Book of the Promises and Predictions of God 2.18–2.22

Gideon, in figure, commends the grace of the Lord Christ. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Judges. Again for the sin of idolatry the people is afflicted, Midian oppressing it. An angel of the Lord was sent for their redemption, sending Gideon son of Joash, one of the Hebrews, to judge and to fight for it, and instructs him with this word: “The Lord is with you, mighty in strength.” And Gideon said: “If the Lord is with us, why have these evils come upon us?” And the angel: “Go,” he says, “for by your hand Israel will be freed from the hand of Midian.” And when Gideon confessed before the Lord that he was of the least tribe in Israel, strengthened by him who exalts the humble and makes him sit with the princes of his people, he at once overthrew the altar of Baal which the sons of Israel had built. The people, pursuing him for this deed, besieged him as he fled into his father’s house. And when he had escaped the people’s attack, his father Joash calmed the raging crowd with these words: “Are you avenging Baal,” he says, “or saving him? Whoever has done him injury shall die in the morning. If he is a god, let him avenge himself.” When the people went away appeased, the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon, and sends him, supported by strength, to fight, assigning a sign of victory to his wish. Yet he asked two things, which were to be known as veiled in great mystery until the time came. “I wish, Lord,” he says, “that the fleece which is on the threshing floor be filled with water, and the threshing floor be dry.” It was done. The floor dry, all the dew came down on the fleece, which, wrung out, filled a basin with water. In the fleece filled on the dry floor we recognize the Synagogue, the Church being dry then in the faith of the nations; while it was watered by no shower of heavenly teaching, the Synagogue, like the fleece, was full of divine rites and sacred mysteries. This the true Power, the Lord Jesus, wrung out into a basin, so that, as his passion drew near, washing his disciples’ feet in it, he emptied all the glory of the Synagogue and left it empty like a wrung-out fleece, ministering to the nations the grace of the New Testament, which he showed plainly in the second sign. “I wish, Lord,” says Gideon, “that the fleece be dry and the whole floor be rained on.” Both the deed and its future fulfilment in Christ and through Christ the prophet David confirms, saying in the seventy-first psalm: “He shall come down like rain on the fleece” (which belongs to the Synagogue), “and like drops dripping on the earth” (which belongs to the Church). And in Deuteronomy: “Let my utterance be received like rain, and let my words come down like dew.” He shows in the dew on the fleece the Synagogue full then, and in the rain on the floor the Church now filled with grace. And the prophet Isaiah says: “As dew or rain coming down does not depart until it soaks the earth and makes it bud, and gives bread to eat to those who till it, so too every word that goes out from my mouth shall not return until it accomplishes what I willed.” All the sacraments being accomplished, then, which were kept hidden in the fleece for others, the whole world now knows that the Synagogue of the Jews has remained empty, and the floor, the Church through all nations, filled with grace by the fruitfulness of believing peoples. But it was commanded to the same Gideon, the band gathered, to go out to fight against the enemies of God’s people. Yet because all things were being read as sacraments, the army being led came to the water to be tested. For the Lord said to Gideon: “Lead the people down to the water, for there are still many with you; and whoever laps with his tongue as a dog drinks, you shall set apart; the rest you shall send away from the camp.” And three hundred men were found. “These,” says the Lord, “you shall bring with you, lest Israel say, My own hands have saved me.” For so divine providence acts, commending grace, so that no one glories in himself but in the Lord. For the power of war is not in the size of the army, but the strength of God is from heaven. The soldiers of the Lord were tested in this way: girded at the loins, carrying jars in their hands, and lit torches, fired in mind and body, with this sign of victory: “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” Gideon, then, spying out by night the camp of the opposing side, and perceiving with what dreams their Lord had terrified the adversaries, at dawn he went out to his soldiers and addressed them as having won a sure victory, and orders the soldiers of God to throw the jars from their hands to the ground and at once, rising, to leap with confidence on the adversaries. So under our judge, the Lord Jesus, our army has conquered and conquers, to which it is commanded: “Let your loins be girded and carry burning lamps,” the two-edged sword, the word of God. The bodies of these brave martyrs, dashed on the earth like jars, as they clash, of those, that is, who fight for the truth even to death, with their great sound put all the enemies to flight. Their triumph resounds in the sweet song of those who say: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us,” “giving thanks to God who has given them the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” For our men too passed through fire and water to be tested, lapping with the tongue like the Lord’s dogs, whom David recalls, saying: “The tongue of your dogs from the enemies, from him.” For these now bark for him whom they once hated, and by their barking every adversary of Christ is put to flight.

