Prophetic Extracts

… having gone through the testimonies concerning our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ drawn from reason and from life, it confirmed them by clear, trustworthy, and true demonstrations and syllogisms, using at the end only very brief testimonies from the divine Scriptures that are believed both among the Jews and among us; for no other line of reasoning called for setting out abundant proofs from them to those who still wholly disbelieve the divine Scriptures. But the work now in hand, meant for those who, as a result of the demonstration in those books, ought to believe the sacred Scriptures as already divine and inspired by God, has been laboured over to fill up what was lacking in them, containing in summary a collection … of the prophecies concerning our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which it seemed good to gather into one from the Old Testament; … and in some places also, through hidden meanings, the things foretold about him … him and the dispensations concerning him. And not … which are shown to have reached their fulfilment. Such … beginning; and scattered not only in prophecies … laid up in histories; … will be useful to not a few …; since it is not easy, except from a … reading through of the Scriptures, for all of them to come to hand for those who wish to have them on their lips and carry them in memory.

It should be known that before the present undertaking we composed Chronological Canons, setting beside them an epitome of every kind of history of Greeks and barbarians, and through them we established the antiquity of Moses and of the prophets after him. Taking the work now in hand to follow in order on those, we have fittingly come after that one to the present treatise. One might gracefully liken it to the natural industry of the wise bee, to which the sacred word in Proverbs sends us when it says: “Or go to the bee, and see how she is a worker, and how she carries on her work as a solemn thing; whose labours kings and private persons use for health; she is desired by all and held in esteem; though she is weak in strength, she was advanced because she honoured wisdom.” For just as that worker, attested as having honoured wisdom, gathers from the flourishing shoots what is suitable, and from the gathering and working of them all provides her labours, healthful, as the Scripture says, to kings and private persons alike, so I think the Prophetic Extracts concerning Christ, being a culling of flowers from the rational meadows of God, will contain something of the same kind: in the bare words they preserve the well-moulded craftsmanship of the wax, while the thoughts stored up in it, like the sweet and most healthful product of that wise creature, are kept somewhere within, in secret. For which of the faithful would not agree that the saving citations concerning the Word of God surpass with an incomparable superiority every pleasure and benefit that comes through bodies, since they serve for acquiring an orthodoxy that is truly profitable and healthful? This must be cherished not only by those advanced in their habit of mind, who are called kings, but also by those below them, who are only now approaching the divine word for the first time. For these especially, I think, the treatise will be suitable, so that from it they may make exact the certainty of the teachings in which they were instructed; for the persuasion of a simple and pure faith holds most firmly when someone, having first laid in the reasoning the foundations that come through demonstration, [leads them] to acquire … an exact grasp and knowledge of what is believed … for this reason, I say … it seemed necessary … to set out after the … of each prophecy …, as by way of an introduction, a brief account … as concise as possible concerning … the refutation of those who boast that they believe the … Scriptures as divine, yet do not accept … Jesus as being himself the one prophesied; raising difficulties … against them, I mean those of the circumcision, and those from the heresies …, and refutations of what they might say when they try to explain the divine utterances in a more mythical way. There will also be, in brief, a moderate exposition of our own, sometimes containing a demonstration that the sacred predictions of God have been fulfilled in our Saviour alone, and sometimes indicating the opinion we hold about the passages to be set out.

But as we are about to take these up, we must first make a distinction: in some places the sacred writings teach that the Word of God existed beforehand, not only before the incarnation but before every generated substance, calling him God and Lord after the Father, as the preaching of the church also holds, in agreement with the testimony of the Gospel, which says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being”; in other places they announce beforehand his two comings: the first, in which they plainly foretold that he would have neither form nor beauty, that he would be led like a sheep to the slaughter, and they say clearly that he would be condemned to death because of the iniquities of the former people, as indeed the dispensations of his first coming in the times of Tiberius are shown to be; and the second, no longer like the first, but more divine and far surpassing it in glory, which will take place with an escort of angels and the array from heaven. In these matters the reader should with good sense hold as a rule and a goal the apostolic preaching, which keeps the doctrines of the truth complete and inviolate: that is, the doctrines concerning the first and unbegotten nature of the God of the universe, and concerning the pre-existence of the divine Word and the service he rendered in the creation of all generated things, as being Word.

… apart from the four letters, unpronounceable among the Hebrews, whose combination signifies the name that is ineffable but is called, by a looser use, “Lord”; this has never yet been used of an angelic power, as you will observe throughout the whole inspired Scripture, wherever God, or the Lord indicated by the four letters, is recorded to have spoken with anyone. [One must ask] whether what is indicated should be referred to the unbegotten nature of the God of the universe, or to his Word, whom, as being second cause of all things, the divine Scripture is accustomed to call both God and Lord in the sense signified by the name that is ineffable among the Hebrews. And indeed, in the present passage, where the word says, “The Lord came down,” and “The Lord said” what is recorded, one might reasonably ask whether what is indicated refers to one of the angels or to the first cause. But it cannot refer to angels: first, because here too “Lord” is used for the unpronounceable title; second, because it shows him addressing his words to others who are below him. Again, the sense is unfitting for the Father and God of the universe; for it would not befit him to say, “Come, and let us go down and confuse their language,” and “The Lord came down to see the city” would in no way suit being said of the supreme authority. It remains, then, to understand that in these passages too the divine Word is indicated. He, entrusted by the Father with the providence and administration of all things, never ceased ministering, sometimes by himself and sometimes through angels who serve him, what tends toward the Father's will for the benefit and salvation of the universe. The things in this passage belong to a mystical and secret contemplation, and this is not the time to unfold them.

The first recorded oracle given to Abraham is when the Lord said to him: “Go out from your land and from your kindred and from your father's house to the land that I will show you; and I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and you will be blessed; and I will bless those who bless you,” and what follows. The second, when the Lord appeared to him and said to him: “To your offspring I will give this land.” And the third, when the Lord said to Abraham, after Lot had separated from him, what is recorded. The fourth, in which it is said: “After these words the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision of the night, saying, ‘Do not fear, Abram; I am shielding you’”; and after other things: “I am the Lord who brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans.” The fifth, when the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him: “I am your God; be well pleasing before me,” and the rest. The sixth, in which again the Lord appeared to him by the oak of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent at midday; “and looking up with his eyes he saw, and behold, three men were standing above him; and when he saw them he ran from the door of his tent to meet them, and bowed down to the ground and said, ‘Lord, if I have found favour before you, do not pass by your servant; let a little water be brought, and let them wash your feet.’” Then after some things it is added that “rising up from there they looked toward Sodom; and Abraham went along with them, escorting them. And the Lord said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham my servant what I am doing? Abraham will surely become a great and numerous nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed; for I knew that he will command his sons and his house after him, and they will keep the ways of the Lord, to do righteousness and judgment, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what he spoke to him.’ And the Lord said, ‘The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah has been multiplied.’” And a little after: “And the men turned away from there and came to Sodom; but Abraham was standing before the Lord. And Abraham drew near and said, ‘Do not destroy the righteous with the ungodly, so that the righteous will be as the ungodly. If there are fifty righteous in the city, will you destroy them? Will you not spare the whole place for the sake of the fifty righteous, if they are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing as this, to kill the righteous with the ungodly, so that the righteous will be as the ungodly. Far be it! Shall not you who judge all the earth do justice?’” And after other things the Scripture says: “The Lord went away when he had ceased speaking with Abraham. And the two angels came into Sodom in the evening; and Lot was sitting by the gate of Sodom.”

It is worth considering whether it is some ordinary angel who is indicated in these passages as the one who gave the oracles to Abraham, or the God of the universe himself, or some third besides these, the Word of God, whom the sacred Scripture is accustomed to call Lord and God after the supreme Father and God of the universe; and further to ask which of the three men who appeared to Abraham was the one to whom he said, “Lord, if I have found favour before you,” and again, “Far be it! Shall not you who judge all the earth do justice?” Of him the divine Scripture, having related it not only a first but a second and a third time, says, “The Lord appeared to him,” the title “Lord” standing for the name that is unpronounced in the Hebrew, which has never been used of an angelic power. When, for example, Lot is recorded as saying to the angels who came to Sodom, “I pray, lord, since your servant has found mercy before you,” the word “lord” stands in the Hebrew, but not with the four letters that the Hebrews use for the ineffable name of God; it is written with other syllables, with which the Hebrews also write the one who among humans is called lord in a relative sense, as the lord of a servant. But the name used, with the four letters, of the supreme authority of God, which has nothing like these and which appears in the recorded visions of God to Abraham, clearly shows that it was neither an angel nor some divine power a little above an angel that gave him the oracles, but God himself, whose ineffable pronunciation, the very one that appears in these passages through the four letters, the high priest alone wore on his forehead, bearing on the golden plate what is called “the engraving of a seal: Holiness of the Lord.” That the divine Scripture does not use such a title of angels indifferently is evident from its very careful practice of recording sometimes that God himself, or the Lord indicated by the tetragram, appeared and spoke to the righteous, and at other times that those seen were angels.

So the one who appeared to Hagar in her wandering was clearly an angel; for it was fitting that for her, since she fell very far short of Abraham and could see nothing greater than an angelic vision, the vision should be suited to her through the presence of the angel, but for Abraham through the greater manifestation of God himself. And the rest of God's sayings to Abraham would not fit if one tried to refer them to angels, but would befit God alone to say, such as “And I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you,” and the like; and above all “I am the Lord who brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans,” and “I am God; be well pleasing before me,” and what follows; and no one could ever be so foolish as to suppose that an angel said these things. And so, when the three men stood by Abraham as he sat at the oak, Abraham approaches them, yet he says, not to the three but to one only, “Lord, if I have found favour before you.” And none of the others is introduced conversing with Abraham, since it was not fitting for the servants to speak in the presence of their lord; the Lord alone gives the oracle, who also says, “Shall I hide from Abraham my servant,” and the rest. Then the men who were with the Lord, clearly the angels, turned away and went down alone to Sodom, the Lord not going with them (for how could the kind and gracious God sojourn among the ungodly?); but he, remaining in company and conversation with the righteous friend of God, rejoices in his converse and also shelters his most humane prayer, in which Abraham, by saying “Far be it! You who judge all the earth,” shows most clearly that he knew well and exactly that he was conversing not with an angel, nor with a lesser divine power, but with God himself. Next the word, distinguishing matters exactly, calls those who went to Sodom plainly angels, adding that “the two angels came into Sodom in the evening”; and in what follows it records that neither the Lord nor God was seen by Lot or spoke with him, but the angels. So it is wholly evident that the one whom Scripture testifies appeared to Abraham was Lord and God, and not one of the angels.

Now all who wish to cut apart the harmony of the Old Testament with the New seize on these passages as a godsend and think they clearly show from them that the Father of Christ, who they say is confessed invisible by the Gospel's voice, is other than the God of Moses and the prophets, who appeared in various ways, now to Abraham, now to Isaac (to whom too he gave oracles foretelling things like those given to Abraham), and likewise to Jacob, and perhaps also to Isaiah, who said, “I saw the Lord of Sabaoth,” and similarly to the other prophets. But we (since in the ancient prophets of God themselves there appears a divine oracle spoken in the person of God, saying, “For I am the Lord your God, and I have not changed”; and “Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord”; and to Moses, giving an oracle, he says, “No one shall see my face and live”), we will raise this difficulty both against those already mentioned and against those of the circumcision, and further against those who do not accept that a second divinity, that of the Son, pre-exists after the unbegotten nature: how could the God who, (according to) these prophecies, is unchanging and immutable, who again says that he alone fills heaven and earth, and who is clearly shown by the Law itself to be invisible, according to “No one shall see my face and live,” be changed again, and, as though turning his own substance, become containable (in) some small parts of the earth, and be seen now by Abraham, now by the other prophets? For if these things were referred to the God of the universe, they would seem to disagree not only with the Gospel's voice but also with the prophetic voices, which declared him uncontainable, unchanging, and invisible to humans; unless one should say that God himself was not seen at all by those recorded, but only made them imagine it, so that they seemed to see and hear without truly beholding any of the things they thought appeared, nor truly hearing, but were deceived in these things and supposed and seemed that they heard: which is unfitting and foreign to the truthful and unerring nature of the God of the universe. Further, it is shown to be untenable because God himself is related to say concerning Abraham: “For I knew that he will command his sons and his house after him, and they will keep the ways of the Lord, to do righteousness and judgment, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what he spoke to him.” Beyond dispute, then, the Lord himself speaks these words as about another Lord; how then is it possible to suppose that the God of the universe said them? About what other Lord besides himself could the words be said? It is clear from these considerations that what is indicated does not seem to belong to the God of the universe; and it has been shown that it does not belong to the nature of angels either; for the word, as I said, knows how to be accurate about the appearance of angels, clearly marking the visions given through them. If, then, these things seem to fit neither the angelic nature nor the supreme and unbegotten nature of the God of the universe, a single solution would remain: that we keep unchangeableness, immutability, and invisibility for the unbegotten substance, and transfer the oracles recorded as from God to the Word of God, who, we believe, appeared in various ways even before the incarnation for the salvation of humans and carried out the dispensations recorded in the divine Scriptures; and to him alone, after the God of the universe, we have found the four-lettered title applied, since this divine designation also fits the only-begotten and heir of the Father. Abraham, then, knowing well, being wise and attested by God himself to be a prophet, that “he has given all judgment to the Son,” bows down to him and says to him alone, apart from the others, “Far be it! Shall not you who judge all the earth do justice?”, which it would be unfitting and most implausible to think was said to an angel, who is below the divine Word; whereas it would be most fitting for the divine Word alone to say, with the rest, “Shall I hide from Abraham my servant what I am doing?” and “For I knew that he will command his sons and his house after him, and they will keep the ways of the Lord, to do righteousness and judgment, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what he spoke to him.” And it befits him to say these things as a teacher: that everything done in holiness by humans may rightly be referred only to the worship of the God and Father of the universe, from whom all good things are supplied to the godly on earth for their benefit and salvation. These things the divine Word says, teaching about another Lord, his own Father; for he also confessed him as his own Lord and God to his own disciples, saying, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.” The Law and all Scripture are full of this pattern of the Lord, that is, of the divine Word, speaking as about another Lord, clearly the Father. Since the matters in these passages need much and very deep contemplation, these remarks are enough for the present undertaking.

“And Hagar ran away from her presence,” that is, from Sarah's, “and an angel of the Lord found her at the spring of water”; and in what follows it is said a second time, “And the angel of the Lord said to her”; and a third time, “The angel of the Lord said to her, ‘I will surely multiply your offspring, and it will not be counted for multitude’”; and again, “The angel of the Lord said to her, ‘Behold, you are with child and will bear a son, and you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your humiliation.’” And after all these words it is said, “And she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are God who looked upon me.’” If the sacred Scripture had not, in its own person, named the one who appeared to Hagar in her wandering “Lord,” in the words “And she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her,” one might have supposed that Hagar mistakenly took the angel for God. But as it is, Scripture testifies that it was the Lord who gave the oracle through the angel just named, through whom, being Lord and God, he fittingly said of himself, “I will surely multiply your offspring”; for it would befit God alone to say this, and no longer an angel. It is likely that Hagar too, attending to this word and understanding that such a voice could belong only to God, said, “You are God who looked upon me.” And a second time, when she runs away with her son, it is written, “An angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said to her” what is recorded, among which is this: “For I will make it into a nation,” clearly the child; and it would not be credible for the angel to say this, for again the promise is God's. Whose name, then, as Lord did Hagar call, “You are the God who looked upon me,” since here too Scripture has the Hebrews' four-lettered name for “Lord”? Is it not clear from what has already been shown that it was the name of the Word who was in the beginning with God? Being present, and from the beginning overseeing and administering human affairs, he himself in person gave visions to men who were advanced and perfect, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; but to those who fell short of their virtue, such as Lot, and Gideon and Manoah in Judges, and others like them, he gave his promises through the divine angels under him, using them as ministers and servants in many parts and many ways. So to Hagar too, since she was not yet able to receive the vision of the divine Word himself, he delivers the recorded oracles through the angel. And if (also) he appears to Jacob through angels, see that he gives oracles in this way at first, as to one still being initiated; but when Jacob had advanced and made progress toward perfection, he gave him a share of his own converse, bare and unveiled, no longer through angels and interpreters, but himself in person: the Lord and God, the Word, who holds the second rank of the Father's divinity, deeming him worthy of his own vision.

“The sun rose upon the earth, and Lot entered Zoar. And the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” I do not think that anyone who has once believed the holy Scriptures to be sacred and inspired by God will invent quibbles about these passages in an attempt to contradict what has been handed down about the Word of God: that he pre-existed with his own subsistence, and that before the incarnation he carried out the dispensations toward humans. For here the Scripture clearly presents two Lords, since the Lord rained from the Lord. One can find the like in the holy apostle, who says, “May the Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus,” and “May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day.” In these passages we must articulate the doctrine of Father and Son, ascribing to the unbegotten Father of the universe the lordship and supreme authority over all things and over the Son himself, and assigning to the Word the second rank after the Father in rule and dominion over all things that have come into being. Since “Lord” is named twice here, as in “the Lord rained from the Lord,” the tetragram appears twice in the Hebrew, so that it is most plainly admitted that this ineffable sign is used of two persons, clearly the God and Father of the universe and his Word. So it is no longer doubtful that wherever such a title is applied to God, it is used not only of the unbegotten nature but also of the Word who was in the beginning with God.

In his blessing of Jacob, Isaac says, among other things, this: “And let nations serve you, and rulers will bow down to you; and be lord of your brother, and the sons of your father will bow down to you.” What is said as if to Jacob does not seem at all capable of being referred to him, nor to the people of the circumcision descended from him. For what nations served him, and when? Or what rulers bowed down to him? And as to whom would they bow? When did he become lord of his brother? Or who are the sons of his father who are said to bow down to him? Indeed, Isaac is not found to have had any son besides Jacob except Esau alone; how then is it said in the plural, “The sons of your father will bow down to you”? We have noted these things because in the prophecies Christ is often called Jacob, as will be shown in the proper places, and we suspect that these words too may in some way fit the testimonies about him. For just as the holy apostle transferred the things about Isaac to Christ, saying, “Now the promises were given to Abraham and to his offspring; it does not say, ‘and to offsprings,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘and to your offspring,’ who is Christ,” see whether in the same way what is said here as of Jacob would not fit Christ better. Whether this is so, the lover of learning will discover by examining each phrase by the laws of allegory.

“And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until morning.” Then, a little later, when Jacob has said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” he says to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” And he said to him, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name, for you have prevailed with God, and are mighty with men.” And again, a little after: “Jacob called the name of that place ‘Form of God’; for I have seen God face to face, and my life was preserved.” To which the Scripture adds: “And the sun rose upon him as the Form of God passed by.”

To Abraham the Lord gives oracles from the beginning in waking vision; he speaks with him often, and is recorded to have appeared to him three times, and not at night but in the middle of the day; the third time, indeed, he is his guest at noon itself. But to Jacob he first appears at the setting of the sun, in the middle of the night, in sleep, as he was going down to Mesopotamia, when in the vision he saw the ladder to heaven and the angels ascending and descending on it, and the Lord standing firm upon it, and he hears the Lord saying to him, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father,” and the rest, which, as the sequel shows, he spoke to him through an angel. The second time was in Mesopotamia, when the Lord indicated by the tetragram again stood by and said to him, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.” This he said to him in sleep and through an angel, as Jacob himself teaches: (together) with the divine voice he calls Leah and Rachel, and after other things he relates to them the oracle he had received, saying, “And the angel of God said to me in sleep, ‘Jacob,’” and what follows, in which he says, “I am the God who appeared to you in the place of God, where you anointed a pillar to me and vowed a vow to me; now therefore arise, and go out from this land, and depart to the land of your birth.” After this, as he returned from Mesopotamia, first, when it was already morning, the angels of God met him, of whom he also said, “This is the camp of God”; and it is likely that these were the ones he had earlier seen on the ladder. Then the sun that had set earlier rises upon him after the passage set out above, in which the one who said to him, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name, for you have prevailed with God and are mighty with men,” appears wrestling with him in sleep. After the vision, then, the sun rose upon him. And when he had now advanced and been perfected, God no longer gives him oracles in sleep, nor at night, nor through an angel, nor even through a human form, but in the middle of the day and in light he says, “Rise, go up to the place Bethel, and dwell there”; and after all these things the divine Scripture then for the first time testifies that God appeared to him in Luz and blessed him, saying what is recorded. We shall ask at leisure how, after this, when he was about to go down to Egypt, God again said to him in a vision and by night, “Do not fear to go down into Egypt.”

We have set these things out of necessity, for they show that the divine Scripture does not lightly, nor in the case of ordinary men, record that God was seen. Neither for Adam, nor for Enoch who was translated, nor for Noah, nor for Moses himself, has it been recorded that God was seen by any of them, although he is recorded to have spoken with them often; indeed the divine word introduces God as seen by no one else at all except Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob alone. And for Abraham he was not seen at his first oracle, but at the second, the fifth, and the sixth; and for Jacob after all the recorded events; for Isaac, to whom alone the Lord gave oracles twice, he is recorded to have appeared twice, though the second time at night. It is evident from what we said earlier about Abraham that the visions must not be referred to the first cause, but to the divine Word, whom not even (they), the blessed and divine men, were yet able to receive; even to those very men to whom he is said to have appeared, he was seen after a great many preliminary exercises. Who (then) else could he be who, in the passage before us, wrestles with Jacob, contends with him, and as it were fights at his side, than the one who spoke to the fathers in many parts and many ways, the sacred Word of God, who alone after the Father is called Lord and God, and who, blessing Jacob, named him Israel, adding, “for you have prevailed with God”? In this way the divine men saw the Word of God, as did the apostles of our Saviour who said, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, and looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the word of life.” Having beheld this Word and Life, Jacob adds, “For I have seen God face to face, and my life was preserved.”

“Judah, may your brothers praise you; your hands shall be on the back of your enemies; the sons of your father will bow down to you. A lion's whelp is Judah; from a shoot, my son, you went up; lying down you slept as a lion and as a whelp; who will rouse him? A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until there come the things laid up for him; and he is the expectation of nations,” and what follows. We must hear Jacob's word as that of the Holy Spirit, foretelling the things about Christ and addressing him in person in the words beginning “Judah, may your brothers praise you.” That the patriarch was not addressing his words to the one son is clear to those who attend to the Scripture, which says in narrative: “And Jacob called his sons and said, ‘Gather together, that I may tell you what will happen to you at the last of the days.’” So he announces that he will prophesy to them about things to come. It is clear on other grounds as well that the words of the prophecy do not fit the patriarch Judah. For when, or why, did his brothers bow down to him, and for what achievement, or when, did they praise him? How would anyone explain the rest of the prophecy as fitting him? Nor would anyone reasonably refer the words to the tribe, since rulers of the people were not appointed from the tribe of Judah alone. The judges after Moses, who came from various tribes, continued as leaders for nearly five hundred years; after them Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin, reigned first of all; and so after these the kings from the tribe of Judah reigned for not quite five hundred years; then, after the captivity to Babylon, those from the tribe of Levi presided over affairs for more than five hundred years, down to the coming of Christ. Why, then, would the prophecy say these things about the tribe of Judah rather than about the rest? So what is indicated would not fit the tribe either. But we know that the true Judah who appeared at the last of the days is our Saviour and Lord Jesus, the Christ of God, who is also called Judah as a steward of the concepts applied to him; just as in one sense he is called Israel, in another Jacob, and David, and at other times in other ways. Him the holy apostles, and all who were counted worthy of the Spirit of adoption, praised and worshipped; and his hands, which we take symbolically to be his deeds, have come to be upon the back of his enemies, that is, of the spiritual enemies as they flee from him. He is also called a lion's whelp, either because of his birth according to the flesh from a royal tribe and from the root of David, a birth that took place in the likeness of sinful flesh, or because of the divinity of which he emptied himself when he became man, on account of which the words “From a shoot, my son, you went up” were fittingly uttered by Jacob. When, then, he indicated the Saviour's birth from a shoot and from his root, he named him a lion's whelp, saying, “A lion's whelp is Judah; from a shoot, my son, you went up”; but when he prophesies his delay and the sleep of his passion, he calls him both, as a lion and as a whelp, in the words “Lying down he slept as a lion and as a whelp”; for then he was lifted up not only as coming from a royal race but as being himself king, since the nations confessed, even if those of the circumcision were unwilling, that he was indeed the King of Israel. It might also be put another way: since the one who was taking up war against the opposing powers and was about to destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, needed to have present with him, born according to the flesh from the shoot of Jacob, the divinity of the Word, the divinity is fittingly compared to a lion, because it has subdued and conquered all the wild and untamed powers, and to a lion's whelp the bit of flesh that he had taken from the royal tribe of Judah. But again, if our adversary the devil is like a roaring lion, see whether every sinner might not be called his whelp, since everyone who commits sin has been born of the devil. Since, then, the Saviour too came in the likeness of sinful flesh and became a curse for us, and “him who knew no sin he made sin for us,” see whether, for these reasons, according to some deeper sense, the prophecy does not declare that at the time of the passion he became neither a lion nor a whelp, but “as” a lion and a whelp; for he himself also compares his own passion to the serpent's, saying, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” After this, in silence as it were, it hints at the mystery of his resurrection through the words “Who will rouse him?” And it has become clear to us from the outcome who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead: evidently his God and Father.

Next come the words beginning “A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs.” If we read these as beginning afresh, they would be said of all those of the Jewish race who led the people, and on this understanding the sense of the words before us would be something like this: the rulers and leaders from among the Jews appointed over the Jewish people will not cease until there comes the one who is the cause of the expectation of the nations, that is, the Christ; when he has come, those mentioned must fail. This being so, let us examine our own times, whether kings and leaders can now be found. But it is evident to all that the Jewish nation, along with the rest, is subject to the Roman governors (province by province), and not one of them has been entrusted with the authority to rule. This began from the times of our Saviour's birth. Up to King Herod we find in the histories Hebrews from among the Hebrews ruling their whole nation, leading in succession from Moses himself: first those called judges, then next the kings down to the captivity to Babylon, after which the high priests took over the rule and continued down to the reign of Augustus. In his reign, when Herod, the first of foreign race, had been entrusted by the Romans with the kingship over them, our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ was born. From that time, then, down to the present, ruler and leader are clearly shown to have failed among the Jews. It is clear that our prophesied Saviour has come, from whose times not only have the rulers of the Jews failed, but also all the worship they performed in Jerusalem according to the law of Moses. And clearly the expectation of the nations who through him have taken refuge with the God of the universe began to be fulfilled in fact from the times of his coming, according to Jacob's prophecy.

This holds if we read the words beginning “A ruler shall not fail from Judah” as beginning afresh. But if we join the present words to the preceding sense as following on from it, then, Christ being understood as Judah according to what was shown before, it would follow to take “A ruler shall not fail from Judah” of the rulers and leaders of the church after Christ, who, the prophecy says, will not fail until there come the things laid up for him; as if it said more plainly: until there come the things laid up for him, when the consummation is at hand, and he receives the kingdom over the universe. That the divine Spirit calls the disciples of Christ leaders is clear from what is said about Judas: “But you, a man of like soul, my leader and my familiar friend.” Attending to these things, those who have believed the sacred words as divine and true should in no way be alarmed, nor should their faith be shaken by the persecutions that come from time to time, especially the present one, which has blown against us more violently than any ever did, and has displayed such things against the churches and the whole people as no one has recorded either from Scripture or from the tradition of the ancients. We say this because it might perhaps seem that in the present persecution the very opposite of what was said has happened, since it seems that now no assembly has been held together, nor the order of the rulers of the church. Since, then, the inspired Scripture does not lie, we must be persuaded that those mentioned have not wholly failed, even if to some they seem to have failed. For the God who said to the prophet, “I have left for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal,” when the prophet supposed that he alone was left after the rest had been killed, the same God now also watches over those worthy of his providence, preserving for us too a remnant according to the election of grace, those guarded by him and seen by him alone; of whom we too might say, “If the Lord of Sabaoth had not left us offspring, we would have become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah.” For to think that those who preside over the word, whom the prophecy has named rulers and leaders, have failed altogether is impossible, because a limit has been set: they will not fail until there come the things laid up for him, that is, the things promised to Christ by the Father, who said to him, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet”; when also every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. For then the expectation of the nations who at the present time have believed in him will have its season to receive the promises they expected, in the expected kingdom of heaven. So much for this. The rest, beginning “binding his colt to a vine,” which depends on allegorical interpretation, we shall leave for the lovers of learning to investigate, having already said more than enough, not in keeping with the purpose we set ourselves, yet of necessity, for a clear account of what is in the passage.

