City of God 16.17–16.26

Chapter 17. On the three most eminent kingdoms of the nations, of which one, that of the Assyrians, was already outstanding when Abraham was born.

At the same time there were eminent kingdoms of the nations, in which the city of the earth-born, that is, the society of men living according to man, stood out more notably under the dominion of the fallen angels: namely three kingdoms, of the Sicyonians, the Egyptians, and the Assyrians. But that of the Assyrians was much more powerful and exalted. For that king Ninus, son of Belus, had subdued the peoples of all Asia except India. By Asia I now mean not that part which is one province of this greater Asia, but what is called Asia as a whole, which some have placed as one of two parts of the whole world, but most as the third, so that all together are Asia, Europe, and Africa; though they did not make the division equal. For this which is called Asia reaches from the south through the east to the north; Europe from the north to the west; and then Africa from the west to the south. Hence two, Europe and Africa, seem to hold half the world, and Asia alone the other half. But those two were made into parts because between them there enters from the Ocean whatever water flows between the lands; and this makes our Great Sea. So if you divide the world into two parts, East and West, Asia will be in one, and Europe and Africa in the other. So of the three kingdoms that were then pre-eminent, that of the Sicyonians was not under the Assyrians, because they are in Europe; but how could that of the Egyptians not be subject to those who held all Asia, with only the Indians, as is said, excepted? In Assyria, then, the dominion of the ungodly city had prevailed; its capital was that Babylon, whose name is most fitting for the earth-born city, that is, Confusion. There Ninus was already reigning after the death of his father Belus, who had been the first to reign there, for sixty-five years. His son Ninus, who succeeded his dead father in the kingdom, reigned fifty-two years, and was in the forty-third year of his reign when Abraham was born, which was about the twelve-hundredth year before the founding of Rome, which was, as it were, another Babylon in the west.

Chapter 18. On God's second address to Abraham, in which the land of Canaan is promised to him and his seed.

Abraham, then, having left Haran in the seventy-fifth year of his age and the hundred and forty-fifth of his father's, went with Lot his brother's son and Sarah his wife into the land of Canaan, and came as far as Shechem, where he again received a divine oracle, of which it is written thus: “And the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him: To your seed I will give this land.” Nothing is said here of that seed in which he was made the father of all nations, but only of that by which he is father of the one nation of Israel; for it was by this seed that that land was possessed.

Chapter 19. On Sarah's chastity, protected by God in Egypt, when Abraham had said she was not his wife but his sister.

Then, having built an altar there and called upon God, Abraham set out from there and dwelt in the desert, and from there was compelled by the pressure of famine to go into Egypt. There he called his wife his sister, telling no lie; for she was this too, since she was related to him by blood; just as Lot too, by the same kinship, since he was his brother's son, was called his brother. So he kept silent that she was his wife, but did not deny it, entrusting the protection of his wife's chastity to God and guarding against human snares as a man; for if he had not guarded against the danger as far as it could be guarded against, he would have been tempting God rather than hoping in God. On this subject we have said enough against the slanders of Faustus the Manichaean. In the end, what Abraham had presumed of the Lord came about. For Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who had taken her as his wife, was severely afflicted and gave her back to her husband. Far be it from us to believe that she was defiled by another's intercourse; for it is much more credible that Pharaoh was not permitted to do this, by great afflictions.

Chapter 20. On the parting of Lot and Abraham, which they agreed on with love unimpaired.

When Abraham had returned from Egypt to the place from which he had come, Lot, his brother's son, now parted from him to the land of Sodom, with love unimpaired. For they had become rich and had begun to have many herdsmen of cattle, and as these quarreled among themselves, they avoided in this way the contentious discord of their households. For from this, human affairs being what they are, some quarrel could have arisen even between the two of them. So these are the words of Abraham to Lot, guarding against this evil: “Let there be no quarrel between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are men and brothers. Behold, is not the whole land before you? Separate from me; if you go to the left, I will go to the right; or if you go to the right, I will go to the left.” From this perhaps arose the peaceable custom among men that when some earthly property is to be divided, the elder divides and the younger chooses.

