Book of the Promises and Predictions of God

From the book of Genesis: of the creation, that is, of Christ and the Church in Adam and Eve. In the beginning God made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them: in heaven the shining things, on earth the walking things, in the air the flying things, in the waters the swimming things. When these were finished, God said: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” And when he had been formed from the mud of the earth, he breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone: let us make him a helper like himself,” a counselor. And a little later: “God cast a deep sleep upon Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs,” and formed it into a woman, “and brought her to Adam, to see what he would call her. And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken from her man. For this reason,” he says, “a man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh.” That this was done so as to be both an event and a figure, the apostle Paul is witness. For explaining this passage in the letter to the Ephesians, he says: “This sacrament is great; but I speak in Christ and in the Church.” The great sacrament, then, which Adam hoped for as promised, saw joined to him, and believed to be his wife, signified to us through faith the Church to come; he called her mother of all the living, for this reason: as Eve was formed from the side of the sleeping Adam, he foresaw that the Church would be formed, as happened, from the side of Christ hanging on the cross, and she is truly the mother of all the living. For this is that woman who is kept for a time, and times, and half a time from the sight of the serpent, as is said of the Church in the Apocalypse.

That two deaths follow on contempt of the commandment. God foretold to Adam and his wife that death would follow if they touched what was forbidden, saying: “From every tree of paradise you shall eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. On the day you eat of it, you shall die the death.” But contemning the precept, as the devil deceived them, they touched what was forbidden. While the man excuses this sin through the woman, and the woman through the serpent, they served the foretold death not only to themselves but also to their descendants. For the whole human race together pays this death, which signifies another, perpetual death, from which everyone who keeps Christ’s commandments will be free; but whoever thinks the saving warnings of our Lord Jesus Christ worth despising will without any doubt undergo it. “For blessed and holy,” says John the apostle, “is he who has a part in this first resurrection; over him the second death has no power.” And the Lord says: “Whoever hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life; and he does not come into judgment, but will pass over from death to life.”

That the devil’s sentence remains on those who do his will. Believed and seen in Genesis. There follows the sentence pronounced and foretold against the serpent, the devil, in which something to be feared is found that was said to him among other things: “You shall eat earth all the days of your life.” For souls that gape after earthly desires are compared to earth, and the prophet David marks them as impious in the first psalm, saying: “They shall be like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth.” And the prophet Jeremiah: “Those who depart from you,” he says, “shall be written in the earth.” Job too says: “The earth has been given into the hands of the wicked.” Again David: “Remember, Lord, that we are earth.” And that he himself is freed from the earth which the serpent received to eat as the desert of sin, he says in another psalm: “Save me from the mire, that I may not stick in it.” Again elsewhere: “Our belly has cleaved to the earth; arise, Lord, help us, and redeem us for your name’s sake.” Again elsewhere: “Do not hand me over, Lord, from my desire to the sinner.” Therefore the divine mercy has decreed that we be admonished daily through the priests to lift up our hearts, and we profess that we have them lifted to the Lord; if only our promise be firm, so that what we utter in words we may also fulfil in deeds by continual grace.

That original sin follows in the curse of the woman. Original sin foretold. Believed and seen in Genesis. And God said to the woman: “I will greatly multiply your groaning and your pains; in sorrow you shall bear children.” That the children of transgressors are born so, the prophet David confirms: “In iniquities,” he says, “I was conceived, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb.” Solomon too testifies the like: “A heavy yoke,” he says, “is upon the sons of Adam, from the day they come out of their mother’s womb until the day of their burial in the mother of all.” Again he says: “And I too, when I was born, received the common air, and fell upon the earth that is made alike, and uttered my first cry like all, weeping; I was nursed in swaddling clothes and with cares. For no king had any other beginning of birth. For there is one entrance into life for all, and a like exit.” And a little later: “For the seed was accursed from the beginning.” And Isaiah: “Wicked seed,” he says, “sons of crime, you have forsaken the Lord.” Job too says: “No one is free from defilement, not even an infant whose life on earth is one day.” Again he says: “No one can make clean what is conceived of unclean seed but you, who alone are clean.” For the expiation of this accursed seed, the uncleanness of the woman who gives birth and of the infant, the sacrifices of the law were instituted, until Christ reigned, who by offering the sacrifice of his body saves small and great. For it was said: “He will save his people from their sins.” Yet these things that were foretold are seen to be fulfilled in such a way that they are taught still to be in fulfilment until the end of the world.

That labor, sweat, and pain come upon all Adam’s descendants. The sentence foretold and propagated. Believed and seen in Genesis. And God said to Adam: “Because you listened to the voice of your wife more than to me, and touched the tree of which alone I had commanded you not to eat, and you ate: cursed is the earth in your works; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; in sorrow and groaning you shall eat the fodder of your field; in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken; for you are earth, and to earth you shall go.” Of this foretold penalty of sin, which Adam, the root of the human race, received as his sentence and passed on to his descendants as to branches, the Apostle says that through one man sin entered the world, and so passed through to all men, in whom all sinned. For the ground, which at the Creator’s command was fertile and before brought forth healthful plants of itself without any cultivation by man, was afterwards filled with hardships and briars, so that every man must eat bread from it in sweat and toil until he runs back into death. We have deserved not only to hear these things foretold but also to pay them, as proved. Hence David says: “Man shall go out to his work and to his labor until evening.” And again: “You shall eat the labors of your hands.” The Apostle too says: “Whoever will not work, let him not eat.” And the Lord sent workers into the vineyard up to the eleventh hour.

Of the two peoples, Christians and Jews, in Cain and Abel. A prediction in figure, namely of the two peoples. Believed and seen in Genesis. From the first human beings, then, who had already been made mortal, two sons were born, both mortal: Cain the elder and Abel the younger, one a shepherd of sheep, the other a farmer. While they tilled the earth, already subject to toil by the judgment of the divine sentence, and strove to expiate themselves from their own and their father’s offenses, they offered sacrifices from the first fruits of their produce. The sacrifice of the younger, Abel, offered from the sheep, is received as acceptable; Cain’s is rejected, since he did not rightly divide his portion of the earth. Envy is born from this, and the Godhead, foreknowing what was to come, enjoins patience on the angry man, and it is said to Cain: “You have sinned; be quiet; its turning is toward you, and you shall rule over it,” that is, he should rule over his sin and not become the slave of sin, if he humbly obeyed the one who commanded. But Cain, stubborn and unable to bear himself, leapt upon Abel in the field and killed him. O crime! Are these, Cain, the bonds of brotherhood? Are these the beginnings of a good nature? Is this the hope of a good disposition, that your father should know you as a murderer before he knew you as a son? But by these acts of daring Cain bound his crime with many more bonds. He became a despiser of the divine command, the head of pride, the author of envy, the first to inflict death, and the first fratricide among men. He laid the foundations of war, so that the guilty shed innocent blood, and, full of spite, he attacked another’s glory. For from here glorious martyrdoms shone forth, as the just are killed by the impious. But so that divine providence might show that everything that was done profits us, God asks the brother about the brother whom he already knew to be killed, and when he denied it, convicted him with the earth as witness: “The voice of your brother’s blood,” he says, “cries to me from the earth.” That Cain prefigured the Jewish people, gaping after earthly desires, and Abel Christ the shepherd of the sheep, killed by that people, no Christian now doubts; every land now receives his sacred blood and cries “Amen” (that is, “True”), so that to the Jew who denies having killed Christ it is rightly said by God: “The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the earth.” In place of Abel, whom Cain killed, Seth was born, from whom in order of succession came Enoch, who, because he pleased God, was taken up so as not to taste death, to be joined to Elijah, so that two suitable witnesses may be prepared for Christ’s second coming, to refute the Antichrist and for the glory of the Son of God as judge; of these we shall bring forward testimonies in their place.