“And Moses was tending the sheep of Jethro his father-in-law.” And a little after: “And they came to the mountain of God, Horeb; and an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire.” And after other things: “When the Lord saw that he was approaching to see, he called him out of the middle of the bush, saying.” And again: “And the Lord said to him, ‘I am He Who Is.’” And after a great deal: “And God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am the Lord; and I appeared to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, being their God, and my name, Lord, I did not make known to them; and I established my covenant with them,’” and what follows. With very careful observance it is recorded here that it was not the Lord but the angel who appeared to Moses, through whom the Lord, giving oracles as through an interpreter, teaches that it is not some lesser power that gives the oracles but He Who Is himself. Who He Who Is is, he shows more clearly when he says, “I am the Lord; and I appeared to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, being their God; and my name, Lord, I did not make known to them.” This seems to me to have some such sense as this: “To you I say, for the time being making known only my name, ‘I am the Lord’; but to your fathers I did not make known my name, for they were worthy of something greater than such knowledge; I myself appeared to them, and through myself I established my covenant with them.” Who it was that appeared to the fathers is evident from what has been shown before: examined in this way, the argument proved that it was the Word, God, who was in the beginning with God. So the same one appears now as well, yet not in the same way as to the forefathers. To them, as greater and more perfect, he appeared himself, and through himself he established his covenant with them; but in the case of Moses it was not the Lord who appeared but the angel, though it was no longer the angel who called him, but the Lord. For the Lord was the one giving the commands, while the angel was the one ministering the divine words. Hence, among other things, the holy apostle said wonderfully that the law was “ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator,” and “For if the word spoken through angels proved firm.” So an angel is clearly introduced, and the Lord giving oracles through him; and not once in the whole legislation would you find the Scripture noting that God or the Lord was seen by Moses, a thing said, as is plain, only of the three patriarchs. From this it is clear that the whole legislation, given to the people of that time as to souls still infants and beginners, was handed down as through tutors and stewards, and that divine things were hinted to them in types and images through symbols, because they were unable to receive the more mystical and spiritual teaching. To them, as to children brought up in Egyptian ways and still needing much correction, God was said to be fire, according to “Our God is a consuming fire,” which is nowhere said in the case of the patriarchs. And when he orders them to purify themselves so that they may see the glory of the Lord, it is not said simply, as in the case of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that God appeared to them; these very things are recorded with great terror and display: “And it came to pass on the third day, toward dawn, that there were voices and lightnings and a dark cloud on the mountain, and the sound of the trumpet resounded loudly, and all the people in the camp were terrified. And Moses led the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood beneath the mountain. (And) Mount Sinai was all smoking, because God had come down upon it in fire; and its smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace; and all the people were exceedingly amazed. And the sounds of the trumpet grew very much stronger as they went on. Moses spoke, and God answered him with a voice. And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, onto the top of the mountain; and the Lord called Moses,” and what follows. That the Lord came down is attested by these words; but that he was also seen is no longer said, a thing reserved for the patriarchs alone. So there had been a coming of the Lord, but the vision was not of him; it was, clearly, of the angels who escorted him, through whom he usefully made the vision fearful and astonishing for the people, taking forethought to strengthen in them reverence, fear, and faith toward him, for keeping and observing the laws about to be given them. That the angels who ministered to the Lord in the giving of the law were many, Moses himself shows in the blessings, saying, “The Lord has come from Sinai, and has appeared to us from Seir, and has hastened from Mount Paran with the myriads of Kadesh; at his right hand angels with him,” and what follows. For this reason Stephen too, in the Acts, addressing the people, says, “You who received the law as ordinances of angels and did not keep it.”

“And the angel of God who went before the sons of Israel moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud also moved from before their face and went and stood behind them, and came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of the sons of Israel.” Then, in what follows, the divine Scripture teaches what the cloud was, saying, “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Behold, I come to you in a (pillar) of cloud, so that the people may hear me speaking to you and may believe you’”; and again, “And God led them by day in a pillar of cloud, to show them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light”; and again, “And the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud.” By these words, then, the angel who went before the sons of Israel was clearly other than the cloud; and the cloud was something other than the angel, being, as it were, a bodily instrument of the Lord himself, through which, though he is himself bodiless by nature and beyond every sensible and material substance, he deemed his servant worthy of his own converse through a sensible voice. And the Lord himself, giving the reason for such a dispensation, says to Moses, “So that the people may hear me speaking to you and may believe you.” With the people, being more bodily, he conversed through a sensible voice; but with the patriarchs, who needed neither cloud nor pillar of fire, the manner both of the vision and of his converse with them was different. That it was not some angelic power that gave oracles through the cloud, but God himself, is shown, besides what has been demonstrated already, by the Scripture that runs as follows: “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go and lead the people to the place I told you of; behold, my angel will go before your face.’” And again: “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go, go up from here, you and the people,’” and what follows, “and I will send my angel before your face along with you.” For it in no way befits an angel to say these things, but God alone, the Lord indicated throughout the whole history by the tetragram.

Did the Maker of the universe, then, the God of all things, descend so far as to ride upon a bodily mountain and, like a tutor, walk beside humans, he who fills heaven and earth? Or is this neither possible nor holy to think, while it is both more reverent and possible to suppose that it was the divine Word, the minister of the Father's will, who, since “Jacob became the portion” of him, the Lord, “and Israel the measured lot of his inheritance,” took care as for his portion and inheritance, emptying himself and diminishing his natural greatness to accommodate himself, even before the incarnation, to the salvation of humans? If we attend with good sense, we shall find him sometimes referring the commands to his own person, as when he says, “You shall not appear before me empty”; and “You shall make me an altar of earth”; and “I will come to you and bless you”; and sometimes speaking as about another Lord, clearly his God and Father, as in the Decalogue, when he says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”; and “On the seventh day, sabbaths to the Lord your God; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the Lord blessed the seventh day”; and again, “Honour your father and your mother, that it may be well with you, and that you may be long-lived on the land that the Lord your God gives you.” For how could it fail to be evident that the Lord, not through an angel but himself in person, is believed to have spoken these words in the Decalogue, teaching the people the worship due to his own supreme Father, the God of the universe?

“Behold, I send my angel before your face, to guard you on the way, so as to bring you into the land that I have prepared for you. Pay heed to him and listen to him; do not disobey him, for he will not hold back from you; for my name is upon him.” These things the Lord enjoins on the people along with the other ordinances. If, then, after the death of Moses the same Lord who gave oracles in the wilderness had not been present with the people, but one of the angels had led them, there would be nothing to inquire into in these passages. But it appears from the history that after the death of Moses the same Lord gives oracles to Joshua and says clearly in his oracles to him: “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you, and I will not forsake you nor overlook you. Be strong and be courageous; for you will divide to this people the land that I swore to your fathers to give them.” And throughout the whole Scripture no angel at all is seen standing by Joshua or giving him oracles, but the Lord himself, the one indicated in Moses by the tetragram, who also seems to me to be the same as the one who appeared to Joshua once only in the form of a man. For just as he is recorded to have appeared to Abraham and to Jacob, so now too, to teach his servant not to think him the first and unbegotten God, he declares himself the chief captain of that one's host. If, then, throughout the whole book of Joshua no angel at all is named as present, but the Lord himself who is indicated throughout the whole legislation of Moses (for the Scripture clearly testifies, saying, “And the Lord was with Joshua”), of whom would it be said, “Behold, I send my angel before your face, so as to bring you into the land that I have prepared for you”? It seems, then, that these words indicate no one else but Joshua himself. For he brought the people into the land of promise, as God's words to him show, when he says, “Be strong and be courageous; for you will divide to this people the land that I swore to your fathers concerning it.” So he gives the people their orders beforehand, saying, “Pay heed to him and listen to him; do not disobey him.” And one should not wonder that he named him an angel, since the prophecy also calls John by this title when it says, “Behold, I send my angel before your face, who will prepare my way before you.” If the passages set out above should be referred wholly to Joshua the son of Nun, see how the Lord says of him, “For my name has been called upon him.” And what name is that but “Jesus” itself? For the name Jesus was not the proper name of the man who then appeared: he was formerly called Hoshea. Moses, inspired by God, was the first to call him Jesus, clearly moved by a more divine Spirit, so that the oracle that said “For my name is upon him” might be fulfilled. The name of the Lord who gave the oracles, whom we have often shown to be the pre-existent Word of God, was Jesus, the name that Moses gave to Hoshea, as the divine Scripture testifies, noting with great exactness that it was at no other time than when, in keeping with the oracle, he sent him out as a messenger to survey the land of promise before the face of the people, that he called him by this name. So by these things Moses clearly appears to have known the title of our Saviour Jesus as well; and just as the name Jesus is found first in him in the passages under examination, so too he appears to have been the first to proclaim the name Christ, though before his times, from all ages, no one had ever yet been called either Jesus or Christ. And he appears to have honoured these titles by inspired reasoning. For on two men who were the most eminent of all the people and distinguished before God, and who had other names of their own, he bestowed these two titles: on his own brother Aaron and on the son of Nun, formerly called Hoshea. Having appointed them, at God's bidding, before all the people as rulers of the whole nation, he glorified them with the titles of our Saviour Jesus Christ: the one he called Christ, because of the image he bore of the true High Priest of the universe, the Word, God himself, who was in the beginning with God; and his own successor he proclaimed Jesus, because he too preserved a type of our Saviour Jesus. For our Saviour, when the worship handed down symbolically through Moses had ceased, and Moses had in this way, as it were, died, took over the worship of God; he has conquered by war and subdued all the invisible powers that opposed his word, and, making his own possession the whole earth among all the nations that was tyrannized by them, he has distributed it as an inheritance to his own people through the churches throughout the whole inhabited world.

“Whenever Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stand at the door of the tent; and the people, standing, would bow down each from his tent. And the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as if one were to speak to his own friend; and he would go back to the camp; but his servant Joshua son of Nun did not go out of the tent. And Moses said to the Lord, ‘Behold, you say to me, “Lead this people up,” but you have not shown me whom you will send with me; yet you said to me, “I know you above all, and you have favour with me.” If, then, I have found favour before you, reveal yourself to me; let me see you so as to know you, so that I may be one who has found favour before you, and that I may know that this nation is your people.’ And he says, ‘I myself will go before you and give you rest.’ And he says to him, ‘If you yourself do not go with us, do not lead me up from here. And how will it be known that I and your people have found favour with you, except by your going with us? And we shall be glorified, I and your people, beyond all the nations that are on the earth.’ And the Lord said to Moses, ‘This word too that you have spoken I will do for you; for you have found favour before me, and I know you above all, and you have favour with me.’ And he said, ‘Show me your own glory.’ And he said, ‘I will pass by before you in my glory, and I will call in the name of the Lord before you; and I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ And he said, ‘You will not be able to see my face; for no human shall see my face and live.’ And the Lord said, ‘Behold, a place beside me, and you shall stand on the rock; and I will cover you with my hand until I pass by. And I will take away my hand, and then you shall see my back parts; but my face shall not be seen by you,’” and what follows, to which it adds: “And the Lord came down in a cloud and stood beside him there; and he called in the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before his face and called, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, long-suffering and full of mercy and true, keeping righteousness and doing mercy to thousands, taking away lawlessness and injustice and sins; and he will not clear the guilty, bringing the lawlessness of fathers upon children and upon children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ And Moses hastened, bowed to the ground and worshipped, and said, ‘If indeed I have found favour before you, Lord, go with us face to face.’”

Moses is recorded speaking to God with as much boldness and freedom as a man might use in conversing with his own friend. These words show no ordinary progress in the prophet. But since the Lord spoke to him face to face, yet had not yet been seen by him as by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for this reason he makes his request, saying, “If indeed I have found favour before you, reveal yourself to me; let me see you so as to know you.” By this he shows that God did not make his appearances to him in the same way as he spoke to him. For if, as one might think, God's having spoken to him face to face is the same as his having been seen by him, as one would say, face to face, what room would still be left for his request, “If indeed I have found favour before you, reveal yourself to me; let me see you so as to know you”? And if he had been seen by him face to face before, as one might suppose, how is it that the Lord adds, saying to him, “You will not be able to see my face; for no human shall see my face and live”? Let whoever wishes say why the word never once testifies that the Lord was seen by him, as it is observed to have said of the patriarchs. But from these words it is evident that, although the Lord spoke to him face to face, he nevertheless spoke to him through the cloud; for the Scripture shows this beforehand, saying, “The pillar of cloud would come down and stand at the door of the tent, and he spoke to Moses.” So he spoke through the cloud, yet he was not seen by him as by Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. For he is recorded to have been seen by them barely and distinctly, without any form; but by Moses through what is called the form and through the cloud, which the word also calls the glory of the Lord, saying, “Whenever Moses spoke to the whole congregation of the sons of Israel, they turned toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in a cloud, and the Lord spoke to Moses.” And again: “Moses went up to the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. And the glory of the Lord came down on the mountain, and the cloud covered it six days; and the Lord spoke to Moses on the seventh day out of the middle of the cloud. And the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a flaming fire on the top of the mountain.” Clearly, then, by these words what Moses beheld is said to be not the Lord himself but the form of the Lord, and cloud and fire, which the word also calls the glory of the Lord. So he saw the form of the Lord and his glory, but by no means the Lord himself, the Word, the Lord who was speaking; yet he heard him speaking through the cloud, which is why it is said, “And the Lord spoke to Moses face to face.” But it is not recorded that he was also seen by him face to face; for he asks for this as something that had not yet happened, saying, “Reveal yourself to me; let me see you so as to know you.” And in another place the word teaches that God spoke to him mouth to mouth, yet was not correspondingly seen, but in a form and through his glory already mentioned. It says this: “And the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the door of the tent of witness; and Aaron and Miriam were called, and both went out. And he said to them, ‘Hear now my words. If there is a prophet of yours for the Lord, I will be made known to him in a vision, and I will speak to him in sleep. Not so my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. Mouth to mouth I will speak to him, in form and not through riddles, and he saw the glory of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?’” So he saw the glory of the Lord, and heard him giving oracles in a form and speaking mouth to mouth, yet he had not yet seen the Lord himself as the fathers had. And it is no wonder that God is recorded to have spoken with Moses mouth to mouth, since Moses teaches in Deuteronomy that he spoke face to face to the whole people, saying, “Not with your fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with you; you yourselves, all of you, living here today. Face to face the Lord spoke to you on the mountain out of the middle of the fire.” Yet even if he gave oracles in this manner both to Moses and to the whole people, see that it is said that he spoke to them mouth to mouth and face to face, but not that he was seen by them, as by the fathers, without the fire or the cloud; for to them the Lord is recorded to have been seen barely, without the veil of cloud or fire. Our Saviour and Lord too teaches that seeing God belongs to the perfect, whose understanding has been purified to the utmost, saying, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” This is why the Lord also proclaims himself God as of such men, saying to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’; this is my eternal name and memorial to generations of generations.”

So Moses, eager for the greater gifts and reaching for progress like theirs, makes his request to the Lord, saying, “Reveal yourself to me; let me see you so as to know you.” For he had an impression of the greatness, the loftiness, and the unspeakable and unattainable pre-eminence of the Word of God who gave him oracles, and he saw that it was through ministering angels that he gave him his visions. So he begs him to reveal himself to him more distinctly and purely, no longer through veils nor by other ministers, but barely, as to Abraham and his family, without the form that came through fire and cloud. This, at least, is what the phrase “Reveal yourself to me; let me see you so as to know you” seems to me to signify. In the same way, having heard beforehand the Lord saying to him, “Behold, my angel will go before your face,” he gently declines, reaching for the greater thing, and says, “If you yourself do not go with us, do not lead me up from here.” When the Lord assented to the request and said, “This word too that you have spoken I will do for you,” Moses, perceiving the readiness of the divine generosity, whose kindness anticipates those who reach for great things, then made himself small, and, reckoning himself not yet worthy of the greater things, puts forward another request, lesser in comparison with the first, saying, “Show me your glory.” And the Lord, fulfilling his word, says, “I will pass by before you in my glory, and I will call in the name of the Lord before you,” and what follows, teaching that the knowledge of the Father and God of the universe is greater than every vision he had beheld before; and this he promises to hand on to him, saying of himself, “I will pass by before you in my glory,” and of the initiation into the Father, “and I will call in the name of the Lord.” For of what Lord does he promise to call, since he is himself the Lord indicated by the tetragram, unless it is the Father? And truly, unless the Word of God first passes through a person, and unless he himself calls upon the Father, it is not otherwise possible to take up the knowledge of the Father of the universe; since “no one knew the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son reveals him.” He is the door and the way, through whom alone it is possible to see the cause that is beyond and above all things, the Father himself. For although the divine Word, like a forerunner of the Father, comes first to dwell in the souls of the blessed and gives them a share in his own glory, he does not stop at the end by taking the supreme authority to himself; having prepared and made ready the dwelling, he withdraws and hands the kingdom over to God and the Father. He himself confesses this, saying, “I will pass by before you in my glory, and I will call in the name of the Lord.” Now, then, he promises in word to do this; and next he adds the deed as well, where it is said, “And the Lord came down in a cloud and stood beside him there; and he called in the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before his face and called, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, long-suffering and full of mercy and true, keeping righteousness, doing mercy to thousands, taking away lawlessness and injustice and sins; and he will not clear the guilty, bringing the lawlessness of fathers upon children and upon children's children, to the third and fourth generation.’” For it is the Lord indicated by the tetragram who says these things himself, having come down in a cloud and stood beside Moses; and he, passing by before his face according to the promise he had made, calls upon his own Lord and Father, the one who is truly Lord, Lord, who appears twice through the tetragram, saying, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful,” and what follows. If someone should insist that it was not the Lord but Moses who said these things, let him take firm assurance from the very words of Moses, who confesses that the words set out above are the Lord's, when, praying in another place, he says, “And now let your hand be exalted, Lord, as you said: ‘The Lord is long-suffering and full of mercy and true, taking away lawlessness and injustice and sins; and with cleansing he will not cleanse the guilty, repaying the sins of fathers upon children to the third and fourth generation.’” Most plainly and clearly, then, it is shown by these words that the Lord himself spoke the words set out above, calling upon a greater Lord, the one who is truly Lord, clearly his own Father. Or, if anyone is reluctant to accept this, let him say whether he is able to give any other explanation of these passages, while keeping to the point that the one who gave the oracles was not an angel, but the Lord himself indicated by the tetragram, who is also recorded to have spoken to Moses face to face, and whom Moses entreats, declining the protection of angels, saying, “If you yourself do not go with us, do not lead me up from here.”

But it is not possible to refer these things to any other than to the Word, God, who was in the beginning with God. He reveals to Moses, who longed for great things, the knowledge of the greater one, teaching him how he may know the only true God, and the Word, God, whom he sent, who is himself also Lord and God in the second place after the Father. And this is the first and most necessary benefit he provides him, that he should never, because of the surpassing glory of what he beheld, take the conceptions proper to the God of the universe and apply them to the Word who gave him oracles. So he teaches him to regard as the first and only true God the one whom he himself called upon, saying, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, long-suffering and full of mercy and true.” Attend carefully to the word “true,” said in the same way as “that they may know you, the only true God,” spoken by the same Saviour in the Gospels. But the whole people could not have received these things; to them, as beginners, the one giving the oracles said, “I am, and there is none besides me.” For they still needed an elementary introduction to the monarchy of God, being not yet able to articulate the doctrines concerning Father and Son, since they had only recently turned away from the polytheistic error of the Egyptians. Yet “I am, and there is none besides me” might be said in the person of the Word of God, like “I and the Father are one,” and “I am in the Father and the Father in me.” For just as he who has seen him has seen the Father, according to “He who has seen me has seen the Father who sent me,” in the same way he who heard him heard the Father in him saying, “I am, and there is none besides me.” We have said this, as far as is possible in such great matters, wishing to show that beyond dispute it was neither the God of the universe nor some angelic power that gave oracles to Moses, but the divine Word himself, whom we have believed with exactness to be, after the Father and Lord of the universe, the second God and Lord of all things, as the evangelist John teaches us more clearly, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

It would take much leisure, not the present, to make clear what the place and the rock are of which the Lord said, “Behold, a place beside me, and you shall stand on the rock.” The apostle made clear what the rock is, saying, “And the rock was Christ.” And I take the place to be nothing other than the rock, and the same as the place that met Jacob, where it is written, “And Jacob went out from the Well of the Oath and went to Haran. And he met a place,” where, having seen in a vision the ladder and the Lord standing firm upon it, he says on waking, “The Lord is in this place,” and again he said, “How fearful is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” But also what the face of the Word of God is, which Moses, the Law, being human and more bodily, cannot behold; and what his back parts are, which alone the typical Law, symbolic of spiritual things, was able to receive; and how “I will cover you with my hand” is said, a veil and covering being laid on the Law, so that through this veil it can see the things behind but not the things that go before and excel: whoever cares to search into these things will learn by examining them privately in due time.

“A man shall come out of his offspring, and he shall be lord of many nations; and the kingdom of Gog shall be exalted, and his kingdom shall be increased. God led him out of Egypt; he has as it were the glory of a unicorn; he shall eat up the nations of his enemies, and drain the marrow of their fatness, and with his darts shoot down the enemy. He lay down and rested like a lion and like a whelp; who shall raise him up? Those who bless you are blessed, and those who curse you are cursed.” Christ is the one born according to the flesh of the offspring of Israel and who has become lord of many nations. For what nation has been ignorant of service under him, since the word of his disciples has gone out into all the earth, and their sayings to the ends of the inhabited world? Among very many even of the barbarians one can see many who through faith in him have come to the knowledge of the one God, and who for their devotion to him have endured every kind of punishment, even to death. This prophecy too, then, is clearly shown to have reached its fulfilment in our Saviour; or else let someone else come forward and show to whom these things could be referred. For us it is evident that the spiritual kingdom and dominion of our Saviour increases daily among the souls that have received his word. And at his coming the kingdom of Gog was also exalted; some have taken this to be the Roman empire, others figuratively the heavenly citizenship according to the Gospel and the contemplation of spiritual doctrines, understanding that this is signified by “Gog,” which is interpreted “roofs.” And God led him out of Egypt: literally, when Joseph, warned by an oracle, took Mary with the child Jesus out of Egypt and returned to the land of Israel, fulfilling both the present prophecy and the one in Hosea, according to the Hebrew and the version of Aquila, which says, “Out of Egypt I called my son”; and in the spiritual sense, when the Father took him up from the spiritual Egypt and from the places here below and led him to the heavens. The so-called glory of unicorns in the Saviour hints at the divinity in him of the Father's monarchy. After this it is said, “He shall eat up the nations of his enemies”: for all the nations that have come under his teaching, which were formerly the portion of his enemies, he has, after their faith in him, made fit, as it were, to be food for himself; thinning down and searching out their fatness, that is, everything material and earthly that has grown together with them, and producing in them nourishing fruits through his own husbandry. These things he accomplished with spiritual and rational darts, shooting down the one who of old ruled the nations and was his enemy, that is, the devil. The words beginning “He lay down and rested like a lion” were spoken in almost the same terms by Jacob too in the prophecies about Judah; having set out what sense they have as it occurred to us, we shall not repeat it. It is clear how we who bless the Christ of God have been blessed. For even if they abhor us, as the Egyptians abhorred God's people of old, yet in our case too it is fulfilled that “the more they humbled them, the more they multiplied, and grew exceedingly strong.” And it is clear in what way those who from the beginning cursed him have received the curse, through “Crucify, crucify him!”; for the cross was a thing of cursing, according to “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” But he who endured their curse has been highly exalted by the Father, while those who were cursed by God himself have received a destruction that lasts for ever; and if anyone examines it with exactness, he will see the greatness of the power of God, which pursues even now those who have once been cursed by him. So much on “Those who bless you are blessed, and those who curse you are cursed.”

“A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a man shall rise up out of Israel, and shall shatter the leaders of Moab, and shall plunder all the sons of Seth.” The Word of God, having emptied himself and taken the form of a servant and been found in fashion as a man, rose as no small star, not to Jacob but out of Jacob; for beginning from the bodily people of those of the circumcision, he shone upon all the nations. And having moved away from them he waged no small wars, cleansing away the opposing powers and the spiritual forces of wickedness; having fought them down, he made plunder for his own lot, taking back all the nations that were formerly under them, concerning which the Father promised him, saying, “Ask of me, and I will give you nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession.”

“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers, like me; you shall listen to him in everything, according to all that you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘We will not again hear the voice of the Lord our God, and we will not see this great fire any more, lest we die.’ And the Lord said to me, ‘They have spoken rightly in all they have said. I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brothers, like you; and I will put my word in his mouth, and he shall speak to them as I command him. And whatever man does not listen to all that the prophet speaks in my name, I will take vengeance on him.’” And whom could anyone from Israel better point to as a prophet like Moses, that is, a lawgiver, shown forth to the human race, than our Saviour and Lord Jesus alone, who has appeared to all the nations as lawgiver of the new covenant, of the life according to the Gospel, according to the prophetic prayer in the psalm that says, “Appoint, O Lord, a lawgiver over them; let the nations know that they are men”? He also redeemed from the spiritual Egypt, from its brickmaking and from the bitter slavery under the spiritual Pharaoh, those who through him have come to the God of the universe; and in short, everything that is related to have been done bodily by Moses, our Saviour and Lord accomplished according to the spiritual law. So he has come, the prophet who is still renowned even now among both Samaritans and Jews, whom Moses foretold, concerning whom God testified beforehand, saying, “And whatever man does not listen to all that the prophet speaks in my name, I will take vengeance on him.” Vengeance has indeed been taken for the blood of all, from Abel to Zechariah who was murdered between the temple and the altar, on the generation that rose up against the Saviour, and especially on those who dared to utter against him the cry, “Crucify, crucify him! Away with such a one from the earth! His blood be on us and on our children!” This happened at once, God, as he had foretold, avenging the blood of Christ both on those very people and on their children; and justice pursued them at the same time, so that from then until now the whole nation has not been able to raise its head at all, and another prophecy was fulfilled, that of Amos, which says, “The house of Israel has fallen; it will not again rise up.” The apostle, foreseeing this by the Spirit, cried out, saying, “Wrath has come upon them to the end.”

“Rejoice, heavens, together with him, and let all the angels of God worship him; rejoice, nations, with his people, and let all the sons of God be strong for him.” To whom else would the divine Spirit command his angels to bow down but to Christ, at whose coming the nations clearly rejoiced with his people, the chorus of the righteous patriarchs and prophets? Of these nations God speaks again in the same song, addressing himself as to another people: “They provoked me to jealousy with what is no god; they angered me with their idols; and I will provoke them to jealousy with what is no nation; with a nation without understanding I will anger them.” And it is evident that after their casting off God chose the foolish things of the world to put to shame those who were wise among them; and he chose the weak things of the world, and the base, and the despised, and the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that formerly were among them. For since the times of Moses himself they had worshipped idols and angered God and provoked him to jealousy, and when his Christ came they did not receive him; but the nations, having come to know through him the Father and God of the universe, will rejoice, according to the prophecy in hand, with his people of the saints. And all the sons of God were strong for the Christ: both those who earlier prophesied the things about him, and all who after his coming received the Spirit of adoption and preached him to the whole inhabited world. So much from the Pentateuch; let us go on to the Scriptures that follow.

“And it came to pass, when Joshua was at Jericho, that he looked up and saw a man standing before him, with his sword drawn in his hand. And Joshua went up and said, ‘Are you ours, or of our adversaries?’ And he said to him, ‘I am the chief captain of the host of the Lord; I have now come.’ And Joshua fell on his face to the ground and said to him, ‘Master, what do you command your servant?’ And the chief captain of the Lord says to Joshua, ‘Loose the sandal from your feet; for the place where you stand is a holy place.’” And who else could the chief captain of the host of the Lord be than the Christ of God, the ruler of the whole holy and spiritual army of God? See whether he is not shown, by the words to Joshua, to be the same one who gave oracles to Moses on the mountain through the angel; for what is now said to Joshua was said likewise to Moses by the Lord through the angel when he was beginning his vision, according to “Loose the sandal from your feet,” and what follows. The Christ of God, who has many names, is now called chief captain of the host of the Lord; as in Isaiah he is called Angel of Great Counsel, in the passage “And they will wish that they had been burned with fire. For a child has been born to us, a son has also been given to us, whose rule is upon his shoulder, and his name is called Angel of Great Counsel.” You would also find him named in Malachi Angel of the covenant, where it is said, “And suddenly the Lord whom you seek will come to his temple, and the Angel of the covenant whom you desire.”

“The Lord went up into the heavens and thundered; he will judge the ends of the earth, and give strength to our kings, and exalt the horn of his anointed.” The Lord, the Word of God, who came down from the heavens, himself went up again into the heavens; and having gone up he thundered forth by his own divine power the preaching of the Gospel, so that it came to be heard in the whole world. He will judge the ends of the earth and those who live as far as them, since he has received all judgment from the Father. He also gave strength to his own disciples, apostles and prophets, who are our kings, and exalted the horn of his anointed, that is, either of the people, who is so named by sharing in the Christ, or of the human nature he took up, whose horn was the divinity, exalted, according to the holy apostle. In the eighty-eighth psalm, too, God says clearly something like what is said here about the Christ: “And in my name his horn shall be exalted.”

“And a man of God came to Eli and said, ‘Thus says the Lord, the Lord’”; and in what follows: “‘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 walk before my anointed all the days. And everyone who is left in your house shall come to bow down to him for an obol of silver and for one loaf, saying, “Put me into one of your priestly offices, that I may eat bread.”’” This is no other than the priest of God Most High after the order of Melchizedek, Jesus Christ our Saviour, whom, according to the apostle, we have as a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. He did all that was in the Father's heart, becoming obedient to him even to death; for which reason the Father raised him up and built him a faithful house, the church, made of rational, living, and faithful stones, truly so. Those who have believed in him come to bow down to him, and he does not turn away the obol of silver: neither, in the bodily sense, the widow who contributes her quadrans for the help of those in need, nor, in the spiritual sense, the soul that rests on faith (alone), or that contributes, according to the measure of its spiritual possessions, what serves for the building up and benefit of the rest. For he chose the foolish things of the world, and the weak and poor, and the despised, and the things that are not, not looking down on them, nor on such souls; but as the Word of God, the lover of humankind, he welcomes these too for their eagerness, and by divine judgment, according to their worth, he places them in the various dwellings of his priestly offices, deeming them worthy of the bread of eternal life that comes from him. The words “And he shall walk before my anointed all the days” are said about the saints in the church, who are themselves also called anointed ones, according to “Do not touch my anointed ones”; for to these the Saviour said in the Gospel, “Behold, I am with you all the days, until the consummation of the age.” Since these passages need more clarification, we shall be content with these remarks, made as briefly as possible.

