whom those promises should be fulfilled, the mouths of the prophets—not only speaking but also writing—should be loosed in testimony of so great a thing to come. For although prophets had almost never been lacking to the people of Israel from the time when kings began to be there, they were for the use of those people only, not of the nations;
but when the prophetic scripture was being established more manifestly, which should one day profit the nations, then it was fitting that it should begin, when this city was being established which should rule the nations. [XXVIII] Hosea, then, the prophet, the more deeply indeed he speaks, so much the more laboriously is he penetrated. But something must be taken from him and here, according to our promise, set down. 'And it shall be,' he says, 'in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, they too shall be called sons of the living God.' This prophetic testimony concerning the calling of the people of the nations, who formerly did not belong to God, the apostles too understood. And because that very people of the nations is spiritually among the sons of Abraham, and thus is rightly called Israel, therefore it follows and says:
'And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel shall be gathered together into one, and shall set over themselves one headship, and shall come up from the land.' If we should wish to expound this further, the savor of the prophetic utterance would be blunted. Yet let there be recalled that cornerstone and the two walls, one of the Jews, the other of the nations; the former by the name of the sons of Judah, the latter by the name of the sons of Israel, both leaning upon their one and the same headship, into one, and coming up, are recognized as from the land. But that these carnal Israelites, who now refuse to believe in Christ, shall afterward believe—that is, their sons (for these will assuredly pass over into their own place by dying)—the same prophet testifies, saying:
'For many days the sons of Israel shall sit without a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice, without an altar, without a priesthood, without manifestations.' Who does not see that the Jews are now thus? But let us hear what he adjoins. 'And afterward,' he says, 'the sons of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and shall be amazed at the Lord and at His good things in the last days.' Nothing is more manifest than this prophecy, when by the name of David the king is understood to be signified Christ, because He was made, as the apostle says, of the seed of David according to the flesh. This same prophet also foretold that the resurrection of Christ would take place on the third day, as it behooved it to be foretold with prophetic loftiness, where he says:
'He shall heal us after two days; on the third day we shall rise again.' For according to this the apostle says to us: 'If you are risen with Christ, seek the things that are above.' Amos too prophesies of such matters thus: 'Prepare yourself,' he says, 'to call upon your God, O Israel; for behold, I am He who establishes the thunder and creates the spirit and announces among men His Christ'; and in another place: 'In that day,' he says, 'I will raise up the tabernacle of David which is fallen, and I will rebuild the things that have fallen of it, and its ruined parts I will raise up and rebuild them as in the days of old; that the rest of men may seek me, and all the nations upon whom my name has been called, says the Lord who does these things.'
[XXIX] The prophet Isaiah is not among the twelve prophets who are for that reason called minor, because their discourses are brief in comparison with those who are for that reason called major, because they composed lengthy volumes; among whom is this Isaiah, whom, on account of the same times of prophecy, I subjoin to the two aforesaid. Isaiah, then, among those things wherein he reproved what was iniquitous and enjoined what was just and foretold evils to come upon the sinful people, prophesied also concerning Christ and the Church—that is, concerning the King and the city which He founded—far more things than the rest, so that by some he was called an evangelist rather than a prophet. But for the sake of bringing the work to an end, I shall set down here one of many. Speaking, then, in the person of God the Father:
'Behold,' He says, 'my servant shall understand, and shall be exalted and greatly glorified. Just as many shall be amazed at you, so shall your appearance be deprived of glory from men, and your glory from men; so shall many nations marvel at Him, and kings shall hold their mouths shut; for they to whom it was not announced concerning Him shall see, and they who have not heard shall understand. Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced before Him as a little child, as a root in a thirsty land; He has no appearance nor glory. And we saw Him, and He had no appearance nor comeliness; but His appearance was without honor, failing beyond all men. A man set amid the plague and knowing how to bear infirmity;
for His face is turned away, He was dishonored and not highly esteemed. He bears our sins and grieves for us; and we esteemed Him to be in grief and in the plague and in affliction. But He was wounded on account of our iniquities and was made weak on account of our sins. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him; by His bruise we have been healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; a man has strayed from his own way; and the Lord delivered Him up for our sins; and He Himself, because He was afflicted, opened not His mouth. As a sheep He was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. In His humiliation His judgment was taken away. His generation, who shall declare?
