Book of the Promises and Predictions of God 2.23–2.29

Ruth, the Church from the nations, mocking the Jews. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Ruth. Ruth is spoken of in that people, who, being a foreigner, that is, coming from the Moabites, placed under the law of God and among the people, did things that bore the figure of the Church coming from the nations. For she offered herself in the marriage of wedlock to a certain man of the Hebrew people. But he, keeping the commands of the law, not drawn by the young woman’s beauty, not seized by the ardor of his youth, sends her, as she offers herself, to the one to whom she was due by the law as the nearer kinsman. He who was summoned by divine right refuses her. The law decreed that he should have his shoe taken off if he would not take his kinswoman; branded with this mark he was disgraced, and she was joined to him who had kept the place of the nearer kinsman. So the Church of the nations offered itself to the people of Israel too, as the nearer kin, in the faith of Christ the Lord; that people, refusing to receive her, was rightly stripped of its shoe, the glory of the law conferred on it, and branded with the mark of infamy; for it did not want the blessing, and it will be far from it. As the Apostle says to that same people: “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you; but since you have thrust it away and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the nations.” For the house of the one whose shoe was taken off was marked with this reproach in that people. He who received her afterward is the people that has its feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace. The Gospel declares that Boaz and Ruth begot Obed, through whose succession of seed it came down to Joseph and Mary and to the birth of Christ the Lord himself. [24] Of Christ the Lord, Leader, Priest, and Prophet, rebuking the priests, in Samuel. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Kings. Hannah, wife of Elkanah, who was barren, vowed a vow to God that if he gave her a son, he would be in the house of the Lord from infancy to old age. Samuel was given and born of her, and when he was weaned, she gave him back to the Lord as she had promised. His was the grace, while he was still a little boy living in the temple, both to receive divine answers and to have the Lord announce the future to him. He not only changed the order of the priesthood in figure, but in him three things are found that are to be assigned to Christ the Lord. For he became leader, priest, and prophet of the people. If you seek Christ as leader, the prophet Daniel says of him: “Leader of the heavenly host.” If you seek Christ as priest, David says: “You are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek.” If you seek Christ as prophet, he himself says of himself in the Gospel: “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country.” While the sons of Eli the priest acted wickedly, presuming without right to eat in other ways from the flesh to be sacrificed, which God had not commanded them, and to have it offered first to themselves and afterwards to God; and also pursuing the women who came to the temple, they committed shameful acts with them. When these crimes were done, God, angered, sent on them the battle of a hostile nation, in which not only was the people slaughtered, but those priests themselves were killed. The very ark of God was taken by the enemies. For so the God of Israel is angry with sinning priests that he does not spare even his consecrated places and vessels. For David says: “God rejected his tabernacle, in which he dwelt among men; and he handed them over into the hands of the nations, and those who hated them ruled over them.” And again: “God has rejected them, his sanctuary.” Again elsewhere: “If the people sin, the priest will pray for it; but if the priest sins, who will pray for him?” Woe is me! With great groaning and unceasing weeping I will say it: I will say that, our sins going before us and our acting impiously, these evils have come in our times too. The enemies who had taken the ark of God believed that it should be worshiped with such veneration that they thought it should be placed in the temple of their god Dagon. Under its power, on the next day, they saw their idol thrown down and lying prostrate. But putting this down to chance, they bound it up again with stronger and firmer clamps. Seeing it on the next day broken and shattered before the ark, they could not find what this was; and that nation itself was struck with a heavier and more terrible plague, which the prophet David testifies with a certain shame, saying: “He struck his enemies in the hinder parts; he gave them everlasting reproach.” Nor could they escape the final penalty of this disgrace unless they returned the ark of God which they had taken, with gifts added. Let kings and nations see and fear, who keep with them even now as captives the consecrated vessels of almighty God and refuse to return them. For what evils do we believe will come on those who would not honor in his consecrated vessels that name which is above every name, when divine history testifies that those who honored the ark of God were so punished, because, seen, God began to take vengeance on his enemies even here? The same stubborn Hebrew people, scorning Samuel’s leadership, asked for a king to be made for them. And the Lord, angered, said to Samuel: “It is not you they have rejected, but me”; so that what they later said to Pilate, scorning the Lord Jesus as king, might then be signified: “We have no king but Caesar.” Yet the Lord gave them as king Saul, son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, who afflicted them with royal power forty years. So every soul that rejects the law and yoke of Christ the Lord deserves to be so afflicted; when wicked leaders, princes, and priests rule over them, they hear: “I have given you a king after your own heart.” Let those too beware who receive these powers, if they seek to lord it, and do not take them up with the affection of counsel, if they choose to be served rather than to serve. This the Lord himself rebukes through the prophet Hosea, saying: “Canaan, in his hand the scales of injustice; for he has chosen domination.” And he himself in the Gospel: “Whoever wishes to be greater among you shall be your servant; just as the Son of man did not come to be served but to serve.”