“And it shall be, when your days are fulfilled and you sleep with your fathers, that I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall be from your belly, and I will prepare his kingdom. He shall build me a house for my name, and I will set up 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 remove from them, as I removed it from those whom I removed from my presence. And his house shall be made sure, and his kingdom for ever before me; and his throne shall be set up for ever.” Things like these are said also in the eighty-eighth psalm. It would be worth the Jews' while to be perplexed over these passages, as to the reason why they will say that God promises to make a firstborn son, whether David or Solomon who reigned after him (of whom, presumably, they will take the prophecy to speak); for in the psalm he says, “He shall call upon me, ‘You are my Father, my God and the helper of my salvation.’ And I will make him firstborn, high among the kings of the earth”; and in the chapter in hand, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.” Yet one would say that David differed in no way from the other prophets, he who needed to make confession because of Uriah's wife, saying, “Against you only have I sinned and done what is evil before you”; or Solomon, whom the bare history of Scripture teaches turned away from God and was moved toward idols through desire for women. And how did the kingdom of David or of Solomon stand for ever before God, and his throne set up for ever, according to the prophecy here, and according to the one in the psalm, which runs somewhat like this: “I swore to David my servant: I will prepare your offspring for ever, and build your throne to generation and generation”; and which says after other things, “Once I swore by my holiness, that I will not lie to David. His offspring shall remain for ever, and his throne as the sun before me”; and again, “And I will establish his offspring for ever and ever, and his throne as the days of heaven”? You would find the like in Jeremiah too, where it is said, “For thus says the Lord: There shall not be cut off from David a man sitting on the throne of the house of Israel; and for the priests and the Levites there shall not be cut off a man from before me, offering whole burnt offerings and sacrificing sacrifice and making incense all the days.” If one examines these things together with the present condition of the Jews and with their histories since the reign of Hezekiah and Jeconiah, under whom the Jews' kingdom descended from David was brought to an end at the time of the captivity to Babylon, after which they were never again ruled or reigned over by those who traced their descent from David, one will find that the words in no way fit either David or Solomon; so that it would necessarily follow (which is not lawful) that God's prediction, made with oaths, is proved false. But if we refer the so-called offspring of David to the Christ who was born from him according to the flesh, it is clear how this offspring, that is, the Christ, will remain for ever, and how his throne and spiritual kingdom are before the Father for ever, set up by him and built up, generation after generation, in the souls of those who believe in him. The throne of this offspring of David, given to us, will remain like the sun of righteousness before the Father and like the days of heaven; which is why it is said to him by the Holy Spirit in another psalm: “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a rod of uprightness is the rod of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” Christ also built for the Father a house, the church, of living and spiritual stones, holy and virtuous souls, raising a temple far better and more excellent than the temporary building of Solomon, which no longer exists. The apostle too testifies that the saying “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” belongs to him, taking it from here in his writing to the Hebrews, where he says, “For to which of the angels did he ever say, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’; and again, ‘I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son’?” The words beginning “And if his iniquity comes, I will rebuke him with the rod of men” are said about the people who believed in Christ, since his church is called the body of Christ, according to the apostle. That the words about visitation are said about those who have believed in him, observe carefully from the plural in “but my mercy I will not remove from them.” Clearly in the psalm too things like these are said about the sons of the one prophesied, in “If his sons forsake my law and do not walk in my judgments, if they profane my ordinances and do not keep my commandments, I will visit their lawlessness with a rod and their injustices with scourges; but my mercy I will not scatter from them.” See how the word has named the persecutions that come from time to time “rods of men” and “strokes of the sons of men.” Yet many are the encouragements of God and the consolations in the Scriptures that do not let us lose heart at the persecutions carried out against us from time to time. For just as he foretold that he would visit Christ's people with the rod when they sinned, so he promised beforehand that he would not remove his mercy from them, saying, “But my mercy I will not remove from them, as I removed it from those whom I removed.” One will ask to whom, before the people from the nations, God's mercy belonged, which he removed from them entirely; he promises not to do the like to the people of Christ.

“And David spoke to the Lord the words of this song.” Then, in what follows: “And he bowed the heavens and came down, and thick darkness was under his feet.” And again after this: “Deliver me from the contradictions of the people; you will make me head of nations; a people whom I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me; foreign sons lied to me; foreign sons shall be cast away, and shall stumble out of their enclosures.” These things are said in almost the same words in the seventeenth psalm too, and would be examined more fittingly when we gather the extracts from the Psalms. For now we note only this: “And he bowed the heavens and came down” might be understood of Christ's coming down from the heavens; “You will deliver me from the contradiction of the people” is said in his person about those of the circumcision who did not believe in him, of whom he also says in Isaiah, “All day long I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contradicting people.” And “You will make me head of nations,” and “A people whom I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me,” are prophesied about the church from the nations; while “Foreign sons lied to me” is about the godless heresies that have fabricated falsehoods about the Saviour himself and the God of the universe, who, the word says, will be cast away, stumbling out of their enclosures, that is, falling away from their insidious and hidden false opinions.

“And now, Lord God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you spoke to your servant David my father; that God will truly dwell with humans on the earth, if the heaven of heaven will not suffice for you.” Words like these are also said by Solomon in his prayer to God in the second book of Chronicles. Here too, then, it is clearly prophesied that God will dwell with humans on the earth; and this too has reached its fulfilment in our time at the coming of Christ, in which God the Word became man and lived with the human race.

“And it shall be, when your days are fulfilled and you sleep with your fathers, that I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall be from your belly; and I will prepare your kingdom. He shall build me a house, and I will set up his throne. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son; and my mercy I will not remove from him, as I removed it from those who were before you; and I will make him sure in my house and in his kingdom for ever, and his throne shall be set up for ever.” Having noted these words, which are like those set out earlier from the second book of Kingdoms, we shall be content with what was said on those, since these differ little from them.

“And now, Lord God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you spoke to your servant David, that God will truly dwell with humans on the earth, if the heaven of heaven will not suffice for you.” Having spoken on these words once, when we set out the passage from the third book of Kingdoms, we shall not repeat it now.

“Men, are not women strong? Great is the earth, and high is the heaven, and swift in its course is the sun, for it turns in the circle of the heaven and runs back again to its own place in one day. Is not he great who does these things? And truth is great and stronger than all things. All the earth calls upon truth, and the heaven blesses it, and all works shake and tremble, and with it there is nothing unrighteous. Wine is unrighteous, the king is unrighteous, women are unrighteous, the sons of men are unrighteous, and all their works are unrighteous, all such things; and there is no truth in them, and in their unrighteousness they will perish. But truth endures and is strong for ever, and lives and prevails for ever and ever. With it there is no respect of persons nor partiality, but it does what is righteous, refraining from all that is unrighteous and wicked; and all are well pleased with its works. And in its judgment there is nothing unrighteous; and to it belong the strength and the kingship and the authority and the majesty of all the ages. Blessed be the God of truth!” Since our Saviour and Lord, being the Word of God, is reported to have said, “I am the truth,” we have fittingly set out the passage before us, which shows truth as having a subsistence of its own, distinct from the Father. For it says, “Truth endures and is strong for ever, and lives and prevails; and with it there is no respect of persons,” and what follows; to which it adds, concerning the Father, who is the God both of the Word of God himself and of the truth, “Blessed be the God of truth!”, to which we too shall add the Amen. These, then, are from the Scripture of Ezra. From Esther we have found nothing on the subject in hand. After the extracts from the historical Scriptures, let us go on to the books written in verse, since these precede the rest of the prophecies in time; and of these let us look first at those from the Psalms.

Having set out the testimonies about our Saviour from the historical Scriptures, we shall next add to them, in this second section of the Extracts, those gathered from the books written in verse, since these precede the rest of the prophecies in time. And let us examine first those from the book of Psalms.

“Blessed is the man who did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the pestilent; but his will is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he will meditate day and night.” And whom could anyone show to have attained so (extraordinary) a virtue as in no way to fall into any sin whatever? This is what seems to me to be signified by “did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly,” and “did not stand in the way of sinners,” and “did not sit in the seat of the pestilent”; by these, I think, is shown that the one pronounced blessed had no taste of sin at all. For not only not to walk in such things, nor, as it were, to make progress by walking in them, but not even to sit, nor indeed to set foot in them at all at the start, nor to stand in them: how is this not something wonderful and rare? The praises of the man indicated come home to the mind still more because they are spoken in the continuous tense: he did not walk, it says, nor stand, nor sit, in such forms of vice; and through these the constant and unbroken virtuous condition of the one pronounced blessed is shown. One might see many who have achieved right conduct through attention and discipline, yet none such as the psalm describes. If one considers how great a thing it is to prosper in everything and to be led well according to God, stumbling in nothing and never falling from the goal of virtue, so that in this sense the psalm can say, “And all that he does shall prosper”; and further, if one considers what it is to have one's own will blended and in agreement with the law of the Lord, and to meditate on it not only all day but also through the night, looking into it with the waking eyes of the understanding, and acting according to it not only in the deeds and words of the day but also in the thoughts and imaginings of sleep, one will know the greatness of having achieved these things, as attested by the divine Spirit. But even though what is said admittedly surpasses all human nature, it would fit one man only, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, born of the offspring of David according to the flesh, to whom alone the divine Spirit in Isaiah has borne witness that “he committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth.” The reading according to the Hebrew confirms that this interpretation is correct, being carefully worded thus: “Blessed is the man,” with the addition of the article. And it was fitting that David, who was called the Saviour's father according to the flesh and had received the promise that Christ would be born of his offspring, should dedicate the first-fruits of his own prophecy to him. Whoever wishes to discern exactly how what is said in the psalm refers to the Saviour will learn by reading those who have written commentaries on it.

“Why did the nations rage, and the peoples meditate vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.” In the Acts of the Apostles, those who heard Peter and John relate the wonders that had happened to them testified that this prophecy too had been fulfilled. For giving thanks for the marvels they heard, they added to the words set out above, saying, “For truly in this city there gathered together against your holy servant, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the nations and the peoples of Israel.” Not only, then, did those who plotted against our Saviour at that time gather together against him, but also the kings and rulers, and whole nations and peoples, who have followed from then until now, by blaspheming him and plotting against his teaching. We must be persuaded that not only the visible kings and rulers among humans plotted against him, but much more the spiritual and invisible rulers of this age, who were at work then and are still at work now: both the nations and the peoples of the circumcision, who meditated on the law of God emptily and in vain, taking counsel not only against the Christ of God but, through him, against the Father who sent him. Concerning all of them the psalm adds: “He who dwells in the heavens will laugh at them, and the Lord will mock them. Then he will speak to them in his anger, and in his wrath he will trouble them.” After this, Christ himself, teaching us the dispensation that took place concerning him after the passion, says, “But I was set up as king by him on Zion, his holy mountain, declaring the decree of the Lord.” We must not, however, according to the grovelling notions of the Jews, think that Christ's kingdom is like those of humans and will be established on a bodily Mount Zion. For to the one who asked whether he was a king, he answered, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Hence he promised a kingdom of heaven to those who believed in him; and that Mount Zion is heavenly was taught not only by the apostle but by a great many other prophecies. Micah, for instance, having foretold that because of the impieties of the former people “Zion will be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem will be like a garden-watchman's hut, and the mountain of the house a thicket of the forest,” next adds, about another Zion and Jerusalem, “And in the last days the mountain of the Lord will be manifest, and peoples will come to it, and many nations will go, for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Of this mountain, then, Christ says here too, “But I was set up as king by him on Zion, his holy mountain.” By whom he was set up is clear: by the Father, who said to him, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you,” and “Ask of me, and I will give you nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession.” That the prophecy is true and the promise unfailing can be seen from those who, in so short a time, have come from every nation to the worship of God through our Saviour. Or else let those who shamelessly dare to look away from what has actually happened say to whom they could apply the prophecy, if they do not accept that it is so. For they could not show that King David, of whom some have thought these things are said, suffered any such thing, with rulers and kings, nations and peoples plotting against him. And when, or for what great exploits, did the Lord say to David, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you”? And how could “Ask of me, and I will give you nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession” be said as to him, when his kingdom was clearly limited to Israel alone and the borders of Judea? Let them answer, too, why they do not accept the Christ who has come. Is it because he suffered, so that they must expect another who will suffer nothing like what he suffered? Then how would the prophecies be fulfilled which foretell that the Christ of God would suffer a great many things, in many other passages and not least in the psalm in hand? Or must we think that he sowed the teaching about the God of the universe in the inhabited world without divine help? Can one even conceive that a human impulse, the bare undertaking of an ordinary person, had such strength and power that, by his teaching alone, without a cooperating divinity, it disposed souls of hearers of every kind toward the God of the universe long ago, and still now persuades them to abandon their ancestral customs and a lawless, savage, and licentious life, and to devote themselves to the worship of God alone, preferring it not only to their property but even to life itself, which all hold dear? I do not think that anyone willing to judge with even moderate fairness will fail to agree that such great things have come about through our Saviour with the cooperation of a divine power beyond the human. From these things both the divinity of the Lord who became man is demonstrated, and the evidence is clearly shown that he has received from the Father the nations for his inheritance and the ends of the earth for his possession, in keeping with the prophecy in hand. To explain everything in the psalm is not for the present occasion, especially since it has already received a very full explanation.

It is easy to take the third psalm too as referring to Christ, since, in keeping with those before it, it teaches about the plot against him through “Lord, why have those who afflict me multiplied?” and about his resurrection, which is shown through “I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the Lord will help me.” Each verse of the psalm, given its proper explanation, would fit Christ. And there is reason too in its being placed third to foretell the Lord's resurrection, following the prophecies before it: for the first, as we have shown, teaches his blameless life and his conduct without sin; the second the events of the passion; and so the third, next after these, foretells his resurrection.

The first part of the eighth psalm, beginning “O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is your name in all the earth,” seems to prophesy the calling of the nations; which is why it is also entitled “For the winepresses,” the winepresses being understood as the churches throughout the inhabited world, in which the rational clusters of the true vine, Christ, and of his branches, as it were, the holy apostles, when pressed, yield the spiritual wine of their teachings, which produces every gladness. For it is not otherwise possible to fit what is said in the psalm to bodily winepresses, since the words contain no sense at all about a vine brought out of Egypt, or the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth, or anything of that kind, as in other passages. The words beginning “What is man, that you remember him, or the son of man, that you visit him? You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honour,” and what follows, are applied in the letter to the Hebrews to our Saviour and Lord Jesus, where after “You subjected all things under his feet” it adds, “But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him. But we see Jesus, made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death.” One might say that he was made a little lower than the angels not only because of the suffering of death but also because of his very incarnation, when, “being in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,” and he lowered himself so far that, instead of the glory in the form of God, it was said of him, “We saw him, and he had no form or beauty; but his form was without honour, and failing beyond the sons of men.” In return for this the Father crowned him with glory and honour, highly exalting him and granting him the name above every name, “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” And he set him over the works of his hands: this too (would fit) the person of our Saviour because of God the Word in him, but not just anyone, since the sacred words are accustomed to count even the heavens among the works of God, according to “And the heavens are the works of your hands.” Besides this, “And he subjected all things under his feet, sheep and all oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea”; by which there seems to be shown, more allegorically, the subjection under the yoke and service of the Word of souls that are more irrational and like secondary cattle, or else of the opposing powers.

The title of the ninth psalm is something like this: “To the end, for the hidden things. A psalm of David.” In place of this Symmachus rendered: “A victory song on the death of the son. A song of David.” And this is more like what the Hebrew seems to have, which runs thus: lamanassē almauth ben masmōra David. It would be well for those of the circumcision who use it to be perplexed as to what death, and what son, the psalm is spoken about by David. To us it clearly appears to prophesy the Saviour's passion; and it appears that the Seventy too understood this and hinted at it more secretly. Aquila, too, himself showing that some great exploit took place at the Saviour's passion, rendered: “To the victory-maker, of the youth of the son. A melody of David.” And anyone who has attended to all the words of the psalm would fit them to Christ, who calls himself poor and needy and prophesies about his resurrection from the dead in the words “Have mercy on me, Lord; see my humiliation from my enemies, you who lift me up from the gates of death, so that I may declare all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion”; what Zion, has been shown to us a little earlier. And in it certain things are prophesied about the nations to be saved through him, as about the poor and needy, among which is this: “Appoint, Lord, a lawgiver over them; let the nations know that they are men.” Here it is worth noting that the nations are not subject to the law of Moses; and the text should be brought against those of the circumcision who accuse those from the nations of not living according to the law of Moses. It should be shown that the prophetic word knows that there will be a lawgiver of the nations other than Moses, since it says as in a prayer, “Appoint, Lord, a lawgiver over them,” clearly over the nations. To this it adds, “Let the nations know that they are men,” as if it said: let the nations take up knowledge and understanding of their rational essence through the lawgiver who is to be appointed for them. This would be Christ, who gave us the new covenant as lawgiver by saying, “It was said to those of old, such and such; but I say to you, such and such.” By a divine and ineffable power he has been able to establish his laws not over one nation or two, nor over some part of the whole inhabited world, nor for a short time, but, as one can gather from what has actually happened, for ever and over all the nations. If anyone does not accept that this is so, let him show whom else, besides our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ, he could name, in keeping with the prophecy in hand, as the lawgiver appointed by the God of the universe for the nations, who has become a teacher to all humans of reverence toward the Creator of the universe.

Since in the eleventh psalm the Lord says, “Because of the misery of the poor and the groaning of the needy, now I will arise, says the Lord; I will set him in safety; I will speak boldly in it,” let us examine whether these words too would fit the person of Christ, teaching about his resurrection from the dead, with some such sense as this: “For the sake of the nations that have come to be in the misery of vice, called poor in a blameworthy sense because they are deprived of the riches that are according to God, I emptied myself and took up the contest on their behalf even to death; now I will arise, and having received from the Father authority over all, I will set all who believe in me in salvation, and I will speak boldly in him,” either in the Father, or in what I have done for the salvation of so many through such great exploits. Such might be the sense of the text. But the first words of the psalm, containing “Save me, O God, for the holy one has failed,” and what follows, show what kind of time it was in which he suffered. For at that time the holy one had failed, and truths had diminished from the sons of men; each spoke vain things to his neighbour; and everything after this was fulfilled at that time.

“I foresaw the Lord before me always, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your holy one see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life; you will fill me with gladness with your presence.” That these words too refer to the person of Christ is testified by Peter in the Acts of the Apostles, where he says: “Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to us by God with mighty works and wonders and signs, which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know, this man, delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you took and killed, fastening him by the hand of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says, ‘I foresaw the Lord before me always.’” Then, after saying some things in between, he adds this word for word: “Men, brothers, one may speak freely to you about the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn to him with an oath to set one of the fruit of his loins on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.” Since Peter, then, has given the interpretation of the prophecy as referring to the Saviour, anyone who does not make the search into these things a side matter will be able either to fit the whole wording of the psalm to him in keeping with Peter's understanding, or to read what others have written in commentary on the psalm; for our purpose does not allow us to say anything more on these passages than what has been said.

We have also noted what is said in the sixteenth psalm, “You tested my heart, you visited me by night, you tried me by fire, and no injustice was found in me,” as being spoken in the voice of Christ, since it is not otherwise fitting for a human nature to say this. And all the words in the psalm can be referred to the Saviour by one who looks into them carefully.

Since those of the circumcision will think that the seventeenth psalm too is spoken by no one other than David, because its title seems to show this, we shall press them, as they cannot maintain of him the words, “You will deliver me from the contradiction of the people; you will make me head of nations; a people whom I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me; foreign sons lied to me; foreign sons grew old.” For of what nations could they show David made head? Or what is this people whom he had not known before, yet who served him, obeying him at the hearing of the ear? And who are those called foreign sons who lied to him, and those who grew old and limped away from their paths? But for us nothing at all of what is said in the psalm will be a stumbling block, since we take this prophecy too in the person of Christ, who was made head of the church from the nations, and we see it plainly fulfilled. For we were, we truly were, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, and for that reason unworthy of the knowledge of the Word of God; but now, having come to know God, or rather to be known by him, we who were once far off have been brought near, and we have served the one who formerly did not know us, and at the hearing of the ear we have obeyed him, receiving the word of his new covenant, which he made with us. And wonderfully, after “A people whom I did not know served me” and the calling concerning us, it sets out what concerns the former synagogue through “Foreign sons lied to me,” which is equivalent to “I begot sons and raised them up, but they rejected me.” These also grew old and limped away from their paths, and did not receive the Christ of God, who, rejected by them, was made by the Father head of the nations that served him and obeyed him at the hearing of the ear, according to the prophecy that says elsewhere, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” I think also that his divinity and his descent to humans are shown in the first parts of the psalm, which, being spoken more secretly, would need no passing or cursory explanation, such as the words “And he bowed the heavens and came down, and thick darkness was under his feet; and he mounted on cherubim and flew, he flew on the wings of the winds,” and whatever else, like these, refers to the Word of God.

“There are no speeches nor words in which their voices are not heard. Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their sayings to the ends of the inhabited world.” We ask whose sound has gone out into all the earth, and whose sayings to the ends of the inhabited world, so that no words or speeches are left among any people among whom their voices have not been heard. But no one could point to any others than the holy apostles, in whom the prophecy has been fulfilled, since their teaching about Christ became renowned in all the world under heaven, when, while they lived, with the divine power that worked with them, they preached throughout the whole inhabited world faith in the Christ of God. About him, after foretelling the preaching of his apostles, the word next teaches that he “set his tabernacle in the sun,” the sun being understood as the divinity, in which he set his own abode and, as it were, his dwelling; or else the body he took from the virgin, which was, as it were, the tabernacle of the divine power abiding in it. He also, “like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoiced as a giant to run his course.” For like a bridegroom who, for the sake of his bride, the church, rose from the Father's bosom, and like some brave and strong giant who has fought through the contest set before him, conquered, and overcome his adversaries, he rejoiced on receiving his consort and bride. “His going forth is from the end of the heaven,” and again, “his arrival is to its end”; since “no one else has gone up into heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man”; and again, “He who came down is the same who also went up far above all the heavens,” according to the holy apostle. “And there is none that shall be hidden from his heat,” concerning which he himself said, “I came to cast fire on the earth, and what do I wish if it is already kindled?” One can easily work out for oneself the rest of the passage in keeping with these remarks.

What is said in the nineteenth psalm, “Now I know that the Lord has saved his anointed,” shows in some way the salvation of our Saviour Jesus Christ from death; for it is said to him also, “Let us rejoice in your salvation.” And the whole passage, given its proper explanation, might be fitted to him.

“O Lord, in your power the king will rejoice,” and what follows, one might say can be referred to David; but “He asked life of you, and you gave him length of days for ever and for ever and ever” no longer fits David, since his death is shown, and the span of his life, which was limited to no long period of years. The king, then, would be Christ, appointed by the Father to reign on the heavenly Mount Zion. He asked the Father for life, not for himself, for he was himself the life, but for all who would believe in him; and the Father granted it to him, so that all who have believed in him can pass from death into eternal life and into the length of the days that are with God, which are for ever and for ever and ever. The rest of what is said in the psalm about the king's glory, which is no small thing, would fit Christ rather than David, given the clarification it deserves.

It is plainly agreed by all who have soundly believed in Christ that the opening of the psalm in hand, which runs thus, “O God, my God, attend to me; why have you forsaken me?”, was spoken by him at the time of the passion; for the cry on the cross, “Elōi, elōi, lama sabachthani,” showed this. But before we begin to take the prophecy in the psalm as referring to him, we shall ask those who boast of circumcision who it could be who says the things in the psalm. For he appears to be no ordinary person who says, among other things, this: “For you are the one who drew me out of the womb, my hope from my mother's breasts; on you I was cast from the womb; from my mother's belly you are my God”; and who adds, “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the midst of the assembly I will sing your praise”; and again, “He did not turn his face away from me, and when I cried to him he heard me. From you is my praise; in the great assembly I will confess you; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.” Besides these, let them say whether they can fit the rest of the psalm to any of the holy men. For whom do they know who became such as the word described beforehand: “All who saw me mocked me”? Or about whom did they speak with their lips and shake the head, saying, “He hoped in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him save him, since he delights in him”? Whom did many calves, and of what nature, and dogs and fat bulls surround, and open their mouth against him like a lion ravening and roaring? And besides, whom did the assembly of evildoers surround, and so surround that they dug his hands and feet, counted all his bones, and divided his garments among themselves, casting lots for his clothing? For the person in the psalm says such things, and after suffering so much he adds, “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the midst of the assembly I will sing your praise.” Let them solve these things, and at the same time explain the rest of the psalm, especially from “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him,” as far as “The generation that is coming will be told of the Lord, and they will declare his righteousness to a people that will be born, whom the Lord has made.” Let them show the generation that did not yet exist then, but was prophesied to come in a future time, and the people that did not yet exist before, but was foreseen to be born in later times; and let them say what they would say about the church gathered from all the nations through Jesus Christ our Saviour. In view of such great multitudes who have come to know the God of the universe through Christ, would they not admit that “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord” and “All the families of the nations will bow down before him” have been fulfilled? It is time, then, for those willing to judge fairly to confess that the prophecy has been fulfilled in no one other than our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ alone, at whose coming the turning of the nations also began, when the prophesied generation arrived, and the people that was to be born, foretold not only here but also in the hundred and first psalm, through “Let this be written for another generation, and the people that is being created will praise the Lord.” This is the people of whom it was said also in the seventeenth psalm, “A people whom I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me.”

This Saviour and Lord of ours, then, who took flesh and on account of it was called a worm, who became a reproach of men and despised by the people: “All who saw me mocked me,” especially at the time of the passion, when what is in the prophecy reached its fulfilment, and those passing by blasphemed him and mocked him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself.” Then too they spoke with their lips and shook their heads at him, saying in these very words, “He hoped in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him save him, since he delights in him”; for these very words are recorded in the Gospels as said to him at the passion. To him, then, and to him alone, it is fitting to say to the Father, “For you are the one who drew me out of the womb, my hope from my mother's breasts; on you I was cast from the womb; from my mother's belly you are my God.” Besides this, the word teaches us that certain wicked and beastlike powers also worked the plot against him, on account of which he said, “Many calves surrounded me; fat bulls closed me in.” And about the synagogue of the circumcision that rose up against him he says, “Many dogs encircled me; an assembly of evildoers closed me in.” These also dug, not only his hands but also his feet; or, according to Aquila, who says “they disfigured,” “They disfigured my hands and my feet.” This was truly accomplished when, hanging him on the wood, they pierced both his hands and his feet with nails. It is good, if anyone demands that it be shown from Scripture that Christ was foretold to endure a cross, to set out, along with the other passages that show it, “they dug,” and still more “they disfigured my hands and my feet.” After these words it adds, “They divided my garments among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.” Aquila rendered this, “They will divide my garment among themselves, and over my clothing they will cast lots”; and Symmachus, “They distributed my garments among themselves, and for my raiment they drew lots.” This too was fulfilled at the time of the passion, when those who crucified him took his garments and made four parts, a part for each soldier, and the tunic; but it was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. So they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be”; to which the evangelist adds, saying, “that the Scripture might be fulfilled, ‘They divided my garments among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.’” So much the prophecy. … Concerning him the Hebrew has something like “hōsanna”; following which the psalm adds, just as the Gospels do, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” This seems to me to mean something like: “Save, then, blessed one who comes in the name of the Lord,” the Father and God of the universe.

“The Lord swore truth to David, and he will not set it aside: ‘Of the fruit of your belly I will set upon your throne.’” And again: “There I will make a horn spring up for David; I have prepared a lamp for my anointed. His enemies I will clothe with shame, but upon him my holiness shall flourish.” Here too a promise about the Christ is clearly given to David by God with an oath, as one who would be born of his offspring and would hold his throne. The passages would need much examination, since Christ does not seem to have sat bodily on the throne of David and on his kingdom; we shall put this off, because it does not belong to the present treatise to spend our leisure, against the purpose before us, on explaining the psalm. But one must, with good sense, not set aside what is clearly said about him in many places because of one Scripture that cannot be fitted to Christ in the bodily sense. Rather, following true reason and standing by the divine Scripture itself, one should notice that it sometimes prophesies that he will come poor, mean, and without honour, having no form or beauty, and at other times calls him an honoured king. Of these, some can be fulfilled even bodily, others only according to the spiritual sense of Scripture, and some must be expected to be fulfilled at his second coming. Nevertheless our Lord was also called King of the Jews at his first coming, not by chance, when Pilate ordered that “This is the King of the Jews” be written on his cross in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew letters.

It seemed good to note also “He who sends his oracle to the earth; his word will run swiftly,” since here too the Scripture teaches that the Word of God is a subsisting reality, being other than the Father who sends him. See how it adds next, “His word will run swiftly”; and this too can be seen fulfilled after Christ's coming, since his teaching ran through in a very short time and in not many years prevailed in all the earth, even to the ends of the inhabited world.

