'And may the Lord give you of the dew of heaven from above and of the fatness of the earth abundance of grain and wine. And let nations serve you, and princes shall adore you; and be lord over your brother, and the sons of your father shall adore you; and whoever curses you shall be cursed, and whoever blesses you shall be blessed.' The matter is indeed carried out according to the present effect in Esau and Jacob, but the spiritual prefiguration holds its own order. The elder had sold his birthright through the desires of the body, despairing of future honour for the sake of present luxury; and the younger, against the loss of present things, bought them. Do not the things to be enacted spiritually follow upon the things done bodily?
Those who are unbelieving reckon every good to be placed in pleasure, and the former people lost the honour of resurrection through the desires of the flesh; but believers renounce present joys, placing all their hope in the things to come, and, on account of it, continent in soul and body, they seize the things destined for the elder. Jacob is clothed in Esau's robe, which is wont to be mentioned as the garment of immortality even in the Gospel, where the younger brother, and likewise the squanderer of the received patrimony, received the first robe. And because he was to be transferred out of sins into the brightness of innocence, therefore Jacob is covered with the skins of kids, meaning in the very matter to imitate the appearance of his brother.
But because from a sinner he was to hold the dignity of the seized blessing, in the skins of dead beasts he takes on the form of a sinner. Now the very reasoning of the blessing and the force of the words show that nothing there is to be understood according to the present deeds. For Jacob is blessed that he may abound in wine and grain from the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth; yet on the contrary he was imperilled by famine and bought grain from Egypt. Nations are made subject to him in servitude; nay rather, he himself with all his household gave himself into the power of Pharaoh. He is said to be one to be adored by princes; but rather, under the dominion of Laban, he endured servitude for a long time. He is constituted lord over his brother; yet why did he adore his brother as a lord?
Therefore, since Scripture is in no danger of falsehood, although these things were said of Jacob, yet they pertain to the people whom he prefigured, and they are signified and are enacted. For all these things are reserved for the faithful according to the prophetic and evangelical promises, since indeed they are to judge the world and the angels and are destined for fellowship in the heavenly kingdom. Finally, that very beginning of the blessing embraces not present things but future and perfected ones. For it says: 'Behold, the smell of my son is as the smell of a full field which God has blessed.' The smell is the foreknowledge of the Spirit, the full field is the perfection of fruits. And the field, as the Gospels teach, is named for the world.
But the blessed world is to be understood as signified—not surely that which will be dissolved and will not be, but that which is eternal and full of perfect fruits. Therefore, since the smell of Jacob is the same as that of the full field, and the smell, according to the nature of things, is the foreknowledge of the Spirit—since what each thing is, is perceived by smelling—Isaac signifies that he smells this, that is, foreknows by the Spirit, the blessing of the younger people, and that the eternal world is to come, with both those, that is, both the world and him who shall enjoy it, being eternal.
And that we might perceive the abundant mercy of God in prefiguring, under present things, the effects of things to come, all things were so diligently set forth and written that one and the same order of history might concur both with the deed done and with the hope of the future. For Isaac, about to bless Jacob in place of Esau, is anxious lest he be deceived in any way; for Esau said that he was Jacob. Being therefore blind, Isaac said: 'Come near to me and I will feel you, my son, whether you are my son Esau or not.' And although it was he, and he was clothed in Esau's robe and had disguised his appearance by the assumption of the skins, yet he was not handled by the blind man without suspicion. For he says, as he touched him: 'The voice indeed is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.'
Therefore through these things Isaac is shown to be anxious in his affection toward Esau. But when afterward Esau returned from the field and the hunt and presented himself to his father as the firstborn, that he might bless him, and the seizure of the blessing was discovered, Isaac is not moved; nay rather, he persists in the confirmation of that very blessing, saying: 'If I have made him your lord and all his brothers I have made his servants, and have strengthened him with grain and wine, what then shall I do for you, my son?' Nay rather, to the one entreating with weeping and tears that he bless him, he thus speaks: 'Behold, of the fatness of the earth shall be your dwelling, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by your sword shall you live, and you shall serve your brother. And it shall come to pass, when you shall shake off his yoke from your neck.'
Whence, then, is this conversion of the will? And why is the man's affection at variance with itself, unless because the word of Scripture is tempered both to the accomplishing of the deed and to the expectation of hope? He derived the anxiety of the questioner from paternal affection; the alteration of the blessing he refused out of spiritual knowledge. There he acted the matter of nature; here he held the order of prefiguration. There the father is anxious in the sanctification of the firstborn; here in the blessing of the younger people he perseveres in the spirit of a prophet. Both the history speaks the deed done, and its own order does not abandon the prefigured hope. But not even in this did the prophetic reason cease; namely, that the sinner and the former people might be able to hope for the blessing of the younger people, if he would believe.