Abimelech, son of a concubine, signifies the heretics. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Judges. Abimelech, son by a concubine, after the death of his father Gideon, having killed seventy lawful sons of his and stirred up the people, became judge in Israel. One of the seventy escaped by hiding, and rebukes all Israel in passing under a certain parable: that when the unfruitful wild trees asked the vine and the fig to be their king, the fruitful answered the unfruitful that they could not leave the fruits of their richness and go to reign among the trees. This figure shows the presumptuous boldness of the heretics, who, being sons not of the free woman but of the slave, like wild trees among wild trees, that is, among unfruitful souls, overwhelmed by the thorns of sins, seize power with this purpose, to kill in the soul by rebaptizing the sons of the true King and Judge. Yet this bold prince Abimelech a woman killed by throwing a piece of millstone from the wall, crushing his head. So too it is fitting that the heretics perish, who strive to fight down our head, Christ the Lord, with insulting disputation; since the sons of the slave woman cannot be heirs, but those of the free: the Church, like a woman of the nations, tying the donkey’s millstone to their neck, sinks them into the deep.

Of the sacrifice of Christ’s flesh, in Jephthah’s sacrifice of a virgin. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Judges. Jephthah too, following in order, judged the people of God for six years. When he was waging war against the sons of Ammon and saw his adversaries prevailing, he made a rash and presumptuous vow that, if he succeeded in conquering his enemies, whatever first came to meet him from his house he would offer in sacrifice. His boldness was rebuked in this way: not an animal of some beast, as he had supposed, but his only daughter, a virgin, running to meet him in the manner of a triumph, grievously afflicted the victor over his promise. Looking at her he said: “Alas, my daughter! A stumbling has been made in my eyes. For I have vowed a vow to God concerning you, and it cannot be turned back.” And his daughter said to him: “If you have opened your mouth concerning me to the Lord, father, do as you promised, because the Lord has taken vengeance on his enemies.” And she asked her father for a respite, in which to weep her virginity on the mountain with her companions. When the time was completed she returned, and Jephthah fulfilled the vows of his sacrifice on her. And she, as was said, had not known a man. It is asked, perhaps, why God did not command that the only daughter be spared, as he commanded Abraham to spare his only son. And there arises that famous question, difficult to solve, which by the Lord’s revelation I will settle in this way: first, that God had not asked this of Jephthah, testing him, as he had of Abraham; but Jephthah vowed of his own accord, not, as I said, tested by God, but rather in some way testing God. Second, it was unworthy [Migne: “perhaps unworthy”] that, without naming a victim, he should sacrifice, as he had promised, a dog or a beast of burden or any other unworthy animal that first ran to meet him. Since, then, not being tested, he chose to test God, what met him was what would prove the strength, the vow, and the mind of the one who promised. But the apostle Paul, in the letter to the Hebrews, mentions this Jephthah among the others full of faith as having worked righteousness by this very act, recalling Barak, Samson, Samuel, and our other heroes; so that the earthly city should not extol its citizens alone with the applause of vanity, if Torquatus killed his son for it, if Mucius stretched out his right hand into the flames, if Curtius, throwing himself headlong into the chasm, deprived himself of life for its cruel fortune; since ours, the citizens of Jerusalem, the great heavenly city, have done far loftier and many and manifold things. Yet this Jephthah’s work of righteousness admonishes us to inquire into the mysteries of the Lord’s action, as far as it may be given to explain the secret of so great a matter. These figured mysteries refer to our Judge and Leader, the Lord Jesus, in such a way that we recognize that he, wishing to take vengeance on our enemies for our redemption, sacrificed his own flesh, a unique virgin, as a daughter. For he is said by the prophet David to have been formed by himself in the womb: “Mother Zion will say: A man, and a man was born in her, and the Most High himself founded her.” She met him at the hour of the passion, when her Creator made an example of the principalities and powers of the air, triumphing over them confidently in himself. She met him, I say, in the hour of which he says in the Gospel: “Father, what shall I say? Let this hour pass. But for this I came to this hour,” that he who had created her might be sacrificed. That she asked a respite to weep her virginity on the mountain with her companions: Jesus went up the mountain with his companions as the passion drew near. Here praying, as the evangelist testifies, sweating, drops of blood were seen to fall to the ground instead of tears. And he warned his companions to watch and pray, lest they enter into temptation, adding that his soul was sorrowful even to death. Coming down from the mountain, he offered to God the Father as a sacrifice this flesh which he had taken for us, a virgin without corruption, who had not known a man. For he too opened his mouth concerning his flesh, saying through the prophet: “What proceeds from my lips I will not make void.” And he himself in the Gospel: “For this,” he says, “my Father loves me, because I lay down my life for my sheep.” And again: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” For not even in death was that flesh corrupted, of which he says in the psalm: “My flesh will rest in hope, for you will not leave my soul in the underworld, nor let your holy one see corruption.” So he lives to God who ends this life for God’s sake. “For to me to live,” says the Apostle, “is Christ, and to die is gain.”

