City of God 17.5–17.8

Chapter 5. On what a man of God said to the priest Eli in the prophetic Spirit, signifying that the priesthood established according to Aaron was to be taken away.

But this is said more clearly by a man of God sent to the priest Eli himself; his name is not given, but from his office and ministry he is understood without doubt to be a prophet. For it is written thus: “And a man of God came to Eli and said: Thus says the Lord: I revealed myself plainly to the house of your father, when they were slaves in the land of Egypt in Pharaoh's house; and I chose the house of your father out of all the sceptres of Israel to serve me as priests, to go up to my altar and burn incense and wear the ephod; and I gave to the house of your father all the offerings by fire of the sons of Israel for food. Why then have you looked on my incense and my sacrifice with a shameless eye, and honored your sons above me, to bless the firstfruits of every sacrifice in Israel in my sight? Therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel: I said, Your house and your father's house shall pass before me for ever. And now the Lord says: By no means; but those who honor me I will honor, and he who despises me shall be despised. Behold, the days are coming, and I will destroy your seed and the seed of your father's house, and you shall have no elder in my house all the days; and I will destroy for you a man from my altar, so that his eyes fail and his soul flows away; and all who remain of your house shall fall by the sword of men. And this shall be the sign to you, which shall come upon these two sons of yours, Hophni and Phinehas: both of them shall die on one day. And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do all that is in my heart and in my soul; and I will build him a faithful house, and he shall pass before my Anointed all the days. And whoever remains in your house shall come to bow down to him for an obol of silver, saying: Put me into one part of your priesthood, to eat bread.”

It cannot be said that this prophecy, in which the change of the old priesthood was foretold so plainly, was fulfilled in Samuel. (For although Samuel was of no other tribe than the one appointed by the Lord to serve the altar, yet he was not of the sons of Aaron, whose progeny had been set apart to supply the priests; and so in this event too the same change that was to come through Christ was foreshadowed; and the prophecy, a prophecy of deed, not of word, pertained properly to the old covenant but figuratively to the new, signifying by the deed what was said by word to the priest Eli through the prophet.) For afterwards there were priests of the line of Aaron, such as Zadok and Abiathar in David's reign, and others after them, before the time came when these things foretold so long before about the change of the priesthood were to be brought about through Christ. But who, looking at these things now with a faithful eye, does not see that they have been fulfilled? For no tabernacle, no temple, no altar, no sacrifice, and therefore no priest either, has remained to the Jews, to whom it had been commanded in God's law that he be ordained from the seed of Aaron. This too is recalled here when the prophet says: “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: I said, Your house and your father's house shall pass before me for ever. And now the Lord says: By no means; but those who honor me I will honor, and he who despises me shall be despised.” For in naming his father's house he is not speaking of his immediate father but of that Aaron who was first appointed priest, from whose progeny the others were to follow; the earlier words show this, where he says: “I revealed myself to the house of your father, when they were slaves in the land of Egypt in Pharaoh's house, and I chose the house of your father out of all the sceptres of Israel to serve me as priests.” Which of his fathers was in that Egyptian slavery and, when they were freed from it, was chosen for the priesthood, but Aaron? Of his stock, then, he said in this place that there would no longer be priests; which we now see fulfilled. Let faith be watchful: the facts are before us; they are seen, they are grasped, and they are thrust upon the eyes of those who do not wish to see. “Behold,” he says, “the days are coming, and I will destroy your seed and the seed of your father's house, and you shall have no elder in my house all the days; and I will destroy for you a man from my altar, so that his eyes fail and his soul flows away.” Behold, the days that were foretold have now come. There is no priest according to the order of Aaron; and any man of his race, when he sees the sacrifice of the Christians flourishing throughout the whole world and that great honor taken away from himself, his eyes fail and his soul flows away, wasting with grief.

