City of God 16.27–16.37

Chapter 27. On the male whose soul perishes if he is not circumcised on the eighth day, because he has broken God's covenant.

It may also be asked how we should understand what is said here: “The male 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”, since this is no fault of the little child, whose soul he said would perish, nor did the child himself break God's covenant, but his elders, who did not take care to circumcise him; unless it is because even little children, not according to anything proper to their own life but according to the common origin of the human race, have all broken God's covenant in that one man in whom all sinned. For many covenants of God are so called besides those two great ones, the Old and the New, as anyone may learn by reading. But the first covenant, made with the first man, is certainly this: “On the day you eat, you shall surely die.” Hence it is written in the book called Ecclesiasticus: “All flesh grows old like a garment. For the covenant from the beginning is: You shall surely die.” For since a clearer law was given afterwards, and the apostle says, “Where there is no law, there is no transgression”, how is what we read in the psalm true, “I have counted all the sinners of the earth as transgressors”, unless because all who are held bound by any sin are guilty of transgressing some law? Therefore, if even little children, as the true faith holds, are born sinners, not by their own act but by origin, which is why we confess that the grace of the remission of sins is necessary for them, then certainly, in the way in which they are sinners, they are also recognized as transgressors of that law which was given in paradise; so that both sayings of Scripture are true: “I have counted all the sinners of the earth as transgressors”, and “Where there is no law, there is no transgression.” And so, since circumcision was the sign of regeneration, and generation will not undeservedly destroy the little child because of original sin, by which God's first covenant was broken, unless regeneration sets him free, these divine words are to be understood as if it had been said: “Whoever has not been regenerated, that soul shall perish from his race, because he broke God's covenant when he too sinned in Adam along with all.” For if he had said, “Because he has broken this covenant of mine”, it would compel us to understand it only of this circumcision; but as it is, since he did not specify what kind of covenant the little child broke, we are free to understand it as said of that covenant whose breaking could pertain to the little child. But if anyone contends that this was said only of this circumcision, that in it the little child broke God's covenant because he was not circumcised, let him look for some manner of speaking by which it can without absurdity be understood that he broke the covenant because, though it was not broken by him, it was broken in him. But in that case too it must be noted that the soul of the uncircumcised little child perishes without injustice, through no neglect of his own, only by the bond of original sin.

Chapter 28. On the change of the names of Abraham and Sarah, who, though they could not beget, because of the barrenness of one and the old age of both, obtained the gift of fruitfulness.

When, then, so great and so clear a promise had been made to Abraham, to whom it was said most plainly, “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 give you a son by Sarah, and I will bless him, and he shall become nations, and kings of peoples shall come from him” (a promise we now see paid in Christ), from then on that couple are not called in the Scriptures, as they were called before, Abram and Sarai, but as we have called them from the beginning, since they are now so called by everyone, Abraham and Sarah. The reason why Abraham's name was changed is given: “Because,” it says, “I have made you the father of many nations.” This, then, is to be understood as its meaning; while Abram, as he was called before, means “exalted father.” No reason is given for the change of Sarah's name; but, as those say who have written interpretations of the Hebrew names contained in these sacred writings, Sarai means “my princess,” and Sarah “strength.” Hence it is written in the letter to the Hebrews: “By faith Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed.” For both were old, as Scripture testifies; but she was also barren and had now ceased to have her monthly flow, for which reason she could no longer bear even if she had not been barren. Moreover, if a woman is of such advanced age that the usual course of women still flows for her, she can bear by a young man but not by an old one; though that old man can still beget, but by a young woman, as Abraham could after Sarah's death by Keturah, because he found her age still vigorous. This, then, is the wonder the apostle commends, and it is to this that he refers when he says that Abraham's body was already as good as dead: because at that age he could no longer beget from every woman who still had some last time of bearing. For we must understand the body as dead in some respect, not in every respect. For if in every respect, it is no longer the old age of a living man but the corpse of a dead one. This question is also commonly solved by saying that Abraham begot afterwards by Keturah because the gift of begetting which he received from the Lord remained even after his wife's death. But the solution we have followed seems to me preferable, because an old man of a hundred, in our time indeed, can beget by no woman; not so then, when they still lived so long that a hundred years did not yet make a man decrepit with age.

Chapter 29. On the three men, or angels, in whom the Lord is shown to have appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre.