And what is said here, “Let them praise the name of the Lord; for he spoke, and they came into being; he commanded, and they were created,” we have gathered among the testimonies about the Word, God, who was in the beginning with God, having learned that the Word of God is also called his name, according to one of the titles among the concepts applied to him. For after saying first, “Praise the Lord,” for such and such reasons, the Spirit accordingly bids praise, after the Father, his name, adding that “he spoke, and they came into being; he commanded, and they were created.” The one who orders and commands, then, would be the God and Father of the universe, and the one who serves would be the Word of God, ministering to the Father's will for the creation of generated things. It should be observed that in the thirty-second psalm too the words “He spoke, and they came into being; he commanded, and they were created” occur word for word; but there they are said about the earth and those who dwell in the inhabited world, while here they are said about those in the heavens and the angels and powers spoken of as in the highest, and further about sun and moon and stars and all that are listed with them. In these words the divine Scripture teaches us that through the Word, according to the holy apostle, all things were created, those in the heavens and those on earth, “whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and in him,” and “without him not one thing came into being.” So much for the extracts from the Psalms. Since our account has received a moderate and sufficient compass, we shall make the extracts from the remaining books in verse, and after them those from the prophets, from a new beginning.

And what is said here, “The righteous will wait for me until you repay me,” seems to be said in the person of the Saviour. For whom else will the righteous wait for until God repays him, but him? For as it is said somewhere about the righteous of old, that “though attested, they did not receive the promises, God having foreseen something better for us, so that they should not be made perfect without us.” That the text looks to him is clear from the fact that the events of his passion too are signified beforehand in the psalm, in keeping with the other prophecies. For it is written, “I will pour out my prayer before him; I will declare my affliction before him. When my spirit failed within me, you knew my paths; in this way in which I was walking they hid a snare for me”; and again, “Deliver me from those who persecute me, for they have become stronger than I.” After this, praying also about his resurrection from the dead, he says, “Bring my soul out of prison, to confess your name”; to which he adds, “The righteous will wait for me until you repay me.” All those righteous men, then, waited for the Christ until the Father should repay him for having emptied himself and become obedient to him even to death. And what would he repay him but the nations as inheritance, and the ends of the earth as his possession, so that when the fullness of the nations has come in, then all Israel too may be saved? And everything in the psalm, containing what concerns his incarnation, in which he was plotted against, would fit Christ.

In the psalm in hand it is said, “Lord, bow the heavens and come down,” and in the seventeenth, “And he bowed the heavens and came down.” We noted the text there too, and here, doing the same, we have taken these words to be said about the Word of God. For having bowed the heavens by emptying himself of the heavenly glory that was in the form of God, he came down to the lower parts of the earth, through the dispensation he took up for the salvation of humans. Hence, before the text set out, the word marvels and says, “Lord, what is man, that you became known to him, or the son of man, that you take account of him?” For to this end the Word of God, bowing the heavens so called, came down: that by becoming man he might be known to the human race, which formerly did not know him; and he did not despise or count as nothing the one who became the son of man, that is, every rational soul made in the image of God. The rest of the psalm too you would understand by taking it spiritually.

After the extracts from the Psalms, let us gather those from the remaining books in verse and from the prophecies that follow, in this third book of the Prophetic Extracts concerning Christ, which is the eighth of the General Elementary Introduction. We note first that it is not possible to show the prophets' words to be true unless faith in our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ is taken along with them, nor can our faith in Christ be made firm more rationally unless the prophets of old confirm the proofs concerning him. Hence one might rightly blame both the Jews, who have not accepted the Christ, and the heretics who reject the prophecies, for falling into untenable positions. The former, accepting the prophecies as God's, prove them false by leaving them unfulfilled, because they cannot accept the outcomes of the prophecies fulfilled in Christ. The latter, confessing Christ, keep faith in him untenable and undemonstrated, by not making use of the wonderful prophets of God, who bore witness beforehand to the things about him. But we, confirming the prophecies through the coming of Christ, and his coming through the prophecies, set forth the clear and solid truth by irrefutable demonstrations. So much by way of preface; let us go on to the subject before us.

The whole book of Proverbs seems to be spoken in the person of Wisdom, who sometimes sets out the moral life, sometimes gives voice to the words of others; sometimes puts forward riddles, and at other times teaches certain things about herself and instructs us about her own divine dignity. Of these we shall gather the passages from which we learn that Wisdom is a divine living being, wholly virtuous by nature, being the same as the second cause of the universe after the first God, the Word who was God in the beginning with God, and the providence of God that governs and administers all things and reaches even to affairs on earth; who was also created before every substance and subsistence, being the beginning of the ways of the whole creation. The words spoken as by Wisdom herself run as follows: “I, Wisdom, made counsel and knowledge my dwelling, and I called upon understanding. The fear of the Lord hates evil, insolence and arrogance and the ways of the wicked; and I have hated the perverse ways of evil men. Counsel and safety are mine; I am understanding, and strength is mine. Through me kings reign, and princes decree righteousness. Through me great men are magnified. I love those who love me, and those who seek me will find favour. Wealth and glory are mine, and the possession of many things, and righteousness. It is better to have my fruit than gold and much precious stone, and my produce is better than choice silver. I walk in the ways of righteousness, and I move about in the midst of the paths of justice, that I may distribute substance to those who love me and fill their treasuries with good things. If I declare to you the things that happen day by day, I will remember to recount the things from of old. The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the age he founded me, in the beginning, before he made the earth, and before he made the depths, before the springs of the waters came forth; before the mountains were settled, and before all the hills, he begets me. The Lord made countries and uninhabited places, and the inhabited heights of the land under heaven. When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him, when he marked out his own throne upon the winds; when he made strong the clouds above, and made secure the springs of the land under heaven, when he set for the sea its boundary, and the waters shall not pass his mouth; when he made strong the foundations of the earth, I was beside him, fitting things together. I was the one in whom he delighted day by day, and I rejoiced in his presence at every time, when he rejoiced at having completed the inhabited world and rejoiced among the sons of men.” This is what Wisdom teaches about herself. Who she is, the holy apostle teaches, saying, “Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God”; and again, “who became wisdom for us from God.” So it is Christ who says the things quoted. He is the Wisdom and Word of God, through whom all things came into being; for “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him”; and “In him all things were created, those in the heavens and those on earth, whether visible or invisible,” according to the apostle. Just as, under one concept, he is called the Word of God, and under another life, and again truth and the true light, and all the other things that the divine Scriptures call him, in the same way he is also called Wisdom, being the servant of the Father for the providence and administration of the universe.

“In the light of a king's son is life; and those acceptable to him are like a late cloud.” And in the light of what other king's son is there life, but in the Word of God, who is the Son of God, the King of all? For he is the true light that enlightens every human coming into the world; and in this light there is life, according to the word of the Gospel that says, “In him was life, and the life was the light of humans.” And those acceptable to him, whom we take to be his apostles and disciples, have become like a late cloud at the last of the days and at the consummation of the age, watering the land once desert and waterless, that is, the church of the nations, with the spiritual rain of reverent teaching.

“Thus says the man to those who believe God, and I cease. For I am the most foolish of all men, and the understanding of men is not in me. But God has taught me wisdom, and I have known the knowledge of the holy. Who has gone up into heaven and come down? Who has gathered the winds in his bosom? Who has wrapped up water in a garment? Who has taken hold of the ends of the earth? What is his name, or what is the name of his children?” And what other man could be the one who says this, but our Lord who became man? He says it either because of our follies, which he took upon himself, or because of the foolishness of the preaching, which is wiser and stronger than the wisdom of humans. Here he says, “For I am the most foolish of all men,” and in the sixty-eighth psalm, “You know my folly.” He also says, “and the understanding of men is not in me,” glorying as in an exploit that he has had none of the understanding of men who have been compared to the senseless cattle and made like them; or of those whose wisdom God made foolish, who think of nothing more than the things on earth, whatever belongs by nature to flesh and matter. For this reason they are attested to be wise in their generation, (by) seeking only the things on earth and thinking (still) on evil from their youth. There was no human understanding at all in the man mentioned, but clearly a divine one, above the human; which is why he adds, “But God has taught me wisdom, and I have known the knowledge of the holy.” Then he asks, “Who has gone up into heaven and come down?”, as if rousing us to search for the one who teaches such great things about himself, concerning whom the rest is also said, which needs leisure of its own. The divine apostle, teaching us about him, says, “He who came down to the lower parts of the earth is the same who also went up above the heavens.” He puts first that he came down, then brings in that he went up, and then that he came down; since after the resurrection from the dead he said to Mary, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father”; after this he was seen by the disciples for forty days, eating with them, having clearly gone up to the Father and come down again because of the dispensation he was carrying out. Hence it is also said, “Having gone up on high he led captivity captive; he gave gifts among humans.” And what are these but the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which he brought down from heaven? This is why here too Aquila says, “Who has gone up into heaven and brought down?” He also took hold of the ends of the earth, so that his word went out into all the earth, and his sayings to the ends of the inhabited world. The one to whom a word of knowledge is given will know how the rest of the passage should be understood. It urges us to ask what his name is and the name of his children. To this we shall answer from what we have learned by experience: his name is Jesus, which is interpreted “salvation of God”; this name those related to him according to the flesh gave him, following the oracle of Gabriel, the angel also giving the reason for such a title: “For he will save his people from their sins,” he says. And the name of his children, to whom he said, “Little children, yet a little while I am with you,” and of those after them in all the churches, his sons, grandsons, and descendants, what else could it be but the blessed name Christian?

“Better is a youth, poor and wise, than a king old and foolish, who no longer knew how to take heed. For out of the house of prisoners he will come forth to reign, for even in his kingdom he became poor. I saw all the living who walk under the sun with the second youth, who will rise up in his place. There is no end to all the people, to all who were before them; and yet those who come later will not rejoice in him; for this too is vanity and a choice of the spirit.” Since Christ, being the wisdom of God, became poor for our sake though he was rich, I think “Better is a youth, poor and wise, than a king old and foolish” is said about him. The old king I think is the devil, “grown old in evil days,” who is king of those over whom the sin worked by him reigns, but foolish because he is deprived of the virtuous understanding that is according to God. The good and wise youth mentioned came forth out of the house of prisoners, either the region around the earth or the places in Hades, at his resurrection from the dead, and was set up by the Father as king on Zion, the heavenly mountain of God; and in his very kingdom he became poor, not counting equality with God a thing to be grasped, but humbling himself and coming down from the highest glory for the sake of those who could not receive the riches of his wisdom. The one said to rise up in his place, the second youth, I take to be the Antichrist, with whom the word says it saw all who live and walk under the sun; and who would they be but all who cherish what is called the vanity of vanities under the sun?

“This too I saw as wisdom under the sun, and it is great to me. There was a small city, and few men in it; and a great king came against it and surrounded it and built great siegeworks against it; and he found in it a man poor and wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom; yet no one remembered that poor man. And I said, ‘Wisdom is better than power; yet the wisdom of the poor man is despised, and his words are not heard.’” Here too the one who wages war is said to be a king, and the one who saves the city besieged by him a poor and wise man. Since in the previous chapter it was said, “Better is a youth, poor and wise, than a king old and foolish,” and we took the foolish king to be the devil and the poor and wise one to be the Word of God, who emptied himself and became poor for our sake, for this reason we have noted the present passage too, thinking that the warlike king described here is no other than the foolish king spoken of there, and likewise that the one who here saves the besieged city by his wisdom is the poor and wise one there, whom we said to be Christ. He ransomed the small city, that is, the region around the earth, which is very small compared with the whole cosmos, and those in it, who are few in comparison with the multitude of all rational beings, all the nations being like a drop from a bucket. They were besieged by the kingdom of the devil, who surrounds on every side the region around the earth and those in it, and builds great siegeworks against it: the rulers, the authorities, the world-rulers of this darkness, and the spiritual forces of wickedness. Him no one else brought down but the poor and wise man alone, our Saviour and Lord, who emptied himself and became poor for our sake in the riches of his own mercy; and having brought him down, he saved by his wisdom the small city, which in another interpretation is, presumably, the church, and those in it who are few; since narrow and hard is the way that leads to life, and few are those who go through it. Those who see so great a dispensation say, “Wisdom is better than power,” clearly the power of the enemies. But also, it says, “no one remembered that poor man.” For it was God who remembered him through the prophets and proclaimed beforehand his sojourn among humans; but of those worked upon by the wisdom of the rulers of this age, not one ever remembered him, since they were not even able to know the mystery hidden before the ages, the dispensation of the incarnation of the Word of God. Besides this it is said, “and the wisdom of the poor man is despised”; for God was pleased through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe. And “his words,” it says, “are not heard”; for not all can hear the Saviour's words, but only those who have ears to hear; for the gospel of Christ is veiled, though not to his disciples, for it is veiled to those who are perishing.

The whole book has as its subject a bride's love for a bridegroom: she confesses that she is wounded by love for him, and he in turn confesses that she alone, out of many, is his perfect dove, beyond those called queens, concubines, and maidens. Those of the circumcision, persuaded that this book too is one of the twenty-two inspired Scriptures believed among them, could not, I think, point to anything said in it worthy of divine inspiration, since they imagine nothing more in these passages than the obvious sense. But whoever is able to remove the veil that lies on this Scripture too, to turn to the Lord, who is the Spirit, and with unveiled face to behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord in these things also, will see in it the mysteries concerning the spiritual bride, clearly the church of Christ, and what is said about the perfect bridegroom of such a bride, and about the difference between his queens, concubines, and maidens, and all the other more secret teachings hidden in the book. These have already received the fullest clarification in the works in which the most industrious interpreter of the divine Scriptures has written his commentaries.

Job is the one who says about the Lord, among other things: “Who speaks to the sun, and it does not rise, and seals up the stars; who alone stretched out the heaven, and walks on the sea as on solid ground”; and again, “who will subdue the great sea-monster.” Since it does not belong to a lofty conception of the God of the universe to suppose that he who fills all things walks on a sea that contains his great size, it remains to understand these things of the Word, by whose power Joshua son of Nun, being his type, spoke to the sun and it stood still over Gibeon; and at the time of his passion, too, as at some divine command, the sun was darkened over all the earth. He it is who stretched out the heaven, who also walked on the sea as on solid ground, when, having become man, he performed the wonders recorded in the Gospels. If the words in these passages are to be referred wholly to the Word of God, it would follow to take not only the texts we have set out as referring to him, but everything said by Job in the passage. For he alone subdued the great sea-monster, loosing the pangs of death and bringing to nothing the truly great dragon, the devil, who of old swallowed down the souls of humans by his strength, like the sea-monster that swallowed Jonah, but who later, subdued by the one who wrestled him down, brought forth again those he had swallowed long ago, like the beast that gave Jonah back safe. In this was fulfilled the prophecy that says, “Death, being strong, swallowed them; and again God took away every tear from every face”; which we too say because of our Saviour and Lord, who subdued what is here called the great sea-monster.

The Lord, in his oracle to Job, going through the works of his providence and administration, says: “Did you take clay from the earth and mould a living being, and set it on the earth able to speak? Did you take away the light from the ungodly and break the arms of the proud? Did you come to the spring of the sea, and walk in the tracks of the deep? Do the gates of death open to you in fear, and did the gatekeepers of Hades cower when they saw you?” The Lord says these things to Job about himself, as no one else but he alone can do such great things. For who is the one who took earth and moulded a living being, but God, who took dust from the earth and moulded the human? At the same time we are taught from this that the one who moulded the human is the same who also came down to the lower parts of the earth, into what is called its heart, which I take to be named here the spring of the sea; and further, the one who walked in the tracks of the sea, to whom alone the gates of death were opened with fear, because it was not possible for him to be held by it; whom the gatekeepers of Hades also cowered at when they saw him, seeing the victory and the sting and the pangs of death destroyed through him. Perhaps it was to these gatekeepers of the gates of death mentioned here that certain divine powers said, at the time of the passion and of our Saviour's descent into Hades, “Lift up your gates, you rulers, and be lifted up, you everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall come in.” The gates are called everlasting, as I take it, because from all ages they had been opened to no one else but to him alone, who also rescued and gave life to those swallowed by death long ago. Of him it is said here, “Do the gates of death open to you in fear, and did the gatekeepers of Hades cower when they saw you?”; and in the hundred and sixth psalm, “For he broke gates of bronze,” which are, I think, no other than those of death, “and broke bars of iron,” clearly the bars of the gates mentioned. We have taken these things, then, as referring to Christ, since they fit no one else; for he it is to whom the Father has given all judgment, so that he takes away the light from the ungodly and breaks the arms of the proud. But if anyone thinks that these things are said about the God of the universe, let him consider whether it is reverent to suppose that the one who says, “Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord,” whose throne is heaven and the earth the footstool of his feet, the God who contains all things, says, or should even be thought, to have walked in the tracks of the sea. And what is wonderful, or worthy of the unbegotten nature, in saying, as if it were something great, that the gates of death were opened to him? Would it befit the God of the universe to recount about himself, as something great and marvellous, that the gatekeepers cowered when they saw him? I do (not) think these things are said about him; but they can be fitted reverently and without force to the Word of God, our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ, who became man, endured death, and rose from the dead with divine power and the authority given him by the Father.

Again the Lord, in his oracle to Job, speaking about the dragon, says, “Are you not afraid, because it has been prepared for me?” He says it of the dragon, which is no other than the devil. Consider, then, whether it is fitting to suppose that the God of the universe says this. It would fit rather our Lord and Saviour, for whom alone was prepared the devil, who was conquered by no one else and had prevailed over nearly all; him the Word of God, stronger than all, alone subdued, according to “who will subdue the great sea-monster.” Having subdued him, he bids his disciples take courage, saying, “Take courage; I have conquered the world.” These are the extracts from the books in verse after the Psalms. It remains to gather those from the prophetic Scriptures, and first those from the Twelve.

“For I am like a panther to Ephraim, and like a lion to the house of Judah.” Since in another passage of the same prophet the Lord says about himself, “And I will be like a panther,” it is necessary to see what is related about the animal. Let us set out the following from the first book of Didymus's Natural History: “The panther is an animal not only beautiful in body, starry-faced as it were, but since it is by nature sweet-breathed, it surpasses even the spices of India in fragrance. Until it is hungry it stays in its den, wishing to keep at home; but when it desires to take food, it comes out and simply walks; and the other beasts, captivated by the fragrance of its body, follow it, charmed. It looks sideways with its eyes for the beast suitable for it to take, and leaps on it and has it.” Such are the facts about the nature of the animal; how they might be transferred to the power of the divine Word and the fragrance that breathes out from it would take long to explain now. The text should be set against those of the circumcision who, by way of slander and abuse, say that our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ was born of a panther. Perhaps they received this from some tradition that signified something more mystical, but they do not grasp its meaning, because they do not attend to the wording of the prophecy before us, in which the Lord himself names himself a panther.

“And destruction shall rise up among your people, and all your walled places shall be gone; as the ruler Salaman from the house of Jeroboam in the days of war dashed the mother down upon the children, so will they do to you, house of Israel, because of your wickedness. For Israel is a child, and I loved him, and out of Egypt I called back his children. As I called them back, so they went away from my presence.” In place of “and out of Egypt I called back his children,” Aquila, following the Hebrew, rendered, “Out of Egypt I called back my son.” We have noted the text of necessity, since Matthew sets out the prophecy word for word, saying that it was very exactly fulfilled in our Saviour: Joseph, warned by an oracle, took Mary and her son, and returned from Egypt to the land of Israel. See, then, whether it is not so according to Aquila too, who says, “At dawn the king of Israel was silenced, for Israel is a child and I loved him, and from Egypt I called my son.” For this clearly shows the casting off of the kingdom of Israel, which, having stood until the appearing of our Saviour, was cast off from that point and silenced; so that for this reason it is said, “At dawn the king of Israel was silenced,” the prophecy calling “dawn” the appearing and the first rising, then, of the divine Word upon all humans. “The king of Israel was silenced” can also be foretold of Herod, as because of the deception he suffered from the magi at our Saviour's birth; and this happened because of the Father's love for his own child, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is called Israel here as in other prophecies. At the right time the Father arranged for him to depart into Egypt with Joseph and his mother, when need required that the king who plotted against him, clearly Herod, be silenced; and again, when Herod had died, he called him back, in keeping with the prophecy in hand. But if anyone refers these things to the Jewish people, saying that they are said about the people of Israel of the circumcision, let him attend to the sequence of the passage. For he says these things having first said, as to Jerusalem itself, “And destruction shall rise up among your people, and all your walled places shall be gone”; and: what this ruler suffered in the war that came upon him, in which they dashed the mother down upon the children, the like I will do to you yourselves because of your wickedness, O house of Israel; and they were indeed cast off together with their king, and have suffered all these things; “for Israel,” he says, “is a child, and I loved him, and from Egypt I called my son.” Let whoever wishes show what sequence the wording has on that view. But just as in countless other prophecies Christ is called Jacob and Israel, so too here. Since, he says, this one, having become obedient to me, took the form of a servant and became a child beloved by me, fulfilling all my counsel, for this reason I called him back, as a true and beloved son, from the spiritual Egypt into which he had come down by becoming man; but you, to whom the word is addressed, together with your kingdom, I will hand over to ruin and destruction. So much the prophecy. It is evident how, from the times of our Saviour, when Jerusalem was besieged, the kingdom of the Jews that had stood until then was destroyed and cast off altogether, so that this prophecy too, with the others, has been fulfilled.

“I will not abandon Ephraim to be wiped out; for I am God and not man, holy among you, and I will not enter into a city. I will walk after the Lord.” The same one who says, “For I am God,” adds, “I will walk after the Lord.” And who else could be God walking after the Lord but the Word of God, following the Father's will? He also teaches that because of the incarnation he should not be thought to have become a mere man, like one of the righteous and holy men of old. He says that he will not enter into a city, showing that he did not live the common, human way of life; and he teaches his disciples to do the same, saying, “Do not go away into the way of the nations, and do not enter into a city of the Samaritans.”

“I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a brand plucked out of the fire; and not even so did you turn to me, says the Lord.” Here too the Lord himself says, as about another, “as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah”; and in Genesis too the divine Scripture kept the two persons, saying, “And the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord.” From these the orthodoxy of the church's faith concerning Father and Son is plain.

“Prepare to call upon your God, Israel. For behold, he who makes firm the thunder, and creates wind, and announces to humans his anointed, who makes dawn and mist, and treads on the high places of the earth: the Lord God Almighty is his name.” Through these words too the sojourn of Christ among humans is clearly prophesied; at leisure each phrase might receive a more exact clarification.

“The vision of Obadiah. Thus says the Lord God to Idumea: I have heard a report from the Lord, and he has sent out a message to the nations.” Since here too the Lord God heard a report from the Lord, we have fittingly noted the passage.

We have not found in the book before us a particular prophecy specifically about Christ. But since, to the generation that asked the Saviour for a sign, he said that no other sign would be given to it than the sign of Jonah the prophet, adding, “For as Jonah was in the belly of the sea-monster three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights,” for this reason we have of necessity noted this Scripture too among the testimonies about Christ.

“For behold, the Lord, the Lord, comes forth from his place, and will come down and tread on the heights of the earth; and the mountains shall be shaken beneath him, and the valleys shall melt like wax before fire.” We have taken this to be said about the second coming of Christ.

“Hear now these things, you leaders of the house of Jacob and the remnant of the house of Israel, who abhor judgment and pervert all that is right, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with injustice. Her leaders judged for bribes, and her priests answered for hire, and her prophets divined for silver; and they leaned upon the Lord, saying, ‘Is not the Lord among us? No evil shall come upon us.’ Therefore because of you Zion shall be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall be like a garden-watchman's hut, and the mountain of the house a thicket of the forest. And it shall be at the last of the days that the mountain of the Lord shall be manifest, made ready on the tops of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall come to it, and many nations shall go to it and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and they will show us his way, and we will walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; and he shall judge between many peoples and rebuke a strong people far away; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles; and nation shall no longer lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more.” Having said that, because of the impieties of the Jewish people, Mount Zion would be ploughed as a field and Jerusalem, formerly thought the holy city, would be like a garden-watchman's hut, the word next prophesies about another mountain of the Lord, which existed at the time of the prophecy but was not manifest to ordinary people, since it would appear at the last of the days and be lifted up above the hills and the mountains. To this new mountain, the word foretells, will come no longer that Israel, but peoples and many nations, saying, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord”; and not only to the mountain of the Lord, but to the house of the God of Jacob, clearly another than the one in Jerusalem, for he had said a little before that Jerusalem, made desolate, would be like a garden-watchman's hut. In keeping with the desolation of Mount Zion and Jerusalem, and with other things appearing in their place, it is said that a law other than the one given by Moses from Mount Horeb will go forth from the new mountain, which is also called Zion by the same name as the former; and further, that the word of the Lord, with the new law, will go forth from the new Jerusalem, which he called above the house of the God of Jacob. The word, going forth to all the nations, is foretold to judge between many peoples and to rebuke a strong people, and to benefit so greatly through its own judgment and rebuke those who would be rebuked, that, changing from their former savage and warlike condition, [they would take up] the quiet and peaceful … So much the prophecy. One may consider whether … the coming of our Saviour, because of those who built … with the blood both of the prophets and of Christ himself and of his apostles, whom the people of the Jews killed in Jerusalem itself … because of those who … the rest of what is in the prophecy … Mount Zion as never at any other time … Jerusalem was besieged; after whose desolation the … and the heavenly Mount Zion of God, of which those things were a shadow and types and patterns, has been made manifest to all who have come to the … God through Christ.

“And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrathah, are the least to be among the (thousands) of Judah; out of you shall come forth for me a leader to be (ruler) in Israel; and his goings forth are from the beginning, from the days of the ages.” … Through these words proofs are shown concerning Christ: one against the error of Marcion and the other heretics …, the other against that of Artemon and the Samosatene … and of the Ebionites, all who have supposed that he did not pre-exist the incarnation. For the prophetic word clearly refutes those who do not confess him … God, …, since his goings forth are from the beginning and from the days of the ages …; while to those led astray according to Marcion and the other heresies, who do not confess his … birth, nor that he was known by those of the Creator …, one should set out the prophesied place of his birth …, clearly confessed to this day even by the local people …, as from the tradition of the place in Bethlehem where … he was born, and as attested by the holy evangelists themselves …. And the text should be brought against the Jews …, to show who the one prophesied might be …, since on their view [the prophecy] is unfulfilled, and clearly the divine prediction is proved false. But the saving and evangelical word of Christ has been established as ruler of the spiritual Israel, properly of the one who is a Jew inwardly, and of every virtuous and discerning soul, understood as Israel ….

“Therefore wait for me, says the Lord, for the day of my resurrection, for a testimony; for my judgment is for gatherings of nations, to receive kings.” Through these words too I think the resurrection of Christ from the dead is shown, after which it is prophesied that the gatherings of the church from the nations everywhere would be formed. Perhaps also … of his second coming, and of the general … of all, the passage might be taken.

“… Almighty: After glory he has sent me to the nations that plundered you”; then a little after he adds, “(You will know) that the Lord Almighty has sent me.” The one who says … me is the Lord Almighty; likewise the one who sends, … being other than the one sent, is named Lord Almighty …. Fittingly, then, we have [noted] the text among those concerning Father and Son …, since the Word of God is also Lord Almighty …, just as he was also called God through the prophets.

“… and rejoice, daughter of Zion, for behold, I am coming, and … I will dwell in your midst, says the Lord. And many [nations] shall flee to the Lord in that day, and shall be for him a people, and shall dwell in your midst, and you shall know that … Almighty has sent me to you.” And who … is the one who says this and confesses that he has been sent by the Almighty, but the Word of God, sent by the Father for the salvation of the human race? He … the heavenly Zion, of which the mountain on earth was a pattern …, and addresses the church from the nations, … to her the calling of those to be saved through him … to be ruled by him as king in her.