Of the Lord Christ, the Nazirite strong in the head, in Samson. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Judges. There was a man called Manoah in the time when judges governed the people of God, whose wife was barren. An angel of the Lord stood by her, promising that a son would be born. “No razor,” he says, “shall come upon his head, and he shall drink no wine or strong drink; for the boy shall be a Nazirite from the day of his birth to the end of his death.” Already “Nazirite” speaks of strength in the head, since the head of man is Christ. So that most mighty Samson was born, full, as was said, of strength from the hair of his head, who judged Israel twenty years. All his action resounds Christ the Lord in figure. The order of his deeds, helped by God’s grace, I shall thus run through. Samson, says Scripture, went down to Timnah and loved a foreign woman there, and pressed his parents that he might obtain her as wife. Our most mighty one too came down from heaven, of whom it is said, “He shall be called a Nazarene,” to unite to himself souls he loved from the nations and join them by faith. As Samson went to see the woman betrothed to him, a lion’s whelp met him, which, filled with the Spirit, he tore apart and cast away in pieces. Returning again and turning aside from the road, as he looked at the carcass of the beast, he saw a honeycomb in the lion’s mouth and took it, and eating it gave some to his parents, and did not tell them the deed. This our Nazirite, the Lord Jesus, too did. He tore apart the Jewish people like a lion’s whelp and cast it away in pieces; of it the Gentile prophet Balaam says: “A lion’s whelp on the way, most mighty Israel.” That its pieces are scattered through the world the prophet David testifies, saying to our mighty Lord himself: “Scatter them by your power.” This we do not merely believe, but see. The honeycomb he found in this lion’s mouth, hearer, understand as the spiritual law of his people, which the bees, the patriarchs and prophets, building, filled with the honey of the divine word. This he took from the mouth of the dead lion, and, the Jews being cast off, ministered that law itself to the nations too. And eating it, the body of our most mighty Judge, Christ the Lord, says: “How sweet are your words to my throat, sweeter than honey and the comb to my mouth.” And Solomon says: “Good words are a honeycomb.” He gave some of it, as was said, to his parents, either to his disciples, when he opened their mind to understand the Scriptures, or to those of the Jews who passed over to faith in Christ, so that they too might taste and see how sweet the Lord is. Samson put forth the riddle of this deed at the wedding feast, under a fixed wager of thirty linen garments and as many robes to the men present, if they could tell what was proposed. “Out of the eater,” he says, “came food, and out of the strong, sweetness.” When, as the day for solving it drew near, they could not understand it, they made his wife, compelled by threats and terrors, search out her husband’s meaning, and, having learned the solution through her, they declare the parable, saying: “What is sweeter than honey, and stronger than a lion?” To them he said: “If you had not ploughed with my heifer, you would never have understood my parable.” So that great sacrament of the Lord’s piety, which was veiled in the Law and hidden for ages in God, revealed through Christ, has been made manifest among the nations. Samson, stripping those he had laid low of their spoils, paid his promises with all speed, so that what had been said of ours might also be signified: “He shall divide the spoils of the strong.” For ours killed his enemies for their good, when he condemned sin by sin in the flesh, paying the promised spoils, not merits for merits, but conferring good for evil on the wretched. When Samson went to the feast day of the Hebrew people to keep it with his own, her parents gave his wife to another man. So do light and worthless souls, which, not keeping fellowship with the one bridegroom Christ with chaste and faithful heart, give and join themselves to any heretical teaching whatever. And the Apostle admonishes souls that keep the bed of the one bridegroom Christ with chaste love: “See that no one deceives you in any way.” So Samson, returning, when he learned that his wife had been joined to another man by plotting, wore down that nation with righteous grief. Catching three hundred foxes and tying their tails to each other, he put burning torches on them and let them go through the grain of the Philistines, and burned all their crops with wonderful economy. Our mighty Lord too, marking the heretics, says: “Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards”: whose torches are of the fire of error rather than of divine love. And they are not at the head but at the tail. For they burn with perverse zeal and teachings, by which, breathing on the unskilled, or rather the skilled, with the spattering of their heat, they consume them all like wild hay with fire. For before our judge Christ a fire will burn; and all foreigners, as the prophet says, will be stubble, and the coming day will burn them up, says the Lord. That woman who, leaving so great a husband, believed she should be joined to another, is known to have been burned by fire with her parents by her own citizens: so every heretical soul with its parents, that is, its teachers, is burned up in unquenchable fire, its sins convicting it. For their iniquities will convict them to their face, when the Lord says to them: “Depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