God appeared again to Abraham at the oak of Mamre in three men, who there is no doubt were angels; though some think that one of them was the Lord Christ, asserting that he was visible even before he put on flesh. It belongs, indeed, to the divine power and to an invisible, incorporeal, and unchangeable nature to appear even to mortal sight without any change of itself, not through what it is but through something subject to it; and what is not subject to it? But if they maintain that one of these three was Christ because, when Abraham had seen three, he spoke to the Lord in the singular (for it is written thus: “And behold, three men stood over him; and seeing them he ran to meet them from the door of his tent, and bowed down to the ground and said: Lord, if I have found favor before you”, and so on), why do they not notice this too, that two of them came to destroy the Sodomites while Abraham was still speaking to one, calling him Lord and interceding that he should not destroy the righteous together with the ungodly in Sodom? And Lot received those two in such a way that he too, in his conversation with them, calls the Lord in the singular. For after he had said to them in the plural, “Behold, my lords, turn aside into your servant's house”, and the rest that is said there, afterwards we read: “And the angels took hold of his hand and his wife's hand and the hands of his two daughters, in that the Lord spared him. And it came to pass, as soon as they had brought him outside, that they said: Save your life; do not look back, nor stop anywhere in the whole region; save yourself in the mountain, lest you be overtaken. And Lot said to them: I pray, Lord, since your servant has found mercy before you”, and what follows. Then, after these words, the Lord too answers him in the singular, though he was in the two angels, saying: “Behold, I have respected your face”, and so on. Hence it is much more credible that both Abraham in the three men and Lot in the two recognized the Lord, to whom they spoke in the singular number, even while they thought they were men; for it was for no other reason that they received them in such a way as to serve them as mortals needing human refreshment. But there was certainly something in which they so excelled, though as men, that those who showed them hospitality could not doubt that the Lord was in them, as he is accustomed to be in the prophets; and so they addressed them sometimes in the plural and sometimes the Lord in them in the singular. But Scripture testifies that they were angels, not only in this book of Genesis, where these events are narrated, but also in the letter to the Hebrews, where, praising hospitality, it says: “Through this some have received angels as guests without knowing it.” Through those three men, then, when a son Isaac was again promised to Abraham from Sarah, such a divine answer was also given that it was said: “Abraham shall become a great and numerous nation, and in him all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.” And here those two things were promised most briefly and most fully: the nation of Israel according to the flesh, and all nations according to faith.

Chapter 30. On Lot's deliverance from Sodom and its destruction by fire from heaven; and on Abimelech, whose desire could not harm Sarah's chastity.

After this promise, when Lot had been delivered from Sodom and a rain of fire had come from heaven, that whole region of the ungodly city was turned to ashes, where sexual immorality with males had grown into such a custom as laws usually grant license to other acts. But this punishment of theirs too was a specimen of the divine judgment to come. For what is the point of forbidding those whom the angels were delivering to look back, unless that we must not return in mind to the old life, which one who is regenerated through grace puts off, if we intend to escape the final judgment? Lot's wife, indeed, when she looked back, stayed where she was, and, turned into salt, provided a kind of seasoning for faithful people, by which they might have the savor to beware of that example. Then Abraham did again at Gerar, with Abimelech the king of that city, what he had done in Egypt about his wife, and she was likewise given back to him untouched. There, indeed, when the king reproached him for keeping silent that she was his wife and saying she was his sister, Abraham, disclosing what he had feared, added this too: “And indeed she is truly my sister, on my father's side, but not on my mother's”; for she was Abraham's sister on her father's side, being his kinswoman. And she was of such beauty that even at that age she could be desired.

Chapter 31. On Isaac, born according to the promise, who was given his name from the laughter of both parents.

After this a son was born to Abraham from Sarah according to God's promise, and he named him Isaac, which means “laughter.” For his father had laughed when he was promised to him, marveling in joy; and his mother had laughed when he was promised again through those three men, doubting in joy; though when the angel reproached her that that laughter, even if it was of joy, was not of full faith, she was afterwards confirmed in faith by the same angel. From this, then, the boy received his name. For that the laughter was not a matter of scornful mockery but of celebrating joy, Sarah showed when Isaac was born and called by that name; for she said: “The Lord has made laughter for me; for whoever hears will rejoice with me.” But after a little while the slave woman is cast out of the house with her son; and, according to the apostle, the two covenants, the old and the new, are signified, in which that Sarah bears the figure of the Jerusalem above, that is, of the city of God.