“And … Jesus the great priest, standing before the face … of the Lord, and the devil was standing at his right hand to oppose him.” And a little after: “And he said to those standing before his face, saying, ‘Take the filthy garments off him’; and he said, ‘Behold, I have taken away your iniquities; and clothe … with a long robe, and put a clean turban on his head.’” And again, a little after, it is said to him: “Hear now, … great priest, you and your companions who sit before you, for they are men who are portent-watchers; for behold, I am bringing my servant the Dayspring.” And again, after other things: “And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Take the things from the captivity from the rulers.’” And a little after: “And you shall take silver and make crowns, and set them on the head of Jesus son of Josedek, the great priest, and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord Almighty: Behold, a man, whose name is Dayspring; and he shall spring up from beneath him and build the house of the Lord; and he shall receive excellence, and sit, and rule on his throne; and the priest shall be at his right hand, and a counsel of peace shall be between them both.’ And the crown shall be for those who endure.” Since the wonderful apostle (named) our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, the one in the prophecy, honoured with the same name and the same dignity, might fittingly be referred to him …. The Lord showed him to the prophet … clothed in filthy …, hinting at our Saviour's descent into our captivity, in which … to proclaim release to captives; for, having taken our sins upon himself, he wore the filthy garments he had from us. These the Father bids him put off and take up the divine garments of divinity, befitting the heavenly high priesthood. Since these things, according to the history too, presumably happened in a typical way concerning the Jesus of that time, the word, starting afresh, says to the man Jesus himself and to the portent-watchers with him (by whom I think are named those counted worthy of spiritual …), “Behold, I am bringing my … Dayspring.” And having placed the crowns on the head of Jesus himself, it adds, saying: “Thus says the Lord Almighty: Behold a man, Dayspring is his name; and from beneath … he shall spring up and build the house of the Lord,” and the … these too might be referred to Christ, given their proper explanation. But also against those of the circumcision … should be set out, since they could not point to any prophet at all raised up from the … of the Persian kingdom and the times of the prophecy …, let alone John and our Lord Jesus Christ. It is time, then, for them to say who the one prophesied is. And if they say that these things refer to Jesus son of Josedek, it must be shown to them that what is said in no way fits him. For when was his name called Dayspring? And why is he deemed worthy of this title? And how will “and he shall sit and rule on his throne” fit him, and especially “and the priest shall be at his right hand”? For if he was himself the great priest, who would be at his right hand, a priest other than he? And it clearly teaches that the one called Dayspring is other than he; for to this very [Jesus] and those around him the word says, “Hear now, Jesus the great priest, you and your companions; behold, I am bringing my servant the Dayspring.” If, then, this is said to him, how could there still be room to think that “Behold a man, Dayspring is his name” is said about him? Clearly, then, two persons are shown here: one to whom the divine Spirit speaks, and another about whom it prophesies; and the latter might beyond dispute be referred to Christ, the true son of …, [Josedek, which] is interpreted “Iao's righteousness”; and this would be the Father, … who places the crowns of victory on his Christ … calls …, because of the teaching that rose upon humans …, and the first and great high priest …, his firstborn Word, being God and Lord of the …, but priest of the first and unbegotten divinity; … and it says that he is … of the human he took up, the man being called great priest because of his union with the only-begotten of God. Since the matters in the passage need much explanation, these remarks are enough for the present undertaking.

“Rejoice … daughter of Zion; proclaim, daughter of Jerusalem; behold, your king … comes to you, righteous and saving; he is meek and mounted … on a beast of burden and a young colt. And he will destroy chariots out of Ephraim and the horse out of Jerusalem, and the bow of war shall be destroyed; and a multitude and peace from the nations; and he shall rule from sea, and from the rivers to the outlets of the land.” The daughter of Zion whom the word bids rejoice is every soul that dwells in the spiritual and heavenly Zion, or the church from the nations formed on earth too through Christ. Likewise again the daughter of Jerusalem is the one that bears kinship with the heavenly Jerusalem, such as Paul's was when he said, “But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.” To such souls the word proclaims beforehand that the Christ of God will (come to dwell), mounted on a beast of burden and a young colt, the human nature that he (took up) at his coming being so understood. With it he destroyed every warlike power from every soul of the church that is able to bear holy fruit, Ephraim being taken to mean fruitfulness, and Jerusalem, in the Greek tongue, vision of peace. Having destroyed the evil demons who formerly ruled humankind, he brought countless people out of all the nations long subject to them under the reverent yoke of his teaching. So much in the spiritual sense. But literally too, when Christ became man and fulfilled bodily the prophecies about him, he brought this one also to fulfilment, when, according to the evangelist, he said to his disciples, “Go into the village opposite and you will find a donkey tied, and a colt; untie them and bring them; and if anyone says anything to you, say, ‘The Lord has need of them’”; and they went and did as he commanded them. This being so, the texts should be set against those who imagine that the things set out will happen at Christ's coming only bodily and in a Jewish manner. And it should be shown how at our Saviour's coming, bodily as well, together with the others, the prophecy was fulfilled that says, “And he will destroy chariots out of Ephraim and the horse out of Jerusalem.” For the divine and heavenly power of Christ, by an ineffable working, after the … plot against him, destroyed Jerusalem itself with the … in which, with the warlike power that it had; then … the people in it, often named Ephraim, … commandment, multiplying horses in Jerusalem and chariots …, figuratively, because of the battle lines in wars …, the horses that became …, compared with the senseless cattle …; all of whom the coming of our Saviour plainly destroyed. … after the saving coming, those having been destroyed, … a multitude from all the nations received the … in their souls, God ruling and holding sway … of the whole inhabited world according to the … prophecy of the divine word.

“And I will strengthen them in the Lord their God, and in the name … they shall boast, says the Lord.” Again the Lord, the Word of God, (promises to strengthen) the worthy in the Lord their God, meaning his own God and Father. So let this text too be noted among those concerning Father and Son.

“And the Canaanites will know the sheep kept for me, that it is the word of the Lord. And I will say to them, ‘If it is good in your sight, give me my wages, or refuse’; and they weighed out my wages, thirty pieces of silver. And I cast them into the house of the Lord, into the furnace. And I cast away the second staff, … to break up the covenant between Judah and Israel.” For what was there among the things concerning our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ … that was not foreknown and foretold to the holy prophets of God? … his birth from a virgin and the … of his birth … and the root from which he was born according to the flesh; and the … wonders at his coming were deemed worthy of the writing of the divine Spirit through the prophets of old; and on top of all they made known beforehand his death and its manner, not leaving out … nor the scourgings and spittings, the blows and insults that he endured, but indicating the one who betrayed him to those who plotted against him, (one of the) disciples. Indeed the divine Spirit pilloried him by name through Jeremiah, saying, “The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen, with a point of adamant.” These words you would find in the Hebrew itself and in the other translators besides the Seventy; and in various Psalms you could learn what is shown about him. And now no less, through the passage before us, the divine Scripture clearly (foretells) the number of pieces of silver that Judas took when he betrayed his teacher to those who plotted against him. What is set out might be said in the person of Christ, as of those who plotted against him, whom elsewhere the word of prophecy calls “rulers of Sodom” and “people of Gomorrah,” and here names Canaanites because of their likeness to the Canaanites. For after saying, “And the Canaanites will know,” the prophecy adds, teaching us whom it means, “the sheep kept for me.” And what were these sheep, formerly kept for the Lord, but the people of the circumcision? Having now named them Canaanites, the word adds, as in the person of Christ, “And I will say to them” what is recorded, which he might say to those who plotted against him, as if asking them for wages for the benefits he had done them, that is, faith in him and a life corresponding to it; for so I understand “Give me my wages.” But they, according to what he said elsewhere about them (“In return for my love they slandered me, but I prayed; and they repaid me evil for good, and hatred for my love”), weighed out thirty pieces of silver and gave them to the traitor, as if valuing him at so much in their most impious judgment. But since “the fire will test what sort of work each one's is,” for this reason the Lord commands that they be put into the furnace, that is, into the fire of judgment and punishment. And whom but those who plotted against him? “And consider,” he says, “whether it is tested,” clearly what they did against him; and he says that they will be tested in the fire, in the way that the Lord himself was tested for them by his sojourn in the flesh and his passion; for he became man and suffered primarily for the salvation of the lost sheep of the house of Israel. After this, signifying also their casting off after our Saviour's passion, the word says, “And I cast away the second staff.” What this is, it teaches by adding “the measuring-cord,” concerning which it is said, “Israel the measured lot of his inheritance.” It shows this more clearly by adding, “to break up” the former covenant of God, “between Judah and Israel.” And it is clearly shown that from the times of our Saviour these things have been taken away, the whole worship according to the law having been destroyed from then until now.

“Sword, awake against my shepherd, and against the man who is his fellow citizen, says the Lord Almighty; strike the shepherd, and let the sheep be scattered; and I will turn my hand against the shepherds.” Since the evangelist, taking “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered” from here, taught that it reached its fulfilment at the time of the saving passion, when the disciples deserted him and were scattered, for this reason we too have noted the text; since it needs much examination, we shall put it off to a suitable occasion.

“And the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as on a day of war; and the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.” We have noted this too, supposing it to be said about the second coming of Christ.

“I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord Almighty, and I will not accept a sacrifice from your hands. For from the risings of the sun to its settings my name has been glorified among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure sacrifice; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord Almighty; but you profane it.” Just as the Word of the God of the universe is named in the divine Scriptures his hand and right hand and arm and power, so the same Word is also called the name of God. That this divine name has been glorified among the nations from the risings of the sun to its settings is evident to everyone from those everywhere who are called by the title of Christ; who also in every place offer to God, through the true high priest, spiritual incense and the pure, bloodless, and rational sacrifice through prayers. Since these worship in this way, God says that he will turn away from the bodily sacrifices of the former people. And it is clear how, after Christ's coming, the prophecy has been fulfilled in both respects: in the casting off of the former people, together with the taking away from them, according to Daniel, of sacrifice and libation; and in the turning of the nations to the God of the universe.

“My covenant of life and peace was with him, and I gave him to fear me with fear, and to stand in awe before the face of my name. The law of truth was in his mouth, and injustice was not found on his lips; in peace he walked with me, keeping straight, and turned many from injustice. For the priest's lips will guard knowledge, and they will seek the law from his mouth, for he is the angel of the Lord Almighty.” We have set out these words too, supposing that they fit the testimonies about Christ. For the covenant of life and peace was with him; and the spirit of fear, with the others, rested on him, according to what is said in Isaiah, “And the spirit of the fear of God will fill him.” And the law of truth, not the typical law, was in his mouth, and injustice was not found on his lips; for according to Isaiah, “he committed no sin, nor was deceit found on his lips.” As one united with the Father's power, he walked with him in peace, keeping straight, leading to conversion many of those who formerly did not know God. And from him, since he is the high priest and guards the knowledge of all things, those who care for the knowledge that comes from him have sought and will seek the divine law; for he is the Angel of Great Counsel, ministering and announcing the Father's will to every generated being.

“Behold, I send out my angel, and he will look over the way before my face; and suddenly the Lord whom you seek will come to his own temple, and the angel of the covenant whom you desire. Behold, he comes, says the Lord Almighty. And who will endure the day of his entry? Or who will stand at his appearing? For he comes in like the fire of a furnace and like the herb of fullers; and he will sit refining and purifying as silver and gold.” Through these words too the events of Christ's second coming are prophesied, when … sent out by the God and Father of the universe, the Christ of God himself, (now) called the angel of the covenant, will look over the way before the Father's face, that is, will prepare and make ready beforehand the souls of humans for the Father's kingdom. When he has fitted out the spiritual temple of rational and living stones, that is, the church, the Lord and God, the Word himself, will come, together with the angel of the covenant himself, to the temple described. Then, as announcing beforehand his second coming, the Word says, as to sinners, “Behold, the Lord Almighty comes; and who will endure the day of his entry? Or who will stand at his appearing?”, and what follows. One must attend carefully to these words, spoken by the Lord Almighty himself as about another; and one must stop those of the circumcision [and ask] whether they can name anyone as the Lord shown here and the angel of the covenant with him, of whom the Lord Almighty says, “Behold, he comes,” and the rest. Through these words, as we understand them, the second coming of Christ is proclaimed. He, being the Word of God, will come and enter into the soul of each, judging each for what he has done in his life, washing out and refining by fire like gold, and purifying the ruling faculties of all. For the Father has given all judgment to the Son, according to the word that says also in the Psalms, “O God, give your judgment to the king, and your righteousness to the king's son, to judge your people in righteousness, and your poor in judgment”; where the divinity, God the Word himself, is proclaimed king, and the human he took up is the king's son.

“And for those who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” The sun of righteousness is the true light that enlightens every human coming into the world. It is said to rise only for those who fear the name of his Father; for to those who are not such it threatens to set, according to what is said in one of the prophets, “And the sun shall set on the prophets who lead my people astray.” These are the extracts from the twelve prophets. But since we intend to include those from Isaiah, because of their number, in a separate book, let us go on and examine those from the remaining great prophets.

“Lord, make it known to me, and I shall know; then I saw their practices. I was like an innocent lamb led to be slaughtered; I did not know; against me they devised, saying, ‘Come, and let us put wood into his bread, and cut him off from the land of the living, and let his name be remembered no more.’” Our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ, according to the prophecy in Isaiah, was led like a sheep to the slaughter and was silent like a lamb before its shearer, and according to the prophecy in hand, “like an innocent lamb led to be slaughtered; I did not know.” His passion on the cross can also be shown through “Come, and let us put wood into his bread, and cut him off from the land of the living, and let his name be remembered no more,” which is spoken in the person of those who plotted against him. For if his body was bread, as he himself teaches when he says to the disciples, “Take, eat; this is my body,” and this was what was exposed on the wood of the cross, then “Come, and let us put wood into his bread” might fittingly be said about him. And if the passage holds a deeper contemplation as well, it does no harm to what has been said.

“I have forsaken my house; I have abandoned my inheritance; I have given my beloved soul into the hands of her enemies. My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest; she has given her voice against me; therefore I have hated her. Is my inheritance to me a hyena's cave, or a cave around her? Go, gather all the beasts of the field, and let them come to devour her. Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have defiled my portion, they have made my desirable portion a trackless wilderness; it has become a ruin of destruction. Because of me all the land has been utterly ruined, because there is no man who takes it to heart.” This too seems to be the voice of our Lord and Saviour, saying “I have forsaken my house” about the temple in Jerusalem, and “I have abandoned my inheritance” about the former synagogue, which had once become his portion and the measured lot of his inheritance; according to “How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Behold, your house is left to you desolate.” And he who said, “No one takes my life from me; I have authority to lay it down,” says also, “I have given my beloved soul into the hands of her enemies.” To him the former inheritance became like a lion in the forest, and gave her voice against him, when, having handed him over to Pilate, they stood accusing him and all but shouting, “Away, away, crucify him!” Therefore, he says, “I have hated her,” because of her works worthy of hatred and because she showed nothing toward him worthy of love. What follows, and especially “Because of me all the land has been utterly ruined,” seems to show the complete capture and captivity of the former people, which came about because of the Saviour after his passion, and the utter desolation of Jerusalem.

“O Lord, my strength and my help and my refuge in the day of evils, to you nations shall come from the end of the earth and say, ‘How false were the idols our fathers acquired, and there is no profit in them!’ Will a man make gods for himself? And they are not gods. Therefore, behold, I will show them at this time my hand, and make known to them my power, and they shall know that I am the Lord. ※ The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen, with a point of adamant, engraved on the breast of their heart.” Having prophesied about those who through Christ have come to know the God of the universe, the word next brings in the sin of the Jewish people against the Saviour, showing that it will be indelible, according to the words set out with asterisks; these one may also fit to Judas the traitor, as being foreknown and proclaimed beforehand by name by the divine Spirit.

“Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Dayspring, and a king shall reign and understand, and shall execute judgment and righteousness on the earth. In his days Judah too shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell confidently; and this is the name by which the Lord shall call them: Josedek, among the prophets. In that day, said the Lord, I will break the yoke from their neck and burst their bonds, and they shall no longer work for strangers, but shall work for the Lord their God; and David their king I will raise up for them.” Things like these are also said in another passage of the same prophet, in these words: “Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and I will raise up for you my good word, which I spoke to the house of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah; in those days and at that time I will make a righteous Dayspring spring up for David.” After which he adds: “For thus says the Lord: There shall not be cut off from David a man sitting on the throne of the house of Israel; and for the priests, the Levites, there shall not be cut off a man from before me, offering whole burnt offerings and sacrificing sacrifice and making offering all the days.” And again: “Thus says the Lord: If you break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that there be no day and night in their season, then also my covenant with David my servant shall be broken, so that he shall have no son reigning on his throne, and with the Levites, the priests who minister to me. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered nor the sand of the sea measured, so I will multiply the offspring of David my servant and the Levites who minister to me.” And again, a little after, it is said: “Thus says the Lord: If I have not set my covenant with day and night, the ordinances of heaven and earth, then I will also reject the offspring of Jacob and David my servant, so as not to take from his offspring a ruler.”

And what would the Dayspring be that the Lord will raise up for David? The divine Word, of whom it is said elsewhere too, “Behold, a man, Dayspring is his name”; who is also prophesied to reign and to understand and to execute judgment and righteousness on the earth. He also makes light spring up for the souls sitting in darkness, in his heavenly kingdom. And when, according to the apostle, the fullness of the nations has come in, and the whole true Israel, together with the spiritual Judah, is saved, the Lord will also call them by name, those he judges worthy, in “Josedekin,” which is interpreted “God's righteous ones.” In that day, after God has freed those mentioned from captivity under the devil, so that they no longer serve him, but serve only the Lord their God, God promises to raise up for them David as king, who is no other than our Saviour, born of the offspring of David, whom the Scriptures in various ways have also called by this name. The David in the prophecy, then, is said to be the human understood in our Saviour; while the righteous Dayspring is the divinity at work in him, called elsewhere the sun of righteousness, since the true light that enlightens every human coming into the world is none other than his. Accordingly, he says, there shall not be cut off for God a man who leads and presides over his church, which is the spiritual house of Israel; nor, the word prophesies, will the priests of God in the spiritual sense fail, who offer spiritual incense and the fragrant, bloodless, and pure sacrifice through good works and words. For if we do not take these things in this way, it is time to prove the prophecies false, since neither the throne of David bodily nor the typical priestly service stands even now: the kings of the offspring of David failed from the very times of Jeremiah, and the Levitical and priestly service not long after the coming of our Saviour, from which time until now they are not even permitted to set foot in Jerusalem. And if those of the circumcision should say that, because of the one they call the patriarch, the offspring of David has not failed, they must be refuted, being unable to show him sitting on the throne of David, reigning on his throne, and ruling Israel. For the prophecy says that these things will never fail, and they are clearly shown to have failed since the times of the captivity, from which time not one person from the offspring of David is shown to have reigned over Israel. And what would they say about the priesthood, plainly destroyed at the present time, which the prophecy foretells will never be cut off?

“Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah a new covenant, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not remain in my covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws into their mind and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach each his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’; for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord; for I will be merciful to their injustices, and I will remember their sins no more.” He clearly foretells that in the coming days the Lord will make a new covenant; new because it has nothing like the old one, which we have already learned was given through Moses in the wilderness. What would those of the circumcision say to this, who try to look away from the plain sense of the prophecies and prefer to show them unfulfilled rather than obey the truth by accepting the new covenant of our Saviour's Gospels? When it came, the first became old, beginning to reach its end from the time when Christ came and fulfilled the law and the prophecies about him. He says, then, that days will come in which the Lord will make the new covenant, that is, the one written (within) the books of the Gospels. Next the same Lord adds that after those days he will write his own laws in the very minds of those who receive the new covenant, so that they will be a people for God and he their God; they will come to know the Lord not at all through human teaching, but will be as if self-taught, or rather taught by God. One can learn that this too is being fulfilled at the present time. One can see how the new covenant and the Lord's laws have been written on the minds and hearts of those who through Christ have believed in God, if one observes among us a multitude of wholly unlettered men who display a virtuous and philosophic way of life such as is not readily found among those who have practised literary studies and pride themselves on the study of the Scriptures.

“The breath of our face, the Lord's anointed, was taken in their corruptions, of whom we said, ‘In his shadow we shall live among the nations.’” Here too the divine Spirit, naming the Christ expressly, foretold the plot of the Jews through “was taken in their corruptions.” The prophets foresaw by the Spirit that they themselves would live under his shelter and shadow, and would live among the nations that were to believe in Christ and through him to receive the writings of the prophets.

“Who has gone up into heaven and taken her, and brought her down from the clouds? Who has gone over the sea and found her, and will bring her for choice gold? There is none who knows her way, nor any who considers her path. But he who knows all things knows her; he found her out by his understanding; he who prepared the earth for all time filled it with four-footed cattle; he who sends forth the light, and it goes; he called it, and it obeyed him with trembling. The stars shone in their watches and were glad; he called them, and they said, ‘Here we are’; they shone with gladness for him who made them. This is our God; no other shall be reckoned beside him. He found out every way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel whom he loved. After this he was seen on earth and lived among humans.” “Who has gone up into heaven,” it says, “and taken her, and brought her down,” and what follows. We are taught by the holy apostle that Jesus Christ who came down is also the one who went up far above all the heavens; who also took the gift of the Holy Spirit, and brought it down and poured it out on the souls of those who received it. Hence it is also said in the Psalms, “Having gone up on high you led captivity captive; you received gifts among humans.” Next, in the Scripture before us, the word says, “This is our God; no other shall be reckoned beside him.” And who is this but the one who went up into heaven and came down? For to “Who has gone up into heaven?”, put as a question, the answer is given, “This is our God; no other shall be reckoned beside him”; and what is said next shows this more clearly: “After this he was seen on earth and lived among humans.” Beside him, then, clearly the Word of God, no other of those who have the title “God” as something acquired will be reckoned. “After this,” it says, “he was seen on earth,” clearly after he had given the whole way of the promise through the law and the prophets; for “he found out,” it says, “every way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel whom he loved”; then after this he was seen on earth and lived among humans.

“Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I judge between strong sheep and weak sheep. With flanks and shoulders you pushed, and with your horns you butted; all that was failing you crushed. And I will save my sheep, and they shall no longer be for plunder; and I will judge between ram and ram. And I will raise up for them another shepherd, and he shall shepherd them, my servant David, and he shall be their shepherd; and I will be their God, and David ruler in their midst. I the Lord have spoken. And I will make with David a new covenant, a covenant of peace.” Since in other places too we take the prophesied David to be none other than our Saviour, born of the offspring of David, for this reason we have marked the passage here too. For who else could be the one who is to shepherd the Lord's sheep after they have been judged by him, but the only good shepherd? He did not overlook the rational sheep of his own flock as they were pushed about and destroyed by the opposing powers, but laid down his own life for their salvation. Of them God his Father promises to appoint him ruler after the time of judgment, making with him a covenant of peace, when, his enemies having been subjected to him, last of all death itself, which now opposes the Word, the Wisdom, and the Life, will be destroyed.

“Thus says the Lord: Behold, I take the whole house of Israel from the midst of the nations where they have gone, and I will gather them into the land of Israel, and I will make them into a nation in my land and on the mountains of Israel; and there shall be one ruler over them, and they shall no longer be two nations, nor shall they be divided any more into two kingdoms, so that they may no longer defile themselves with their idols. And I will rescue them from all their lawless deeds by which they sinned, and I will cleanse them from all their sins by which they sinned, and I will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I the Lord will be their God. And my servant David shall be ruler in their midst; there shall be one shepherd of all, for they shall walk in my ordinances and keep my judgments and do them; and they shall dwell on the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where their fathers dwelt, and they themselves shall dwell on it; and David my servant shall be their ruler for ever. And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and there shall be an everlasting covenant with them; and I will set my holy things in their midst for ever, and my dwelling shall be among them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. And the nations shall know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them, when my holy things are in their midst for ever.” After the gathering of the dispersion of the spiritual and true Israel, and after the finding of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, when the fullness of the nations has first come in, then, the Lord promises, he himself will be God to his people that is to be, and will set his servant David as ruler in their midst, to shepherd them and rule them, not for a short and brief time but for ever. Let those of the circumcision suppose, then, that the word promises them that man, the son of Jesse, again imagining a bodily kingdom of his and awaiting God's promises in corruptible and earthly things unworthy of a divine promise. But we, persuaded that what is said as about David in no way fits divine promises, nor is to be referred to David himself, should take it of the one born of his offspring according to the flesh, our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ, thinking that the prophecies, the passages that appear in the sacred Scriptures as in David's person, fit him rather than that David: such as “The Lord said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you’”; and “You will make me head of nations,” said in the seventeenth psalm, where again it is said as in his person, “A people whom I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me.” And about whom else would God fittingly be thought to say, “He shall call upon me, ‘You are my Father,’” and “And I will make him firstborn,” but about our Saviour, his only-begotten child? For what exceptional thing had David achieved beyond the other prophets and righteous men, that these things should be said about him alone, and that he should be prophesied to rise again as king and shepherd of God's sheep? Seeing all this together, and attending to the prophecy of Isaiah, which after David's death proclaims, among other things about Christ, “A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall come up from the root, and the Spirit of God shall rest upon him,” and what follows, we are persuaded that the things here too, prophesied as about David, are fittingly said about the same one. For only the Christ of God, called also David by transfer of the title, has been shown to be the good shepherd, having become leader and saviour of God's flock and church; who is prophesied to be appointed by the Father king over the whole spiritual Israel, after the Lord has turned back the captivity of his people.

“And in the times of those kings the God of heaven will raise up another kingdom, which shall be for ever and shall not be destroyed; and this kingdom shall not leave another nation, but shall strike and do away with the kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever; just as you saw a stone cut from a mountain without hands, and it crushed the clay, the iron, the bronze, the silver, and the gold.” These words too show the kingdom of Christ that will come at the consummation of the ages. For the stone cut from a mountain without hands would be a symbol of the Word of God, who is called a stone in other prophecies too, as in “Behold, I lay in Zion a chosen, precious cornerstone,” and “The stone that the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” The present word says, then, that he, having brought down and crushed the kingdoms of the world, the rulers, the authorities, and the world-rulers, will hold the kingdom of the saints for ever.

King Nebuchadnezzar, having thrown Hananiah and his companions into the furnace of fire, when he learned that they had suffered no harm from the fire, became an eyewitness of the marvel and is recorded to have said to his friends: “Did we not throw three men into the midst of the fire?” And when they agreed, he says, “Behold, I see four men loosed and walking in the fire, and there is no corruption in them, and the appearance of the fourth is the likeness of a son of God.” The Hebrew likewise has “likeness of a son of God,” and the other translators have rendered it similarly. For this reason we have noted the passage, since here too the title “Son of God” is signified.

In the visions Daniel says: “I watched in the vision of the night, and behold, on the clouds of heaven one like a son of man coming, and he reached the Ancient of Days and was brought to him; and to him were given the authority and the honour and the kingdom; and all the peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him. His authority is an everlasting authority that shall not pass away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed.” This agrees with the prophecy of the same Daniel that foretold the kingdom of Christ under the figure of the stone cut from a mountain without hands. For who else is the one coming on the clouds like a son of man and reaching the Ancient of Days, but our Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sake took the form of a servant and became a son of man, and who said, “I came forth from the Father, and I am going to God”? In the presence of his own disciples, as they watched, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him up; and as they were gazing into heaven, behold, two men appeared in bright clothing and taught them about his second coming, foretelling that he would come again in a cloud. To Christ alone, then, were given by the Father both the authority and the honour and the kingdom, so that all the nations serve him and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

When Daniel had prayed about the captivity of the whole people to Babylon and about the desolation of Jerusalem, the archangel Gabriel appeared and showed him at the same time the end of the seventy-year captivity, the renewal of Jerusalem, the time from the renewal to the coming of Christ, the second capture of the city that would happen after this, and, after all, the enslavement of the whole nation, which was accomplished after the coming of Christ. His words run as follows: “Daniel, now I have come out to give you understanding. At the beginning of your supplication a word went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are a man of desires; consider the word and understand the vision. Seventy weeks have been cut short upon your people and upon the holy city, for sin to be brought to an end, and to seal up sins, and to blot out lawless deeds, and to make atonement for injustices, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophet, and to anoint a holy of holies. And you shall know and understand: from the going forth of the word to answer and to build Jerusalem until an anointed leader, seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; and it shall return, and street and wall shall be built, and the times shall be emptied. And after the sixty-two weeks an anointing shall be destroyed, and there is no judgment in it; and he shall destroy the city and the sanctuary with the leader who is coming, and they shall be cut off in a flood, and until the end of the war, which is cut short, with desolations. And one week shall confirm a covenant with many; and in the half of the week sacrifice and libation shall be taken away, and upon the temple an abomination of desolations, and until the consummation of the time a consummation shall be given upon the desolation.” Of those who have applied themselves to these weeks, we know of Africanus alone as having studied them most exactly and more successfully than the rest. It seems necessary to me, then, first to bring forward his explanation of these passages, and then to consider whether we too can contribute anything to the subject. He writes, then, in the fifth book of the Chronographies, word for word as follows:

“This passage, then, running somewhat as it does, signifies many and marvellous things; but for now we shall discuss what is needed concerning the times and what bears on them. That these things are said about the coming of Christ, who was to appear after seventy weeks, is clear. For in the time of the Saviour, or from him, transgressions are made old and sins are brought to an end through forgiveness, and lawless deeds together with injustices are blotted out by atonement, and an everlasting righteousness is proclaimed, (beyond) the righteousness from the law; visions and prophecies last until John; a holy of holies is anointed. For before the Saviour's coming these things did not exist and were only expected. The angel lays down that the numbers, that is, the seventy weeks, which are 490 years, begin from the going forth of the word to answer and to build Jerusalem. This happened in the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes king of the Persians. For Nehemiah, his cupbearer, made his request and received the answer that Jerusalem should be built, and a word went forth commanding this; for until that time the city had lain desolate. For when Cyrus, after the seventy years of the captivity, had sent down each of those who wished to go of his own accord, those who went down with Jesus the great priest and Zerubbabel, and those after them with Ezra, were at first prevented from building the temple and from putting a wall around the city, since this had not been commanded. So matters remained until Nehemiah and the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, the hundred and fifteenth of the Persian empire, and the hundred and eighty-fifth year from the capture of Jerusalem. Then King Artaxerxes commanded that the city be built, and Nehemiah, sent down, took charge of the work; and street and wall were built, as had been prophesied. Counting from there, the seventy weeks are completed for us at Christ. For if we begin to count from anywhere else and not from here, neither will the times agree, and a great many absurdities will result. If we make the beginning of the count of the seventy weeks from Cyrus and the first sending down, there are more than a hundred years too many; there is more time still if we count from the day on which the angel prophesied to Daniel, and much more if from the beginning of the captivity. For we find that the Persian kingdom is bounded by 230 years, that the Macedonian lasted 300 years, and from there to the sixteenth year of Tiberius Caesar 60 years. But from Artaxerxes the seventy weeks are completed at the time of Christ according to the reckoning of the Jews. For from Nehemiah, who was sent by Artaxerxes to resettle Jerusalem in the hundred and fifteenth year of the Persian kingdom, the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes himself, and the fourth year of the eighty-third Olympiad, to this time, which was the second year of the two hundred and second Olympiad and the sixteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, 475 years are reckoned. These make 490 Hebrew years, since they count their years by the lunar month, which is, roughly speaking, twenty-nine and a half days; so that, the solar cycle being 365¼ days, the lunar twelve-month falls short of it by eleven and a quarter days. For this reason both Greeks and Jews insert three intercalary months every eight years, since eight times eleven and a quarter make three months. The 475 years, then, make fifty-nine periods of eight years and three months; and with three intercalary months in each eight-year period, there come to be fifteen years, short by a few days; and these, added to the 475 years, complete the seventy weeks.”