For to all the entrance to salvation lies open, and the way of life is difficult not by its own hardships—which indeed are none—but by the law of our own free choice. For the delay in obtaining the mercy of God belongs to the human will, which is made known from this very saying, since it is of Esau. For he had begged to be blessed, but the father, moved by a spiritual impulse, both left him to the world and gave him over to the sword and consigned him to the servitude of his brother. But lest these things be thought decreed forever and without return of repentance, the blessing which he sought he deferred to that time when he should have shaken off from his neck the yoke of his brother who was to have dominion.
Therefore it is left to his own right to shake off the yoke, because for each one there is a free right of his own will toward faith, when he is now worthy of the blessing, once he has transferred himself into the liberty of faith out of the servitude of irreligion. Concerning Moses: The setting forth of the things done in Moses held also the order of the prefiguration begun already from Adam. And this is worthy of the mercy of God, that the deeds of all his patriarchs should imitate, in some measure of perfection, those things which were to be consummated in our Lord. For those things which were fulfilled in that one and through that one are prefigured, out of something, through kinds and times and generations.
For the imitation of so many ages could not attain to that which, in that one alone, is of the truth; yet nothing was so done in individuals or through individuals that those things which were afterward consummated either through him or in him did not speak, nearly by the very imitation of the present deeds. For Moses, born at that time when Pharaoh had commanded all the males born to be killed, is preserved as leader for the people, floating on the water by means of wood. Did not the hatred and fear of a king, equal and the same, blaze up at that time when our Lord was born according to the man, against that same man for us, whom He assumed through the sacrament of wood and water in Himself, and whom He reckoned to Himself for heavenly glory and constituted king of the Gentiles?
Then Pharaoh's daughter took up Moses to be washed in the river. When his sister was present, she offered a nurse from among the Hebrews. Then she brought forth the mother, who took him up to be nourished, and Pharaoh reported to his daughter, who took up the one she had received as a son. Join the persons, compare the effects, behold the deeds: you will find in the imitation of the present the truth of what follows. For under Moses' sister the Law followed Christ as far as the sacrament of wood and water. But in Pharaoh's daughter is the figure of the Gentiles, who, although according to the truth of the history she saw an infant, yet by the very effect retained the power of prophecy.
For the Law, like Pharaoh's daughter, presented the synagogue as both nurse and mother of the infant, and thus the spiritual order was preserved in the deeds. For it was fitting that Christ be nourished according to the flesh by this Law which teaches it, and that He be adopted by that other. Moses, having become great, seeks out his brothers held in slavery. Then he strikes down an Egyptian domineering and inflicting injury upon one of them, and afterward is reproached by that very man whom he had avenged upon the Egyptian. Was not Christ, when He was of consummate and perfect age, visiting His people who are His brothers according to the flesh? For He came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Did He not strike down and conquer the devil who domineered over them?
For no one will plunder the vessels of the strong man unless he first binds the strong man. Was He not reproached by those very ones to whom He was giving back both vengeance upon the devil and liberty from slavery? Thus that which in the giver of the Law is an imitation attains its consummation in the grace of God. A bush blazes before the sight of Moses and yet is not burned: namely the Church is set ablaze by the flames of sinners, persecutions, and temptations, as the Apostle says: 'suffering distress, enduring want, but we are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we do not perish, always carrying about in the body the sufferings of Jesus, that the life of Jesus Christ may also be manifested in our body.' Thus the fires of all iniquities rage against us and yet do not burn us up.
Then the sign of faith is set: the rod changed into a serpent, and the serpent, when done away, again into a rod. But this change is for the confirmation of faith, not for the conversion of nature. And because in the rod there is the power of a kingdom, and in the serpent there is the naming of the devil, we are admonished to believe in Him who, being from God the God of the ages, was reckoned Beelzebul, and then, from being called and reckoned Beelzebul, was, through the change of the resurrection, recognized as the God of the ages, which is what He was. The sign following the faith of this matter fulfilled it by a kind of imitation, satisfying both the hope and the time.