Chapter 32. On the obedience and faith of Abraham, by which he was tested in the offering of his son to be sacrificed; and on the death of Sarah.

Among these events, which it would take too long to record in full, Abraham is tested about sacrificing his most beloved son Isaac himself, so that his godly obedience might be proved, to be brought to the knowledge of the ages, not of God. For not every testing is to be blamed, since the testing by which proof is made is even to be welcomed. And for the most part the human mind cannot come to know itself otherwise than by answering to itself about its own strength, not by word but by experience, when testing, as it were, questions it; and there, if it acknowledges God's gift, then it is godly, then it is strengthened with the firmness of grace, not puffed up with the emptiness of boasting. Abraham would certainly never have believed that God delights in human victims; though when the divine command thunders, it must be obeyed, not disputed. But Abraham is to be praised for having believed that his son, once sacrificed, would immediately rise again. For God had said to him, when he was unwilling to carry out his wife's wish that the slave woman and her son be cast out: “In Isaac shall your seed be called.” And certainly there follows there: “And the son of this slave woman too I will make into a great nation, because he is your seed.” How, then, was it said, “In Isaac shall your seed be called”, when God called Ishmael too his seed? The apostle, explaining what “In Isaac shall your seed be called” means, says: “That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed.” And so the children of the promise, to be the seed of Abraham, are called in Isaac, that is, are gathered in Christ by grace calling them. The godly father, then, holding faithfully to this promise, since it had to be fulfilled through this son whom God was commanding to be killed, did not doubt that he who could be given when not hoped for could be given back to him when sacrificed. So it was understood and so expounded in the letter to the Hebrews too: “By faith Abraham, when tested, went ahead with Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only son, to whom it had been said, In Isaac shall your seed be called, reasoning that God is able to raise even from the dead.” Hence it added: “For this reason he also brought him back as a likeness.” A likeness of whom, but of him of whom the apostle says: “Who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all”? For this reason Isaac too, as the Lord carried his cross, himself carried to the place of sacrifice the wood on which he was to be placed. Finally, since Isaac was not to be killed, after his father was forbidden to strike, who was that ram by whose sacrifice the offering was completed with significant blood? Indeed, when Abraham saw it, it was caught by its horns in a thicket. Who, then, was figured by it but Jesus, crowned with Jewish thorns before he was sacrificed?

But let us rather hear the divine words through the angel. For Scripture says: “And Abraham stretched out his hand to take the knife to kill his son. And the angel of the Lord called him from heaven and said: Abraham! And he said: Here I am. And he said: Do not lay your hand on the boy, nor do anything to him; for now I know that you fear your God, and you have not spared your beloved son for my sake.” “Now I know” was said for “now I have made it known”; for God was not ignorant of this until then. Then, when that ram had been sacrificed in place of his son Isaac, Abraham called the name of that place, as we read, “The Lord saw”; so that they say today: “On the mountain the Lord appeared.” Just as “Now I know” was said for “now I have made it known”, so here “The Lord saw” for “The Lord appeared,” that is, made himself seen. “And the angel of the Lord called Abraham a second time from heaven, saying: By myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not spared your beloved son for my sake, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your seed like the stars of heaven and like the sand which is by the shore of the sea. And your seed shall possess by inheritance the cities of its adversaries, and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you obeyed my voice.” In this way that promise of the calling of the nations in the seed of Abraham was confirmed even by God's oath, after the burnt offering by which Christ was signified. For he had often promised, but never sworn. And what is the oath of the true and truthful God but the confirmation of the promise and a kind of rebuke to the unbelieving?

After this Sarah died, in the hundred and twenty-seventh year of her life and the hundred and thirty-seventh of her husband's. For he was ten years older than she; as he himself said when a son was promised him from her: “Shall one be born to me who am a hundred years old, and shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear?” Then Abraham bought a field in which he buried his wife. Then, therefore, according to Stephen's account, he was settled in that land, since he began to be an owner there; after the death, that is, of his father, who is gathered to have died two years before.

Chapter 33. On Rebecca, granddaughter of Nahor, whom Isaac took as his wife.

Then, when Isaac was forty years old, that is, in the hundred and fortieth year of his father's life, three years after his mother's death, he married Rebecca, the granddaughter of his uncle Nahor. And when, so that he might marry her, the servant was sent by his father into Mesopotamia, what else was shown, when Abraham said to that servant, “Put your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord God of heaven and the Lord of the earth that you will not take a wife for my son Isaac from the daughters of the Canaanites”, but that the Lord God of heaven and the Lord of the earth was to come in the flesh that was drawn from that thigh? Are these small signs of the foretold truth which we see fulfilled in Christ?