This is how the man mentioned above has treated these passages. Come, let us too, after the interpretation given, see whether it is possible to treat the passages in another way, so that we may not seem to make the explanation more forced by stealing away the times from Cyrus to Artaxerxes, and so as not to seem, besides, to leave unexplained the reason for the division into seven weeks and sixty-two, which the divine word has surely made with some reasonable thought and very deep understanding, saying, “And you shall know and understand: from the going forth of the word to answer and to build Jerusalem until an anointed leader, seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; and it shall return, and street and wall shall be built.” Consider, then, whether our explanation would not be unforced if we count the times from Cyrus himself, under whom Daniel prophesies. For he was the first to put forth the answer about raising up Jerusalem, according to the Scripture in Ezra, which runs as follows: “And in the first year of Cyrus king of the Persians, that the word of the Lord from the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of the Persians, and he made a proclamation throughout his whole kingdom, and also in writing, saying, ‘Thus says Cyrus king of the Persians: The Lord God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judea. Who is there among you of all his people? His God shall be with him, and he shall go up to Jerusalem,’” and what follows; to which is added: “And King Cyrus brought out the vessels of the house of the Lord, which Nebuchadnezzar had taken from Jerusalem and put in the house of his god. And Cyrus king of the Persians brought them out by the hand of Mithridates and counted them out to Samanassar, the ruler of Judah.” After this the Scripture relates how the first to go up lay the foundations of the temple, and how they are kept from their zeal in the time between, until the seventh week of years; for forty-six years are counted from Cyrus to the sixth year of Darius, in which the building of the temple was completed. Hence the word fittingly separated the first seven weeks from the rest, wishing to show the time between the first laying of the temple's foundations and its full completion. For Cyrus reigned thirty-one years and handed the rule to his son Cambyses; and when he had lasted nine years, Darius received the kingdom and again, after Cyrus, ordered by decree that Jerusalem be built. And in the sixth year of his reign, which was the forty-sixth from Cyrus, the building was completed. Starting from this they said to our Saviour, “This temple was built in forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But according to Josephus, exactly forty-nine years are reckoned from Cyrus to the ninth year of Darius, in which, he says in the eleventh book of the Antiquities, the building of the temple was completed, stating in so many words that the temple was built in the seventh month of the ninth year of the reign of Darius; to which he adds, saying, “They settled in Jerusalem, using an aristocratic constitution with oligarchy; for the priests presided over affairs until the descendants of Asamonaeus came to reign.” These, then, are the seven weeks of the prophecy, bounded by the year of Darius mentioned; and it is evident why they have been separated from the rest.

Let us see also to what times the remaining sixty-two are bounded. The ninth year of Darius is shown, from the history of the Greek chronographers, to fall in the sixty-seventh Olympiad. From this to the hundred and sixteenth Olympiad, in which Seleucus, after the death of Alexander, became master of all Syria and Babylonia, are two hundred years. From there to the death of Simon, high priest of the Jews, 177 years of the Syrian rule passed, as the first of the books called Maccabees indicates, which carries its history down to that point. Again from there Josephus, recording most exactly the successions of the priests, says that after the Simon mentioned, John, also called Hyrcanus, led the people for twenty-nine years; that Aristobulus succeeded him, who also reigned one year; and after him Alexander for twenty-seven years, after whom came his wife Alexandra. Up to her, all the years from the ninth year of Darius are reckoned at 434, which is what the sixty-two weeks would make, in which the anointed leaders, who would be the high priests, beginning from Cyrus, presided over the affairs of the nation. For it is evident from the sacred Scripture, (and indeed) also from the words of Josephus set out above, that after the return from Babylon, beginning from Jesus the great priest himself, they had as leaders and rulers men in succession, down to those whom Josephus names the sons of Asamonaeus, whom the Scripture named Maccabees. Of these the first to be high priest was Judas, called Maccabaeus, who also led the people after routing the generals of Antiochus; after him his brother Jonathan took over both the high priesthood and the leadership of the people; and again his brother Simon was high priest, after whom Hyrcanus, after whom Judas, also called Aristobulus, succeeds, and he was the first to put on a diadem with the high priesthood and kingship. After him Alexander, having received both the high priesthood and the kingship, dies leaving his wife as successor. At this point, when the weeks in Daniel are completed, the rulers from the priests, called anointed ones, come to an end; so that the oracle that says “until an anointed leader” shows that there will be so many weeks; as if it had said more clearly that sixty-nine weeks of years would pass, that is, (a time) of 483 years, during which an anointed one and high priest, leading in succession, would preside over the affairs of the people. And it is clear to everyone from what we have set out that such a number of years is shown from Cyrus to the death of Alexander, the last of their high priests to lead. After him a woman, alone of all who ever ruled, then took over the kingship of the nation, and from her both the leadership of the Jews and the high priesthood that had proceeded steadily from their forefathers were thrown into confusion. Having taken over the rule, she gives the high priesthood to her son Hyrcanus, while she herself holds the kingship for nine years and dies. After her Aristobulus, who had quarrelled greatly with his brother, takes the high priesthood from him, and himself falls from it and from the kingship in the third year. For Pompey, the Roman general, at once came upon them, besieged Jerusalem by force, and defiled the holy things, going as far as the innermost sanctuary of the temple, and sent Aristobulus in chains to Rome with his children. After this, when Hyrcanus too had been led captive by the Parthians, Herod, the first from the nations, was entrusted by the Roman senate with the kingship over the Jews; an Idumean by descent on his father's side and an Arab on his mother's, as Josephus relates; but, as Africanus, whom we mentioned a little before, says, those who have exact knowledge of his affairs say that Antipater (who was his father) was the son of a certain Herod of Ascalon, one of the temple slaves at the shrine of Apollo.

When the rule of the Jews passed to such a man, then, together with the other prophets, the prediction of Jacob recorded by Moses was also fulfilled, which says, “A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up; and he is the expectation of nations.” It is evident from the histories and from what we have set out that until Herod, under whom Christ was born, the rule of Hebrews from among themselves, leading the whole nation in succession, did not fail; but when Herod, the first of foreign race, reigned over them, at once the coming of Christ was fulfilled, and the foretold expectation of the nations began to be accomplished in fact through our Saviour's teaching, which ran through every nation. Then too the prediction in Daniel after the weeks we have discussed was sealed, which says, “And after the sixty-two weeks an anointing shall be destroyed, and there is no judgment in it; and he shall destroy the city and the sanctuary with the leader who is coming, and they shall be cut off in a flood, and until the end of the war, which is cut short, with desolations.” In what way the prophecy of the weeks foretold, the first seven [the text reads fifty-seven] and the sixty-two after them, in which by succession an anointed one and high priest led the people (which is why the oracle says “until an anointed leader”), reached its end in the times of Herod, has been shown as far as we are able. And how, after this, when the time of the weeks mentioned was completed, an anointing was destroyed, because there was no judgment in it, as the oracle indicates (meaning that with reasonable judgment the anointing of the high priesthood would come to an end at the time indicated), would be clear to those who attend both to the ordinance of the law (in which it is commanded that those to whom it belongs by family succession should hold the high priesthood for life until their very death) and to the history down to the times of Herod, which shows that the high priests in succession were deemed worthy of the honour throughout their whole life in keeping with the legislation about them; and how under Herod himself not only was such an ordinance concerning the high priests confused and destroyed, but Herod, though of foreign race, took from them the authority over the holy vestment, which was permitted to the high priest alone, since no one else but he could minister in it, and put it under his own control.

If proofs of these things too are needed, receive the words of the witness (which) Josephus, himself a Hebrew, who was deemed worthy of the honour of the priests and of the most distinguished family among them, set down in the twentieth book of the Antiquities. About the overturning of the high priests he writes, word for word, somewhat as follows: “Herod, having been entrusted with the kingship by the Romans, no longer appointed high priests from the family of Asamonaeus, but assigned the honour to certain undistinguished men who were not from the priests, except for one, Aristobulus. Having appointed as high priest Aristobulus, son of the Hyrcanus who had been taken captive by the Parthians, he married his sister Mariamme, seeking to win the goodwill of the people toward himself because of the memory of Hyrcanus. Then, afraid that all would turn to Aristobulus, he killed him at Jericho, contriving that he be drowned while swimming, as we have already related. After him he no longer entrusted the high priesthood to the descendants of the sons of Asamonaeus. Archelaus his son did the same as Herod concerning the appointment of the high priests, and after him the Romans, when they took over the rule of the Jews.” So Josephus on these matters. About the high-priestly vestment he relates this in the eighteenth book of the Antiquities: “Herod, when he became king, having built this tower lavishly, since it lay in a suitable place, called it Antonia, and he kept the high-priestly vestment, which he found lying there, believing that because of it the people would make no revolt against him. Archelaus, his son, who was appointed king after him, did the same as Herod; and from him the Romans took over the rule and kept control of the high priest's vestment, which was stored under seal in a house built of stone.” From these things there would be an indisputable proof that the prophecy's limits were reached at the times shown. If those of the circumcision do not agree with this, they must be asked for an explanation of the Scripture other than ours, and it must be shown that on their view the predictions of so great a being as Gabriel must be proved false, if none of the things foretold has happened from then until now, when already nearly a thousand years have passed. But to us the word is clearly shown to be true according to the explanations we have set out without force; and in keeping with them it is easy to show how the last single week, brought in after all the rest, “confirmed a covenant with many”: the new covenant of the saving preaching, which was spread over the whole inhabited world and preached no longer to the one nation of the Jews only, but already to many, so that for this reason it is said, “One week shall confirm a covenant with many.”

It is reasonable to note that the last single week, which the word says will confirm a covenant with the many, is not joined in sequence to the other weeks. For it did not do with the one week as with the seven and the sixty-two weeks. In their case, dividing the number of the whole time into the seven and then the sixty-two weeks, it made a continuous division, joining the sixty-two to the seven and leaving no time or event between them, since no interval of time is introduced that divides and separates the continuous history of those weeks. But in the case of the single week that follows there is a long and separated interval. For after the sixty-two weeks, it says first, “an anointing shall be destroyed, and there is no judgment in it,” which, it is evident, reached its end in the times of Herod. Then it says, “and he shall destroy the city and the sanctuary with the leader who is coming.” And who will destroy but the destroyer of souls, the devil? And who is the leader who is coming but Herod, the first from the nations to lead them, and those after him who have held the leadership over the Jews until now? For just as the prophecy enigmatically called the high priests who of old led them “an anointed leader,” in the same way it called those from the nations who ruled them after those had ceased “a leader who is coming,” saying, “and he shall destroy the city and the sanctuary with the leader who is coming.” Aquila rendered this more clearly, putting, “and the people of a leader who is coming shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.” And it is evident how the people and the army of the leaders from the nations who took over the rule of the Jews after the anointed leaders, using the laws of the nations, destroyed both the city and the sanctuary; and how, in the spiritual sense, the destroyer who leads souls, together with the leader who came according to the prophecy, worked every destruction, first on the people itself and on the citizens who lived in the city, and then also on the temple and the worship that was long performed in it. A divine oracle, signifying beforehand this as the cause of Christ's coming, which happened at once, says somewhere: “The Lord looked down from heaven on the sons of men, to see if there is anyone who understands or seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is none who does kindness, there is not even one.” Then, as of those mentioned being corrupted, the word teaches beforehand what would overtake them, saying, “And they shall be cut off in the flood”; and they will be cut off to such an extent, “until the end of the war, which is cut short, with desolations.” And while these things are still being accomplished and carried out, “one week shall confirm a covenant with many.” This would be the week of the saving preaching, through which our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ confirmed the handing on of the new covenant among the many who were made his disciples: at one time before the passion, living with them and sharing their life; at another, after the resurrection, appearing to them for forty days, eating with them, and speaking about the kingdom of God; which is why he also commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem. In the half of this week, through the plot he suffered from the Jews, the rest of the divine prediction was also fulfilled; for that he preached for about three and a half years is shown by the Scripture of the Gospels. This is why it is said, “And in the half of the week sacrifice and libation shall be taken away.” And it is clear how, at the time of the passion, sacrifice and libation were taken away from them in power, when, according to the Scripture of the Gospels, the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom, and according to the history of Josephus, “At the very Pentecost, the priests, going into the temple by night for their services, as was their custom, said that they first perceived a movement and a noise, and after that a voice of many: ‘Let us depart from here.’” Josephus, having handed down these things word for word and others like them in his histories, would help us to prove that after the saving passion the bodily worship of the people was in power dissolved and destroyed.

I know also another interpretation given of the week that confirmed a covenant with many. This interpretation takes it as a week of decades and shows that the whole time of the apostles extends to seventy years, in which the preaching of the new covenant, preached no longer to one nation but to many, was confirmed throughout the whole inhabited world. For it is shown from the histories that John, the disciple of the Lord, survived his ascension by seventy years; for the account has it that he remained until the reign of Trajan. According to this explanation it is evident how, in the half of this week of decades, sacrifice and libation were taken away, and the so-called abomination of desolation stood in the holy place. For the time from our Saviour's resurrection to the last siege under Vespasian extends to thirty-five years, which would be the half of the week given; when the old temple and holy sanctuary suffered complete destruction by fire and razing, and “sacrifice and libation shall be taken away, and upon the temple an abomination of desolations” received its seal. The oracle shows that this abomination of desolation will remain until the consummation of the world, saying, “And until the consummation of the time a consummation shall be given upon the desolation.” But we have set these things out in an abridged account. It is now time to go on to Isaiah, who alone of the whole Old Testament remains for us.

As we attempt to gather the Prophetic Extracts from Isaiah, which alone remain for us, we shall first set out a few things, against those who are disposed to disbelieve the prophecies, to show the truth of the prophets. And first I shall set out an argument well observed by those before us. They seem to me to have said well that the Law itself solemnly testifies to those under the law of Moses that the nations among whom they will live will listen to omens and divinations: “But to you,” it says, “the Lord your God has not given it so.” And further, the divine word, keeping them away from augury and all the meddlesome divination that comes through demons, adds, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers.” If, then, these things had been written for them but had not happened in fact, and there had been no prophetic men among them, could they have believed the Law, and the word that promised these things, when it was so openly and plainly lying? Or would they not clearly, drawn by their very craving for foreknowledge of what was to come, have despised their own Scriptures as having nothing true or divine, because there were no prophets among them, and deserted of their own accord to the oracles and soothsayings of the nations? But they evidently accepted not only Moses but many after him as prophets of God, clearly for no other reason than that they had had experience of the divinity in them. For these men foretold to them not only things that were to happen long afterwards, but also predicted certain everyday matters of life, such as about lost donkeys, and about the dangerously sick, whether they would live or not, and about plenty that was to come to the people, and countless other things recorded in their histories. If these things did not happen in this way, let someone answer for what reason they thought them prophets and called them so, or why they deemed their words worthy of writing. What is the cause for which they handed down their writings, as divine, to their children afterwards? For it is most implausible of all to think that, having seen nothing divine or marvellous in these men, they formed such opinions about them idly and in vain. If anyone runs back in thought to those times, what would he think when he saw rustic men, plain in appearance, goatherds and shepherds, coming into the midst of the whole nation and saying things as in the person of God, crying out, “Thus says the Lord,” addressing kings and the whole people with undaunted boldness, displaying a wisdom beyond the human, which is still found even now in their prophecies, philosophizing on countless other secret matters through riddles and parables, handing on to the people moral and doctrinal teaching in the Hebrew tongue, and besides this showing a life in keeping with their words, speaking to all without flattery, and rebuking the ungodly to their faces, so that they were plotted against by them even to death, while standing by the true word with strong and noble boldness? Anyone who takes these things to heart fairly, how would he not confess that all this happened in them according to a truly divine inspiration? This is why it was natural that they were then admired by the sensible, that their words were preserved in writing by the sacred scribes, and that still now they are believed by the whole nation to have been prophets of God. Our treatment of Christ shows this most plainly of all, in which we demonstrate that the whole dispensation concerning him, both his teaching and the calling of all nations through him, was exactly foreknown and foretold countless years before by those inspired men; whose sacred books the Jews, who would be more trustworthy than we, guard and bring forward with every reverent honour. Having usefully set out these things first, we must proceed to our subject.

“The word that came to Isaiah son of Amoz concerning Judea and concerning Jerusalem. For in the last days the mountain of the Lord shall be manifest, and the house of God on the tops of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills, and all the nations shall come to it. And many nations shall go and say, ‘Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will declare to us his way, and we will walk in it’; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge between the nations and rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles; and nation shall not take sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more.” Let those who boast of circumcision show us what the law is, and of what sort, and to whom it will be given, which is prophesied to go forth from Zion. For “out of Zion,” it says, “shall go forth the law,” clearly other than the law given through Moses in the wilderness. And what is the word of the Lord which, according to the prophecy, no longer remains in Jerusalem, but goes out from Zion itself and moves to all the nations, and is to judge between them and (rebuke) many people, when, a most profound peace having come to the nations to be judged by the word of the Lord, those deemed worthy of the peace will change their former weapons of war and give their mind to the husbandry of their own souls? I do not know whether they have any answer to this. But we who have soundly believed in Jesus, the Christ of God, can easily smooth out the whole prophecy and show it to be truly divine and marvellous, by believing that what was prophesied has reached its end, and not falling away from the truth by postponing the fulfilment of the prophecies to unending times. For we say that at the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ, even bodily, the law of the new covenant, the law according to the Gospel, went forth from Zion and from there was proclaimed to all the nations; when also the saving Word himself, who is called the Word of the Lord, went forth from Jerusalem, where he lived and taught (according to “Behold, your house is left to you desolate”), and poured out his grace on all the nations. They, judged by him and rebuked for their former sins, coming to awareness and repentance, have ceased to occupy themselves with the wars of the passions and live in the most profound peace of soul, caring for their own understanding, its husbandry and fruitfulness. Whether one wishes to take these things according to the letter, a sound sense is given; or according to the spiritual sense, much more easily; since one should be persuaded that what is in these passages is fulfilled primarily and rather in this sense. From what has been said, the things at the beginning of the passage in hand can also be made clear. For in the last days, clearly now at the consummation of the ages, the spiritual mountain of God has become manifest, that is, the divine and heavenly Word; and his house, the church, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and for this reason said to be above the mountains. These things became manifest after the casting off of the people of the circumcision and after the kingdom of heaven was taken from them, when the words of the prophecy above the passage set out reached their fulfilment, by which it is said, “The daughter of Zion shall be left like a booth in a vineyard, and like a garden-watchman's hut in a cucumber field, like a besieged city”; and when there was fulfilled, “Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; give heed to the law of God, you people of Gomorrah. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord,” and what follows, to which it adds: “Your new moons and your feasts my soul hates; you have become a surfeit to me; I will no longer forgive your sins. When you stretch out your hands to me, I will turn my eyes away from you; and if you multiply supplication, I will not listen to you; for your hands are full of blood.” See how the word, after directing all these things at them, does not here charge them with idolatry or any other sin, nor with the shedding of much blood, but of one special blood, clearly that of Christ, about which the word plainly convicts the people, saying, “for your hands are full of blood.” For this reason it next says, “How has the faithful city Zion become a harlot, she that was full of judgment, in which righteousness lodged, but now murderers?” After all this, ending, the word again foretells their casting off, saying, “For they shall be like a terebinth that has shed its leaves, and like a garden that has no water. And their strength shall be like a stalk of tow, and their works like sparks, and the lawless and the sinners shall be burned together, and there shall be no one to quench them.” Having declared so many and such great things against them beforehand, the prophecy next adds the passage we have just set out, in which it is said, “For in the last days the mountain of the Lord shall be manifest,” clearly indicating, after their complete and total casting off and desolation, the dispensations of the new covenant, under which the mountain of the Lord has become manifest to all the nations. And what mountain but the Word, God, who was in the beginning with God? He is our Saviour and Lord, as we have shown before, of whom it is said in the Psalms too, “The mountain of God, a fat mountain,” and “the mountain in which God was pleased to dwell.” Besides this mountain, the house of God too has become manifest; and the house of God would be the church, set firm on the tops of the mountains, the apostolic and prophetic words. When these became manifest, it is not Israel that has come to this very mountain, clearly the divine Word, nor the house of Jacob mentioned in many places, but simply all the nations. And it is clear how, once the things foretold were accomplished through our Saviour's appearing, and the mountain described and the house shown became manifest, we from the nations, having come to the God of the universe through faith in Christ the Son of God, formerly ignorant of such great things but now, by divine grace, knowing them, have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. And having been taught by the Word of God, who came out, or rather came down, from the heavenly Jerusalem, that “the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother,” we rouse one another toward this heavenly house of God and to Zion, itself the heavenly mountain of the Lord, and urge one another on by teaching and exhortation, saying, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will declare to us his way, and we will walk in it.” When these things had been accomplished and, by God's grace, become manifest to us all, another prophecy too reached its end, through which the saving Word himself bears witness more clearly to the passage in hand from Isaiah's prophecy, saying, “I became manifest to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me; I said, ‘Here I am,’ to a nation that did not call on my name.” If anyone does not take these passages in this way, what mountain or what house of God could he otherwise show, about which the prophecy signifies what was set out, as not then being manifest bodily? These things can also be fitted otherwise to the second coming of Christ, as things foretold that will be completely fulfilled then rather than now. It should be known that almost the same things occur word for word in the prophecy of Micah as well.

“Behold now, the Master, the Lord of Sabaoth, will take away from Judea and from Jerusalem the strong man and the strong woman, the strength of bread and the strength of water, the giant and the strong man, and the man of war, and the judge, and the prophet and the diviner, and the elder, and the captain of fifty, and the wonderful counsellor, and the wise master builder, and the intelligent hearer. And I will set youths as their rulers, and mockers shall lord it over them,” and what follows; to which God adds: “I will not be the leader of this people, for Jerusalem is forsaken and Judea has fallen, and their tongues are with lawlessness, disobedient toward the Lord. For now their glory has been humbled, and the shame of their face has stood against them; and they have declared and displayed their sin like that of Sodom. Woe to their soul, for they have counselled an evil counsel against themselves, saying, ‘Let us bind the righteous one, for he is troublesome to us’; therefore they shall eat the fruits of their works.” The so-called Wisdom of Solomon too has, about the righteous one, words like those said here: “Let us lie in wait for the righteous one, for he is troublesome to us and opposes our words.” There it is clear from the context that these words are said about Christ; and so the words here too are prophesied about those who plotted against him and counselled an evil counsel against themselves rather than against him. This is why the word fittingly brings the lament upon them, through “Woe to their soul,” and also sets out the punishment awaiting them, saying, “therefore they shall eat the fruits of their works”; for such things as they sowed against Christ, they will also reap at the judgment seat of God. But see whether, already in this life, after the plot against Christ, the word of the prophecy set out was not fulfilled upon them, which says, “Behold now, the Master, the Lord Sabaoth, will take away from Judea and from Jerusalem the strong man and the strong woman.” For truly the divine and heavenly grace that formerly dwelt among them has been taken away from them, and one can no longer find among them either prophet or diviner. Where is their man of war, or judge, or wonderful counsellor, or intelligent hearer? And if they seem to share in spiritual bread by reading the sacred words of God, see whether the power and strength stored up in the divine writings has not been taken away from them. Clearly, besides this, Jerusalem is forsaken, and all the rest has been fulfilled upon them because of that one sin against Christ. For “woe,” the word says, “to their soul”; and it adds the reason for the lament, saying, “for they have counselled an evil counsel against themselves, saying, ‘Let us bind the righteous one, for he is troublesome to us.’”

“My people, those who call you blessed lead you astray and confuse the path of your feet. But now the Lord will stand up for judgment and will make his people stand. The Lord himself will come into judgment with the elders of the people and with its rulers.” “Now the Lord will stand up for judgment” does not seem to refer to the God of the universe, and especially not “The Lord himself will come into judgment with the elders of the people and with its rulers.” It would fit that these things are prophesied about the Word of God, who is himself also called Lord. For the Word of God, proclaimed to all under heaven, will stand up for judgment with all, giving none of the ungodly room for defence, since his teaching has run to the ears of all. And Jesus Christ will come into judgment especially with the elders of the people and with its rulers, since they gathered against him and contrived the plot against him; who also, by calling blessed the people ruled by them, led it astray, calling the evil good and declaring the good words of our Saviour evil.

“And the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying, ‘Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God, in the depth or in the height.’ And Ahaz said, ‘I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord.’ And he said, ‘Hear now, house of David: Is it a small thing for you to weary men, and how do you weary the Lord? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel. Butter and honey he shall eat; before he knows or prefers evil, he shall choose the good; for before the child knows good or evil, he refuses wickedness, to choose the good.’” Let those of the circumcision who do not accept the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ say who the virgin is who, according to the prophecy, would conceive in the womb and bear the son named Emmanuel. But if they say that according to the Hebrew it is not “virgin” that is written but “young woman,” we must reply that those who first translated the Scripture by a divine dispensation were not ordinary men: they were seventy in number, selected by merit from the whole people, and had given no small proof of wisdom in their own times. And what marvellous sign would the word promise to be given by the Lord himself to the house of David, testifying beforehand as to something wonderful, if the word were about a mere young woman? Nothing prevents us, even if, as they say, the Hebrew has “young woman,” from thinking that what is said is shown of a virgin. For in Leviticus you would find that one who is admittedly a virgin, betrothed to a man but violated by another, is named a “young woman” by the Scripture. And so it would be worthy that a sign be given by the Lord to the house of David because of their unbelief: that a virgin would marvellously give birth; for which reason the one to be born is also proclaimed as someone wonderful, if from childhood and, so to speak, from his very birth he is prophesied to refuse wickedness and choose the good. And his name is wonderfully proclaimed beforehand as Emmanuel, which is “God with us”; which we too who confess him might say, perceiving his divine and ineffable sojourn among all humans through his power. Emmanuel, God with us, might also be said because the Father and God of the universe is beyond not only mortal but every rational nature, while the Son is fittingly named God with us because of his sojourn that reached as far as us. Since I remember hearing one of those of the circumcision say that these things were prophesied to Ahaz about Hezekiah, who was born of him and reigned after him, it must be observed that Hezekiah is shown to have been born long before Ahaz reigned and before this very prophecy was spoken to him. For Hezekiah succeeds Ahaz, who reigned sixteen years, being in his twenty-fifth year of age when he began to reign; so that his birth preceded his father's accession to the kingdom by nine years. But the prophecies set out are spoken to Ahaz when he was already reigning, about the marvellous and most wonderful birth of Christ that has been shown. What sense each phrase has, the lover of learning will discover by reading the exegetical works of the wonderful man on these passages.

“And the Lord said to me, ‘Take for yourself a new, large volume (of paper) and write in it with a man's pen, to make spoil of plunder swiftly; for it is at hand. And make faithful men witnesses for me, Uriah the priest and Zechariah son of Barachiah.’ And I went in to the (prophetess), and she conceived in the womb and bore a son; and the Lord said to me, ‘Call his name: Plunder swiftly, spoil quickly; for before the child knows how to call father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria before the king of the Assyrians.’” For recording the marvel that was to be accomplished, the prophet is commanded to take a new, large, unwritten volume, by which I think the Gospel of the new covenant is shown; and also to make for the Lord faithful men witnesses, of whom one is said to be a priest, and the other was, I think, a prophet, for the Scripture of Chronicles mentions him. These too I take to be a symbol of the prophets who bore witness to the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the priests of old established as his type. After this it is said, “And I went in to the prophetess, and she conceived in the womb and bore a son,” and what follows. It is very unfitting, and foreign to prophetic dignity and purity, to suppose so offhandedly that the prophet, in the very moment of being inspired by God, went in to a woman, a prophetess herself, before the witnesses mentioned, for the sake of shameful intercourse. And what plausibility would there be in daring to say that as soon as he went in she conceived and bore a son? Rather, I think this prophecy too holds to the sense of the one set out before, in which it was said, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb.” There it was foretold that the virgin would conceive in the womb and bear a son; here the manner in which the prophecy was fulfilled is also shown: for “she conceived in the womb,” it says, “and bore a son.” Who, then, could the one be who says, “I went in to the prophetess,” but the Holy Spirit who speaks in the prophet, concerning whom it was said to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you”? Hence she too might not unfittingly be called a prophetess, since, having conceived from the Holy Spirit, she bore the one who there was named Emmanuel and here is called otherwise; for “call,” it says, “the name of the child born: Plunder swiftly, spoil quickly.” And truly he plundered and despoiled, by an ineffable and divine power, the opposing invisible and spiritual powers, so as to say, “I have conquered the world.” Having taken spoil and plunder from them, he proclaims release to captives, the souls long tyrannized by them, and confesses that he has received from the Father the nations as his inheritance, which might easily be called spoils, and the ends of the earth as his possession, which too might fittingly be called plunder. Besides this, “before the child knows how to call father or mother,” it says, “he shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria before the king of the Assyrians.” These too I think are said only in the spiritual sense, either about certain evil powers, which the divine power of our Saviour brought down at his very birth, or about the different kinds of souls who have believed in him: of these, those who changed from idolatry to the life of the Gospel are presumably what is called the power of Damascus, and those from the circumcision who received the Christ of God what are called the spoils of Samaria. Having taken these souls as spoil and plunder from the spiritual enemies, in the face of the spiritual king of the Assyrians, that is, the devil, he armed them and prepared them to wage war against him. Whoever wishes may learn these things exactly from the commentaries the sacred man wrote on these passages. But if those of the circumcision demand that these things be taken more bodily, they must be asked in turn whether they themselves can show bodily in what way Isaiah went in to the prophetess, before the witnesses mentioned, for the sake of bodily union; who such a prophetess was, and how she conceived in the womb at once and gave birth immediately; and what child this was that the Lord commands Isaiah to call by the name “Plunder swiftly, spoil quickly.” What reason does so great a name have? Or how is it possible, by the obvious sense, to conceive of any child at all taking bodily what is called the power of Damascus and the so-called spoils of Samaria before the king of the Assyrians, and doing these things before it knows how to call father or mother? And besides this, if they contradict what we have given, let them show how the Christ they expect will, when he comes, take bodily the power of Damascus according to the prophecy, and what spoils of Samaria, or before what Assyrians, when none of these is active any longer at the present time.