Of Christ the shepherd playing the harp, in David. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Kings. When that same king Saul, seized by pride, despised God’s commands and was rejected by God, David (whose name means “strong of hand”), though least among his brothers, received the sacrament of royal anointing: a shepherd of sheep, indeed, to signify our anointed shepherd, Christ the Lord, who says: “I am the good shepherd.” David declares that he rescued the prey from the lion’s mouth. And our strong of hand rescued from the mouth of the lion, the devil, both Peter when he denied and the robber when he confessed. Playing the harp with sweet sound, David not only soothed the hearing of living creatures but also calmed in Saul himself the torment of the evil spirit. If you look at the harp of our strong of hand, Christ the Lord, sounding, fitted to the wood of the cross with the strings of his flesh and limbs, which he touches with the plectrum of the Holy Spirit, filling every living thing with blessing, he drove the devil himself from the hearts of his enemies, for whom, praying on the cross, he uttered that sweet sound, saying: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Yet the same David, while he was pleasing to King Saul for his harp, and knew him to be troubled by the messages of Goliath, who challenged to single combat on condition of slavery, the little David set himself against that mighty man. “Let not my lord’s heart fail,” he says; “I will go and fight this Philistine.” Saul said to him: “You cannot, for you are a boy, and he has been a man of war from his youth.” “Your servant,” said David, “killed both lion and bear. So shall this one be, as one of them”: signifying, as had been promised, that from his seed would come the one who trampled the lion and the dragon. Taking up the contest, David refused Saul’s armor with which he had been clothed. Choosing five smooth stones from the brook and taking a sling in his hand, not in the appearance of a king, the little shepherd overcomes the great enemy. So our shepherd, Christ the Lord, rejecting the wisdom of this world like that armor, chose in five stones the foolish things of the world to confound the strong. For all that terrible circumference of the proud man, struck on the forehead with one blow of a stone, was laid low, and is known to have been beheaded with his own sword. For from the five books of the law one stone, the predicted one, spoken by the sling of the flesh, thrown by the strong hand, struck down all the pride of the devil and killed him with his own sword, when he killed death by death. “For through the envy of the devil death entered the world.” This the innocent shepherd, the Lord, took on, who laid down his life for his own, so as to defeat the devil by his death. When the enemy had been destroyed and laid low, Saul wickedly conceived envy against David from the victory, and, repaying evil for good, he drives away, hates, and persecutes the innocent man. Our Lord too says of such: “They repaid me evil for good, and hatred for my love.” That David ran through the hiding places of the mountains, through caves and deserts, as Saul pursued him, our Lord in this figure expressed the persecutions of his body, that is, of his holy members, the martyrs; of whom the apostle Paul says: “Of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and in caves and in holes of the earth.” That David did not kill his persecutor Saul when he was delivered into his hands, but, cutting off the edge of his cloak, spared the one who hated him: this our shepherd and king, Christ the Lord, does daily toward those who hate and persecute him; while he cuts off from them the great vice of pride, he spares even raging kings, because he does not will the death of the impious, but that they turn and live. This he did and does in all his enemies, he who justifies the impious not by merits but freely. When David again avoided Saul’s plots, the nations received him. So our Christ the Lord, withdrawing from the raging Jews, gave himself to the nations. The Philistines betrayed to King Saul that David was hidden among them in Gath. The same prophet speaks of our King being betrayed, saying: “Against me all my enemies whispered; against me they devised evils for me.” And again: “The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.” But David, knowing he was betrayed, does certain things, or rather future mysteries are done through him: feigning madness, his spittle ran down on his beard, and he was carried, as Scripture says, in his own hands. Seeing him such, the king of that nation commanded him to be thrown out, saying: “Why have you brought this madman to me?” For nothing was said or done in the law that could be empty or wholly foreign to a figured act. For the Jews, our Lord’s enemies, said to him: “You are a Samaritan and have a demon.” Despising him, they even cast him out of certain cities. And the Lord Jesus too was carried in his own hands, when, bearing his body in the sanctified bread in his hands, he said: “This is my body, which is given for you.” Of these mysteries, whoever also wishes to know how David danced naked before the ark in the sight of his servants and maidservants, to show Christ crucified to men and women present, let him look at the words of Augustine, bishop of venerable memory, in which, ranging more widely over these things, he has covered almost everything (see Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 33.1.5ff.).