What follows pertains properly to the house of this Eli to whom these things were said: “And all who remain of your house shall fall by the sword of men. And this shall be the sign to you, which shall come upon these two sons of yours, Hophni and Phinehas: both of them shall die on one day.” This, then, was made the sign of the priesthood's being changed from his house, by which sign it was signified that the priesthood of the house of Aaron was to be changed. For the death of his sons signified the death not of men but of the priesthood itself from the sons of Aaron. What follows pertains now to that priest whose figure Samuel bore by succeeding Eli. So what follows is said of Christ Jesus, the true priest of the new covenant: “And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do all that is in my heart and in my soul; and I will build him a faithful house.” That house is the eternal Jerusalem above. “And he shall pass,” he says, “before my Anointed all the days.” By “shall pass” he meant “shall live”; as he had said above of the house of Aaron: “I said, Your house and your father's house shall pass before me for ever.” And his saying, “It shall pass before my Anointed”, is certainly to be understood of that house itself, not of that priest who is Christ himself, the mediator and savior. His house, then, shall pass before him. “Shall pass” can also be understood as from death to life, all the days in which this mortality runs its course to the end of this age. And as for God's saying, “who shall do all that is in my heart and in my soul”, let us not think that God has a soul, since he is the creator of the soul; this is said of God figuratively, not literally, as are hand and foot and the other members of the body. And lest it be believed from this that man was made in the image of God in the shape of this flesh, wings too are added, which man certainly does not have, and it is said to God, “Under the shadow of your wings you will protect me”, so that men may understand that these things are said of that ineffable nature not by proper but by transferred names of things.

What is added, “And whoever remains in your house shall come to bow down to him”, is not said properly of the house of this Eli but of that of Aaron, of which men remained until the coming of Jesus Christ, and of which race there are not lacking some even now. For of the house of this Eli it had already been said above: “And all who remain of your house shall fall by the sword of men.” How, then, could it be truly said here, “And whoever remains in your house shall come to bow down to him”, if it is true that no one of that house survived the avenging sword? Unless he meant to be understood those who belong to the stock, but that of the whole priesthood according to the order of Aaron. So if it is a matter of that predestined remnant of whom another prophet said, “A remnant shall be saved” (whence the apostle too says, “So too at the present time a remnant has come into being, chosen by grace”), since it is well understood that the one of whom it was said, “Whoever remains in your house”, belongs to such a remnant, he certainly believes in Christ; just as in the times of the apostles very many of that nation believed, and there are not lacking even now some who, though very rarely, believe; and in him is fulfilled what this man of God immediately added: “He shall come to bow down to him for an obol of silver.” To bow down to whom, but to that high priest who is also God? For in that priesthood according to the order of Aaron men did not come to the temple or the altar of God to bow down to the priest. And what does “for an obol of silver” mean, but the brevity of the word of faith, of which the apostle recalls the saying: “The Lord will carry out his word on the earth, completing and cutting it short”? That silver stands for speech the psalm is witness, where it is sung: “The words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried in the fire.” What, then, does this man say who comes to bow down to the priest of God and the priest who is God? “Put me into a part of your priesthood, to eat bread.” I do not wish to be placed in the honor of my fathers, which is nothing; put me into a part of your priesthood. For “I have chosen to be cast down in the house of God”; I desire to be a member, of whatever kind and however small, of your priesthood. For here he calls the people itself the priesthood, the people whose priest is the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. To this people the apostle Peter says: “A holy people, a royal priesthood.” Some, however, have translated “of your sacrifice,” not “of your priesthood”; which nonetheless signifies the same Christian people. Hence the apostle Paul says: “We, though many, are one bread, one body.” What he added, then, “to eat bread”, also elegantly expressed the very kind of sacrifice of which the priest himself says: “The bread which I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.” This is the sacrifice, not according to the order of Aaron but according to the order of Melchizedek; let him who reads understand. So this short confession, wholesomely humble, in which it is said, “Put me into a part of your priesthood, to eat bread”, is itself the obol of silver, because it is both short and the speech of the Lord dwelling in the heart of the believer. For since he had said above that he had given food to the house of Aaron from the victims of the old covenant, where he says, “I gave to the house of your father all the offerings by fire of the sons of Israel for food” (for these were the sacrifices of the Jews), therefore he said here, “to eat bread”, which in the new covenant is the sacrifice of the Christians.

Chapter 6. On the Jewish priesthood and kingdom, which, though said to be established for ever, do not endure, so that other things may be understood whose eternity is promised.