“Behold, I and the children whom God has given me; and there shall be signs and wonders in the house of Israel from the Lord God of Sabaoth, who dwells on Mount Zion.” The words “Behold, I and the children whom God has given me” have been rightly taken in the letter to the Hebrews as spoken in the person of the Saviour about the apostles and those who believed in him after them. Here is added, “And there shall be signs and wonders in the house of Israel”; and it is clear how at the time of the Saviour's coming signs and wonders took place (in) the house of Israel such as had never been accomplished.

“And they will wish that they had been burned with fire. For a child has been born to us, a son has been given to us, whose rule has come upon his shoulder; and his name is called Angel of Great Counsel; for I will bring peace upon the rulers, and health to him. Great is his rule, and of his peace there is no limit, upon the throne of David and his kingdom, to set it right and to uphold it in judgment and in righteousness, from now and for ever. The zeal of the Lord of Sabaoth will do these things.” I think that the child mentioned here is none other than the one prophesied above to be born of the virgin, whom a little earlier the prophetess was said to bear; but above his name was Emmanuel, and after that, “Plunder swiftly, spoil quickly.” Here this same one is called, according to the version of the Seventy, Angel of Great Counsel; ※ but according to Aquila and the Hebrew itself ※ his name is Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty, ※ Powerful, Father, also Prince of Peace; and according to ※ Symmachus, the child's name will be called Marvel of Counsel, Mighty, Powerful, Father of the age, Prince of Peace. Those of the circumcision must then be asked what child they could show to whom they would fit such great things. For to us these are concepts of the divine power of Christ, those who did not believe in whom will wish they had been burned with fire rather than see their own casting off and the salvation of the nations, which the zeal of the Lord of Sabaoth is said to accomplish. Beside this you will set what is said in Moses somewhat as follows: “They provoked me to jealousy with their idols, and I will provoke them to jealousy with what is no nation; with a nation without understanding I will anger them.” But it is not for the present occasion, nor within our purpose, to make clear each phrase of the prophecy; [another occasion] will show how “upon the throne of David and his kingdom, to set it right” is said, at which those of the circumcision would likely stumble, because our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ did not sit bodily on the throne and kingdom of David. So, referring the lovers of learning to the commentaries on these passages, we shall complete our task.

“Behold now, the Master, the Lord of Sabaoth, will throw the glorious into confusion with strength, and the lofty in insolence will be crushed and humbled, and the lofty will fall by the sword, and Lebanon with the lofty will fall. And a rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall come up from the root; and the Spirit of God shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and godliness shall fill him, the spirit of the fear of God. He shall not judge by appearance, nor rebuke by what is said; but he shall judge judgment for the lowly and rebuke the lowly of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the word of his mouth, and with breath through his lips he shall destroy the ungodly. And he shall have his loins girded with righteousness and his sides wrapped with truth. And the wolf shall feed with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the bull and the lion shall feed together, and their young shall be together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and an infant child shall put its hand on the hole of asps and on the bed of the offspring of asps; and they shall not do harm, nor be able to destroy anyone on my holy mountain; for the whole earth has been filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as much water to cover the seas. And there shall be in that day the root of Jesse, and the one who rises to rule nations; in him nations shall hope; and his rest shall be honour.” Not even those of the circumcision have supposed that the one prophesied here is anyone other than the Christ, except that, imagining the things in the passage to happen more bodily according to the bare reading of the prophecy, they do not confess faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. But we, persuaded that everything in the prophecy is worthy of God, have believed that these things are said about the changes of humans who, through our Saviour's appearing, have turned from the depth of vice to gentleness. We see even now how, and in what way, in the churches throughout the inhabited world, after the coming of Jesus Christ who sprang from the root of Jesse, most people were reshaped and changed their very nature from the beastlike life: some who were formerly wolves, leopards in this way, lions, and the other beasts and reptiles the prophecy lists, in proportion to the varied vice and wickedness in each. Having changed and been, as it were, reshaped, they reached such gentleness that they feed together, eating the same food of the sacred words of God, with the righteous men of God who are gentlest in character, whom, for such innocence of soul, the divine word has likened to tame and very gentle animals and to the children written of here. If anyone is reluctant to accept this, let him say whether it is possible otherwise to save the wording according to the obvious sense. For why, or how, will Lebanon fall with the lofty? Let him not interpret the rod figuratively, nor the flower from it, but show how a bodily rod is said to come forth from the root of Jesse, and what sort of flower will come up from it. And if this compels even the very hard to raise these things to a spiritual sense, see whether we have not rightly shown the rest too to have been fulfilled spiritually at our Saviour's coming. These things happened in keeping with the prophecy after the Lord of Sabaoth threw into confusion those of the former people who were glorious of old, who, exalted in their insolence against our Saviour, he prophesies will be crushed, humbled, and fall. And with them, the word says, Lebanon too will fall; for it is its custom to name thus Jerusalem and the worship formerly performed bodily in it, as is clear from Ezekiel, where it is written as follows: “The great eagle, with great wings, long in extent, full of talons, which has the purpose of entering into Lebanon, and it took the choice parts of the cedar.” Solving the parable, the prophetic word itself clearly teaches that Lebanon is Jerusalem, saying, “Son of man, say now to the provoking house, ‘Do you not know what these things were?’ Say, ‘When the king of Babylon comes against Jerusalem, and takes its king and its rulers.’” It is evident, then, how this Lebanon too fell with those lofty in insolence at the coming of our Saviour, born of the root of Jesse; on whom also the fullness of the gifts of the Holy Spirit rested, and who will come again at his second and glorious coming, not judging by appearance (for God does not accept the face of a man), nor rebuking by what is said (for he tests hearts and kidneys, and pierces to the division of soul and spirit). At his coming, which has already taken place, the earth was truly filled with the knowledge of the Lord, though before no one knew him except those of the circumcision alone; but the prophecy will be brought still more to its end when, after the fullness of the nations has come in, all Israel too will be saved together with the other nations. And Christ, having risen from the dead, was appointed by God to rule the nations, according to “And there shall be the root of Jesse, and the one who rises to rule nations; in him nations shall hope.” See, then, that here neither Israel nor Jacob nor Judah is named at all, but it is clearly prophesied that the nations will hope in the one who will rise from the root of Jesse, the wording here agreeing with the words in Moses: “A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up; and he is the expectation,” not of Israel, but of the nations. And whose rest has come to be in the highest honour with God, but his who heard the Father saying to him, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet”?

“And a throne shall be set right with mercy, and one shall sit on it with truth in the tent of David, judging and seeking judgment and hastening righteousness.” These things too are prophesied about the second coming of Christ, when the Word of God, the kingdom over all having been set right for him with mercy and love for humankind, will sit judging with truth in the tent of David; by which I think is meant the church of the holy firstborn enrolled in heaven, and all the saints who have come under the portion of the Word of God.

“Behold, the Lord sits on a light cloud and will come into Egypt, and the handmade things of Egypt shall be shaken before his face, and their heart shall be defeated within them.” To take what is set out as about the unbegotten nature of the God of the universe, as though he were going to ride on some cloud and sojourn in the bodily Egypt, I think is neither plausible nor holy. So the prophecy must be taken of the Word of God, and as already plainly fulfilled at his first coming, in which, on a light cloud, the flesh formed for him by the Holy Spirit, he came into this life, figuratively named Egypt, and also bodily into Egypt itself, to which, while still a child, he was carried by his mother and Joseph. At that time, for certain secret reasons, the demons who formerly dwelt and were active in the handmade wooden images everywhere were shaken and moved, thrown into confusion by his coming; which is shown by the prophecy that says, “And the handmade things of Egypt shall be shaken.” These things will also be fulfilled at his second and glorious kingdom from the heavens, at which it would be likely that it too will be shaken; and then the handmade things of Egypt mentioned will be shaken still more, whose heart too, they say, will be defeated within them, the divine Word then subjecting to himself and humbling every height now raised up against the knowledge of God. The rest of the prophecy will all be explained by figurative interpretation alone.

“In that day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the land of the Egyptians, and a pillar to the Lord at its border; and it shall be for a sign for ever to the Lord in the land of Egypt; for they will cry to the Lord because of those who afflict them, and he will send them a man who will save them; judging, he will save them; and the Lord will be known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day, and they will make sacrifices and an offering, and will vow vows to God.” And who else could the man sent by the Lord be, who saved the Egyptians by judging, but the Christ of God, who took the form of a servant and was found in fashion as a man? If Egypt is understood figuratively as human life, the Egyptians would be the superstitious and those given over to material things, whom the God of the universe pitied as they were afflicted by the demons who tyrannized them, and sent the man mentioned, who saved them with a salvation befitting God; so that those who were formerly excluded by the law from the assembly of the Lord came to know the Lord through the appearing that happened to them, the Lord himself making himself known to them. It is clear how in the land of the Egyptians so understood an altar was set up to the Lord from the gatherings held in every place for prayers and the worship of God. One who keeps to the wording, “And there shall be an altar to the Lord in the land of the Egyptians,” might say: if the altar is a place of victims, where irrational animals are slaughtered for the sake of God, then most justly a greater and truer altar has come to be for God through Christ, both in the whole region of the earth, figuratively called Egypt, because of the martyrs everywhere offered to God as victims and, as it were, sacrifices for the human race, and in the bodily land of the Egyptians itself, where so many and such great martyrs glorified God by their own blood. But if those of the circumcision are reluctant to accept what has been given, let them say when, where, and by whom an altar was set up to the Lord in Egypt; who is the man who saved the Egyptians; and in what way and when the Lord became known to the Egyptians, so that they turned from their former error and took up the knowledge of him; for that is what it is to come to know the Lord. All the rest of the prophecy depends on a deeper sense, which the present occasion does not allow us to unfold.

“Lord, in affliction I remembered you; in small affliction was your discipline for us; and as a woman in labour draws near to giving birth and cries out in her pain, so have we become to your beloved.” A title in the Psalms runs, “For the beloved”; and again it is said, “The king of the hosts of the beloved”; and in those passages the one called the beloved of God is shown to be none other than the Christ. For this reason we have noted the beloved in the passage in hand too, taking him to be that very one whom a voice from heaven clearly proclaimed, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

“Hear the words of the Lord, you afflicted men and rulers of this people who are in Jerusalem. Because you said, ‘We have made a covenant with Hades and agreements with death; if a rushing storm passes by, it shall not come upon us; we have made falsehood our hope, and by falsehood we shall be sheltered’; therefore thus says the Lord, the Lord: Behold, I lay in the foundations of Zion a costly stone, chosen, a cornerstone, precious, for its foundations; and whoever believes in him shall not be put to shame; and I will make judgment a hope, and my mercy for measures.” How is it not truly foolish and quite laughable, the notion of those who bodily expect that a stone, one of those thought costly and very precious, will be laid by the Lord himself in the foundations of the bodily Zion, a stone in which whoever believes is prophesied never to be put to shame? Shaking off, then, the foolish and Jewish explanations and the old wives' tales, as the apostle called them, let us receive the inspired prophecies in a way worthy of God. “Therefore,” he says, “behold, I lay in the foundations of Zion a stone.” Therefore for what reason? Because the rulers of the former people had made agreements with death, and had abandoned God's covenant and made a covenant with Hades in its place, and supposed that because of this they would suffer no evil; and further because they had set their hope on falsehood and thought that they would be sheltered by falsehood. For these reasons, then, as those men had fallen from their hope in God, he promises to lay the precious stone for those who believe. To those who had said, “We have made a covenant with Hades and agreements with death; if a rushing storm passes by, it shall not come upon us; we have made falsehood our hope, and by falsehood we shall be sheltered,” the word says further on: “You who trust in vain in falsehood, the storm shall not pass you by, lest it also take away your covenant with death; and your hope toward Hades shall not stand; if a rushing storm comes upon you, you shall be trampled by it.” It is evident how these things were fulfilled upon that people at the coming of our Saviour. Consistently, then, we hold that the chosen stone shown here, so wonderful and marvellous that those who believe in him will not be put to shame, is none other than the sacred Word of God, on whom, as on a firm foundation, the spiritual and heavenly Zion has been built, which is none other than the church of God. “For no one can lay another foundation than the one laid, which is Jesus Christ.” About him it is said in the Psalms too, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the head of the corner,” and he has been named cornerstone. Daniel too interprets this stone as the kingdom of Christ, where he says, “And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain, and struck,” or rather “filled, the whole earth.” Those who built the building according to the letter of the law rejected this stone; but he, nonetheless rejected by them, has been shown to be the head of the corner of the church from the nations, according to what is said somewhere, “You will make me head of nations.” Whoever believes in this stone, then, will not be put to shame, this prophecy about him also proving true.

“Behold, the name of the Lord comes after a long time, a burning wrath; with glory the oracle of his lips; the oracle full of anger, and the anger of his wrath shall devour like fire.” And what could the so-called name of the Lord be but God the Word, through whom all things came into being? I think, then, that this prophecy too hints at his second and glorious coming.

“Thus says the Lord: Blessed is he who has offspring in Zion and kinsfolk in Jerusalem; for behold, a righteous king shall reign, and rulers shall rule with judgment.” The Christ of God, who said, “But I was set up as king by him,” is shown through these words too. The rulers under him would be either the apostles and those who rule the churches with God's judgment, or divine angels, overseers of human salvation. Because of this king who reigns over Zion and Jerusalem, “Blessed is he who has offspring in Zion and kinsfolk in Jerusalem”; which should be taken in a way worthy of the apostolic Spirit, who teaches us about the Jerusalem above and the heavenly Mount Zion.

“Be glad, thirsty wilderness; let the wilderness rejoice and blossom like a lily; and the deserts of the Jordan shall blossom and rejoice; and the glory of Lebanon has been given to it, and the honour of Carmel; and my people shall see the glory of the Lord and the majesty of God. Be strong, you weakened hands and paralysed knees; comfort one another, you faint-hearted in mind; be strong, do not fear; behold, our God renders judgment and will render it; he himself will come and save us. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be clear; for water has broken out in the wilderness, and a ravine in a thirsty land; and the waterless land shall become marshes, and in the thirsty land there shall be a spring of water.” It foretells that at the coming of God there will be marvellous healings. Clearly, then, here too the Christ of God has been honoured with the title of God; at whose coming the healings mentioned were accomplished bodily on the sufferers, and are still now worked even more wonderfully through faith in him, the whole human race, simply put, being freed from the passions of the soul. Water broke out in the wilderness at Christ's coming, and a ravine in a thirsty land, when the drinkable and life-giving word gushed up in the land that was long desert and thirsty, the church from the nations; in which, formerly waterless and parched, a spring of the living water of Jesus' words, springing up to eternal life, suddenly poured forth. Watered by this spring, the once desert land is said to blossom like a lily, and is commanded to be glad and rejoice; and the reason for the gladness and rejoicing is added, since, it says, the glory of Lebanon, that is, of Jerusalem, has been given to it. About Lebanon it was said in the earlier prophecies that Lebanon too will fall with the lofty; and when it fell, the glory formerly in it was given to the wilderness now evangelized, that is, the church from the nations, together with the former honour of what is called Carmel, clearly the former people. These things clearly reached their end in deeds after the coming of Christ, in keeping both with the prophecy in hand and with the word of our Saviour himself which says that the kingdom of God will be taken away and given to a nation producing its fruits.

“A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his paths. Every ravine shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and all the crooked places shall become straight, and the rough way plains; and the glory of the Lord shall be seen, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God, for the Lord has spoken.” John, the forerunner of our Saviour, said to those who asked him who he was, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” and what follows. For this reason we have set out the chapter among the testimonies about Christ, thinking that John is a symbol of the apostolic preaching. For such is the voice crying in the wilderness, being obscure and inarticulate to those just beginning to learn the elements. In the wilderness of old, the church from the nations, such a voice, having come, bids them prepare the way of the Lord, and what follows; which whoever cares to know these things will learn by investigating them at leisure.

“Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good news to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem; lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God.’ The Lord, the Lord, comes with strength, and his arm with lordship; behold, his reward is with him and his work before him; like a shepherd he will shepherd his flock, and with his arm he will gather lambs, and comfort those that are with young.” We think these things too are said about the coming of the Word of God, and perhaps rather about the second, at which he is prophesied to come as a righteous judge, bringing his reward, which renders to each according to what he has done. The rest, however, the present occasion does not require us to explain; so we shall turn to another passage.

“Who raised up righteousness from the east, called it to his feet, and it will go? He will give it before nations and will astound kings; and he will give their swords to the earth, and their bows ※ like driven-off brushwood; and he will pursue them; the way of his feet will pass in peace; he will not come. Who has worked and done these things? He who called it from the beginning of generations called it; I am God, the first, and for the things to come I am. Nations saw and were afraid; the ends of the earth were amazed; they drew near, they came together, each judging to help his neighbour and his brother; and he will say, ‘The carpenter has prevailed, and the coppersmith, striking with the hammer, beating at the same time’; sometimes he will say, ‘It is a good joint’; they made them strong with nails; they will set them up, and it will not be moved.” What could the righteousness raised up from the east be, as a definite substance having its own subsistence, but the Christ of God, of whom the apostle says, “who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption”? Him the dispensation of the incarnation raised up from the Father's bosom, which is the east of all spiritual light, or the Father himself did, who gave him before the nations; so that their former kings, being invisible evil powers, might be astounded at the marvel of the dispensation, seeing so great a Son of God having neither form nor beauty; and that after such astonishment their swords might be given to the earth and their bows be like driven-off brushwood, so that they might no longer hold weapons of war and fiery darts, with which they formerly warred down the souls subject to them. After this it says, “And he will pursue them,” so that, when they have thus been pursued at the end of all things, the way of his feet may pass in peace. “Who has worked,” it says, “and done these things?” We understand in addition that it is the goodness and love for humankind of the God of the universe, who calls it, clearly the righteousness, which is none other than his wisdom; seeing which, the nations who were formerly without the fear of God feared God; and being called from the extremities and the ends of the inhabited world, they drew near to God, those once far off having come near to the kingdom of heaven. Therefore they were also amazed at the marvel of salvation, and teaching one another, brother helping brother, they confess their former error about idols, saying these very things: “It was a carpenter, then, and a coppersmith, who by hammer and nails and human contrivance raised up and made strong those we formerly thought gods; but they were nothing but lifeless wooden images, receiving no movement from themselves; and how false were the idols our fathers acquired, and there was no profit in them!” That these things were thus accomplished at our Saviour's coming, the testimony of deeds shows better than that of words.

“Jacob my servant, I will help him; Israel my chosen, my soul has accepted him. I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth judgment to the nations. He will not cry out, nor raise his voice, nor will his voice be heard outside. A bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench; but he will bring forth judgment to truth. He will shine forth and not be broken until he has set judgment on the earth; and in his name nations will hope. Thus says the Lord God, who made the heaven and fixed it, who made firm the earth and what is in it, and gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who tread on it: I, the Lord God, have called you in righteousness, and I will hold your hand and strengthen you; and I have given you as a covenant of a race, as a light of nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out of bonds those who are bound, and out of the prison house those who sit in darkness.” That the words from “Jacob my servant, I will help him; Israel my chosen, my soul has accepted him” are not prophesied about the Jewish people will be clear to those willing to examine each phrase of what is set out; and it is also clear from the exactness of the Hebrew, for neither the name Jacob nor Israel appears in it, which is why they have been marked with the obelus in the accurate copies of the Seventy. And I think no one doubts that no other of the righteous except our Saviour Jesus Christ, not even Isaac's son himself, who was called Jacob and Israel, was such that the things set out could fit him. For even if one were to fit “I have put my Spirit upon him” to others, what would he say to “He will bring forth judgment to the nations,” and what follows, and especially “And in his name nations will hope”? And how would it be plausible to fit either to the Jewish people, or to Isaac's son Jacob himself, or to any other of the righteous, “I have given you as a covenant of a race, as a light of nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out of bonds those who are bound, and out of the prison house those who sit in darkness”? But let these difficulties be raised by us against those of the circumcision. The Gospel clearly teaches us that this prophecy too was fulfilled in our Saviour Jesus, when the Pharisees went out and took counsel against him how to destroy him; but Jesus, knowing it, withdrew from there, and many followed him, and he healed them all, and he ordered them not to make him known. For to this is added in the Gospel: “that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, ‘Behold my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased; I will put my Spirit upon him,’” and the rest that is listed in the prophecy. He, then, would be the one also called Jacob, being the only-begotten servant of God, as it is said elsewhere: “It is a great thing for you to be called my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to turn back the dispersion of Israel.” Having heard from the Father, then, among other things, “I have given you as a covenant of a race, as a light of nations,” he brought forth judgment to the nations, so that they live by a discerning reason according to the holy Gospel. It is clear how the nations who have believed in him have hoped in his name, and how he has been shown to be a light of nations, so that through the light of his word the eyes of the understanding of those long blinded were opened; and he also brought out of bonds those formerly bound fast by the cords of their own sins, and out of the house of the devil's prison those who sat in darkness through ignorance of the God of the universe. It remains for the lover of learning to examine each phrase of the prophecy and, in keeping with what we have said, to transfer to the Christ of God whatever occurs to him.

“Be my witnesses, and I am a witness, says the Lord God, and the servant whom I have chosen.” And who could the servant be whom the Lord God has chosen, whom he also counts with himself as one who will be a witness among those who bear witness to him, but the one about whom it was said in the previous chapter, “Jacob my servant, I will help him,” and what follows? These were clearly shown to have been prophesied about our Saviour and Lord Jesus.

“I made the earth and man upon it; I with my hand made firm the heaven; I commanded all the stars. I raised him up as king with righteousness, and all his ways are straight; he will build my city and turn back the captivity of my people, not with gifts nor with ransoms, said the Lord Sabaoth. Thus says the Lord Sabaoth: Egypt has toiled, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians, and the Sabeans, tall men, will cross over to you and be your servants, and follow behind you in fetters, and cross over to you and bow down to you, and pray in you; for God is in you, and there is no God besides you; for you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, the Saviour. All who oppose you shall be ashamed and confounded, and shall go in shame.” The Father raised Christ from the dead so that he might be king with righteousness, reigning on Zion, his heavenly holy mountain; and he raised him for this reason, because all his ways, it says, have been straight, having nothing crooked or twisted; “for he committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth.” He also built the city of God, both his holy church on earth and the heavenly Jerusalem, turning back the captivity of his people, which once came about under the spiritual Nebuchadnezzar and the evil powers under him. And he turned back the captivity mentioned, not by giving ransoms to the captors, nor by persuading them with gifts, but by making war against them and subduing them through a contest, so that, glorying in the achievement, he said, “I have conquered the world.” The multitudes who through him have run back from their former error to knowing the true God bear witness to this. Or let those of the circumcision say to whom they would fit the prophecy in hand, which clearly confesses the one prophesied to be God. For “these and those,” it says, “will be your servants, and follow behind you, and bow down to you, and pray in you; for God is in you, and there is no other besides you; for you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, the Saviour.” For clearly here the word, addressing the one to whom it was said, “for God is in you,” says to him, “and there is no other besides you; for you are God, and we did not know it.” These words are heard as spoken in the person of those who have come to know the Christ of God made man, in whom God the Father dwelt, according to “I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” For this reason “There is no God besides you” would fit him alone, since the divinity of the Word alone is united and blended with the Father's kingship, and for this reason one glory and one rule of both is conceived. In “Egypt has toiled, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians, and the Sabeans, tall men, will cross over to you,” I think is shown a contest of certain spiritual opposing powers who took up the struggle against Christ and became subject to him; or of souls of this kind, who at first resisted the Word but later took up service under him for their own benefit. About these, I think, is said also, “They will be your servants, and follow behind you bound in fetters, and pray in you”; while “All who oppose you shall be ashamed and confounded, and shall go in shame” is prophesied about those who did not repent but remained enemies and foes, and were in no way willing to take upon themselves the yoke of the word of Christ. So much for the clarification concerning Christ. It would be fitting to set the passage not only before those of the circumcision, but also before those who have supposed that the Saviour was a mere man: the Ebionites, or the followers of Artemon and Paul of Samosata. For through these words too the divinity of Christ is clearly demonstrated to those who are reluctant to accept it.

“Hear me, Jacob, and Israel whom I call: I am the first, and I am for ever. And my hand founded the earth, and my right hand made firm the heaven; I will call them together, and they shall stand and be gathered and hear. Who announced these things to them? ※ The Lord, loving you, I have done your will on Babylon, to take away the offspring of the Chaldeans. I have spoken, and I have called; I have brought him and prospered his way. Draw near to me and hear these things: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret; when it happened, I was there; and now the Lord, the Lord, has sent me, and his Spirit.” Since it is one person who says these things in the passage, who else could be the Lord who made the heaven and fixed it, and made firm the earth, who says, “I am the first, and I am for ever,” and adds in what follows, according to all who have translated the divine Scripture, “And now the Lord God has sent me, and his Spirit,” but the sacred Word of God, who after the unbegotten beginning is called the first God of all generated things? About him it is also written elsewhere, “He sent his word and healed them”; for he is the one through whom all things came into being, those in the heavens and those on earth, whether visible or invisible; whom the Lord God the Father sent, and with him the Holy Spirit, to carry out the things for human salvation. The text would be fitting against the Jews, teaching that the Lord who created all things is other than the God of the universe, by whom he confesses he has been sent, saying, “And now the Lord has sent me.” He would be the one to whom, in the making of the world, the Father, commanding, says, “Let there be light,” and “Let there be” this and that; and “Let us make man according to our image.” (In this way) it is also written in the Psalms, “For he spoke, and they came into being; he commanded, and they were created.” For it is evident that one who commands something and speaks commands and orders another than himself. To examine each phrase of the passage, however, does not belong to the present treatise.