Of the same Samson: that Christ the Lord, bound by the Jews, broke all bonds. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Judges. The same Samson loved another woman in that people, and as he went to take her, the plots of the enemies fell upon him as he passed alone on the road. Divine strength was at once with him. For seizing the jawbone of an ass, he laid low a thousand men of them and put the rest to flight. And when he was failing from thirst in the fighting, he called upon God, and water flowing from a cleft in the jawbone restored him, satisfied, to his former strength, and, the adversaries overcome, made him victor. If you look at our mighty Lord, carried on this animal, you will find just as great, and a greater, number of enemies laid low by him; to whom the prophet David says: “A thousand shall fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but they shall not come near you.” For from his side, as from a cleft, blood and water flowed for his thirsting body, by which every Christian soul, satisfied, says: “He has brought me up beside refreshing waters; he has turned back my soul.” After that wonderful battle Samson joined to himself another woman whom he loved, named Delilah. These two women (as the mystic action itself, examined in many ways, reveals) I take to be those two cities which the prophet Ezekiel marked by these names, Oholah and Oholibah, that is, Samaria and Jerusalem: Samaria, which received the split of the kingdom into eleven parts, like that first woman who, leaving her lawful husband, gave herself to heretics; Jerusalem, like this Delilah, which brought to a close the mysteries of the passion of Christ the Lord in an ordered action. The events follow thus. The Philistines said to Delilah: “Seduce your husband, and let him tell you where his strength lies, and we will give you each a thousand and a hundred pieces of silver.” See that threefold sale. Christ is sold in Joseph before the Law; he is sold in Samson under the Law; he is sold by Judas to the Jews under grace. The woman Delilah, at their urging, seduces her husband and says: “Tell me how your strength may be weakened.” Samson in a way opened his mouth in parables and said: “If I am bound with moist sinews, that is, fresh ones, I shall be weak and be like all men.” The mighty one lets himself be bound with these bonds; and when the adversaries lay in wait and his wife said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson,” he broke those bonds by his strength, as tow when it touches fire, and put all the adversaries to flight. Our Lord of strength too let himself, as it were, be bound with these bonds at Jerusalem. For the Pharisees bring to him a woman caught in adultery and say, testing him: “Teacher, we have just caught this woman. Moses commanded such to be stoned; but what do you decide about her?” They believed they had bound Jesus as with the sinews of the Law, and fresh ones especially, when they said “just now.” Our mighty one broke these with this answer: “Whoever of you is without sin, let him throw the first stone at her.” Hearing this they went away one after another, so that the bond with which they had bound him was loosed; as the prophet said: “As wax melts before the fire, so let sinners perish before God.” Again the Philistines lay plots through the woman; and the woman says to Samson: “Tell me now how your strength may be weakened.” And Samson: “If I am bound,” he says, “with new ropes, I shall be weak and be like all men.” And when it was done: “Your adversaries are upon you, Samson,” she says. But he, filled with the Spirit, broke the ropes from his arms like thread, and scattered and put to flight all the adversaries. Our mighty Lord too lets himself be bound, when the Pharisees come to him a second time and say: “Teacher, we know that you teach in truth and show favor to no one. Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” In this temptation they bound our mighty one as with a two-headed noose. But with the Spirit of strength our mighty one broke all the knots with this word: “Why do you test me, hypocrites? Bring me the coin of the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. And the Lord: “Whose is the image and inscription?” They said: “Caesar’s.” “Render,” says the Lord, “to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” With these words, with wonderful speed, he broke those bonds, the man taken up, who sings to his God in the psalms: “You have broken my bonds; I will offer you the sacrifice of praise.” A third time the woman entices her husband: “How long,” she says, “will you mock me? Tell me now how your strength may be weakened.” Almost the same words the Jews too said to our judge Christ: “How long,” they say, “will you hold our souls in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” But Samson let himself be bound a third time in this way: “If the hair of my head,” he says, “is woven into the web on the loom, I shall be weak and be like all men.” When the woman did it: “The same plotters are upon you, Samson,” she says. But he, rising, broke everything, and laid low the enemies, routed and beaten. Such a binding is done to our mighty Lord Jesus too, like the weaving of hair into the loom. The scribes and Pharisees say to Jesus: “Moses wrote for us that if anyone dies having no sons, his brother shall take his wife and raise up seed for his brother. There were seven brothers: the second and the third took the brother’s wife, and died leaving no sons; afterwards all of them took her; and the woman too died without children. In the resurrection,” they say, “whose wife will she be?” The more strongly they believed they had bound our mighty one, the more quickly he solved the question they had brought, truly as one having authority, since he could not be bound by these ties unless he himself allowed it. “The sons of this age,” he says, “beget and are begotten; but those who are found worthy to attain that age neither marry nor are given in marriage. For they can no longer die, because they are like the angels and sons of God.” With these words his enemies were laid low in total confusion and put to flight. And the hour of Samson’s death came. And ours says: “The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. For unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” As the woman pressed him, weeping falsely before him, Samson, says Scripture, became faint-hearted even to death, so that the figured action of ours might be fulfilled, who says: “My soul is sorrowful even to death.” “If the hair of my head is shaved,” says Samson, “I shall be weak and be like all men.” Before this was done, the woman sends to the men, saying: “Bring the silver, for now he has told me everything truthfully.” A sure betrayal takes place, which Judas fulfilled on receiving the silver; and what was done openly in our Christ the Lord is fulfilled in Samson in figure. For that the woman, taking him, made him sleep in her lap, is what our mighty Lord says: “It is not fitting that a prophet should die outside Jerusalem.” That she made him drunk with a deadly cup is what our Lord too said: “They gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” That with a razor applied she shaved his head is that they crucified him in the place of Calvary. When Samson’s head was shaved, his strength departed; and ours, hanging on the wood, cried out: “God, my God, look upon me; why have you forsaken me?” And again: “Those who hate me without cause are more than the hairs of my head.” Samson’s enemies dug out his two eyes. Two parts of the disciples, like eyes, were poured out for a time, some by denying, others by fleeing; for whom our mighty one cries out: “My eyes have failed while I hope in my God”; and again: “Enlighten my eyes, lest I ever sleep in death.” We know this was done in the disciples when, after he rose, their eyes were opened and they recognized him in the breaking of bread. Samson’s enemies took him and bound him with iron: the nails of the Crucified show this. What they did in mocking him, striking his face with the palm, smearing him with spit, beating him with scourges: all these Isaiah the prophet foretold, and the holy Gospels testify that they were fulfilled in Christ the Lord, where the Jews mock him as though blinded, striking his head with a reed and saying: “Prophesy to us, Christ: who struck you?” Samson did one final miracle in his death, which our Lord, the mighty one, also fulfilled. As the hair of his head grew and his strength grew with it, he was led by his enemies to the temple where all that people had gathered to give praises and victims to their gods for having handed over to them their fiercest enemy; placed there, he ordered the boy who led him to give into his hands the columns on which the whole building rested. Taking hold of them, one with each hand, calling upon God, he asked to be strengthened once more; and with the force of the Spirit pulling the columns out, as the whole building fell with the peoples, Samson killed more in his death than he had killed in his life. Our Lord too showed more plainly what Samson had done in mystery: moving in his death the two corners of the world, circumcision and uncircumcision, like two columns, he overthrew all the worship of idolatry, dissolving the enmity in his flesh, that he might create the two in himself into one new man, making peace, and reconcile both in one body to God through the cross, killing the enmity in himself. Thus far the figures of what was done have come before us in Judges.