Of the flood and the ark, which signified the Church. A prediction believed and seen in Genesis. The flood foretold. When the sons of God fell away from their purpose of holiness, God warned the just Noah thus: “The end of all flesh,” he says, “has come before me; for the earth is filled with their iniquity, and I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of squared timbers; you shall make the ark with three chambers, and pitch it inside and out; and so you shall make it. The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. You shall make a window in the ark, and finish it in a cubit. And you shall set the door of the ark in its side. Behold, I will bring a flood of water upon the earth, and kill all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven.” While faith, then, fits and prepares the mind, and believes that what it hopes for will be fulfilled, Noah, obedient to the mystic command and to the work, built the ark in which he was to shelter himself with the clean and unclean animals, as had been commanded: with a geometric measure which, as is said, extends six times as far as ours. Gathering a few things about these numbers set down, as far as God helps me, I will bring in the opinion of our architect, the apostle Paul, who, referring the figured construction of that ark and all its spiritual building to the holy Church, expressed in it the likeness of the cross. For he says in the letter to the Ephesians: “I bend my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he may give you, according to the riches of his grace, strength, that Christ may dwell through faith in your hearts, rooted and grounded in love, so that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the height, breadth, length, and depth; to know also the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.” He spoke five statements in five clauses, as one who had said: “I would rather speak five words with my mind in the church.” These five statements are shown to belong to the measures of the ark in this way. For the number five, made of even and odd, contains two and three: three from the Trinity, two from the two commandments, which joined form five. To this one is added, for the unity of the undivided Trinity, and the perfect number six is made, corresponding to itself on every side, in its first part, its third, and its half. Many of our elders have already spoken of this number. These numbers five and six, then, joined and multiplied by each other, extend to the measures of the ark, which are multiples of five. For this reason God made all that was created on the fifth day, except man; all the commands of the law were written in the five books of Moses; and, to fulfil the law, the Savior and Lord himself was handed over to the gibbet on the fifth day of the week. The number six contains this: that man was formed on the sixth day; that in the sixth age of the world the Word of God took up man for the world’s redemption; and that on the sixth day of the week, hung on the cross, he poured out from his side, as through the door of the ark, his precious blood, the price of us all, from which the dove, the Church, came forth, endowed with such blood. For this reason the crooked heretic, the raven, going out, shipwrecked by his greed for a human corpse, would not return to the ark, the Church. Of him the clean animals placed inside cry out: “He went out from us, but he was not of us; for if he had been of us, he would surely have remained with us.” These two numbers, then, as I said, five and six, when multiplied by each other make up thirty. For five times six and six times five make thirty. And these are the thirty cubits which were commanded to be built in the height of the ark, belonging to the lofty part, hope, in which the head of the Crucified was fixed on high. For all hope is in the head. For this reason our head himself deigned to be crucified at thirty years. Again, the number five is multiplied by the decalogue, because of the ten commandments of the law: ten times five and five times ten make fifty. And these are placed in the breadth of the ark, which on the cross mark the expanse of love, in which the hands of the Crucified were fastened. For the ten commandments are said to have been written by the finger of God, and we ourselves are commanded to lift up our hands in the holy places. Again, the numbers five and six multiplied by fifty fill out the length of the ark. For fifty times six and sixty times five make three hundred, which are assigned to the length of our ark, patience, in which the body of the Crucified was stretched out; to whom it is said: “Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” For our old man was fixed to the cross together with him, and we are commanded to be patient until the coming of the Lord. The depth of the cross signifies the greatness of the flood, by which both that ark and ours are borne. For the judgments of God, as it is written, are like a great abyss. As for what was said, “You shall make it with three chambers,” our architect Paul expressed this construction: “There remain,” he says, “faith, hope, love, these three.” For while in the first and second dwellings beasts, cattle, serpents, and birds remained in faith and hope, in the third Noah with his family, remaining in love (for the greatest of all these is love), could not fear the flood. For whoever remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him; for God is love. The window of the ark we better take as regard for the salvation of souls, which are joined and bound together inside and out with pitch in the unity of the Holy Spirit and in the bond of peace. It was said that the ark was finished in a cubit; for so it was fitting to signify the unity of the Church: for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Hence that rich man in the Gospel, fearing the flood of this life, said to the Lord of all things himself: “Good teacher, what shall I do to obtain eternal life?” And the Lord, showing him the measures of that ark: “You know the commandments?” he says. And when he had told him many of them in number, the man, as though wishing to be joined to the ark as squared: “All these commandments,” he says, “I have kept; what yet remains for me?” And the Lord, showing that the perfection of our ark consists in one cubit: “If you wish to be perfect,” he says, “go, sell all you have, give to the poor, and come, follow me.” When he could not do this, because he was not squared on every side, he did not deserve to reach the cubit of the ark’s perfection. For he went away, as it is said, saddened. That the flood came upon the earth for forty days and forty nights shows in this number not so much the past as the present flood of souls, which are sunk on the rocks of the world and in the whirlpool of shameful deeds, in the shipwrecking waves of various pleasures. To escape these, Moses for forty days, Elijah for forty days, and the Savior himself for forty days are shown to have hallowed fasts, for this threefold reason: as necessary for the three times, before the law, under the law, and under grace. The end of the flood, then, which came in Noah’s six hundred and first year, signifies the end of the world after the six ages of the world, as was said, and the short span of the Antichrist. For even a long-lived man’s life is stretched through as many ages, until from infancy he runs on to old age. Now the Church, like the ark, is known to carry good and bad, like clean and unclean animals, until the end mentioned; of which our Lord and Savior testified in the Gospel, saying that his coming would be as it was in the days of Noah, suddenly upon people eating and drinking, buying and selling. Noah, then, believed what he saw foretold in the ark. He believed what was to be shown to us, the Church; with us he hopes for what will be declared at the last judgment.

Of the nations, in the three sons of Noah, which Christ the Lord found scattered and gathered. The nations foretold: from the three sons of Noah. Believed and seen in Genesis. From the three sons of Noah, then, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and as many wives of theirs, when the fruitfulness of mortals had increased, pride, the root of sin, could not perish, though the world had been struck by the flood. A proud tower is built by the proud, whose top was to reach heaven. Its undertakings are brought to nothing by God, the true artisan, through the confusion of tongues; for so it is written: “Behold, the whole earth has one language, and they have begun to do this, and now nothing that they have undertaken to do will fail them.” And God said: “Come, let us go down and confuse their tongues there.” God the Trinity speaks. For God to go down is to look into human acts or to draw near to their minds. These things, as they were foretold, were soon fulfilled. For the confused tongues not only could not complete what had been planned, but also marked off each of the nations scattered through the world by its own speech. Yet, once the sentence of the Creator and Judge had been fulfilled, love, through the humble grace of Christ, gathered under one teaching what proud impiety had wickedly scattered. So now let every tongue confess as one that the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the tower of strength, is in the glory of God the Father. When he was drunk, like Noah from the vineyard, and stripped in his passion, Ham his son, mocking him, received the curse in his son Canaan and passed it on to the nations. This the Lord Jesus took away, who became a curse for us.

Of the Hebrew nation, in Heber, which handed on its primacy to the Christian people. The Hebrew nation foretold, from whom it arose, holding the primacy among all languages. Believed and seen in Genesis. Among the others whom the confusion of tongues divided into nations, one was called Heber, in whom, it is said, the Hebrew language remained as the first, whence the Hebrew nation too received its name. That Hebrew was the first language is shown by that mystic title written by Pilate. For it was marked in three languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, which, holding the primacy among nearly all languages, were inscribed on the title of the same Creator, in that divine order which the prophet David testified before it happened, saying: “Do not corrupt the inscription of the title.” For the judge had written, of the crucified one, “King of the Jews.” When the Hebrews read this in their own language, which was placed first, and demanded that it be changed, Pilate, moved by God, said, “What I have written, I have written,” so that the integrity of the title might remain inviolate, as was promised, and the language of the Hebrews might rightly be marked, as a testimony, in the chief place, which it afterwards lost. From this Heber, then, the line runs down to Abraham, from whom, as some say, the Abraei [perhaps Abrahaei] were named, as the Hebrews from Heber. That this people is the firstborn, the Lord himself attests, saying, “Israel is my firstborn”; but it is shown more fully in the book of Deuteronomy: “When the Most High divided the nations,” it is said, “he set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God. And his portion became Jacob, Israel the lot of his inheritance.” But let us retrace in order by what path this Jacob, who was called Israel, comes, so that the promises to Abraham, whose grandson he is, may be filled out.

Of the land of the living, to belong to the Christian people, in the calling of Abraham. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. From the seed of Shem, son of Noah, then, Heber was born, whose son was Peleg, in whose time the languages were divided. Peleg begot Reu; Reu begot Serug; Serug begot Nahor; Nahor begot Terah; Terah begot Abram, who was afterwards called Abraham, whose grandson was Jacob. Scripture testifies that this Abraham was born among the Chaldeans. Called out of that nation, because he believed first, he deserved by the grace of the one who called him to be called the father of faith. The Chaldeans, devoted to astronomy, while they cunningly scrutinize the positions of the stars, erred greatly about the worship and religion of God, and not seeking the Creator of all things at all, became futile, as Paul says, in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. From these Abraham, kindled not by cunning about the creature but by the warmth of divine worship, was separated from the foolish and senseless by the Lord’s gift. “Go out,” God said to him, “from your land and from your kindred, and come into whatever land I shall show you.” At the command of the one who called him, leaving his first home and kindred, he believes by faith what he has not seen, until he should deserve to see all that he believes. Going out, then, from the land of the Chaldeans, he lived in Haran, where he was filled with all riches. He received also the future inheritance of that land in the hope of his seed. When, from an aged and barren wife, and himself declining into old age, he awaits an heir through the promise, this father of faith shows us that we need not fear the long outcomes of our sojourning, and that we must always hope in Christ the Lord, by whose grace we shall possess the everlasting inheritance in the land of the living, of which the prophet David says: “I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.”

That the Christian people is multiplied like the stars in the seed of Abraham. The promise of multiplying the seed of Abraham. Believed and seen in Genesis. The word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, saying: “Do not fear, Abraham; I protect you; your reward shall be very great.” And Abraham said: “Lord, what will you give me? For I am without children, and the son of the steward of my house is this Damascus Eliezer.” And Abraham said: “Since you have given me no seed, my home-born servant will be my heir.” And at once the word of the Lord came to him: “This one shall not be your heir; but he who comes forth from your womb, him you shall have as heir.” And he brought him outside and said to him: “Look up to heaven and count the stars, if you can count them.” And he said: “So shall your seed be.” And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. The apostle Paul confirms this, saying: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” And Isaiah says: “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” Faith is the foundation of every future thing; the summit of its building has taken possession of earth and heaven in Christ Jesus, who is of the seed of Abraham.