“Hear me, you islands, and attend, you nations. After a long time it will stand, says the Lord. From my mother's womb he called my name; and he made my mouth like a sharp sword, and hid me under the shelter of his hand; and he said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, and in you I will be glorified.’ And I said, ‘I have toiled in vain; I have given my strength for nothing and to no purpose; therefore my judgment is with the Lord, and my toil before my God.’ And now thus says the Lord, who formed me from the womb as his own servant, to gather Jacob and Israel to him: I shall be gathered and glorified before the Lord, and my God shall be my strength. And he said, ‘It is a great thing for you to be called my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to turn back the dispersion of Israel; behold, I have made you a covenant of a race, a light of nations, that you may be for salvation to the end of the earth.’ Thus says the Lord who rescued you, the God of Israel: Sanctify him who despises his own life, who is abhorred by the nations, the servants of the rulers; kings shall see him, and rulers shall rise, and they shall bow down to him for the Lord's sake, for the Holy One of Israel is faithful, and I have chosen you. Thus says the Lord: In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you; and I formed you and gave you as a covenant of nations, to establish the earth and to inherit deserts, saying to those in bonds, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Be uncovered’; and in all the ways they shall feed, and in all the paths shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger nor thirst, nor shall the scorching heat strike them, nor the sun; but he who has mercy on them will comfort them and lead them through springs of water; and I will make every mountain a way and every path a pasture for them.” Those of the circumcision would likely think that what is in the prophecy is said about themselves, since it is said, “And he said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, and in you I will be glorified.’” But besides the fact that the words do not fit them, it is clearly shown from what follows that what is said is prophesied about another Israel. For it is written: “And now thus says the Lord, who formed me from the womb as his own servant, to gather Jacob and Israel to him”; and again, “He said to me, ‘It is a great thing for you to be called my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to turn back the dispersion of Israel.’” And also “Behold, I have made you a light of nations, that you may be for salvation to the end of the earth” shows the one about whom the word speaks to be someone marvellous and wonderful. And who would he be but our Lord Jesus Christ, who already before, in the passages above, was called Jacob and Israel, through “Jacob my servant, I will help him; Israel my chosen, my soul has accepted him”? For he is the only one who truly sees God the Father: named Israel, which is interpreted “seeing God,” according to the concept of his divinity; and Jacob, which is “supplanter,” in that, having become man, he fought down all the opposing powers. See whether the passages do not agree with one another, the one in hand and the one in which it was said, “Jacob my servant,” referred to Christ. For as there “Jacob my servant” is said, so here “It is a great thing for you to be called my servant”; and as there “Israel my chosen” is said, so here “for the Holy One of Israel is faithful, and I have chosen you.” And again, there it is said, “I have given you as a covenant of a race, as a light of nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out of bonds those who are bound, and out of the prison house those who sit in darkness”; and in the passage in hand, “Behold, I have made you a light of nations, to establish the earth and to inherit the inheritance of the desert, saying to those in bonds, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Be uncovered.’” That what is in the prophecies set out fits no one else but our Saviour alone will be clear to those who attend to the multitude of nations who have hoped in him and through him in the God of the universe, for whom he was made a light by the Father. It says, “to establish the earth,” that is, to bring the soul that was long in tumult and instability to its natural steadiness and composure; and also “to inherit the inheritance of the desert,” meaning the church from the nations, which, being desert before his coming, he received as an inheritance from the one who said to him, “Ask of me, and I will give you nations for your inheritance.” According to the prophecy about him, he told those in bonds to come out: literally, as in the case of Lazarus, who was bound with grave-bands and four days in the tomb, whom he released free to go, saying, “Lazarus, come out”; and in part in a spiritual sense, in the case of the daughter of Abraham whom Satan had bound for eighteen years, whom he also freed from her infirmity and sent away whole; and generally, when he granted to all who were bound fast by the cords of their own sins forgiveness of their former sins, since he alone (has) authority to forgive sins; and still now through his teaching he bids them come out of their former bonds, saying to each, “See, you have become well; sin no more.” Besides this, still now he commands those who are still buried in ignorance and wickedness to be uncovered, since he is the Word of God, who tests hearts and kidneys and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. That we may run through as concisely as possible, fitting the earlier parts too to what is said about Christ, we shall take them up from the beginning and set out our understanding of them. Having spoken clearly to the people of the circumcision in many places, when he also calls by name either Jacob or Israel, here he does not direct the prophecy to them, but summons islands and nations to hear what is to be said. And here is the Lord's promise, spoken about the calling of the nations formerly wholly unbelieving and alien to the worship of God; among whom, in part, are understood also what are called islands: souls that long ago were, in a way, submerged under the waves of life and flooded by the most briny currents of vice. Let us consider, then, what the Lord teaches these about himself. “From my mother's womb,” he says, “he called my name”; this clearly concerns Christ, for the words are his, as we have learned from the Scripture of the Gospel. For when Joseph did not know about Mary's conception, Gabriel, the minister of the Father's will, stood by him and said in a dream, among other things, “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people.” And it adds in the prophecy, “And he made my mouth like a sharp sword”; and again, “He made me like a chosen arrow.” For the word of God is active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, as the inspired apostle taught. “You are my servant, Israel, and in you I will be glorified” would most fittingly be said to him alone, who became obedient to the Father even to death. And “And I said, ‘I have toiled in vain,’” and what follows, might be said by the Saviour because of the scarcity of those who live according to his Gospel. And since he came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, it is rightly said that he came primarily to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to turn back the dispersion of Israel; and consequently, because not all of them received him, it adds as to him, “Behold, I have made you a light of nations, that you may be for salvation to the end of the earth.” After this the Lord God and Father, who rescued him from all who gathered against him, commands us to sanctify him, saying, “Sanctify him who despises his own life.” For he truly despised his own life, emptying himself and becoming a curse for us; and taking up our sins, he despised shame even to death, the death of the cross. After this it says, “him who is abhorred by the nations, the servants of the rulers”; and it is clear how those enslaved to the rulers of this age not only abhorred him at the time of his passion, saying, “He is grievous to us even to behold,” but abhor him still now, trying to overturn his teaching. The Lord commands that this one be sanctified, signifying beforehand his glorious coming. That the word, foretelling the calling of the nations, adds the next prophecy, from “I gave you as a covenant of nations,” and what follows: to examine this further, being more spiritual and given only in the spiritual sense, does not belong to the present treatise.

“Thus says the Lord: What is this bill of divorce of your mother, with which I sent her away? Or to which creditor have I sold you? Behold, for your sins you were sold, and for your lawless deeds I sent your mother away. Why was it that I came, and there was no man? I called, and there was no one to listen. Is my hand not strong to rescue? Or is it not strong to deliver? Behold, by my rebuke I will make the sea desolate, and I will make rivers deserts, and their fish shall dry up because there is no water, and they shall die of thirst. I will clothe the heaven with darkness and make its covering like sackcloth. The Lord, the Lord, gives me a tongue of instruction, to know when I must speak a word; he has set it for me early in the morning; he has given me an ear to hear; and the instruction of the Lord opens my ears; and I do not disobey nor contradict. I gave my back to scourges and my cheeks to blows, and I did not turn away my face from the shame of spittings. And the Lord, the Lord, became my helper; therefore I was not ashamed, but I set my face like a (solid) rock, and I knew that I would not be put to shame, for he who justified me draws near. Who is the one who contends with me? Let him draw near. Behold, the Lord, the Lord, helps me; who will harm me? Behold, all of you will grow old like a garment, and a moth will devour you. Who among you fears the Lord? Let him listen to the voice of his servant. You who walk in darkness and have no light, trust in the name of the Lord and lean upon God. Behold, all of you kindle fire and strengthen a flame; walk in the light of your fire and in the flame that you kindled. Because of me these things happened to you; you shall lie down in sorrow.” The divinity of the Word is clearly demonstrated through the words set out too: both that he pre-existed the incarnation, and that, having become man, he was to suffer what is recorded in the Gospels. For who else could the one be who says, “Is my hand not strong,” and what follows, as far as “I will clothe the heaven with darkness and make its covering like sackcloth,” but the Word of God? Having said such great things, he adds, “The Lord gives me a tongue of instruction, to know when I must speak a word”; and again he adds the rest, saying, “And I do not disobey nor contradict. I have given my back to scourges and my cheeks to blows,” and so on, as far as “for he who justified me draws near.” For we say that the Word suffered in a manner of power, suffering together with the human whom he took up. We do not know, then, whether anyone will be able to give an account of the prophecy set out who does not accept that there is a second subsistence of God the Word after the first and unbegotten, the Father and God of the universe. But we, rightly persuaded, hold that this is clearly God the Word, who here too says, among other things, “I will clothe the heaven with darkness,” and adds, in the person of the human he took up, “The Lord gives me a tongue of instruction, to know when I must speak a word.” To whom else besides the human of our Saviour would it be fitting to say, “Who is the one who contends with me? Let him stand against me”? Or about whom would the words from “Who among you fears the Lord? Let him listen to the voice of his servant” be said, but about Christ alone, who, according to the Scriptures, despised shame, emptied himself, and humbled himself even to scourges? This was when, according to the prophecy about him set out, Pilate had him scourged and handed him over to be crucified; and he endured blows and spittings when the high priest, tearing his clothes at his words, declared that he had blasphemed; for then they spat in his face and struck him with their fists, and others slapped him, saying, “Prophesy to us, Christ, who is it that struck you?” The things at the beginning of the chapter seem to be said about the synagogue of the Jews; for “behold,” it says, “for your sins you were sold, and for your lawless deeds I sent your mother away.” For he came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and found no man among them; he called them first, but the people did not listen. Therefore it says, “Why was it that I came, and there was no man? I called, and there was no one to listen.” The things at the end of the passage, in sequence, after their casting off, refer to the calling of the nations, from “Who among you fears the Lord? Let him listen to the voice of his servant.” For we truly were those who walked in darkness, and before our Saviour's coming we had no light; but now, through God's grace, we trust in the name of the Lord and lean upon God. To those who did not believe in Christ, to whom it was said above, “Behold, all of you will grow old like a garment, and a moth will devour you,” the word adds, saying, “Behold, all of you kindle fire,” and what follows; among which clearly “Because of me these things happened to you” is spoken in the person of Christ, reproaching them and convicting the lawlessness committed by the Jewish people against him.

“Thus says the Lord: Because of you my name is continually blasphemed among the nations. Therefore my people shall know my name; therefore in that day, because I am he who speaks, I am present, like springtime on the mountains, like the feet of one who brings good news of a report of peace, like one who brings good news of good things; for I will make your salvation heard, saying, ‘Zion, your God shall reign.’” This prophecy too would most reasonably fit the Saviour, “Because I am he who speaks, I am present” having been fulfilled at his sojourn. The words beginning “Because of you my name is continually blasphemed among the nations” are said to the face of the former people; while those beginning “Therefore my people shall know my name in that day” might be understood of the nations that have believed in him. He, then, is the one who formerly spoke to humans, sometimes through angels and sometimes through prophets; and the lover of learning will discover by searching what sense it has that he came again to them and himself proclaimed salvation to all.

“And the Lord will reveal his holy arm before all the nations, and all the nations, the ends of the earth, shall see the salvation that is from God. Depart, depart, go out from there, and touch nothing unclean; go out from the midst of her and be separated, you who carry the vessels of the Lord; for you shall not go out with confusion, nor go in flight; for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel who gathers you. Behold, my servant shall understand, and shall be exalted and lifted up greatly. As many will be astonished at you, so shall your appearance be without glory from men, and your glory from men; so shall many nations marvel at him, and kings shall shut their mouths; for those to whom it was not announced about him shall see, and those who have not heard shall understand. Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced as a child before him, as a root in thirsty ground; he has no form nor glory; and we saw him, and he had no form nor beauty; but his form was without honour, failing beyond the sons of men; a man in affliction, and knowing how to bear sickness; for his face is turned away; he was dishonoured and not esteemed. He bears our sins and suffers pain for us; and we reckoned him to be in toil and in affliction and in calamity. But he was wounded because of our sins, and made sick because of our lawless deeds; the discipline of our peace was upon him; by his bruise we were healed. All we like sheep went astray; man went astray in his way; and the Lord gave him up for our sins. And he, because he was afflicted, does not open his mouth; like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away; who will declare his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth; because of the lawless deeds of my people he was led to death. And I will give the wicked in return for his burial and the rich in return for his death; for he committed no lawlessness, nor was deceit found in his mouth. And the Lord wills to cleanse him from his affliction; if you give an offering for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived offspring; and the Lord wills by his hand to take away from the toil of his soul, to show him light, and to form him with understanding, to justify a righteous one who serves many well; and he himself will bear their sins. Therefore he will inherit many, and he will divide the spoils of the strong; because his soul was handed over to death, and he was reckoned among the lawless; and he bore the sins of many, and because of their lawless deeds he was handed over. Rejoice, barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry out and delight, you who are not in labour; for many are the children of the desolate one, more than of her who has a husband.”

And when else, as at the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ, did the Father and God of the universe reveal before the nations his great arm, which is none other than his Word? Seeing the salvation granted them by God, the nations are commanded to depart from their former error and no longer to touch the unclean things in which they formerly wallowed, entangled in shameful and defiled practices. And since it is no small thing to separate oneself from the former way of life handed down from the fathers and from the common converse of humans, for this reason the Lord himself promises to go with and gather those who carry his vessels, clearly the sacred doctrines and the divine words. Again, besides this, as in the prophecies above Christ was named in various ways the servant of God, so too here; and he is prophesied to understand and be exalted and greatly glorified, his human nature being understood as that about which these things are said. Truly many were astonished and at a loss over him, supposing him a man like themselves; and they were astonished to see him clothed in no worldly pre-eminence or glory, when, having put aside the form of God, emptied himself, and taken the form of a servant, he performed marvels worthy of inquiry and amazement, so that those who saw them were amazed and said, “Is not this the son of Joseph? Are not his mother and his brothers with us?” And until now very many are astonished and at a loss over him, seeing his teaching having run, and still running, over the whole inhabited world, and observing the unwavering and unchangeable disposition of those who have believed in him. Marvelling at these things, they do not understand the divine power by which he has worked, and is still now able to work, such great things. Kings truly shut and closed their mouths at him: whether those who gathered at his passion (about whom it was said, “The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together”), or the rulers of the nations from time to time; and they shut their mouths because, although they often tried to hinder his word and teaching, he nonetheless prevailed and shone forth, glorified and raised on high, so as to make himself manifest not only to those who had received the prophecies about him from their fathers, but, most marvellous of all, to those to whom nothing had ever been announced about him, that is, to us the nations; who, having heard nothing at all from our forefathers nor learned beforehand about his coming, understood him when he came and accepted the prophecies about him. Foreseeing this in the Spirit, the prophet cries out in wonder, saying, “Lord, who has believed our report?” This is not the same as “No one has believed our report”; for clearly great multitudes of those from the nations, and some even of those from the circumcision, have believed the report about Christ. “And the arm of the Lord,” it says, that is, the pre-existent Word of God, “to whom has it been revealed?” The word itself teaches at the beginning of the prophecy, saying, “And the Lord will reveal his holy arm before all the nations.” Next to these it is said, “We announced before him as a child, as a root in thirsty ground; he has no form nor glory; and we saw him, and he had no form nor beauty,” and what follows. These too were fulfilled when, having emptied himself of the form of God, he did not choose a form handsome and comely among humans, nor did he pass through human life with glory among humans or the garb of any worldly pre-eminence; but taking the form of a slave and servant he humbled himself and became truly man, “a man in affliction and knowing how to bear sickness”; and the glorious and divine face of his divinity was turned away and hidden. For this reason he was also dishonoured among those who perceived only his human nature, among whom he was esteemed not only not as Son of God, but not even as an ordinary righteous man. Those who perceived these things by the Spirit say, as if relating and teaching the reason for such a dispensation, “He bears our sins and suffers pain for us”; for as prophets they saw in what way he would become the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. To this is added, “And we reckoned him to be in toil and in calamity and in affliction; but he was wounded because of our lawless deeds.” For he was wounded in power when they took up stones to throw at him; and he was made sick, it says, because of our sins; for more than Paul, Christ, being weak with the weak, would have said, “Who is weak, and I am not weak?” The prophet confesses that the one of whom the word speaks will suffer all these things because of himself and the whole people; “for he was wounded,” he says, “because of our lawless deeds, and made sick because of our sins”; and counting himself in, he adds, “By his bruise we were healed.” And seeing clearly the error that would arise concerning him in the whole people of the circumcision, and that there is no human who will not sin, even if he seems the most righteous of all, he adds, “All we like sheep went astray; man went astray in his way; and the Lord gave him up for our sins,” and what follows; which are shown beyond dispute to have reached their fulfilment in our Saviour Jesus alone.

Hence one may marvel at the hardening of those of the former people who do not accept him on the pretext of what they did against him, at which they are accustomed to mock and ridicule, as though he suffered things unworthy of God's care for him; when, besides what has been said, the prophet cries out clearly about him that he was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer was dumb, so he does not open his mouth; and that his life is taken away from the earth. Who would not marvel at what is added to all that was listed before, hearing the prophet say, “Because of the lawless deeds of my people he was led to death”? Or what quibble could they find against this, who truly heard the voice of Christ with hearing and did not understand, and looked on his coming with their very eyes and did not see? For what other of the righteous could they show led to death because of their sins? Or who has become such as to bear the sins of the whole people and of the prophets themselves, and suffer pain for them, so that all of them confess they are healed by his bruise, saying, “He bears our sins and suffers pain for us, and by his bruise we were healed”? Who, having a human nature, could become such that nothing was sinned by him in word or deed, so that the divine Scripture speaks truly about him that he committed no lawlessness, nor was deceit in his mouth? For what reason does the word foretell that one so attested would be led like a sheep to the slaughter and be condemned to death because of the lawless deeds of the people? Let them say, too, whether the Christ they expect to come will by all means suffer these things which the prophecies declare about him, or whether nothing of the kind will happen to him. But if they stumble at faith in our Saviour because of what happened to him, they would not (say) such things about the one they expect. It is time, then, on their view, to declare the divine words unfulfilled and clearly false; but not on ours, to whom nothing about him was announced by our fathers nor handed down, yet who saw him and received him, according to what is said elsewhere: “A people whom I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me.” Throughout the whole prophecy the things concerning him are set out more broadly and more brightly; and the ruin that overtook those who plotted against him is shown through “And I will give the wicked in return for his burial and the rich in return for his death; for he committed no lawlessness, nor was deceit in his mouth”; for, it says, they killed him though he was such, and for this reason they will suffer such things. After this the church from the nations is again given good news, compared with and preferred to the former people, through “Rejoice, barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry out, you who are not in labour; for many are the children of the desolate one, more than of her who has a husband.” Since the matters in the passage need much search and examination, whoever cares for the Saviour's command that says, “Search the Scriptures, in which you think you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,” will learn what is in them by searching more carefully.

“Hear me, and you shall eat good things, and your soul shall delight in good things. Give heed with your ears, and follow my ways; listen to me, and your soul shall live in good things; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, the sure holy things of David. Behold, I have given him as a testimony among nations, a ruler and commander among nations. Behold, nations that do not know you shall call upon you, and peoples who do not understand you shall flee to you for refuge, for the sake of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.” The word that receives what is said here understands spiritual foods and a divine and heavenly delight, and further, not the indifferent life of the flesh but the eternal life of the soul. It also promises to make with them an everlasting covenant, which it says will contain the sure holy things of David. What, then, would this be, prophesied to be given to those to whom the word is addressed, a new and everlasting covenant after the temporary one through Moses? The new Scripture of the sacred Gospels, containing the holy things of David because of Jesus, the Christ of God, born of his offspring. Him, God says, he has given as a testimony, not to Israel, but to the nations, to rule them and command them, and not the former people of the circumcision. These nations, formerly not knowing him at all, when they came to know that he is the Son of God, called upon him as Saviour and God; and we too, who had never known him, fled to him for refuge, escaping from our former error and from slavery under the opposing powers. These things, says the prophecy, will happen for the sake of the Lord his God, because he glorified him; and it is clear how the Father glorified him, according to the voice brought to him from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” See whether the words here, “Nations that do not know you shall call upon you, and peoples who did not know you shall flee to you,” are not akin to those in the chapter before this, where it was said, “For those to whom it was not announced about him shall see, and those who have not heard shall understand.” Like these are the words in the seventeenth psalm in the person of Christ: “A people whom I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me.” We, then, believing the prophecies to be true, are persuaded that they were fulfilled at the coming of our Saviour, perceiving how we ourselves, being nations long astray, driven by harsh demons into every idolatry, neither knowing the only true God nor heeding the prophetic voice, have come through the teaching of our Saviour Jesus to the knowledge of the God of the universe; we have believed the inspired Scriptures and have received the prophesied Word of God, though we did not know him at all before. Having received so many benefits through the teaching of our Saviour, how should we not rightly receive him and honour him as divine, since he is the Son of God and our own Saviour?

“See how the righteous one is taken away, and no one takes it to heart; and righteous men are taken away, and no one considers it; for the righteous one has been taken away from the face of injustice; his burial shall be in peace; he has been taken from the midst. But you, draw near here, lawless sons, offspring of adulterers and of a harlot. In whom have you delighted? And against whom have you opened your mouth? And against whom have you let loose your tongue? Are you not children of destruction, a lawless offspring?” The Christ of God alone has truly been shown to be such, beyond all who have ever been called righteous; so he alone would properly be called the righteous one, so that the prophecy says about him, “See how the righteous one is taken away.” From what he is taken away it adds in “for the righteous one has been taken away from the face of injustice.” And who it is who takes him away we may hear from him when he says, “No one takes my life from me; I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again.” Then it says, “His burial shall be in peace.” Here it should be noted that the prophetic Scripture signifies not only his death but also his burial; which is why the holy apostle too, writing to the Corinthians, says, “For I delivered to you first of all what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried.” What Scriptures, but those that say, “Because of the lawless deeds of my people he was led to death,” and “His burial shall be in peace”? Not only the righteous one mentioned has been taken from the midst of injustice, but also righteous men, it says, are taken away; these would be the holy apostles of Christ and his wonderful martyrs, who are themselves called righteous by sharing in his righteousness. While these things were being accomplished, it says, no one saw and no one considered: clearly those whose heart had grown fat and who had shut their eyes so as not to see; to whom the rest of the prophecy is spoken, from “But you, draw near here, lawless sons, offspring of adulterers and of a harlot.”

“And those from the west shall fear the name of the Lord, and those from the risings of the sun the glorious name; for wrath shall come from the Lord like a violent river; it shall come with fury. And the deliverer shall come for the sake of Zion, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob, said the Lord. And this is my covenant with them: my Spirit, which is upon you, and the words that I have put in your mouth shall not fail from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, said the Lord, from now and for ever.” Again, through these words too, the word prophesies the calling of the church formed from the nations through our Saviour. For who else would those from the west be, or through whom did the nations of every kind fear the name of the Lord, but those who through the teaching of Jesus left their former error of the darkness of ignorance and took refuge with the God of the universe? And who is the one prophesied to come from Zion, to deliver and turn Jacob away from his former ungodliness, but the one who came to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel, who were in ungodliness? To them, it says, the Spirit of God that is in Christ will give as a covenant the words of eternal life, which the Father has put in the Son's mouth; and these, it says, shall not fail either from him or from the mouth of his offspring, from now and for all time. These would be the words of the Gospel of the new covenant, which, though so many have plotted against them of old and still now plot against them, have not failed, nor will they fail, from the mouth of the church formed from the rational and spiritual offspring of Christ; for the Lord said and declared that he will not blot them out from now and for ever. Hence, according to John, the Gospel of Christ is seen to be an eternal gospel.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; ※ the Lord has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to call the acceptable year of the Lord and a day of recompense ※ for our God; to comfort all who mourn, that to those who mourn for Zion may be given glory instead of ashes, the oil of gladness to those who mourn, a garment of glory instead of a spirit of weariness; and they shall be called generations of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for glory.” Jesus, the Christ of God, who came forth from the root of Jesse, on whom the seven spirits of God rested, having loved righteousness and hated lawlessness, was anointed by God his Father with what is called the spiritual oil of gladness. He once took Isaiah in his hands, at the time when he had become man, read the passage set out, closed the book, and said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled”; for he was truly the one sent by the Father to bring the good news of the kingdom of heaven to the poor in spirit, to whom he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”; and to heal the broken-hearted, of whom it is said, “A broken and humbled heart God will not despise.” Besides this, he came to proclaim release of sins to those who had long ago become captives of the spiritual Nebuchadnezzar; which is why he said with confidence to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven.” He also came to give recovery of sight to those injured in the eyes of the understanding and blinded by the spiritual foreigners and Babylonians, like Samson and Zedekiah; among those healed by him in part were also the bodily blind, whom he made to see when they believed in him and cried out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.” He is the one who called the acceptable year of the Lord, which he proclaimed after John was shut up in prison, and who taught about the kingdom of God and about our judgment, in which to each will be rendered the just recompense for what he has done. Besides this, he came to comfort those who mourn the praiseworthy mourning that is according to God, to whom he also promised blessedness, saying, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” And he came, besides this, so that to those who mourn for Zion glory might be given. Who would they be but those who seek their own homeland and continually rekindle the memory of the heavenly city? Such was he who, knowing himself to be a sojourner and stranger on the earth, lamented, “Woe is me, for my sojourning has been prolonged”; and further those who wept by the rivers of Babylon when they remembered Zion. For to these the Christ of God, fulfilling the comfort he promised to those who mourn, will give glory when they are freed from mourning; and instead of the ashes with which they were covered while mourning in this life, he will give the oil of gladness, anointing them too with the oil of rejoicing, that they may become sharers in his anointing and kingdom, so that they too may say, “For we have become sharers of the Christ.” Further, Christ is prophesied to give to those who mourn for Zion # a garment of glory instead of the spirit of weariness, # (if) they have grown weary of the affairs of life, as if displeased with the deeds of humans, and mourning especially in this way: not only because they see God's promises from afar, but also because, out of compassion and love for humankind, they suffer with and share the pain of their weak members, all but crying out with the apostle's disposition, “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn?”

“Let my soul rejoice in the Lord; for he has clothed me with a garment of salvation and a tunic of gladness; he has put a turban on me as on a bridegroom, and adorned me with ornaments as a bride. And as the earth makes its flower grow, and as a garden makes its seeds spring up, so shall the Lord, the Lord, make righteousness and rejoicing spring up before all the nations.” The soul of our Lord Jesus Christ, of which he said, “My soul is very sorrowful,” and “Now my soul is troubled,” rejoices and is glad in none of the things that have come into being, but in the Father and Lord alone. For he clothed him with the garment of divinity and the tunic of true and perfect gladness. And (he) was the bridegroom of the bride, the church, which has no spot or wrinkle, so he put a turban on (him) as on a bridegroom; and [the soul] was the bride of the divinity that is above all reproach, which adorned it as a bride with the adornment befitting the Spirit (of the) Lord. And he cultivated it as a fruitful and good land, and further as a garden growing and flourishing with the shoots in it, with which the great paradise of God is said to have been planted. These things will happen, it says, since the Lord, being righteous, and being God not only of the Jews but also of the nations, has made his own righteousness, that is, his Christ, spring up before all the nations who believe through him.

“Raise a signal for the nations. For behold, the Lord has made it heard to the end of the earth: Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your saviour has come to you, having his reward with him and his work before his face; and he shall call it a holy people, redeemed by the Lord; and you shall be called a city sought after, and not forsaken.’ Who is this who comes from Edom, with the redness of his garments from Bosor, so beautiful in his robe, with might and strength? ‘I speak righteousness and the judgment of salvation.’ Why are your garments red, and your clothes as from a trodden winepress? ‘Full of trodden grapes; and of the nations there is no man with me; and I trampled them in my wrath.’” Again here the prophecy bids raise a signal concerning the church from the nations, promising that the Lord will make something heard to the end of the earth; which reached its fulfilment at the coming of our Saviour Jesus, when the sound of his apostles went out into all the earth and their sayings to the ends of the inhabited world. Next it is said, “Say to the daughters of Zion” (clearly the churches from the nations; for these would be daughters of the heavenly Zion, which is our mother, according to the apostle), “Behold, your saviour comes, having his reward,” and what follows; through which the second coming of Christ is shown, when he will come as judge, to render to each the rewards for his labours in the present and the recompense for whatever evil each has done now. Next, as if asking, the word says, “Who is this who comes from Edom” (which is interpreted “earthy”), “with the redness of his garments from Bosor, so beautiful in his robe?” It seems to say this in wonder that, even after the incarnation, the self-emptying, and the sojourn on earth, and after the passion and the descent among the dead, the beauty of the Saviour remained lovely and bright, confused in nothing, having received no filth, stain, or blemish from the material and bodily condition of earthly and human affairs; and further in amazement at his strength, since he fought down the whole army of the devil. It adds, “so beautiful in his robe, with might and strength?” To this question the Saviour answers, teaching who he is, and says, “I speak righteousness and the judgment of salvation.” Again the word says to him, as about the passion, “Why are your garments red,” and what follows. For as the Lamb of God, having taken upon himself the sins of the world, he put on garments red from our sins; so that for this reason it is said in the prophet Zechariah too, “And Jesus was clothed in filthy garments.” These were the clothes from our sins; on account of which it was said a little before, “He bears our sins and suffers pain for us”; for he himself committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth. Again the Saviour, answering the question, teaches from where his garments became red, saying, “from the nations”: these nations he alone subjected, with no human working with him, having trampled the whole opposing power of the evil spirits who were his enemies.

“And the Lord remembered the days of old: he who brought up from the earth the great shepherd of the sheep, who put the Holy Spirit among them.” And who else could be the one brought up from the earth by the Lord, the shepherd of God's sheep, but our Saviour, who came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? For he is the good shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep, whom the Father brought up from the earth and highly exalted, granting him the name above every name.

“The city of your holy one has become a wilderness; Zion has become as a wilderness, Jerusalem a curse; the house, our sanctuary, and the glory that our fathers blessed, has been burned with fire, and all our glorious things have fallen; and in all these things you held back, Lord, and were silent, and humbled us exceedingly. I became manifest to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me; I said, ‘Here I am,’ to a nation that did not call on my name. But over you I stretched out my hands all day long to a disobedient and contradicting people, who did not walk in a true way, but after their sins.” Here too, after the casting off of Israel is first prophesied, next the choosing of the nations that came about through Christ is signified. For when the prophet has sent up a prayer in the person of the people, the word answers, convicting the hardness and disobedience of the former people and showing its own love for humankind. “For how,” it says, “do you say these things, as though I were slow to save you? Why, I showed myself openly even to those who did not ask for me or seek me.” And it is evident how the Word of God, formerly unknown to the nations, at the consummation of the ages, by the goodness and love for humankind of the Father and God of the universe, became manifest to them, though because of their error about idols they had never asked him about what they needed; and he was found by us who did not seek him; and to those who did not call on his name he answered by becoming man, all but crying out, “Here I am.” These things the word clearly prophesies about the calling of the nations; and next again, most shamingly toward the word of the Jews, it adds, saying, “But over you I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contradicting people.” Through these words the form of his passion on the cross can also be signified. So much, too, from Isaiah. Having completed the subject of the Extracts in four books in this ninth book of the General Elementary Introduction, in the tenth we shall try to provide another fitting approach for those whose reasoning has been harmed by the godless heresies.