約伯倫理 第 117 章

Verse 13. — Now on a certain day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the house of their firstborn brother. 18. The elder son of the Lord is the Jewish people. — We said that the sons and daughters of blessed Job designate either the order of the apostles or the multitude of all the faithful. But the incarnate Lord first chose a few from Judea unto faith, and afterward gathered to Himself a multitude of the gentile people. But who is to be taken as the elder son of the Lord, if not the Jewish people, which had long since been begotten to Him by the teaching of the law once given: and the younger, the gentile people, which was gathered even at the world's extremity?

Since therefore, when Satan unknowingly served the benefit of men, and demanded, with the hearts of the persecutors corrupted, license for the Lord's passion, the holy apostles did not yet know that the gentile world was to be gathered to God, and were preaching the mysteries of faith to Judea alone; when Satan is said to have gone out from the Lord, the sons and daughters are reported to feast in the house of the firstborn brother. For it had been said to them: Go not into the way of the gentiles (Matt. 10:5). For after the death and resurrection of the Lord they were turned to the preaching of the gentiles. Whence also in their Acts they say: To you it was necessary that the word of God should first be spoken; but because you rejected it, and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the gentiles (Acts

13:46). These, then, are the sons of the bridegroom, of whom by the voice of the same bridegroom it is said: The sons of the bridegroom shall not fast, so long as the bridegroom is with them (Matt. 9:15), who feast in the house of the firstborn brother, because, namely, the apostles were as yet feeding on the delights of sacred Scripture within the gathering of the Jewish people alone.