Chapter 34. What is to be understood in Abraham's taking Keturah as his wife after Sarah's death.

What is the meaning of Abraham's marrying Keturah after Sarah's death? Far be it from us to suspect incontinence here, especially at that age and in that holiness of faith. Or was he still seeking to beget sons, when, by God's promise, so great a multiplication of sons from Isaac, like the stars of heaven and the sand of the earth, was held by most approved faith? But surely, if Hagar and Ishmael, as the apostle teaches, signified the carnal people of the old covenant, why should not Keturah and her sons also signify the carnal who think they belong to the new covenant? For both were called both wives and concubines of Abraham; but Sarah was never called a concubine. For when Hagar was given to Abraham, it is written thus: “And Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave woman, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife.” And of Keturah, whom he took after Sarah's death, we read thus: “And Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah.” See, both are called wives; and both are found to have been concubines, as Scripture says afterwards: “And Abraham gave all his property to Isaac his son; and to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he was still living, eastward, to the land of the east.” The sons of the concubines, then, have some gifts, but they do not reach the promised kingdom, neither heretics nor carnal Jews; for apart from Isaac there is no heir, and “it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed”, of which it was said, “In Isaac shall your seed be called.” For I do not see why Keturah, who was married after his wife's death, should be called a concubine, except because of this mystery. But whoever does not wish to take these things in these meanings, let him not slander Abraham. For what if this too was provided against the heretics who would come, opponents of second marriages, so that in the very father of many nations it might be shown that to marry again after the death of one's wife is no sin? And Abraham died at the age of one hundred and seventy-⟨five⟩. He left his son Isaac, then, seventy-⟨five⟩ years old, having begotten him at a hundred.

Chapter 35. What the divine answer indicated about the twins still enclosed in the womb of their mother Rebecca.

Now let us see how, from this point, the times of the city of God run on through Abraham's descendants. From the first year of Isaac's life, then, to the sixtieth, when his sons were born to him, this is memorable: that when he asked God that his wife, who was barren, might bear, and the Lord had granted what he asked, and she had conceived, the twins, still enclosed in her womb, struggled. When she was distressed by this trouble, she inquired of the Lord and received the answer: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be separated from your belly, and people shall overcome people, and the elder shall serve the younger.” The apostle Paul wishes this to be understood as a great proof of grace, because before they were born or had done anything good or bad, the younger is chosen without any good merits and the elder rejected; when without doubt, as regards original sin, both were equal, and as regards personal sin, neither had any. But the plan of the work undertaken does not permit me now to say anything more fully on this subject, on which I have already said much in other works. As for the words, “The elder shall serve the younger”, hardly anyone of our writers has understood them otherwise than that the elder people of the Jews was to serve the younger Christian people. And indeed, although this may seem to have been fulfilled in the nation of the Idumaeans, which was born of the elder son, who had two names (for he was called both Esau and Edom, whence the Idumaeans), since it was afterwards to be overcome by the people that sprang from the younger, that is, the Israelite people, and to be subject to it, it is more fittingly believed that this prophecy, in which it was said, “People shall overcome people, and the elder shall serve the younger”, was aimed at something greater. And what is this but what is evidently fulfilled in the Jews and the Christians?

Chapter 36. On the oracle and blessing which Isaac received, just as his father had, being loved for his father's merit.