For His life shall be taken away from the earth. From the iniquities of my people He was led to death. And I will give the wicked for His burial, and the rich for His death. Because He did no iniquity, nor was deceit in His mouth; and the Lord wills to cleanse Him from the plague. If you give your soul for sin, you shall see a long-lived seed; and the Lord wills to take away His soul from grief, to show Him light and to form understanding, to justify the just one who serves many well; and He Himself shall bear their sins. Therefore He Himself shall inherit many and shall divide the spoils of the strong, because His soul was delivered up to death, and He was reckoned among the wicked, and He Himself bore the sins of many, and on account of their sins was delivered up.'
These things concerning Christ. But now let us hear what follows concerning the Church. 'Rejoice,' He says, 'you barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry out, you who do not travail; for the sons of the desolate are more than those of her who has a husband. Enlarge the place of your tent and of your curtains; fix them, do not spare, lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes, stretch out yet farther to the right hand and the left. And your seed shall inherit the nations, and you shall inhabit the desolate cities. Fear not, because you have been put to shame, neither be abashed, because you have been reproached; for you shall forget the everlasting shame and shall not remember the reproach of your widowhood. For the Lord who makes you, the Lord of Sabaoth is His name;
and He who delivers you, He Himself, the God of Israel, shall be called the God of the whole earth'; and the rest. But let these things suffice; and among them some things must be expounded; but I think those things are sufficient which are so plain that even enemies are compelled to understand them against their will. [XXX] The prophet Micah, setting forth Christ under the figure of a certain great mountain, speaks thus: 'It shall be in the last days: the mountain of the Lord shall be made manifest, prepared upon the tops of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills. And the peoples shall hasten to it, and many nations shall go and shall say: Come, let us ascend into the mountain of the Lord and into the house of the God of Jacob, and He will show us His way, and we will walk in His paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.
And He shall judge among many peoples and shall rebuke mighty nations even afar off.' This same prophet, foretelling also the place in which Christ was born: 'And you,' he says, 'Bethlehem, house of Ephrathah, are the least, that you may be among the thousands of Judah; out of you shall come forth for me One to be for a prince in Israel; and His going forth is from the beginning and from the days of eternity. Therefore He will give them up until the time of her that travails; she shall bring forth, and the rest of His brethren shall be converted to the sons of Israel. And He shall stand and shall see and shall feed His flock in the strength of the Lord, and they shall be in the honor of the name of the Lord their God; for now shall He be magnified even to the ends of the earth.'
But the prophet Jonah prophesied Christ not so much by speech as by a certain suffering of his own—indeed more plainly than if he had proclaimed His death and resurrection with his voice. For why was he received into the belly of the sea-beast and given back on the third day, except to signify that Christ would return from the depth of hell on the third day? Joel compels all that he prophesies to be expounded in many words, so that the things which pertain to Christ and the Church may become clear. Yet one thing, which the apostles too mentioned, when upon the assembled believers the Holy Spirit, as had been promised by Christ, came down from above, I shall not pass over. 'And it shall be,' he says, 'after these things, that I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.'
'And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your elders shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions; and moreover upon my menservants and my maidservants in those days I will pour out of my Spirit.' Three of the minor prophets, Obadiah, Nahum, and Habakkuk, neither state their own times themselves, nor is it found in the chronicles of Eusebius and Jerome when they prophesied. For Obadiah is indeed placed by them together with Micah, but not in that passage where the times are noted at which Micah is established from his own writings to have prophesied; and I judge this to have happened through the error of those who carelessly copy the labours of others. The other two mentioned we were unable to find in the copies of the chronicles which we had.