Of the same David, loving his enemies and preparing a remedy for the fallen. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Kings. As the order of the promise required, the anointed David took all Israel to govern, not a part as before, when Saul had been killed in battle. He grieved deeply at his death and also avenged him, and all Israel gathered to him. This is done now too, when our King, Christ the Lord, greatly loves and avenges his enemies; the whole world, as was promised, is gathered to him, to whom it was said: “I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” And though he has now taken possession of almost all the nations, it still remains that, when the fullness of the nations has come in, the whole predestined Israel may be saved, so that through him the whole world may be reconciled to God. But what David did when raised to the kingdom looks to those who, fallen through some presumption of pride, are corrected through penance and joined to the body of Christ, the Church, a second time. For prosperity, as someone says, wearies the minds of the wise. In it this David, puffed up, committed the two chief things the law forbids, adultery and murder. Warned through the prophet Nathan, when, moved by great compunction of heart, he did penance (since sins cannot go unpunished), though he escaped sudden death, yet it is clear that he was gravely punished in what he did. For he had already heard from the prophet’s mouth: “You did it in secret; you shall suffer it under the sun.” By this sentence the whole state of his house was disturbed in this order. One of his sons, seized by shameful desire for his sister, though by another mother, secretly overpowered and violated the virgin. The girl’s full brother Absalom killed his brother, the violator. Struck by this deed, Absalom, fleeing from his father’s face, stirred up all Israel, and, becoming a rebel, drove out and pursued his father, and wickedly defiled his bed with the concubines. David, bearing this patiently, recognized that he was being punished, by the avenging justice, in those things which, as it seemed, he had committed in secret. While the divine law resounds the deeds of these men, it shows itself to be a mirror, not hiding the acts even of our ancestors, and with the clearness of its splendor showing both the beauties and the foulnesses of anyone at all; strong in that truth which both proves and punishes even the guilt of its own, not indeed without mercy, which covers all and shows all: both the fall of so great a man, and the sentence of the just Judge, and the pardon of the most merciful Father. He is set here as an example for sober souls, that they may learn to fear prosperity more than to dread adversity. For in tribulation, as the prophet says, we are mindful of God. But it is dangerous for the soul to be left to its pleasures, since the Lord himself says: “Those whom I love I reprove and chastise.”