Since, then, these things, foretold then with such depth, now shine with such clarity, someone may nevertheless not unreasonably be troubled and say: How can we be confident that everything foretold in those books as to come will come, if this very thing that was divinely spoken there, “Your house and your father's house shall pass before me for ever”, could not take effect? For we see that that priesthood has been changed, and what was promised to that house cannot be hoped ever to be fulfilled, because what succeeds it, rejected and changed as it is, is rather the one proclaimed eternal. Whoever says this does not yet understand, or does not remember, that even the priesthood according to the order of Aaron was established as a shadow of the future eternal priesthood; and so, when eternity was promised to it, it was promised not to the shadow and figure itself but to what was foreshadowed and figured through it. But lest the shadow itself be thought to endure, its change also had to be prophesied. In the same way the kingdom too, even of Saul himself, who was certainly rejected and cast off, was a shadow of the kingdom to come that would endure in eternity. For the oil with which he was anointed, and from which chrism he was called the anointed (christus), is to be taken mystically and understood as a great sacrament. This David himself so revered in him that his heart was struck and he trembled when, hidden in a dark cave into which Saul too had entered under the pressure of nature's need, he secretly cut off from behind a small piece of his garment, so that he might have something with which to show how he had spared him when he could have killed him, and so remove from his mind the suspicion with which Saul, thinking holy David his enemy, was fiercely pursuing him. So he feared lest he be guilty of violating so great a sacrament in Saul, because he had even handled his garment in this way. For it is written thus: “And David's heart struck him, because he had taken away the edge of his cloak.” And to the men who were with him and urged him to kill Saul, delivered into his hands, he said: “Let it not happen to me from the Lord that I do this thing to my lord, the Lord's anointed, to lay my hand on him; for he is the Lord's anointed.” So great a reverence, then, was shown to this shadow of the future, not for its own sake but for the sake of what it prefigured. Hence also what Samuel said to Saul: “Because you have not kept my commandment which the Lord commanded you, as the Lord had now prepared your kingdom over Israel for ever; and now your kingdom shall not stand for you, and the Lord will seek for himself a man after his own heart, and the Lord will command him to be prince over his people; because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you”, is not to be taken as though God had prepared Saul himself to reign for ever, and afterwards was unwilling to keep this for him when he sinned (for he was not unaware that he would sin); but he had prepared his kingdom, in which there would be a figure of the eternal kingdom. That is why he added: “And now your kingdom shall not stand for you.” What was signified in it, then, has stood and will stand; but it will not stand for him, because neither was he himself to reign for ever, nor his progeny, so that what was said, “for ever”, might seem to be fulfilled at least through his descendants succeeding one another. “And the Lord will seek,” he says, “for himself a man”, signifying either David or the mediator of the new covenant himself, who was figured also in the chrism with which David himself and his progeny were anointed. God does not seek a man for himself as though he did not know where he is; but he speaks through a man in the manner of men, because by speaking so he seeks us. For not only to God the Father but also to his only-begotten Son, who came to seek what was lost, we were already so known that we were chosen in him before the foundation of the world. “He will seek for himself”, then, means “he will have as his own.” Hence in the Latin language this verb takes a preposition and is said adquirit, “acquires,” whose meaning is plain enough. Although even without the addition of the preposition quaerere, “to seek,” is understood as “to acquire”; from which gains are called quaestus.

Chapter 7. On the rending of the kingdom of Israel, by which the perpetual division of the spiritual Israel from the carnal Israel is prefigured.