Of the royal priesthood of the Church, in the priesthood of Abraham. A promise in which Abraham, when God asks a sacrifice, is shown to be a priest. Believed and seen in Genesis. In a second oracle the Lord said to Abraham: “I am he who brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans, to give you this land and that you might possess it.” And he said: “Lord, how can I know that I shall possess it?” And the Lord said: “Take a heifer three years old, and a she-goat three years old, and a ram three years old, a turtledove also and a pigeon.” Taking all these, he divided them in the middle and set each part opposite the other; but the birds he did not divide. And birds came down upon the divided carcasses, and Abraham drove them away. And when the sun was setting, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham, and a great and dark horror seized him. And it was said to him: “Know for certain that your seed shall be strangers in a land not their own, and they will bring them into slavery and afflict them four hundred years. But the nation which they serve I will judge, says the Lord. Afterwards they shall come out with great substance. But you shall go to your fathers, nourished in a good old age. And in the fourth generation they shall return here; for the iniquities of the Amorites are not yet complete.” In this promise and in this threefold sacrifice (which was done in the present in such a way that it yet signified other things to come), recognize, spiritual reader, in these three animals the three times mentioned above: the three-year-old heifer, the people before the law, frisking without the yoke of the law; the three-year-old she-goat, under the law, which the people transgressing the law must sacrifice for sin; the three-year-old ram, under grace, the perfect sacrifice, which Abraham offered figuratively in place of his son, our ram Christ, three years old, proclaimed in three times, received on the altar of the cross for the sin of the people (see Augustine, City of God 16.24). For “for the iniquity of the people,” says Isaiah, “he was led to death, and by his bruises we are all healed.” That these animals were set divided opposite one another, the apostle Paul shows to mean the divisions and schisms to come, by which they would fight one another, saying: “There must be heresies, so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you.” For before the law Cain’s sacrifice was rejected, as a heretic’s; and in the law the earth swallowed alive Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the authors of heresies and schisms. And under grace the doctrines of many heresies, the birds settling on the divided carcasses of the dead, are driven off by Paul when he says: “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Abraham was commanded in that sacrifice not to divide the chaste turtledove and the simple dove. For spiritual sons who are chaste and virgins who are simple, while they offer in love the sacrifice of unblemished faith, cannot be divided at all. That the seed of those who sing to their Lord is a stranger in this life, David testifies, saying: “I am a sojourner and a stranger, as all my fathers were.” And that they were oppressed in Egypt four hundred years, while they groan and say, “Woe is me, for my sojourning is prolonged,” is plain enough. That they return to freedom from this Egyptian slavery in the fourth generation shows our freedom rescued from sin, which, filling out the three times so often mentioned, will rise up as our whole freedom in the fourth, which the Lord calls the regeneration, declared through the true resurrection, when the sins of the Amorites have been filled up, that is, of those who do not believe the Gospel of God. For “whoever does not believe,” as the Lord says, “is already judged.”

Of the perfection of the name, by which Abraham is father of the nations in faith. A promise in figure. Believed and seen in Genesis. In a third oracle the divine promise is confirmed even in his name. He was called Abram before; the Lord his Creator calls him Abraham, and the meaning of the name is marked: “I have made you,” he says, “the father of many nations”; so that this promise might be believed to belong not only to the fleshly offspring of Abraham, from which the Jewish people came. Glorying in this they said in the Gospel: “We have Abraham as our father”; and they were answered by him who had given both such a name and faith: “Do not glory in this,” he says; “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham”; so that Abraham might be, in Christ, father of many nations through faith, though he was father of only one nation by generation.

Of circumcision, by which the Christian is circumcised in heart. A prediction in figure. To this Abraham, already called through faith, a certain covenant of circumcision is enjoined, as a sign of the old testament which he and his descendants are commanded to keep; and every soul that has not observed circumcision is to perish from the people. It is asked, perhaps, why it pleased God that only every male of those who had vowed themselves to obey God should be circumcised. This was done as a great sacrament, which looked to the middle and past times and to the future. For by reason of the first transgression man was struck in that part of the body by the serpent’s venom, and, burning with the heat of lust, was ashamed of things that had not been created shameful; and he decided in modesty to cover what had been immodestly laid bare. Therefore God, the Creator and Judge, enjoined the sign of circumcision in that part of the body, tempering the disease of lust wrongly conceived from the due union, so that through the good of continence and the beauty of integrity he might repair what had been corrupted. For the circumcision of the heart, which shines in the New Testament, was figured in that sign: for there are eunuchs who have castrated themselves for the kingdom of God. And God rebukes and reproaches the sons of Israel, uncircumcised in heart.

What Isaac, whose name means laughter, shows in Christ by his birth. A promise in figure. Believed and seen in Genesis. Again the divine majesty appeared to the same Abraham at the oak of Mamre in three men, bringing the promise of a son to be received very soon and confirming what had been said before; and by him Sarah his wife is also asked after. For God said to Abraham: “Where is Sarah your wife?” He said: “She is in the tent.” And the Lord said to him: “I will return to you at this season, in due time, and Sarah shall have a son.” Hearing this, Sarah, who was at the door of the tent behind him, laughed within herself, saying: “It has not happened to me up to this time, and my lord is old.” The Lord said to Abraham: “Why did Sarah laugh within herself, saying, Shall I truly bear, now that I am old? Is anything impossible for the word of God?” And again he confirms: “I will return to you in due time, and Sarah shall have a son.” Sarah, afraid, denies that she laughed; that she laughed is proved by the truth. When she conceived and gave birth, his name was called Isaac, which is interpreted “laughter.” For this reason Sarah herself, when she was already carrying the little one in her arms, said: “God has made laughter for me. For everyone who hears that an old and barren woman has given birth will rejoice with me in laughter.” The offspring of laughter is received, in whom Abraham received the promised blessing of all the nations. For the nations which now believe in Christ, who came in the flesh through that old man, confess their Savior, who was turned into a laughingstock by the Jews, and, glorifying him, acknowledge that his shameful passion is their true freedom.

Of the day of the future judgment, in Sodom and Gomorrah. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. The Lord showed the same faithful servant Abraham the foretold overthrow of the impious cities of the Sodomites and Gomorrahites, saying: “The cry of the Sodomites and Gomorrahites has multiplied, and their sins are exceedingly great. Going down,” he says, “I will see whether they have done according to the cry that has come to me; and if not, that I may know.” God went down, as is said here, because he did not hide his just judgment from his most dear servant; and through a kind of agreement which the humble suppliant intercessor had received, knowing that God rightly wished to destroy those cities, he sought to soften him in his anger, in this way: “Do not destroy,” he says, “the just together with the impious. Shall the just be as the unjust? If there are fifty just in the city, will you destroy them? Will you not spare the whole place for the sake of those fifty just?” And when God had promised that he would not destroy them if he found fifty just in those places, he took from this the boldness to speak, using the devout words of one who prays, confessing himself mud and dust, and with wonderful calm he held back God’s sentence from fifty down to ten. Even that small number, it is said, he did not find there. And rescuing Lot with his wife and two daughters from the peoples and cities which he was about to consume with heavenly fire, he warned those he freed not to stay in all that region and not to look back. Lot’s wife, despising the command and looking back, was made a pillar of salt, and by her example seasoned the foolish, so that those who make progress in the holy purpose to which they strive should not look back with harmful curiosity; and this woman showed that such people cannot escape the appointed punishments, for she lost what she had escaped. Such people the Lord rebukes in the Gospel, saying: “It will be more tolerable for the land of the Sodomites on the day of judgment than for you.” But those whom Christ’s grace frees he admonishes through the Apostle: “Come out from their midst, and be separate, says the Lord.” Again the Apostle: “Forgetting what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead.” “No one who looks back and puts his hand to the plow is fit for the kingdom of God.” When the Lord spoke, he said: “Remember Lot’s wife.” Those, then, await the day of judgment without fear who glory in the cross of the Lord, by which the world has been crucified to them, and they to the world. For the Lord strikes the hearts of the faithful with fear, saying: “As it happened in the days of Lot, so will be the coming of the Son of man”; lest that day find them suddenly weighed down with carousing and drunkenness. Of it the Apostle says: “For the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

Of Christ’s passion, in Isaac to be sacrificed. A prediction in figure. Believed and seen in Genesis. God tested Abraham, saying: “Abraham, Abraham.” And he said: “Here I am.” And the Lord said: “Take your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go into the high land, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will tell you.” He orders that one to be offered to him as a burnt offering in whom he himself had promised by so many divine oracles that the seed of Abraham would be multiplied like the stars of heaven and the nations be blessed in him. Yet the father does not hesitate to fulfil in his son what was commanded, knowing, as Paul says, that the Lord could raise him even from the dead. But in the one tested in his son, the strength of the faith conferred on him is shown not only for itself but also as set before us for imitation, and so that the authority of the new precept from the Gospel might stand: “Whoever loves father or mother above me is not worthy of me; or whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” For though Abraham knew that he was not yet fit for offspring, he obeyed God’s command with this intention, that he knew God was not forgetful of his promises, and that a mystic sacrament of the Lord’s future passion was being enacted: looking, that is, to that day of our redemption of which the Lord, rebuking the Jews in the Gospel, says: “Your father Abraham longed to see my day; and he saw it and was glad.” Abraham saw the day of the passion of the Son of God figured in his own son: in that he did not spare his only son; in that he hastened for three days with the innocent victim as though to the altar of the cross; in that the son, patient and without a word, like a lamb before its shearer, offered his devoted neck to his father to strike; in that Isaac did not resist being bound on the wood which he himself had carried; in that the ram caught by its horns in a thicket, showing Christ crowned with thorns, appeared to be sacrificed in Isaac’s place; in that Isaac was not sacrificed, because the resurrection was reserved for the Son of God. Believing all this, Abraham was found worthy to see in figure what we know to be fulfilled through grace.