Nevertheless, since they are contained in the canon, they too ought not to be passed over by us. Obadiah, so far as concerns his writing the briefest of all the prophets, speaks against Idumaea, that is, the nation of Esau, one of the twin sons of Isaac, grandsons of Abraham, the elder of whom was rejected. Furthermore, if we take Idumaea to be set, by that manner of speech in which the whole is understood from a part, in place of the nations, we can recognise concerning Christ what he says among other things: 'But on Mount Zion there shall be salvation, and it shall be holy.' And a little afterwards, at the end of the same prophecy: 'And they that have been saved,' he says, 'shall come up from Mount Zion, to defend the mount of Esau, and the kingdom shall be the Lord's.'
It appears indeed that this was fulfilled when those saved from Mount Zion—that is, those from Judaea believing in Christ, who are recognised above all as the apostles—went up to defend the mount of Esau. In what way did they defend it, save by the preaching of the gospel, by making safe those who believed, so that they might be rescued from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God? This he consequently expressed by adding: 'And the kingdom shall be the Lord's.' For Mount Zion signifies Judaea, where salvation was foretold as to come, and that which is holy, namely Christ Jesus. But the mount of Esau is Idumaea, by which is signified the Church of the nations, which those saved from Mount Zion defended, as I have explained, that the kingdom might be the Lord's. This was obscure before it came to pass;
but who that is faithful does not recognise it now that it has been done? Nahum the prophet—or rather God through him—says: 'I will destroy the graven and molten images, I will make it thy sepulchre; for behold, upon the mountains are the swift feet of him that bringeth good tidings and announceth peace. Keep thy festivals, O Judah, pay thy vows; for they shall no more go on to pass into old age. It is consummated, it is consumed, it is taken away. He is gone up who breathes into thy face, delivering thee out of tribulation.' Let him who remembers the gospel call to mind who it was that ascended from below and breathed into the face of Judah—that is, of the Jewish disciples—the Holy Spirit.
For they belong to the New Testament, whose festal days are so spiritually renewed that they cannot pass into old age. Furthermore, we now see the graven and molten images—that is, the idols of false gods—destroyed through the gospel and handed over to oblivion as to a grave, and we recognise that in this matter too the prophecy has been fulfilled. As for Habakkuk, of what else does he speak than of the coming of Christ which was to be? For this reason those same codices, which they keep and preserve—thereby, though unwilling, bearing witness to us—are themselves also dispersed among all the nations, wherever the Church of Christ is extended.
For a prophecy concerning this matter was set forth beforehand in the Psalms, which they also read, where it is written: 'My God, his mercy shall go before me; my God hath shown me concerning my enemies: slay them not, lest at any time they forget thy law; scatter them by thy power.' Therefore God has shown to the Church, in her enemies the Jews, the grace of his mercy, since, as the apostle says, 'their fall is the salvation of the Gentiles'; and for this reason he did not slay them—that is, he did not destroy in them that which makes them Jews—although they were conquered and oppressed by the Romans, lest, forgetting the law of God, they should be of no value for this testimony of which we are speaking. Therefore it was too little for him to say:
'Slay them not, lest at any time they forget thy law,' it would have been too little, had he not also added: 'Scatter them'; because if, along with this testimony of the Scriptures, they were only in their own land and not everywhere, then surely the Church, which is everywhere, could not have them as witnesses among all the nations to the prophecies concerning Christ which were set forth beforehand. Wherefore, whoever is a foreigner—that is, not begotten of Israel nor received by that people into the canon of the sacred letters—is read to have prophesied anything concerning Christ, if it comes or has come to our knowledge, may be cited by us for good measure;
not because it is necessary, even if it be lacking, but because it is not incongruously believed that there were also among other nations men to whom this mystery was revealed, and who were impelled to foretell these things too, whether they were partakers of that same grace or without it but taught by evil angels—whom we know to have confessed even the present Christ, whom the Jews did not acknowledge. Nor do I think that the Jews themselves would dare to contend that no one belonged to God except the Israelites, from the time when the offspring of Israel began to be, his elder brother having been rejected. For in truth there was no other people who could properly be called the people of God;