For when the hand, put into the bosom, received the whiteness of snow, it signifies that we who rest in the paternal bosom—that is, of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob—are to be enlightened, the nature of our body being absorbed into the appearance of glory and honour. But when the hand, again put in, is recalled to what it had been, it is taught that what had been prefigured in the sign does not yet exist in time. And when, by the third sign, water taken from the river and poured on the ground is blood, the reasoning of the sacrament is mingled with these, since indeed those who are washed by water are to pass over into the knowledge of the blood.
It is a great thing that in these things which were done under the patriarchs the effect of matters is so contained that in nothing does it differ from those things which were afterward fulfilled in the Lord, neither in place nor in time nor in reasoning. For in that one the imitation set beforehand follows upon the appearance of the absolute truth, and is compared as an image of that form of which it is the rival. For the deeds are indeed the very truth to themselves—for they were carried out according to bodily accomplishments—but that very truth of human actions was an imitation of the divine operation; and this was done for the true instruction of our hope and faith, since nothing was found in the things of God which was not perceived, as though premeditated beforehand, in the very ages and manners and effects of men.
For although in all the preceding discourse it has been shown that the deeds of Moses, up to the going forth of the people from Egypt, agree with the deeds either in the Lord or through the Lord, yet even now the spiritual imitation is annexed to the bodily truth. For in the desert the people thirsted, the water is bitter, there is a murmuring against the leader, wood is shown, and by its dipping the water is made sweet, and in it justification and judgments and temptation are decreed. And thence they come to twelve fountains of waters and seventy palm trees, and they settle beside the waters. Though the zeal of those who resist may turn away their minds, and the error of unbelievers may block the sense of their understanding with the barrier of disobedience, yet they will not be able to be ignorant of the power of so great a work.
For what weight did the wood have in itself, or what efficacy did inanimate matter contain in itself, to abolish bitterness, to produce sweetness, to introduce and remove nature, while that which had recoiled as unpleasant is now perceived as sweet? And because in that which was being done for the present there is the efficacy of the power of God transferring nature into one thing out of another, yet He is not to be thought to have needed the service of the wood, so as to grant the change to the waters only by its intercession. But because God was able to do all things, He contrives in the present the secret of His operation reserved for the times. For to the people lingering in the desert the water was useless; and indeed we find peoples often named in place of waters, when it is said:
'The waters saw You, O God, and were afraid,' and again: 'All you waters, clap your hands.' Therefore, whether the waters themselves are bitter by their own nature, or the whole people abiding in the desert and not yet about to obtain the land of promise is made bitter through the murmuring which is born of obstinacy, it is made sweet by the sacrament of the wood. And it not only falls away from what it was, but is changed for the better and beyond necessary use; for it not only ceased to be bitter, but was rendered sweet. The wood therefore both operates upon the present water and is useful, by the sacrament of its power, upon the peoples named under the term of water. In this wood, according to the same Moses, the life of all hangs, when he says:
'You shall see your life hanging before the eyes of your eyes night and day, and you shall fear and shall not believe your life.' This is cast into bread in Jeremiah thus: 'Against me they devised a device, saying: Come, let us cast wood into his bread.' From this material is the rod that conquers the magicians, terrifies Pharaoh, crushes Egypt, divides the sea, pours back the deep, draws forth the fountain, takes away bitterness, bestows sweetness; for by the sacrament of this the hearts of unbelievers are softened and are transferred from the bitterness of sins and impiety into the sweetness of faith. And lest not all things should agree with those which were then being done by the effects of the hidden sacrament, Scripture subjoined, saying:
'There God placed justifications and judgments, and there He tempted him.' When it is said 'there,' it is not a signification of place but of deed. For we do not find that in that place any dispositions of justifications and judgments and temptations existed. On the contrary, in the sacrament of the wood, on which the Lord hung, on which He affixed with Himself all things that were adverse to the salvation of the human race, there is both justification—because the just man is from faith—and there are judgments—because he who does not believe is already judged—and there is temptation—because through the scandal of the cross is salvation; for the cross is foolishness to those who perish, but the power of God unto salvation to those who believe.
And so, since the reproach of the cross is the temptation of faith, since unbelief is the cause of judgment, since faith is the reward of justification, deservedly in the sacrament of the wood transferring the water from bitterness into sweetness both justification and judgments and temptation are contained. 'And they came to Elim, and there were there twelve fountains of waters and seventy palm trees; and they settled there beside the waters.' Therefore the spiritual disposition is consummated in the deeds being done; for from Marah, the place of bitterness, they come to Elim, where there were twelve fountains of waters and seventy palm trees.