Of God’s oath, by which Abraham’s seed is extended beyond number in Christ. A promise to Abraham in figure. Believed and seen in Genesis. “By myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you did not spare your most beloved son for my sake; I will bless you and multiply your seed like the stars of heaven and like the sand on the shore of the sea. And your seed shall possess the cities of their enemies, and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you obeyed my voice.” The book of Numbers shows that Abraham’s seed was indeed multiplied and reached a great number; yet we read that it was not beyond number. But God’s promise contains “like the stars of heaven and like the sand of the sea,” which cannot be numbered; and the very order of things shows that this blessing has been fulfilled in Christ through the faith of the nations, whose father Abraham is; and so do the oracles of the prophets, which testify through David and the others that the children of Abraham, not only by the seed of the flesh but by faith, are called to an infinite number. “In him,” he says, “all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed; all nations shall call him blessed.” Again: “All the kings of the earth shall adore him; all nations shall serve him.” And Isaiah: “There shall be the root of Jesse, and he who shall rise to reign over the nations; in him the nations shall hope.” The apostle Paul too says that the Jews are broken branches through unbelief, and that the nations have been grafted, like a wild olive, into the faith of the root, Abraham. Again he says: “That the nations should glorify God for his mercy”: the mercy by which, as he promised, taking away the heart of stone, he would give them a heart of flesh. For he calls stones those who worship gods of stone, when he says: “I tell you, if these are silent, the stones will cry out.” In a wonderful way those who were stones, made sons through grace, cry out: “Our Father, who are in heaven”; and those who were sons, made stones, say: “Make us gods to go before us”; for forsaking the living God, they served Baal and the idols of the nations. The nations, on the contrary, scorning idols, followed the living God. These things we see being fulfilled: those, namely, which were promised in his future seed through Christ, which Abraham also believed.

That Christ would take manhood from the thigh of Abraham. The mystic act that follows shows that Christ’s flesh was foretold to come from the thigh of Abraham. Believed and seen in Genesis. Abraham calls the steward of his house and says to him: “Put your hand under my thigh and swear by the God of heaven that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of this land among whom I dwell; but from my own tribe you shall take a wife for him.” That the God of heaven was in the thigh of Abraham, this order shows: Abraham begot Isaac; Isaac, Jacob; Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, among whom was Judah, from whose tribe came David; from him, through the series of generations, the virgin Mary, who bore Christ, who is the God of heaven, because all things were made through him.

Of the two peoples, Christians and Jews, in Rebecca’s twins. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. When the same Isaac had taken Rebecca, his kinswoman, as wife, and perceived that she was barren, he prayed to God, who had promised manifold offspring, for a child; and as soon as he asked, he received. When Rebecca had conceived, twins struggled in her womb. And she, taking it hard, said: “If it was to be so with me, why has this happened to me?” Isaac went with her to inquire of the Lord, and received this answer: “Two peoples,” he says, “are in your womb, and two nations shall come forth from your belly; and people shall overcome people, and the elder shall serve the younger.” Isaac received the two promised sons, recognizing that there would be not only two but two peoples, whom that mystic act has shown us unveiled. For as Esau, hairy, came forth first from the womb, the hand of the younger, Jacob, put out after him, took hold of his heel: a wonderful and great event that went before. This same younger Jacob, smooth, already in his boyhood supplanted his elder brother through the red cooking of lentils and took away his birthright; and the sacrament of so great a mystery could not be empty. That smooth younger Jacob signified the smooth and gentle Christian people, endowed with that gentleness by which the fury of the Gentiles had believed it could be consumed as harmless. This smooth people, then, through the red cooking, that is, the passion of Christ reddened with blood, willingly offered it to the greedy and raging Jewish people, whose figure Esau bore, who was also called Edom, when it asked; and the birthright which that one had, he sold, this one received. The Jew lost by covetousness what he had by birth; the Christian acquired by grace what he did not have by nature.

Of the same, what they did in figure. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. How wonderful, how great, how full of sacraments according to God’s promises are all the things done in these two twins, I will try to explain briefly, as is fitting. Isaac their father, blinded in his outward eyes but shining with inward light, promises the blessing to Esau, his firstborn son, if the son would prepare for his father the food he desired from his hunting. He goes off to carry out the command. The mother, who had heard the blessing promised to the elder, moved by God so that it might come to the younger, Jacob, prepares a mystic artifice composed with prophetic skill. She took the garment of her firstborn, which was with her in the house; she clothed the younger in it, and put the skins of kids on his arms and his bare neck, and fitted him who was what he was so that he could be seen as what he was not; as though she already showed us that one figured as Christ, who took not the flesh of sin but the likeness of the flesh of sin. Receiving also the law of the Old Testament, like the firstborn’s garment, the Lord said that he had come not to abolish it but to fulfil it. So arrayed, that younger son Jacob, who had already taken his brother’s birthright, usurps the blessing besides, offering his father the food prepared by his mother, and says: “Father.” And he: “Who are you, son?” “I am,” he says, “Esau, your firstborn. I have done as you told me.” And when the father recognized the voice of the younger son but, thinking he should feel him, found the limbs of the elder in the clothing, he was confused about his sons and became, as someone says, a pleasant error to his parents. Having received, then, the food which the mother had prepared, which the son offered and the father gladly accepted, he gave this blessing to the younger son: “Behold,” he says, “the smell of my son is like the smell of a full field which the Lord has blessed. May God give you,” he says, “of the dew of heaven and of the fertility of the earth abundance of grain, wine, and oil; and let nations serve you, and princes adore you, and you shall be lord of your brother, and the sons of your father shall adore you; and whoever blesses you shall be blessed, and whoever curses you shall be cursed.” All these things fit Christ the Lord; all the nations, blessed, run after his fragrance. When these things were done, the firstborn son Esau came too, already rejected by the favor shown to the younger. He too offers food to his father and says: “Let my father rise and eat of his son’s game, that your soul may bless me.” At this the father, terrified, said: “Who then is it who hunted game and brought it to me before you came in? And I blessed him, and he is blessed.” Blessed, the later people, the Christian, now says to the Father: “You have put gladness in my heart: from the fruit of their grain, wine, and oil they have been multiplied.” But to the elder people, the Jew, the Father says: “I will not take calves from your house, nor goats from your flocks. The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me.” “For your brother came with guile and took your blessing.” Because God loved Jacob but hated Esau, therefore, when the time was fulfilled, the sacrifices of the Jews having been rejected, the whole Christian people now acknowledges that a pure sacrifice is offered to his name, as was foretold; this people through grace has taken from the Jew both the birthright and the blessing. For of this people it was said: “You shall be lord of your brother.” For in those twins it did not come to pass: the younger offered gifts to the elder, professed himself his servant, and humbly bowed before him; so that what was then signified by the letter might now be made manifest to us in grace.

Of Esau, from whose seed came Job, and of Christ among the nations through faith. A promise believed and seen in Genesis. Rewards promised to virtue and patience. From the seed of Esau came the Idumean nation, in which, among the other chiefs, that most valiant athlete of God, Job, shone out, brought forward as an example of all patience, so that in the contest of the arena he might overcome the devil, the chief of all warfare, supported by God’s help. For since he was a just man and blameless before God, and God deigned to show what he was, to the devil’s confusion: “Have you considered,” God said to the devil, “my servant Job? For there is no one like him on earth.” And the devil said: “Does Job worship God for nothing? Have you not blessed his house and multiplied his flocks? But put forth your hand and touch all that he has, and you will see whether he blesses you to your face.” “Behold,” God said, “all that he has I give into your hands; only beware not to touch him.” A great contest takes place. The faithless and apostate angel attacks God’s faithful servant, and, as befits the malice he begot from himself, lays waste, routs, and destroys all the innocent man’s goods, and together with the whole inheritance consumed every heir. Yet though so many darts were thrown, Job remains unharmed; and by him, as by a soldier of God, the devil is struck with a single blow. “Naked I came out,” he says, “from my mother’s womb; naked I shall return to the earth. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has been done. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Defeated in this contest, the enemy proclaims another, greater. “Put forth your hand,” he says to God, “and touch his flesh and bones, and you will see whether he blesses you to your face.” “Put forth your hand” means nothing other than “Give power.” For the devil did not have this even over pigs, unless he had given it who under this authority handed Job over to him too, so that he should not exceed the limit of the command. “Behold,” God says, “I hand him over to you; only preserve his life.” When he had been struck with a grievous wound, the structure of his whole body rotting, all his limbs loosened, pus flowing, worms swarming, while his whole mind stood firm in his corrupted body, and the devil felt him strong within whom he had thought weak without, he armed the wife, whom at that moment he had left as necessary to himself, against her husband, and through the wife strikes that most valiant man from his own side. When the woman poured in the poisoned darts which she had taken from the enemy, she said among other things: “Say some word against the Lord, and die.” And at once he, remembering the fall of the first man, overcoming the new Eve, and in her that enemy who was fighting, said: “You have spoken like one of the foolish women. If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why do we not endure evil?” Laid low by these divine darts, the enemy was overcome through grace; the perverse angel gave way to the devout man, and the devotion of humble patience vanquished every assault of pride. For already through the just and mighty man were signified the footsteps of Christ that would pass to the nations, of whom David says in his person: “Into Idumea I will stretch out my shoe.” The apostle James too, strengthening the hearts of believers by the example of patience, says: “You have heard of the patience of Job, and you have seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is merciful and compassionate.” For Job, as victor, received double rewards. But to his own who fight, and conquer with his grace helping them, the Lord promises that he will give a hundredfold here and bestow eternal life in the age to come. We see this fulfilled in Valentinian, brother of Valens, who, when for Christ’s sake he spurned his post as tribune, obtained the rule of this world, and as a true confessor of Christ acquired eternal life.