Isaac too received an oracle like those his father had received several times. Of this oracle it is written thus: “And there was a famine over the land, besides the famine that had been before in the time of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech, king of the Philistines, at Gerar. And the Lord appeared to him and said: Do not go down into Egypt; but dwell in the land of which I shall tell you, and sojourn in this land; and I will be with you and bless you. For to you and to your seed I will give all this land, and I will establish my oath which I swore to Abraham your father; and I will multiply your seed like the stars of heaven, and I will give to your seed all this land, and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham your father obeyed my voice and kept my precepts and my commandments and my ordinances and my statutes.” This patriarch had neither another wife nor any concubine, but was content with the posterity of the two twins begotten from one act of intercourse. He too, indeed, feared danger because of his wife's beauty when he lived among strangers, and did as his father had done, calling her his sister and keeping silent that she was his wife; for she was related to him by both father's and mother's blood; but she too remained untouched by the strangers once it was known that she was his wife. Yet we ought not on that account to prefer him to his father because he knew no woman besides his one wife. For without doubt the merits of his father's faith and obedience were greater, so much so that God says it is for his father's sake that he does for Isaac the good things he does: “In your seed,” he says, “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham your father obeyed my voice and kept my precepts and my commandments and my ordinances and my statutes”; and again in another oracle: “I am the God of Abraham your father; do not fear; for I am with you and have blessed you and will multiply your seed for the sake of Abraham your father.” So we may understand how chastely Abraham did what seems to shameless men, who seek support for their wickedness in the holy Scriptures, to have been done from lust; and further, so that we may learn this too: not to compare men with one another by single good qualities, but to consider everything in each. For it can happen that someone has something in his life and conduct in which he surpasses another, and that it is far more excellent than that in which he is surpassed by the other. And so, by a sound and true judgment, although continence is preferred to marriage, a married believer is nevertheless better than a continent unbeliever. But the unbeliever is not only less to be praised; he is even most to be deplored. Let us suppose both are good: even so, a married man most faithful and most obedient to God is certainly better than a continent man of lesser faith and lesser obedience. But if all else is equal, who would hesitate to prefer the continent man to the married one?

Chapter 37. On the things mystically prefigured in Esau and Jacob.

So Isaac's two sons, Esau and Jacob, grow up together. The primacy of the elder is transferred to the younger by agreement and consent between them, because the elder desired too immoderately the lentils which the younger had prepared as food, and for that price sold his birthright to his brother, with an oath. Here we learn that in eating one is to be blamed not for the kind of food but for immoderate greed. Isaac grows old, and his sight is taken from his eyes through age. He wishes to bless his elder son, and without knowing it blesses the younger in his place, who puts himself under his father's hands in place of his elder brother, who was hairy, having fitted kid skins on himself, as though bearing the sins of another. So that this deceit of Jacob might not be thought a fraudulent deceit, and the mystery of a great matter might not fail to be sought in it, Scripture said beforehand: “And Esau was a man skilled in hunting, a man of the field; but Jacob a simple man, dwelling at home.” Some of our translators have rendered this “without guile.” But whether it is rendered “without guile,” or “simple,” or rather “without pretense,” which in Greek is ἄπλαστος, what is the guile of a man without guile in receiving this blessing? What is the guile of the simple man, what the pretense of one who does not lie, but a deep mystery of truth? And what is the blessing itself like? “Behold,” he says, “the smell of my son is like the smell of a full field, which the Lord has blessed. And may God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth, and abundance of grain and wine; and let nations serve you and princes bow down to you; and you shall be lord of your brother, and the sons of your father shall bow down to you. Whoever curses you, cursed be he; and whoever blesses you, blessed be he.” The blessing of Jacob, then, is the proclamation of Christ among all nations. This is happening, this is being done. Isaac is the law and the prophecy; even through the mouth of the Jews Christ is blessed by it, as by one who does not know, because it is itself not known. The world, like a field, is filled with the fragrance of Christ's name; his is the blessing of the dew of heaven, that is, of the rain of divine words, and of the fatness of the earth, that is, of the gathering of the peoples; his is the abundance of grain and wine, that is, the multitude which grain and wine gather in the sacrament of his body and blood. Nations serve him, princes bow down to him; he is lord of his brother, because his people rules over the Jews; the sons of his father bow down to him, that is, the sons of Abraham according to faith, because he too is a son of Abraham according to the flesh; whoever curses him is cursed, and whoever blesses him is blessed. Our Christ, I say, is blessed, that is, truly spoken of, even from the mouth of the Jews, who, though they err, still chant the law and the prophets; and they think another is being blessed, whom they in their error await.

See, when the elder asks for the promised blessing, Isaac is struck with fear and realizes that he has blessed one in place of the other; he wonders and asks who it was; yet he does not complain that he has been deceived; rather, as the great sacrament is at once revealed to him within his heart, he avoids indignation and confirms the blessing. “Who then,” he says, “hunted game for me and brought it to me, and I ate of it all before you came? And I blessed him, and blessed he shall be.” Who would not have expected here rather the curse of an angry man, if these things were done not by inspiration from above but in an earthly way? O deeds done, but done prophetically; on earth, but from heaven; by men, but divinely! If each thing so fruitful in great mysteries were examined, many volumes would have to be filled; but the measure which must be set in moderation to this work compels us to hasten on to other things.