After the knowledge of the sacrament of the wood—namely of the apostolic and evangelical preaching—a resting place is sought, with the seventy preachers overshadowing for a time and the twelve apostles flowing forever; and because the seventy preachers of the Gospel, though chosen, were afterward found to be unbelievers—although they had brought back the fruit of faith, with the unclean spirits made subject to them—while the apostles endured in the preaching of faith, although mention is made of seventy trees together with twelve fountains, yet according to the faith of Scripture rest is taken only at the seat of the waters. Now indeed, in the flesh of the quails and the food of the manna, how great and how absolute is the reasoning of the spiritual matter! The people who had been led out of Egypt murmur against their leaders;
they desire the flesh which they were accustomed to use in Egypt. A flock of quails flying in the evening covers the camp; the people are fed by their flesh. In the morning manna is found. Without distinction of age or sex, to each one the same measure of quantity is decreed: he who gathers more does not have too much, he who stores up less does not lack. In those things which were beyond necessity, a worm swarmed up. And that portion of the manna which had been left over gathered in the field, wasted away as the sun grew hot. On the sixth day double is stored up and is not corrupted; on the seventh day the manna is withheld, though some waited in vain. Finally an omer destined for each is stored in a golden vessel and is reserved as a testimony for the generation to come.
And this too is to be considered, that the manna is given as a temptation: through its observance each one is to be proved, whether he is fit for the precepts of God. For thus it is written: 'The Lord said to Moses: Behold, I will rain upon you bread from heaven, and the people shall go out and gather one day's portion for the day, that I may tempt them, whether they will walk in my law or not.' But concerning the flesh it was thus said: 'At evening you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread.' Eating at evening is signified in the flesh, but the filling in the morning is signified in the manna. Therefore that which pertains to the flesh is this: that the people, abiding in the desert, are held by the desire of habit; for they desire the flesh of Egypt.
He takes it at evening—being, that is, unbelieving toward God and impatient of His promises even to the consummation of the age, which is signified in the evening—by the desires of the world, which has often been signified under Egypt. Finally, the people had this flesh only once, so that, given not for necessary use but for the significance of prefiguration, they might be taught. But in the manna is temptation; for through it the people are tempted, whether they are going to be obedient to God, that is, whether they will be worthy to take the true bread from heaven; and the reasoning of this temptation is to be sought from what follows. It is found in the morning; for this is the time of the heavenly food in the resurrection of the Lord. The same is appointed for every age and sex;
according to human nature it is contrary—for when is the same amount of food necessary for a little child and for a grown man?—but according to spiritual prefiguration it is most fitting, the heavenly food being imparted equally to all, undivided in its power to the parts—for we speak of the sacrament to those who know—none of the greater abounding and none of the least lacking, all being equally filled, that is, from that which was taken divided among the parts.
But in those things which were gathered beyond measure and superabounded in the morning, in which there is both worm and rottenness, it is not doubtful that for those who have gathered together, beyond the heavenly gift and the spiritual teaching, things not necessary, these things are both foul in perception—that is, corrupted from the truth—and swarming with the vices of demons, namely made restless with worms, to be dissolved at last from the liquid as the sun grows hot, that is, as Christ, who is the Sun of righteousness, returns for judgment. But on the sixth day, in the double gathering of the manna for the rest of the seventh, the preparation of spiritual works accumulated is enjoined, for those who prepare good things to use them then, when rest is at hand. Finally, what remains of the sixth day is not corrupted.
whereas that which is beyond the measure of the other days stinks. Thus also for those things which are beyond what is prescribed, corruption is presumed. Therefore in this time of our age we must labour, so that we may use it in rest. But the time is that of this sixth thousandth year, which is signified under the number of the sixth day, the prophet saying: 'For a thousand years in the sight of the Lord are as one day.'
The people therefore are fed on the seventh day, that is, in the rest of the Lord, with foods prepared the day before, and use those things which one had prepared, not being about to find on the seventh anything on which he might be fed, with many going out into the field and finding nothing; that is, with the times of the ages being concluded, we shall find nothing else for the use of our rest than what had been prepared and stored up by us beforehand. Then the omer of manna is commanded to be reserved in a golden vessel for the generations to come, in the sight of the Lord. But where at last is this vessel, and where is the manna which was stored up after the frequent captivities of the people? After the twin destructions of the city and the temple, that which was laid up does not exist. And what then? Do we suppose that God was ignorant that the manna could not be reserved for the generation to come?