Of Jacob, to whom Christ the cornerstone was shown in a vision. A promise in figure. Believed and seen in Genesis. Jacob too, son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, received the promise through certain things wonderfully done with him. For as he fled from his brother’s plots, the course of the setting sun gave him a place to lodge. There, with a stone placed under his head, he relates what was revealed to him in a dream: a ladder of wonderful greatness was shown him, whose top reached to heaven, on which the angels of God were ascending and descending, and the Lord leaning upon it and saying to him: “The land on which you sleep I will give to you and to your seed after you.” Waking, he set up on high, as a sacrament, the stone he had had at his head, and anointing it with oil he consecrated for us Christ the cornerstone, of whom the prophet says: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” And Isaiah: “Behold,” he says, “I lay in Zion a cornerstone, chosen, precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” This cornerstone, Christ, explained to Nathanael, who came to him, the dream Jacob had seen: “You will see,” he says, “heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” For he who descended is Christ himself, who also ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And the ladder points to the narrow way that leads to life.

That not all the Jews would believe, in the lameness of Jacob. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. As the same Jacob was returning from Mesopotamia with his wives, children, and servants, an angel met him on the way, who wrestled with him in a sacred struggle; and the angel let himself be overcome by the man, and the victor demanded a blessing from the vanquished. “I will not let you go,” he says, “unless you bless me.” And the angel said to him: “What is your name?” And he said: “Jacob.” “No longer,” he says, “shall you be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name, because you have prevailed with God, and you shall be strong with men.” And the angel touched the broad part of his thigh, and Jacob was made lame all his days. This lameness, which came from his thigh, signifies the Hebrew people itself limping, to whom the prophet Elijah says: “Why do you limp on both hams? If he is God, go after him.” And David says: “Strange sons have grown old, and have limped away from their paths”: because that people would not follow Christ, the way, on a straight road, but, limping through errors, wandered on various paths; while the Christian people through grace has taken hold of God, seeing God, which is what “Israel” means.

Of the sons of Jacob, and of Joseph, who bore the figure of Christ. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. Jacob had from his women twelve sons, whom Scripture attests as the twelve patriarchs. Not that holy men were pleased to have many women, that is, out of desire, but because God gave permission for the sake of multiplying offspring, who both permitted one and later at some time forbade it. For though he said in the law, “Cursed is the man who does not raise up seed in Israel,” yet through the prophet Solomon he set a limit to this permission: “A time,” he says, “to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.” Among these twelve patriarchs was Judah, from whom come the Jews, and Joseph and Benjamin, full brothers, of their father Jacob and their mother Rachel, whose every deed speaks of Christ and the Church. For it is said: “Jacob loved Joseph.” And God says of the Son: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” “Jacob,” it says, “made Joseph a coat of many colors.” And it is said to our Joseph, Christ: “The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety.” Joseph dreamed a dream and told it to his brothers. “I thought,” he says, “that we were binding sheaves in the field. My sheaf rose and stood upright; and your sheaves turned and bowed down to my sheaf.” That this would be in Christ, Jacob likewise showed in the blessing which Judah received from his father, when he said: “The sons of your father shall bow down to you.” For these say, “Come, let us worship and fall down before him,” who now say, “Our Father, who are in heaven.” And he himself in the Gospel says: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself.” Again he sees other sacraments in a dream and told them to his brothers: “As it were the sun and the moon and eleven stars,” he says, “were bowing down to me.” And of our Joseph, Christ the Lord, it is said through the prophet: “Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all stars and light”; and, “The heavens tell the glory of God”; and Habakkuk: “The sun was lifted up,” he says, “and the moon stood in her order.” The moon is the Church, made up of mortals departing and succeeding, which, after the sun, Christ, was lifted up, rises again in unbroken order; she stood in faith, with the stars shining for him who numbers them. For he says to his disciples, whose number is fixed: “Let your works shine,” as lights in the world.

Of the same, who like Christ the Lord was sent to visit the sheep. A promise prefigured. Believed and seen in Genesis. Joseph is sent by his father to visit his brothers and the sheep. And our Joseph, Christ the Lord, says: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” It was said: “His brothers hated Joseph because of his dreams.” And our Joseph, Christ, cries out about his brothers the Jews: “For they hated me without cause.” When they saw Joseph, his brothers said: “Here comes that dreamer: come, let us kill him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” And in Solomon the impious are reported to have said of our Joseph: “Come, let us kill the just man, for he is unpleasant to us.” And it continues: “He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a son of God. Let us see if his words are true, and test whether what is to come to him will happen.” He himself confirms this in the Gospel about the son who was sent to the tenants of the vineyard, how they said: “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.” Joseph’s brothers took him, stripped him of that coat of many colors, and threw him into the pit. Our Joseph too says this of his passion through the prophet: “They threw me,” he says, “into the outer pit, in darkness and in the shadow of death.” The Gospel’s authority relates that the tunic stripped from him was woven from the top, which even the soldiers would not divide, confirming the unity of the Church, from whose lot heretics are excluded; for it came by lot that one, that is, unity, should possess it. “Joseph’s brothers,” it says, “taking a kid from the goats, stained his coat with blood,” which they bring to their father with the false testimony that an evil beast had devoured him. Those three kinds of sacrifices which Abraham offered keep, in changed order, each its own time: for Isaac, a ram; for Joseph, a kid from the goats; for the lost son returning to his father, the fatted calf from the herd is killed. “Come,” says one of the brothers, “let us sell Joseph, and not kill him.” This the Jews too said about Christ, whom they handed over, sold, to Pilate for death: “It is not lawful for us to kill anyone.” And Joseph’s brothers sold him to Ishmaelite merchants going to Egypt for twenty pieces of gold. That our Joseph, Christ, was sold, the prophets Zechariah and Jeremiah testify. “They gave,” he says, “the price of him who was priced, thirty pieces of gold.” The Gospels relate that Judas received this from the Jews, so that Christ, sold off by the Jews, might pass to the nations. For Judas lost his life together with the price; the Jews lost both the price and Christ whom they had bought; but the nations, by possessing the gain of grace, have been possessed.

Of the same, in whom chastity is rewarded through suffering. A promise made and figured, by which Joseph in affliction is not forsaken. Believed and seen in Genesis. The Ishmaelites sold Joseph in Egypt to a certain chief of Pharaoh’s cooks. Not even this is idle, that it is said “to the chief of the cooks.” For by the cook is signified that red garment of Christ’s passion, by which the later people, the Christian, as has often been said, takes the birthright from the people that always knew how to sell Christ and not how to buy him by grace. It was said: “The Lord was with Joseph”; and ours says: “I am not alone, for the Father who sent me is with me.” His master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said to him: “Lie with me.” And when he resisted, telling of the favor he had found with his master, and fearing, out of the holy fear of God with which he was full, to offend, the woman watched for another suitable time and pulled him by his garments, saying: “Come, lie with me.” But he, leaving his garments in her hands, fled and went outside. And when her husband, his master, had come (it is known what a raging woman can do), iniquity lied to itself: she affirms falsehood for truth, and says she suffered the violence she had done. O shameless woman! “She burns, loving, feeds the wound in her veins, and is consumed by a hidden fire”: she loves, and persecutes; she desires, and rages. And because he does not consent to the sexual sin, she resolved that he must be killed, and seeks the ruin of the one she loves. This shameless Egyptian woman I would rightly compare to impious idolatry. For she too cast her eyes on our Joseph; she saw him fairer in form than the sons of men, and pulled him by his garments toward an unlawful consent. What are the garments of our Joseph, Christ, but the holy martyrs, of whom he says through the prophet Isaiah to his body, the Church: “As I live, says the Lord, you shall be clothed with them all”; and in the Song of Songs: “How red are your garments!” And Jacob in his prophetic blessing: “He will wash,” he says, “his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape.” When, then, Christians are dragged to be put on the rack for sacrificing to idols, what else is it but Christ being dragged by his garments? “Let the Christians be seized,” says the impious and shameless teaching; “either let them consent, or let prisons, exile, swords, fires, beasts, and other punishments be prepared for them.” In these our Joseph, Christ, is dragged by his garments. But when he says to his own, “Do not fear those who kill the body,” and they answer him, “For your sake we are put to death all day long,” he left his garments in her hands. And what is said, “He fled and went outside, leaving his garments,” shows the soul set free, which cries out through David: “Our soul has been rescued like a sparrow from the snare of the fowlers.”

Of the same Joseph, in whom Christ’s passion is figured. A promise believed and seen in Genesis. Christ’s passion promised through figures. Joseph is handed over to prison. Our Joseph, Christ, as Isaiah says, was counted among the wicked. While the wisdom of God guides the innocent among the guilty, it went down with him, as it is written, into the pit, and did not abandon him in chains. Here our Joseph, Christ, cries out: “I have become like one without help, free among the dead.” And what follows, that he found favor, of which he was full, with the keeper of the prison, and that all the keys and the whole custody were handed over into Joseph’s hands, was to be understood thus: that to him to whom heaven was subjected in the sun, stars, and moon, and the earth in the sheaves, the underworld of the prison too was subjected, so that to our Joseph, Christ, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. Nor do I think it foreign to the sacrament of the Lord’s passion that two of Pharaoh’s eunuchs were thrust down with him in that suffering, so that in a way the number of the three crucified might be filled; of whom our Joseph, Christ, by revealing mysteries, punished one with a deserved penalty and freed the other by undeserved grace. These sacred acts were performed then in figured events, so that all things might be kept to be revealed to us.