Of souls fervent with the warmth of Christ’s grace, in Abishag. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Kings. To this same David, now worn out with old age, Abishag the Shunammite, a virgin, is brought to warm the king, for no reason of intercourse; she was found a virgin even after his death. This likeness signifies the soul kindled by God’s grace with the warmth of chastity, which with its affection warms souls cold in faith, as the limbs of the great King. For she sings of herself in the psalms: “You have tried me with fire, and no iniquity was found in me.” And warming others with her breath, she says: “Come and hear, all you who fear the Lord, and I will tell you how great things he has done for my soul.” When the king had failed, then, Solomon succeeded his father David in the kingdom. While many divine promises resounded in his name, so that no one should attribute to his person what had been figures, when he turned aside from the Lord’s commands he lost both his life in old age and his wisdom together, so that all those things that had been figured might be kept for Christ the Lord, the peaceable one (which is what Solomon means). Yet what he did as a prophet in the person of Christ the Lord I shall run through briefly, as it may be given. At the beginning of his reign the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying: “Ask some request for yourself.” He asked for nothing but wisdom; so he asked for Christ, for Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. “You will give,” he said, “Lord, to your servant a wise heart to judge and govern your people.” As this request pleased (so that the gift of the wisdom conferred might be shown to all the people), two women stood before the king, who, living together in one room, had borne sons at the same time. One of them, while sleeping, smothered her little one and put him beside her sleeping companion, and took the other’s living child for herself. When the duties of the night’s sleep were done and the bright sunrise gave back the day to their eyes, all drowsiness shaken off, the woman who had lost the living child, thinking she was putting him to her breasts, looked at the dead child and did not recognize him as hers. When she reclaimed the living one from the thief, and the other stoutly contradicted her for what she had seized, contending in this dispute they came together before the king. And when it could not be shown whose the living child was, that wisdom, Christ, which had been given to the king, ordered a sword to be brought, not to strike the child, but to show anew the heart of the mother who had given birth. “Divide,” said the king to his men, “the living child into two parts, and give half to this one and half to that.” The true mother, so that he may only live, gives up the whole to her adversary; the false, so that the true may not possess him, asks for half. So the souls of heretics are judged under our King Christ: when the true Catholic mother offers her whole living name to those who quarrel, they, wishing to depart, ask for half. But our King, who came to send a sword on the earth, removing the deceits of the heretics, gave back the living child to the true mother who asked for life. “For he asked for life,” says the prophet, “and you gave it to him.” And the same little one, undivided, the son of the true Catholic mother, praises the judgment of the peaceable supreme King, Christ the Lord, and says: “My soul shall live and shall praise you, and your judgments shall help me.” The same Solomon built for his Lord that great temple, constructed with a wonderful circuit, dedicated with all royal power. His father, when he vowed it, was not permitted to fulfil it. For he had laid low many nations in war, and it was said to him that because he had shed much blood on the earth, not he but his peaceable son should build a house for God. But since that signifies this spiritual building, it is written that the Most High does not dwell in buildings made by human hands. For this reason our King, true peace, Christ the Lord, building a spiritual house of living stones, made the hearts of the faithful sons not only individual temples in each, but one temple out of all. To them the Apostle says: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells in you?” In it spiritual sacrifices are offered to God through the chief of priests himself. For he is our peace, who has made both one. The peaceable Solomon had all his time quiet with the nations, the Lord granting peace. When he had given himself wholly to wisdom, writing sayings and odes, that is, immortal parts, and composing mystic riddles too, the fame of his kingdom was spread splendidly through the world by messengers. To see such a man, then, the queen of the South came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Marveling at his teaching, she offered gifts, set his presence above the praises she had heard, and departed from his sight. From this deed our King, Christ the Lord, rebukes the Jews, that the queen of the South, breaking off all delays and royal necessities, not hindered by the length of the journey, came with all haste to see and hear the wise man, while they despised Wisdom itself coming to them of its own accord. Rightly he says she will rise in the judgment with that generation and condemn it. But this queen shows our holy Church, of which it is said to our King himself: “The queen stood at your right hand,” who now runs from the rising of the sun to its setting to hear Christ the Lord, Wisdom, praising the name of the Lord and offering gifts, because he has done great things in all. So what was said of Solomon, or done by him prophetically, is rightly assigned to Christ the Lord. For the rest, he himself, as was said above, puffed up, committed fornication in mind and body in his old age, the Lord forsaking him, and died badly, leaving a fearful example to his descendants, that they should not, through the happiness of this life, desert Christ, who is the eternal happiness of his own.