Chapter 21. On God's third promise, in which he promises the land of Canaan to Abraham and his seed for ever.

When, then, Abraham and Lot had parted and were living separately because of the need to support their households, not through the ugliness of discord, Abraham in the land of Canaan and Lot in Sodom, the Lord said to Abraham in a third oracle: “Look with your eyes and see from the place where you now are, to the north and the south-west and the east and the sea; for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your seed for ever; and I will make your seed like the sand of the earth. If anyone can number the sand of the earth, your seed too shall be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in its length and in its breadth, for I will give it to you.” Whether this promise also includes the one by which he was made the father of all nations does not clearly appear. For it may seem that this belongs to it: “And I will make your seed like the sand of the earth”, which is said by the figure of speech that the Greeks call hyperbole; and this is certainly figurative, not literal. That Scripture habitually uses this, as it does other figures, no one who has studied it doubts. This figure, that is, this manner of speaking, occurs when what is said is far greater than what is meant by saying it. For who does not see how incomparably greater the number of the sand is than that of all human beings can be, from Adam himself to the end of the world? How much greater, then, than the seed of Abraham, not only that which belongs to the nation of Israel, but also that which is and will be, by imitation of his faith, throughout the whole world in all nations! That seed, compared with the multitude of the ungodly, is certainly among the few; though these few too make up their own innumerable multitude, which is signified by hyperbole through the sand of the earth. Certainly this multitude promised to Abraham is innumerable not to God but to men; to God not even the sand of the earth is. So, since not only the nation of Israel but the whole seed of Abraham, in which there is also the promise of many sons, not according to the flesh but according to the spirit, is more fittingly compared to the multitude of the sand, a promise of both things can be understood here. But we said it does not clearly appear, because the multitude of that one nation, born according to the flesh from Abraham through his grandson Jacob, has also grown so much that it has filled almost all parts of the world. And so it too could be compared by hyperbole to the multitude of the sand, since it too is innumerable to man. That only the land called Canaan is signified, certainly no one doubts. But the words, “I will give it to you and to your seed for ever”, may trouble some, if they understand “for ever” as “to eternity.” But if they take “for ever” here in the sense in which we faithfully hold that the beginning of the age to come starts from the end of the present one, nothing will trouble them; because, though the Israelites have been expelled from Jerusalem, they still remain in other cities of the land of Canaan and will remain to the end; and when that whole land is inhabited by Christians, it is the seed of Abraham itself that inhabits it.

Chapter 22. On Abraham's defeat of the enemies of Sodom, when he also rescued Lot from captivity and was blessed by the priest Melchizedek.

Having received this answer of promise, Abraham moved and stayed in another place in the same land, by the oak of Mamre, which was Hebron. Then, when five kings were waging war against four, and the enemies had fallen upon Sodom, and when the Sodomites were defeated Lot too was taken captive, Abraham freed him from the enemy, leading into battle with him three hundred and eighteen of his home-born servants; he won the victory for the kings of Sodom and would take none of the spoils, though the king for whom he had conquered offered them. But he was then blessed by Melchizedek, who was priest of God Most High; about whom many great things are written in the letter entitled To the Hebrews, which many say is by the apostle Paul, though some deny it. For there first appeared the sacrifice which is now offered to God by Christians throughout the whole world, and that is fulfilled which long after this event is said by prophecy to Christ, who was still to come in the flesh: “You are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek”; not, that is, according to the order of Aaron, which was to be removed when the things foreshadowed by those shadows came to light.

Chapter 23. On the word of the Lord to Abraham, in which it is promised that his posterity will be multiplied like the multitude of the stars; and that, believing this, he was justified while still uncircumcised.