Christ’s resurrection figured in the same Joseph. A promise believed and seen in Genesis. The resurrection promised in figure. After two full years, as the third began, Joseph is brought out of prison. And our Joseph, Christ the Lord, rose from the dead on the third day. He is presented to Pharaoh: the resurrection is declared to the world. Joseph explains Pharaoh’s dreams, and instructs him with sound counsel that, to ward off the coming famine, grain should be stored from the abundance of seven years by a wise man, and the granaries filled. And our Joseph, Christ the Lord, gave the world, running toward its end through the number seven, such counsel. “Unless,” he says, “a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” For “those who sow in tears will reap in joy.” Joseph was given power in all Egypt by Pharaoh. And our Joseph, Christ the Lord, says after the resurrection: “All power has been given me in heaven and on earth.” Joseph sent his men through all Egypt and gathered grain as abundant as the sand of the sea. And our Joseph, Christ the Lord, sent his own through the world, saying: “Go, baptize the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And a numberless number of believers was gathered, like the sand of the sea. Joseph set up granaries through all Egypt; and through the whole world Christ the Lord consecrated churches, of whom John says: “He stores the wheat in the granary.” Joseph opened the granaries in the time of famine and supplied the peoples. This too is said of ours: “The eyes of the Lord are on the just.” And it continues: “to rescue their souls from death and feed them in famine.” The famine of the soul the prophet Amos shows: “I will give them, says the Lord, a famine, not of bread and water, but a famine of hearing the word of God.” And in the Gospel the Lord himself: “Because iniquity has abounded, the love of many will grow cold.” To us placed in this famine our Joseph, Christ the Lord, supplies from his granaries the divine provision of his body, and tasting it we see how sweet the Lord is. It was said that Joseph acquired all Egypt for Pharaoh. And of ours it is said: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.”

Of the same, who like Christ the Lord loved his enemies. A promise believed and seen in Genesis. Exaltation promised to those who have done good to enemies. Joseph’s brothers, driven by famine, came into Egypt to buy grain for a price from the one they had sold. Those who crucified our Joseph, Christ the Lord, came to him, so that, refreshed by his food, they might take away the hunger by which their souls were tormented. Those bow down; these bow down. Seeing his brothers, Joseph recognized them, but they did not recognize him. This too was fulfilled in ours, that his brothers did not recognize him: “For if they had known him, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.” Joseph made himself strange to his brothers and said to them through an interpreter: “You are spies; you have come to look at the tracks of this land.” This our Joseph, Christ the Lord, too says through the interpreter Peter to his persecutors: “You denied the holy and just one, and killed the prince of eternal life.” Joseph’s brothers repent of what they had done. To these it is said: “Repent.” Those say: “We are in sin concerning our brother”; and Reuben says to them: “Did I not tell you, Do not harm the boy? And you did not listen to me. Behold, his blood is required.” And the Jews who had said to Pilate, “His blood be on us and on our children,” say to the apostles: “What shall we do, brothers? Show us.” So as not to be thought spies, Joseph’s brothers testify that they are twelve sons of one father, that one is no more, though he was the very one to whom they were telling it, and that another, the youngest, is with their father. When Joseph heard mention of his full brother, burning with longing for him, he said: “By this I will prove that you are not spies, if your youngest brother comes with you.” And taking Simeon from them, he bound him before their eyes and handed him over to custody. If you consider our Benjamin, the youngest brother whom our Joseph, Christ, seeks, he is that Paul, from Saul, of the tribe, as he himself says, of Benjamin, who declares himself the least of the apostles. In Simeon bound we might take Peter, whom fear bound with three bonds of denial and love loosed. But we know better that sins are bound and loosed through him, to whom it was said: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven too; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven too.”

Of grace figured in the same Joseph. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. Joseph ordered his brothers’ sacks to be filled with grain, and each one’s price that they had brought to be returned, so that the grace of our Christ might not be from works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. A second time Joseph’s brothers come with Benjamin, as they had promised; a second time three thousand of the Jews come to Christ, with Paul, the least of the apostles, following. Joseph saw Benjamin, his brother by the same mother, and wept; Jesus saw Paul raging against the Church, his mother, and had pity. For the same Paul says that Jesus appeared to him as to one untimely born. Benjamin was born at such a departure that he drove his mother to death: hence he was called the son of sorrow. And our Benjamin, Paul, says: “I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God.” Joseph said to the steward of his house about his brothers: “Bring these men into the house, for they will eat bread with me”; and ours says through the prophet to his brothers: “Come, eat of my bread, and drink the wine I have mixed for you.” Joseph gave gifts to his brothers; and our Joseph, Christ, gave gifts to men when he gave the Holy Spirit to his disciples. But Joseph gave the youngest brother, Benjamin, more than the gifts of his brothers. Our Benjamin, Paul, proclaims this too: “I labored more than all of them; yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” Again Joseph orders his brothers’ sacks to be filled with grain and the prices returned. The brothers of our Joseph too cry out that they have received grace for grace. Joseph had his cup secretly put into Benjamin’s sack; when it was searched for and threw his brothers into confusion, the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack. The cup of Christ’s passion, given secretly through grace, is recognized in Paul’s body; preaching it, when he threw the whole synagogue into confusion by his words, he himself confesses that it was found also in his own sack, when he says: “For I bear the marks of our Lord Jesus Christ in my body.” When Joseph now wanted to be recognized by his brothers, he cried out, saying: “I am Joseph your brother. Is my father still alive?” And our Joseph, Christ, to show himself to his brothers, said in the Psalms: “I will declare your name to my brothers,” whom he taught to say: “Our Father, who are in heaven.” Joseph said to his brothers: “Do not be afraid; it was not you who sent me here, but God.” And John the apostle says of ours: “For God sent his Son into the world for this, that we might live through him.” And he himself in the Gospel: “Thus it is written,” he says, “and thus the Christ had to suffer and enter into his glory.”

Of the descent of Jacob into Egypt, and of Christ the Lord into the world. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. Jacob, visited at Luz, is told to go down into Egypt; for God appeared to him, saying: “Do not fear to go down into Egypt; for I will make you a great nation there, and your son Joseph will put his fingers on your eyes.” And Jacob went down into Egypt with seventy-five souls, and Joseph his son met him; and when he saw him, he said: “I see you, son; now I will gladly die.” Something very like this is found in our Joseph. For when that venerable old man Simeon, a father in age, not by generation, had seen Christ, for whose sake he had been kept in his extreme old age in this light, as in Egypt, he said: “Now you let your servant depart, Lord, according to your word, in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.” He went down with seventy-five souls. The psalm of David too cries out: “In Judea God is known; in Israel his name is great.” Since, then, Israel means “seeing God,” everyone enlightened by grace, Jew and Greek, must be freed from this Egyptian slavery, even though he is pressed down by the hard yoke of the devil, Pharaoh. “The people grew,” says the book of Exodus, “and were multiplied in Egypt.” This happens through faith in the seed of Abraham, so that in Christ it may be multiplied, as was promised, like the sand of the sea; though the raging devil, Pharaoh, seeks punishments to kill the innocent, to be drowned in the river, thinking that what he sees multiplied must be diminished, so that the people may not increase. By God’s command the people increases by dying, and the power of the raging one is frustrated; which has also happened to our martyrs, and above all to the little ones killed for Christ by Herod: when these precious grains were sown, a great harvest of faith sprang up for the Church.

Of Moses, who bore the person of Christ the Lord, the Mediator. A promise of the Mediator made and figured. Believed and seen in Exodus. At that time Moses was born, and he was pleasing to God; he was nursed for three months in his father’s house. And these three months correspond to the three times so often mentioned. And when they could hide him no longer, his mother took a basket, smeared it outside with pitch, put the infant in it, and set it in the river. Figures succeed figures, while all of them by their action signify Christ and the Church. We find three things done in this Moses that are to be compared with our Mediator: namely, the priest to come in the flesh, the water of the river in baptism, and the wood on which he hung on the cross. Pharaoh’s daughter, coming down to bathe in the river whose waters our Moses had consecrated through the wood, recognized that he was one of the Hebrews’ infants, took him up, and brought him up as a son. While the teaching of this world came down to Christ, washed in the spiritual wave, it laid aside its pride, and, great as it was, receiving the little one through humble grace, joined to the person of the Church, it becomes a mother, though it is Christ’s daughter. For this reason it is written: “In place of your fathers sons have been born to you.” So while it took him to be educated, it is educated. For God chose the foolish things of the world, to bring to nothing through them the wisdom of the world. For all philosophy yielded to Christian teaching, which, fighting it to good purpose, destroyed the enemies with their own darts. So Moses, educated by the Egyptians, at once fought the Egyptians, so that in the Red Sea, as in baptism, all pride might be drowned. Through Moses the sons of Israel are freed from the Egyptians, and through Christ souls are freed from unclean spirits. When Moses had grown up, he saw an Egyptian wronging one of his own people; he avenged him and defended him by killing the Egyptian, and buried him in the sand. This too our Moses, the Mediator Christ, does, rescuing souls from the power of darkness in that multitude of Abraham’s spiritual seed which grew like the sand of the sea. He buries Egypt when the expelled demons cry out: “What have we to do with you, Jesus, son of David? Have you come before the time to destroy us?”