Saul sinned again by disobedience, and again Samuel said to him in the word of the Lord: “Because you have despised the word of the Lord, the Lord has despised you, so that you shall not be king over Israel.” And again for the same sin, when Saul confessed it and begged pardon and asked Samuel to return with him to appease God, he said: “I will not return with you; because you have despised the word of the Lord, the Lord will also despise you, so that you shall not be king over Israel. And Samuel turned his face to go away; and Saul took hold of the edge of his double cloak and tore it. And Samuel said to him: The Lord has torn the kingdom from Israel out of your hand today, and will give it to your neighbor, who is good above you; and Israel shall be divided in two; and he will not turn back nor repent; for he is not as a man, that he should repent; he threatens and does not persist.” This man, to whom it is said, “The Lord will despise you, so that you shall not be king over Israel”, and “The Lord has torn the kingdom from Israel out of your hand today”, reigned forty years over Israel, that is, for as long a span of time as David himself, and heard this in the first period of his reign; so that we may understand that it was said because no one of his stock was to reign, and may look to the stock of David, from which sprang according to the flesh the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Scripture does not have what is read in most Latin manuscripts, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel out of your hand”, but, as we have set it down, found in the Greek, “The Lord has torn the kingdom from Israel out of your hand”; so that “out of your hand” is understood to mean “from Israel.” This man, then, figuratively bore the person of the people of Israel, which was to lose the kingdom, since Christ Jesus our Lord was to reign through the new covenant not carnally but spiritually. When it is said of him, “And he will give it to your neighbor”, this refers to kinship of the flesh; for Christ is from Israel according to the flesh, as was Saul. What is added, “who is good above you”, can indeed be understood as “better than you”, and some have so translated it; but it is better taken as “good above you” in the sense that, because he is good, he is therefore above you, according to that other prophetic saying: “Until I put all your enemies under your feet”; among whom is also Israel, his persecutor, from whom Christ took the kingdom; although there was also there an Israel in whom there was no guile, a kind of grain among that chaff. For certainly from there came the apostles, from there so many martyrs, of whom Stephen was the first; from there so many churches which the apostle Paul mentions, glorifying God at his conversion.

Of this I do not doubt that what follows is to be understood: “And Israel shall be divided in two”: namely into Israel hostile to Christ and Israel clinging to Christ, into Israel belonging to the slave woman and Israel belonging to the free woman. For these two kinds were at first together, as Abraham still clung to the slave woman, until the barren woman, made fruitful by the grace of Christ, cried out: “Cast out the slave woman and her son.” We know indeed that because of Solomon's sin, in the reign of his son Rehoboam, Israel was divided in two and so continued, each part having its own kings, until that whole nation was overthrown and carried away by the Chaldeans in a great devastation. But what has this to do with Saul, when, if anything of the kind were to be threatened, it should rather have been threatened to David himself, whose son Solomon was? Finally, the Hebrew nation is now not divided among itself, but dispersed throughout the earth without distinction in the fellowship of the same error. But that division which God threatened to that kingdom and people in the person of Saul, who bore the figure of that kingdom and people, was signified as eternal and unchangeable by what was added: “And he will not turn back nor repent; for he is not as a man, that he should repent; he threatens and does not persist”; that is, a man threatens and does not persist, but not God, who does not repent as a man does. For where we read that he repents, a change of things is signified, while the divine foreknowledge remains unchangeable. Where, then, he is said not to repent, it is understood that he does not change. We see that by these words a divine sentence was pronounced, altogether indissoluble and wholly perpetual, concerning this division of the people of Israel. For whoever have passed over, or are passing over, or will pass over to Christ from there, were not of there according to God's foreknowledge, not according to the one and same nature of the human race. Assuredly, whoever of the Israelites cling to Christ and persevere in him will never be with those Israelites who persist in being his enemies to the end of this life, but will remain perpetually in the division which was foretold here. For the old covenant from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery, is of no profit except in that it bears witness to the new covenant. Otherwise, as long as Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts; but when anyone passes over from there to Christ, the veil will be taken away. For the very aim of those who pass over is changed from the old to the new, so that each no longer aims to receive carnal but spiritual happiness.

For this reason the great prophet Samuel himself, before he had anointed Saul king, when he cried out to the Lord for Israel and the Lord heard him, and, as he was offering a burnt offering and the foreigners were approaching to fight against the people of God, the Lord thundered over them and they were confused and stumbled before Israel and were overcome, took one stone and set it up between the new and the old Mizpah, and called its name Ebenezer, which is in Latin “the stone of the helper,” and said: “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” Mizpah means “aim” (intentio). That stone of the helper is the mediation of the Savior, through whom we must pass from the old Mizpah to the new, that is, from the aim with which a false carnal happiness was awaited in a carnal kingdom to the aim with which through the new covenant the truest spiritual happiness is awaited in the kingdom of heaven; and since nothing is better than this, God helps us thus far.