At that time too the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. When God promised him protection and a very great reward, Abraham, anxious about posterity, said that a certain Eliezer, a servant born in his house, would be his heir; and at once an heir was promised him, not that home-born servant, but one who was to come from Abraham himself; and again a seed beyond number, not like the sand of the earth but like the stars of heaven; where it seems to me rather that a posterity exalted in heavenly happiness was promised. For as far as number is concerned, what are the stars of heaven compared with the sand of the earth? Unless someone says that this comparison too is alike in so far as the stars also cannot be counted, since it is not to be believed that all of them can even be seen. For the more keenly anyone looks, the more he sees. Hence it is rightly thought that some are hidden even from those who see most keenly, besides those stars which are said to rise and set in another part of the world very far from us. Finally, all who boast of having comprehended and recorded the whole number of the stars, like Aratus or Eudoxus or any others, the authority of this book despises. Here indeed is set down that sentence which the apostle recalls in order to commend the grace of God: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”; so that the circumcision might not glory, and refuse to admit the uncircumcised nations to the faith of Christ. For when this happened, that faith was reckoned as righteousness to Abraham who believed, he had not yet been circumcised.

Chapter 24. On the meaning of the sacrifice which Abraham was commanded to offer when he had asked to be taught about the things he had believed.

In the same vision, when God was speaking to him, he also said this to him: “I am God, who brought you out of the region of the Chaldeans, to give you this land, that you may be its heir.” When Abraham then asked by what he should know that he would be its heir, God said to him: “Take for me a heifer three years old, and a she-goat three years old, and a ram three years old, and a turtledove and a pigeon.” And he took all these for him, and divided them in the middle, and laid them each opposite the other; but the birds he did not divide. And there came down, as it is written, birds upon the bodies that had been divided, and Abram sat down with them. And about sunset a dread fell upon Abram, and behold, a great dark fear fell upon him; and it was said to Abram: “Know for certain that your seed shall be a sojourner in a land not its own, and they will reduce them to slavery and afflict them four hundred years; but the nation which they will serve I will judge. And after this they shall come out hither with much goods. But you shall go to your fathers in peace, nourished in a good old age. And in the fourth generation they shall return hither; for the sins of the Amorites are not yet fulfilled until now.” And when the sun was now setting, there was a flame, and behold a smoking furnace and lamps of fire, which passed between those divided pieces. On that day the Lord God made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your seed I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”

All these things were done and said divinely in a vision; to discuss each of them in detail would take long and go beyond the purpose of this work. We ought, then, to know what is sufficient. After it had been said that Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, he did not fail in faith when he said, “Lord and Master, by what shall I know that I shall be its heir?” (for the inheritance of that land had been promised). For he does not say, “How shall I know?”, as though he did not yet believe; but he says, “By what shall I know?”, so that some likeness might be applied to the thing he had believed, by which its manner might be recognized; just as it is not distrust on the part of the Virgin Mary when she says, “How shall this be, since I do not know a man?” For she was certain of what was to be; she was asking the manner in which it would come about, and when she had asked this she was told. So here too a likeness was given from animals, the heifer, the she-goat, the ram, and two birds, the turtledove and the pigeon, so that he might know according to these things that what he no longer doubted would come to pass. Whether, then, by the heifer is signified the people placed under the yoke of the law; by the she-goat the same people as one that would sin; by the ram the same people as one that would also reign (and these animals are said to be three years old because, since there are notable turning points of time from Adam to Noah, and from there to Abraham, and from there to David, who, when Saul was rejected, was the first established by the Lord's will in the kingship of the nation of Israel, in this third period, which stretches from Abraham to David, that people grew up as though in its third age); or whether these signify something else more fittingly: I would in no way doubt that the spiritual are prefigured in them by the addition of the turtledove and the pigeon. And that is why it is said, “But the birds he did not divide”, because the carnal are divided among themselves, but the spiritual in no way, whether they withdraw from the busy dealings of men like the turtledove, or live among them like the pigeon; yet both birds are simple and harmless, signifying that in the very people of Israel, to whom that land was to be given, there would be undivided sons of the promise and heirs of the kingdom who would remain in eternal happiness. The birds coming down upon the divided bodies indicate nothing good, but the spirits of this air, seeking a kind of food of their own from the division of the carnal. That Abraham sat down with them signifies that even among those divisions of the carnal the true faithful will persevere to the end. And that about sunset a dread and a great dark fear fell upon Abraham signifies that about the end of this age there will be great disturbance and tribulation of the faithful, of which the Lord says in the Gospel: “For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning.”