Of the same Moses, who like Christ brought peace to those who quarreled. A prediction made and figured, by which we are commanded to be peaceable with those who hate peace. Believed and seen in Genesis. On another day Moses saw Hebrews quarreling with each other, and began to bring them to peace, saying: “Men, brothers, why do you harm one another?” And the one who was wronging the other said: “Who made you judge or ruler over us? Do you want to kill me too, as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?” And our Moses, the Mediator Christ, cries out through David: “With those who hated peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them, they attacked me without cause.” And elsewhere: “They repaid me evil for good.” At that word Moses fled and became a fugitive in the land of Midian. And ours says: “Behold, I have gone far off in flight and stayed in the wilderness.” Moses took as wife the daughter of Jethro, priest of Midian, to signify that our Mediator took his bride, the Church, from foreigners. Moses, it is said, was feeding the sheep of Jethro his father-in-law in the wilderness. And our Mediator Christ, feeding the sheep, says: “The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” Moved by a terrible vision, Moses goes to see why the fire that had come down on the mountain did not burn up the bush. Our Moses testifies that he came to send fire on the earth, which he wishes to be kindled more and more to good purpose. For he himself says: “I am fire,” consuming vices, not men. When Moses, called, goes to climb the mountain, it is said to him: “Take the sandals off your feet,” so that the feet of the Mediator who brings good news may be free and beautiful. Moses is ordered to go to the sons of Israel and to Pharaoh king of Egypt, that he should let God’s people go out of his land, whose cry in hard slavery had gone up, and take up the mediation to come. Through Matthew our Mediator says: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Moses excuses himself that he is hindered in speech and has a thin voice. Ours says to the Jews: “My word finds no place in you.” Again, when God insisted that he go, Moses excuses himself on every side, saying: “Lord, provide another whom you may send,” so that the voice of our Mediator, of the human weakness he had taken up, might be signified, saying: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” Moses is told to take his brother Aaron as associate, himself to handle matters before God, and Aaron before the people; and signs and wonders are given him in his hand and in his rod. And it is said to our Mediator: “I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession: you shall rule them with a rod of iron.” By Aaron we can understand Paul, chosen to speak to the people, of whom our Mediator before God himself shows to Ananias, saying: “This man is my chosen vessel, to carry my name before the nations and kings and the sons of Israel.” For so Moses and Aaron, preaching to the Hebrew people, confirmed that they had been sent by God to rescue them from Egypt; and the people, hearing them, knelt and worshiped, and believed them as they worked signs. And when Paul preached to the nations and confidently promised Jews the salvation of souls through Christ, working signs, he turned the people with wonderful speed to the knowledge of God, and rescued even kings from the future judgment of God.

Of the same Moses, who, like Christ the Lord, slew the devil. A prediction made and figured, by which the devil is overcome by God’s ministers. Believed and seen in Exodus. So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh, and not only told by divine command the words they had heard, but also displayed the signs that had been given them. The rod which Moses carried in his hand, thrown down before Pharaoh, became a serpent. Pharaoh’s magicians too were allowed to do such signs, so that they might be overcome by the divine power; throwing down their rods, they too showed the forms of serpents; and Moses’ serpent swallowed the magicians’ serpents, as the rod of the teaching of our leader Christ has consumed by divine power the doctrines of all pagans and heretics. They did this not only to signify by this figured act, but also so that the proclamation of the prophet David might resound, saying: “The Lord will send forth the rod of your power from Zion: rule in the midst of your enemies.” Moses shows another sign before the people: putting his hand into his bosom and drawing it out, it became leprous as snow; put back again and drawn out, it was restored to its own color. By the bosom is signified prayer for sin, as David says: “My prayer returned into my bosom.” That the hand drawn out of the bosom showed snow signified that when our Mediator, Christ the Lord, poured out prayer for us, our sins too are cleansed. So he himself shows through Isaiah: “If your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.” And the Church sings to him: “You will wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.” For we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Lord, and he is the propitiation for our sins.

Of the same, when the devil, like Pharaoh, is beaten with scourges. The plagues already foretold presented to hardened Pharaoh and his people, by which they were judged. Believed and seen in Exodus. As was promised to Abraham, they at last, unwillingly, let go the sons of Israel whom they had long held captive; and soon Pharaoh himself, who let them go, perished with his people by a fitting destruction and punishment. The ten plagues inflicted on Egypt are to be compared with the ten commandments which the people received in the desert; with the Lord’s help we have undertaken to show this in such a way that they are proved to correspond to one another. The first plague of the Egyptians: the waters were turned into blood through Moses. And the first commandment contains: “Hear, Israel: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no gods besides me. You shall not make for yourself any likeness.” Those, then, who leave the one true God and serve false gods wallow in flesh and blood; and flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God. For corrupt morals deserved to have the element of water corrupted. So the waters are changed into blood, because by sacrificing their sons and daughters to demons they shed innocent blood, rejecting the true God, Christ, the fountain of pure water; by whose grace the woman healed of the flow of blood showed the soul rescued from the flow of idolatry. The second plague of the Egyptians is the teeming multitude of frogs, defiling all Egypt with stinking filth. And the second commandment in the law is: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not cleanse such a one.” So every heretic, perjurer, and sacrilegious person, while his tongue sounds something other than the name of the Lord, croaks against God like frogs with the stench of his disputation. Deceitful lips speak with a double heart. And not without reason are they compared to these animals, who in the swamp of the rebaptizers do not wash away the filth they have amassed but rather heap up their offenses. The third plague of the Egyptians is the gnats, swarming through the whole air, tormenting the Egyptians with their pestilent bite in the midst of the heat; in this plague all the magicians’ learning failed, and they confessed that the finger of God was in it; and when they too were afflicted, their cunning remained empty and vain. And the third commandment in the law is that unless the rest of the sabbath is observed, the soul shall perish from its people. This rest the prophet David proclaims in the person of the Lord, saying: “Be still, and see that I am God.” Those, then, who make a vow and offer themselves to God, and are free for his word, keep a spiritual sabbath, like Mary, who chose the better part. Those who turn aside from it into strangling, entangled in worldly cares, are hurt by the pestilent bite of this plague, in the soul that is to be redeemed through our leader Jesus, who is Lord of the sabbath. The fourth plague of the Egyptians is the dog-fly, that is, the canine fly, inflicting pains with its bites even on the private parts. And the fourth commandment in the law is that parents are to be honored. This is the first commandment that refers to men, since the earlier ones are seen to be assigned to the Godhead. Those who do not honor their parents with the respect commanded are like dogs, exercising the madness of their foulness, and cannot be long-lived on the earth. To such the Lord says in the Gospel that what is holy must not be given; and from their company the Canaanite woman, cleansed by faith, with her humble and devout barking, obtained grace for herself and health for her daughter with no preceding merits. The fifth plague of the Egyptians is the sudden death of all cattle and beasts of burden. And the fifth commandment of the law is: “You shall not kill.” Not only those who rage with the sword, but also those who rage with hatred, are murderers. For John the apostle says: “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” Such people fall with a sudden rush like the animals of Egypt, because no murderer has life abiding in him. The sixth plague of the Egyptians is boiling blisters and running sores. And the sixth commandment of the law is: “You shall not commit adultery.” What adulterers suffer in the soul this plague demonstrates. For unless the sores of the foulest love and boiling lust disturbed the reason of the mind, he would surely not be an adulterer, nor, as it is written, would he gain the ruin of his soul through want of sense. And though such people are punished even here by human laws, “fornicators and adulterers,” as our Paul says, “God will judge.” The seventh plague of the Egyptians is hail mixed with fire, overthrowing not only every animal but even the trees and shrubs. And the seventh commandment is: “You shall not steal.” This is the comparison: the thief brings upon the walls and houses of others what raging hail does in the fields; and he is liable to the general law by which it is said: “What you do not wish done to you, do not do to another.” The eighth plague of the Egyptians is the multitude of locusts, covering everything and destroying it to the roots. And the eighth commandment in the law is: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” For the forger, inventing many and various things, gnaws like a locust at the reputation, life, and deeds of others, until he destroys to the roots the whole person against whom he contrives falsehoods. But a false witness will not go unpunished. The ninth plague of the Egyptians is the thickest darkness, full of deadly images and terrors. And the ninth commandment of the law is: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” What is worse than evil desire, which so blinds the whole mind that, forgetting not only the fear of God but even the very penalties of the laws and an infamous death, no light remains in the adulterer, whom deadly darkness wholly occupies? Those whom grace frees from these it admonishes through the Apostle, saying: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord: walk as children of light.” The tenth plague of the Egyptians is the death of all the firstborn. And the tenth commandment in the law is: “You shall not covet anything of your neighbor’s.” That evil desire is firstborn is shown by the fact that the devil, Pharaoh, himself desired to be what he was not, and Adam, who threw himself into death through covetousness. The vices of his angels, through whom death entered the world, as the firstborn of the Egyptians in this world as in Egypt, our leader has slain, while he teaches us to renounce the devil, his pomps, and his angels: so that where sin abounded, grace may abound all the more.