He is certainly not to be believed to have been ignorant, since He foresees the very future counsels of men; but by the figure of the golden vessel and of the manna stored in the sight of God and reserved for the generations to come, He showed that He would be precious and eternal, who was to reserve, in His body as in a golden vessel, the received manna, with God beholding the uncontaminated custody of this spiritual food received by us. Book Two. Concerning Hosea. And in the book of the prophets, to Hosea, another word of the Lord is also read: 'Go, take yourself a wife of fornication, for by fornicating the land shall fornicate away from the Lord.' And after many things which are set between, full of malediction against her, and after the birth of Israel and of Not-beloved and of Not-my-people, these things are made known:
'And I will make for them in that day a covenant with the beasts of the field and the birds of heaven and the serpents of the earth; and bow and sword and war I will crush from the earth, and I will settle you in hope, and I will betroth you to myself forever. I will betroth you to myself in justice and in faith, and you shall know the Lord. And it shall be in that day, says the Lord: I will hear the heaven, and the heaven shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the grain and the wine and the oil, and these shall hear Israel. And I will sow her for myself upon the earth, and I will love Not-beloved, and I will say to Not-my-people: You are my people.'
And, as I judge, there is no room for hesitation but that we should understand here a prefiguration of the Church already foreshadowed, since the Apostle reckoned that what had been said above to Hosea concerning the sons of this harlot must be referred to the people of the faithful, saying to the Corinthians: 'He has called us not only from among the Jews, but also from among the nations, as he says also in Hosea: I will call him who was Not-my-people, My-people, and her who was Not-beloved, Beloved; and it shall come to pass that in whatever place they were called Not-my-people, there they shall be called sons of the living God.'
Therefore that which in the prophet was carried out bodily—that is, the marriage and the begetting (for from the harlot three children were born, of whom the first was named Israel by the command of God, the second, a daughter, was called Beloved, and the third was named Not-my-people)—this same thing is both confirmed and accomplished by God toward a spiritual understanding.
For this harlot, joined to the prophet, the Lord made his bride in righteousness and in faith, ordaining a covenant with the beasts of the field—that is, with men savage by the law of the world—and with the birds of the heaven, namely with those living under the emptiness and vanity of this world, and with the serpents of the earth, that is, with those constituted with venomous mind and deceit in the body: about to shatter the bow among the serpents, the spear among the birds, war among the beasts; by the kinds of weapons and the names of living creatures he was to tame in peace the diverse instincts of the human mind—the wars of beasts, the darts of the flying, the venoms of serpents.
Likewise 'the heaven hearing the heaven and the earth the earth' signifies in him who hears and him who is heard a diversity in number, yet showing that this very thing—namely, that which hears and is heard—is one and the same, since the heaven hears the heaven and the earth the earth; but the signification is of divinity in the heaven and of bodiliness in the earth. And because the Lord was born a man from God, and we from man are to be conformed to God, therefore the heaven shall hear the heaven and the earth the earth. But in the grain and the wine and the oil, which he shall hear—since indeed in these insensible things there is no sense of hearing—he nevertheless shows that he it is who under the sacrament of the anointing and of the body is to hear in these.
By these things, while Israel heard, he sowed for himself in hope the harlot betrothed to him, passing over the one who had been named Israel and imparting to the rest the honor of transformation, so that he who was not his people might be his people, and she who was not beloved might be Beloved. For Israel was chosen from among the nations in Abraham his father, as is said in the Psalms: 'the house of Jacob from a barbarous people.' But abiding in sins and given over to vain religions and unfaithful to the promises of God, he did not deserve to receive the effect of the promises, and, though first chosen into the people of God, he lost the honor of election.
For nothing more is said of Israel, first brought forth from the harlot, and the whole discourse of God is about those begotten afterward, since the former were rejected and set apart from affection and ownership—children born unto not being loved, begotten unto not being used. But first the harlot was chosen into a bride for God through faith and righteousness; then those who were not beloved, who were not his own, who were of the harlot's offspring—these are named sons of the living God.
And this word of God indeed, by which the prophet is commanded to take a harlot to wife, had therefore to be recalled, so that—since we are taught that all things are prefigured through the deeds of the Old Testament, and that these things are to be accomplished in the Lord and through the Lord—by this very fact, that a harlot is joined to the prophet, we might understand it shown that Gentile ignorance is joined to the teachings of the prophets, and that from these, born of the not-beloved, they are called beloved; of the not-people, a people; of the harlot mother, sons of God. CONCERNING JOSHUA THE SON OF NUN.