Chapter 8. On the promises made to David concerning his son, which are by no means found in Solomon but most fully in Christ.

Now I see that I must show what God promised to David himself, who succeeded Saul in the kingdom, and whose change of fortune figured that final change for the sake of which all things were divinely said and all things written, so far as it pertains to the matter we are treating. When King David had enjoyed much prosperity, he thought of making a house for God, namely that most renowned temple which was afterwards built by King Solomon his son. While he was thinking of this, the word of God came to the prophet Nathan, to be carried to the king. There, after God had said that the house would not be built for him by David himself, and that in all that time he had not commanded anyone among his people to build him a house of cedar, he says: “And now you shall say this to my servant David: Thus says the Lord Almighty: I took you from the sheepfold, to be leader over my people, over Israel; and I was with you in all your goings, and I destroyed all your enemies from before you, and I made you renowned like the name of the great ones who are on the earth; and I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, and they shall dwell apart and shall be troubled no more; and the son of iniquity shall no more humble them, as from the beginning, from the days when I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies; and the Lord will tell you that you shall build a house for him. And it shall be, when your days are fulfilled and you sleep with your fathers, that I will raise up your seed after you, who shall come from your belly, and I will prepare his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will direct his throne for ever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. And if his iniquity comes, I will rebuke him with the rod of men and with the strokes of the sons of men; but my mercy I will not take away from him, as I took it from those from whom I turned away my face; and his house shall be faithful and his kingdom for ever before me, and his throne shall be set up for ever.” Whoever thinks this great promise was fulfilled in Solomon is much mistaken. For he attends to what was said, “He shall build a house for me”, because Solomon built that famous temple, and does not attend to, “His house shall be faithful and his kingdom for ever before me.” Let him attend, then, and look at Solomon's house, full of foreign women worshipping false gods, and at the king himself, once wise, seduced by them into the same idolatry and cast down; and let him not dare to think that God either promised this falsely or could not foreknow that Solomon and his house would be such. We ought not to be in doubt on this point, even if we did not already see these things fulfilled in Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, so as not to look here vainly and emptily for someone else, as the carnal Jews do. For they themselves understand so well that the son whom they read was promised to King David in this place was not Solomon that, now that the one promised has been declared with such clarity, they still say, with wonderful blindness, that they hope for another. There was indeed some image of the thing to come in Solomon too, in that he built the temple and had peace according to his name (for Solomon means “peaceful” in Latin), and at the beginning of his reign was wonderfully praiseworthy; but in his own person, through the shadow of the future, he too foretold Christ the Lord, he did not exhibit him. Hence some things are written of him as though these things had been foretold of him, since holy Scripture, prophesying even by events, in a way sketches in him the figure of things to come. For besides the books of divine history, where his reign is narrated, the seventy-first psalm too is inscribed with his name in its title; and in it so many things are said which cannot fit him at all, but fit Christ the Lord with the most apt clarity, that it evidently appears that in the one some sort of figure was sketched, but in the other the truth itself was presented. For it is known within what boundaries Solomon's kingdom had been confined; and yet in that psalm we read, to say nothing of other things: “He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth”, which we see fulfilled in Christ. For he took the beginning of his dominion from the river, where, baptized by John and pointed out by him, he began to be recognized by the disciples, who called him not only Master but also Lord. And Solomon began to reign while his father David was still living, which happened to none of those kings, for no other reason than that from this too it might be clear enough that he is not the one whom this prophecy foreshadows, which speaks to his father and says: “And it shall be, when your days are fulfilled and you sleep with your fathers, that I will raise up your seed after you, who shall come from your belly, and I will prepare his kingdom.” How, then, because of what follows, “He shall build a house for me”, shall this Solomon be thought to be prophesied, and not rather, because of what goes before, “When your days are fulfilled and you sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you”, another peaceful one be understood to have been promised, who was foretold to be raised up not before, as Solomon was, but after David's death? For however long a time intervened before Jesus Christ came, without doubt he had to come after the death of King David, to whom he was promised in this way, to build a house for God, not of wood and stones but of men, such as we rejoice that he is building. For to this house, that is, to the faithful of Christ, the apostle says: “For the temple of God is holy, which you are.”