What was said to Abraham, “Know for certain that your seed shall be a sojourner in a land not its own, and they will reduce them to slavery and afflict them four hundred years”, was most plainly prophesied of the people of Israel, which was to be in servitude in Egypt; not that that people was to spend four hundred years in that servitude under afflicting Egyptians, but it was foretold that this would happen within those four hundred years. For just as it is written of Terah, Abraham's father, “And the days of Terah in Haran were two hundred and five years”, not because they were all spent there but because they were completed there, so here too it is inserted, “and they will reduce them to slavery and afflict them four hundred years”, because this number was completed in that affliction, not because the whole of it was spent there. Four hundred years are indeed spoken of because of the fullness of the number, though they are somewhat more, whether they are counted from the time when these things were promised to Abraham or from the birth of Isaac, because of the seed of Abraham of which these things are foretold. For, as we said above, four hundred and thirty years are counted from Abraham's seventy-fifth year, when the first promise was made to him, to the exodus of Israel from Egypt; which the apostle recalls thus: “This is what I say: the law, which came four hundred and thirty years afterwards, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.” These four hundred and thirty years, then, could already be called four hundred, since they are not much more; how much more when some of that number had already passed when these things were shown and said to Abraham in the vision, or when Isaac was born to his father at a hundred, twenty-five years after the first promise, when of those four hundred and thirty there remained four hundred and five, which God chose to call four hundred. And no one will doubt that the rest that follows in the words of God foretelling it belongs to the people of Israel.

What is added, “And when the sun was now setting, there was a flame, and behold a smoking furnace and lamps of fire, which passed between those divided pieces”, signifies that at the end of the world the carnal are to be judged by fire. For just as the affliction of the city of God, such as never was before, which is expected to come under Antichrist, is signified by Abraham's dark fear about sunset, that is, as the end of the world is now approaching, so at sunset, that is, at the very end, this fire signifies the day of judgment, dividing the carnal who are to be saved through fire from those to be condemned in fire. Then the covenant made with Abraham shows the land of Canaan specifically and names eleven nations in it, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates; not, then, from the great river of Egypt, the Nile, but from the small one that divides Egypt from Palestine, where the city of Rhinocorura is.

Chapter 25. On Hagar, Sarah's slave woman, whom Sarah herself wished to be Abraham's concubine.

From here follow the times of Abraham's sons, one by Hagar the slave woman, the other by Sarah the free woman, of whom we have already spoken in the preceding book. As regards what was done, no charge is by any means to be branded on Abraham in the matter of this concubine. For he used her to beget offspring, not to satisfy lust; not insulting his wife, but rather obeying her, who believed it would be a consolation for her barrenness if she made the fruitful womb of her slave woman her own by will, since she could not by nature; and by that right of which the apostle says, “Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does”, the wife would use another woman to bear what she could not bear herself. There is no wanton desire here, no base wickedness. The slave woman is handed over to the husband by the wife for the sake of offspring, and received by the husband for the sake of offspring; by both is sought not the indulgence of fault but the fruit of nature. Finally, when the pregnant slave woman grew proud toward her barren mistress, and Sarah, with a woman's suspicion, laid the blame rather on her husband, even there Abraham showed that he had been not a slavish lover but a free begetter, and that in Hagar he had guarded the chastity of his marriage to Sarah, and fulfilled not his own pleasure but her will; that he had received, not sought; approached, not clung; sown seed, not loved. For he says: “Behold, your slave woman is in your hands; use her as you please.” O man, using women like a man: his wife with temperance, his slave woman in compliance, neither with intemperance!