Of the schism of heresies, from which Christ gathers his sheep, in Rehoboam. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Kings. When Rehoboam, son of Solomon, was reigning, bound by his own sin as well as his father’s, and was turning almost all Israel to the worship of idols, the kingdom was torn from his hands. For Jeroboam, Solomon’s servant, by divine judgment received the larger part of the kingdom in eleven tribes. Through this division Samaria and Jerusalem kept the order of the kings of Judah and Israel by the succession of their rulers. But this shows the figure of heretics and schismatics, as has often been said, until he who makes and loves unity brings the other sheep he has outside his fold, his grace enlightening them, so that, as he deigned to promise, there may be one flock and one shepherd. We do not now go through all the kings in order, but only those in whose times things were done or said that announced the coming of our Redeemer, with a view to brevity and so as not to bore the reader. When, then, the most wicked king Ahab was reigning in Judea, the prophet Elijah is sent to rebuke the king and the people, because they had left God and followed Baal. And when Jezebel, King Ahab’s wife, by that incomprehensible judgment of God by which power is given to the wicked, had killed the prophets of the Lord, Elijah, by praying for drought, hid himself from the king’s face. When three years and six months had passed and a cruel famine was afflicting all Judea, Elijah is ordered to present himself to the king. And when he had said to the Lord that, all the prophets being killed, he alone was left, the divine answer said to him: “I have left for myself seven thousand men who have not bent the knee before Baal.” By this even the pride of the saints is checked, so that no one in any good work may think himself necessary to God; since God accomplishes all his work through whom he wills, for all things serve him. For man is shown to need God, not God to need man. Hence that holy prophet says: “I said to the Lord, You are my God, for you have no need of my goods.” Elijah accomplished what had been divinely commanded before the king and the people through that mystic evening sacrifice, obtaining fire from heaven. By it our calf, sacrificed in figure, like Elijah, destroyed all the priests of idolatry together with the very error of Baal, filling the earth with the rain of grace by which the hunger of the faithful soul is driven away. That to the same Elijah, placed in the desert, ravens by divine command brought bread in the morning and meat in the evening, signifies the figure of the whole body of the Lord ministered, when first in precepts the bread, and afterwards the flesh of the Lord’s passion, the Jews, like ravens, ministered to the nations: black in color, hoarse of voice, foul of smell, horrible to look at. Like these birds, the Jews, preparing for the nations the flesh of the cross, cooked on the wood, cried out to Pilate like ravens with one hoarse voice: “Crucify, crucify.” This flesh they eat who hear him saying: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you.” Yet here too the three times and half a time, in three years and six months (as we also mentioned above), the heavenly rain is by God’s deep judgment denied to those who, not eating his flesh nor redeemed by drinking his blood, are found strangers to his body.

Of Christ in Elijah, and of the primacy of mercy in the widow. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Kings. The Lord said to Elijah: “Go to Zarephath of Sidon; for behold, I have commanded a widow woman to feed you there.” Here too the spiritual reader recognizes mystic actions. For the Almighty was not lacking in means to feed his prophet through the same birds for as long as he wished. But he knew him to be necessary for the widow, for whom he willed plenty to be prepared from famine by the power of the word through his minister. Seeing by divine prompting this widow in the field gathering two sticks, like the two commandments, Elijah, moved also by the heat of a spiritual thirst, asked the woman for water. As she went to bring it, the prophet asked her for a little bread too. She, testifying, says that she has a little flour in the jar and a little oil in the cruse, food for one day, for herself and her children, which being used up she would die with her children. From this very thing the prophet orders that it be offered to him first, and then prepared for herself and her sons, so that mercy may take the first place, which Scripture testifies goes before the face of God. For from it came plenty. “For thus says the Lord,” says Elijah, “the jar of flour shall not fail, and the cruse of oil shall not diminish, until the day when the Lord gives rain on the earth.” So the merciful soul lends to God; so, while it gives in need, it provides for its own salvation. So is that soul filled which, when the body has departed to the Lord, loving the one who chastises, keeps with chaste love the faith of a single marriage bed, strengthened by the sacrament of the flour and the anointing of the oil, securely awaiting the welcome rain, when the Lord says to it: “Well done, good and faithful servant; because you have been faithful in a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your Lord.” In her likeness that widow too is praised by the Lord, who, putting two mites into the treasury, he who saw said had put in more than all, because she kept nothing for herself.