Chapter 26. On God's testimony to Abraham, in which he promises the old man a son from barren Sarah, appoints him father of the nations, and seals the faith of the promise with the sacrament of circumcision.

After this Ishmael was born of Hagar, in whom Abraham might have thought fulfilled what had been promised him when he wanted to adopt his home-born servant, and God said: “This one shall not be your heir; but he who shall come out of you, he shall be your heir.” So that he might not think this promise fulfilled in the slave woman's son, when he was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to him and said: “I am God; be pleasing in my sight and be blameless, and I will set my covenant between me and you, and I will fill you exceedingly.” And Abraham fell on his face. And God spoke to him, saying: “And I, behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations; and your name shall no longer be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of many nations; and I will increase you exceedingly, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come out of you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your seed after you, in their generations, as an everlasting covenant, to be your God and the God of your seed after you. And I will give to you and to your seed after you the land in which you are a sojourner, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.” And God said to Abraham: “And you shall keep my covenant, you and your seed after you, in their generations. And this is the covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your seed after you, in their generations: every male among you shall be circumcised, and you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. And a boy of eight days shall be circumcised, every male among you, in your generations. The home-born and the one bought from any stranger, who is not of your seed, shall be circumcised with circumcision, the home-born of your house and the bought. And my covenant shall be in your flesh as an everlasting covenant. And the male who is not circumcised, who will not be circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin on the eighth day, that soul shall perish from his race, because he has broken my covenant.” And God said to Abraham: “Sarai your wife, her name shall not be called Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her and give you a son by her, and I will bless him, and he shall become nations, and kings of peoples shall come from him.” And Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart: “Shall one be born to me who am a hundred years old, and shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear?” And Abraham said to God: “May this Ishmael live in your sight.” And God said to Abraham: “Yes; behold, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant, to be his God and the God of his seed after him. And as for Ishmael, behold, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will enlarge him and multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve nations, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year.”

Here clearer promises are given of the calling of the nations in Isaac, that is, in the son of the promise, by whom grace, not nature, is signified, since a son is promised from an old man and a barren old woman. For although God also works the natural course of procreation, yet where the work of God is evident with nature impaired and failing, there grace is more evidently understood. And because this was to come about not by generation but by regeneration, circumcision was commanded now, when a son was promised from Sarah. And his commanding that all, not only sons but also home-born and purchased slaves, be circumcised testifies that this grace belongs to all. For what else does circumcision signify but nature renewed by putting off the old? And what else does the eighth day signify but Christ, who rose again when the week was complete, that is, after the sabbath? Even the names of the parents are changed: everything sounds of newness, and in the old covenant the new is foreshadowed. For what is the thing called the Old Testament but the concealment of the New? And what else is the thing called the New but the revelation of the Old? Abraham's laughter is the exultation of one who rejoices, not the mockery of one who distrusts. His words too in his heart, “Shall one be born to me who am a hundred years old, and shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear?”, are not those of one who doubts but of one who marvels. And if anyone is troubled by the words, “And I will give to you and to your seed after you the land in which you are a sojourner, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession”, as to how it is to be taken as fulfilled or still awaited to be fulfilled, since no earthly possession of any kind can be eternal for any nation, let him know that our translators render as “everlasting” what the Greeks call αἰώνιον, which is derived from “age”; for in Greek the age is called αἰών. But the Latins did not dare to say “secular” for this, lest they send the sense far off into something else. For many things are called secular which are so done in this age that they pass away even in a short time; but what is called αἰώνιον either has no end or extends to the end of this age.