Of the Passover figured, and of Christ’s passing to the Father. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Exodus. The Passover, which means passing over, in which is enacted every act of our faith and the sacrament of the Lord’s passion, God commanded Moses to be done thus: that the Hebrews should ask the Egyptians for vessels of gold and silver and for clothing, and, taking them, should despoil the Egyptians, who lent them under the pressure of the loss of their firstborn. Fearing for themselves, they drove the Hebrews out quickly with all they had given them, so that, as the prophet says, the reward of their labors might be paid to the just. For they had built two cities for the Egyptians, for which those spoils were not taken by theft, but a wage was paid. The mystic passing itself was this: a lamb without blemish, a year old, was to be killed by divine command in each household, and the doorposts of the house smeared with its blood; not a bone of it was to be broken; it was to be eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, with loins girded, in all haste, and nothing of it was to be left till morning. While all these things were figures, the authority of the Gospel tells how they were fulfilled, which commands us to eat the flesh of the lamb until the morning that will have no evening, that is, until the resurrection, not with the old leaven but with the unleavened bread of sincerity, with the doorposts marked with his blood, on whose foreheads his cross shines. It is said “with bitter herbs,” for those who lead a bitter life in mourning; but they are blessed, for they shall be comforted. That the Egyptians were despoiled by our people we gather in this way: all worldly knowledge, in which, born above others, they took pride, and moral wisdom, passed to Christ, so that he possesses them humbly with right faith, and the proud people rightly loses them. The Hebrews, driven out, are led through the desert, because for every Christian who renounces the world the narrow and confined way that leads to life is necessary. A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night showed this people the way, because a Christian man’s steps are directed by the Lord, and he will delight in his ways. And when the desert and the shore of the Red Sea had received the people, Pharaoh, hardened, so that he might perish entire with his own, joined chariots and horsemen and pursued the fugitives. This the raging devil does with his vices and angels, when he pursues our people as they flee from him. For everyone who renounces these, hastening to baptism as to the Red Sea, flees the enemy, so that the Savior may find him.

Of baptism, as in the Red Sea. A promise made and figured in baptism. Believed and seen in Exodus. The Lord said to Moses: “Why do you cry to me? Tell the sons of Israel to close ranks, and you, lift up your rod over the sea and divide it, and let the sons of Israel go through the midst of the sea on dry ground. For I will harden the heart of Pharaoh and of all the Egyptians, so that they will pursue them, and I will be glorified in Pharaoh and in all his army.” When this was done, the sea, carrying out the judgment of its Creator and King, fulfilled the commands of the divine sentence, punishing the rebels well: for the innocent it provided a way, the waves cut back and the flood suspended, as they walked on dry dust; and the wave, brought back on itself, sank the enemies to the bottom. And the avenging water, consecrated by the word, reddened with blood, struck by the wood of the cross in the mystery of the rod, gave salvation to those coming to the Savior, but thrust the sins, with their author the devil, like the Egyptians with their king, into the deep. This is our God, of whom the prophet Micah says: “He will turn again and have mercy on us, and will sink all our sins into the depth of the sea.” After hard exile, after the labors of the desert and the crossing of the Red Sea, the victor’s palm received the people of God; though at Marah the bitter water wearied them in their thirst, which, when wood was cast into it, became sweet, showing that the thirsty Christian, as soon as he has drunk the bitter cup of the passion, is to be freed from all bitterness by the sweetness of the wood of the cross. Hence Paul too says: “Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world.” For the same place which gave that people rest, with twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, was consecrated in our mysteries. For after baptism the streams of pure teaching of the twelve apostles, as springs, overflow to satisfy hearts, to which the holy psalm sounds: “In the churches bless the Lord God from the springs of Israel.” And in the seventy palm trees the whole number of the holy martyrs in their thousands is marked, who, fighting for the truth even to death, receive the palm of the upward call. These too the Apocalypse of John the apostle marks, saying: “I saw a great crowd, which no one could number, from every tribe, people, and tongue. And they were clothed in white robes, and palms were in their hands,” which that palm, Wisdom, who was exalted in Kadesh, gave to the victors.

The bread of heaven in the manna, which is Christ. Manna from heaven promised. When the bread they had brought with them from Egypt was used up, the people, murmuring, asked Moses for bread, longing also for the meat of Egypt. But that mediator Moses obtained bread and meat for them from the Lord. The people are ordered to receive bread in the morning and meat in the evening. But these were figures of us. For first the people received to eat that holy bread which came down from heaven, and afterwards the flesh of Christ offered in his passion, of which the Lord himself says: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, you will not have life in you.” The holy people fed on the manna under a fixed daily measure; if anyone exceeded it, he threw it away corrupted by worms and rotten, cheated by the greed of his avarice and intemperance. Such people Paul, the teacher of the nations, reproaches, saying: “Having food and clothing, let us be content with these. For those who want to become rich fall into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge a man into ruin and destruction. For the root of all evils is covetousness.” This is the rottenness, and these the worms, of those who, while the world perishes, desire their riches to increase and are not content with daily bread. But the same people in the desert murmured again against Moses, for want of water to drink. When Moses asked the Lord, it was said: “I will go before you,” he says, “to Horeb; and I will stand upon the rock, and you, coming, shall strike the rock, and water shall come out, and my people shall drink.” This was done. And David testifies: “He split the rock in the desert, and gave them drink as from a great abyss.” What this rock is, the apostle Paul explains, assigning everything that was done then in mystery to Christ the Lord: “Our fathers,” he says, “were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. And all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ.” This rock, satisfying us too, says: “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give will never thirst; but it will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” This rock, struck on the cross, brought forth blood and water, with which they are soberly made drunk.

Of overcoming enemies by the sign of the cross. A promise in figure, by which we are commanded to overcome all our adversaries by the sign of the cross. Believed and seen in Exodus. This people, in which our whole life is figured, was met by Amalek and the whole hostile nation with its leader, declaring war on an untrained people which it believed it could easily overcome. When battle was joined and the adversaries were prevailing greatly, Moses, stretching out his hands to God, expressed the likeness of the Crucified. By this sign the enemies fell; when Moses’ hands drooped, the adversary was stronger and won. But that Moses’ hands might be steady, Aaron and Hur held up his hands and made them firm with a certain steadiness, and Amalek fell, fled, and was wholly destroyed. If we look here at the sign of our Mediator, when we recall him singing through David, “The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice,” in whose passion the sun and moon changed their aspect and course, what adversary spirit or what hostile power will be able to oppose this sign, and not rather all flee, provided the fighter’s hope hangs on the hands of the Crucified, through whom we are daily rescued from the power of darkness? Now let us run back over all the figured acts of the time before the law, since that people received the promises in all that was done in such a way that it too, looking far ahead in faith, left things to be believed for itself and to be seen by its descendants. Since, then, the people was led by sure predictions and promises to Mount Sinai, where Moses, receiving the law from the Lord, was to lay open heavenly laws for ruling the tribes (whence I suppose they are called Judaei, as bearing or following the jus, the law, of God): know, reader, that up to here the time before the law is concluded, like one day rising from the four corners of the world, namely of the patriarchs, the chief men Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with the ray of the East shining in Melchizedek, king and priest, in the number of twelve hours. Those born of them are also called our patriarchs; so that, when this has closed toward evening, another time, under the law, may rise like another day, begun through the other numbers.

Of the laws given on the mountain, and of the commandments of Christ the Lord on the mountain. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Exodus. God called Moses on Mount Sinai and gave him the law written on tablets of stone to hand on to the people, so that by keeping it duly they might receive the land of promise. But our Mediator, the Lord Jesus (whose figure Moses also bore), going up the mountain with his disciples, wrote the law of how men might become blessed, not on tablets of stone, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart by the Spirit of God; so that those who keep his commandments may obtain not land, but heaven and eternal life. To that same people, after the ten commandments had been set first, heavenly laws are handed down through Moses: on the succession of heirs; on the failure of an heir; that a faithful friend and member of the household should succeed in place of an heir; on restoring theft fourfold; on deposits or loans taken away by accident or by some force; on punishing adulterers; on a virgin violated in the field or in the city; on a pregnant woman who is struck; eye for eye, tooth for tooth; and the other things which the authority of divine law contains in these matters. The people under the law received them from Moses with the attestation by which it promised to do everything. So Moses, killing a calf in sacrifice and taking its blood as a testimony, with hyssop and scarlet wool sprinkled the people and the book itself, saying: “This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you.” To this our Mediator, Christ the Lord, not making void the law but fulfilling it, consecrated the new Testament with his own blood, not only for the free and powerful but also for the lowly and slaves who do his commandments; not without hyssop, which, mixed with vinegar, he drank in his passion. In this Testament there is no distinction of persons. For the apostle Paul says: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” who is the undivided and everlasting inheritance of the faithful. Faith must be kept toward a neighbor who lends or deposits, he commands through the same Apostle: “Guard the good deposit, Timothy.” And again: “Each looking not to his own interests, but also to those of others.” And through the prophet Solomon: “To the faithful man the whole world is full of riches; but to the unfaithful not even a penny.” Again Paul: “Let the thief no longer steal.” He too fears for the chaste virgin the serpentine corruption of the devil, when, conceiving with devoted affection, he declares that he is pregnant in spirit, saying: “My little children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.” These he desires to bring to birth unharmed in every respect, when he says: “For in Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel.” Our Mediator also added the commandments of the new law, tempering the punishment of the Old Testament. For whereas there he decreed that adulterers be punished, here he frees the adulteress with such mercy that he does not destroy the law, saying: “Go, and sin no more.” Not only must one not commit adultery, but one must not consent with the eyes to desire. Not only must murder not be committed, but whoever hates his brother is a murderer. Eye for eye must by no means be demanded, and, more, evil must not be repaid for evil. To him who takes the tunic the cloak too must be given up; to him who strikes on one cheek the other must be offered; with him who compels one to go a mile, one must go twice as far. One must do good to enemies and pray for persecutors. And the other things commanded in the Gospel by the heavenly founder of law himself are shown not to be contrary to the law from this: that there it was commanded that if an enemy’s animal falls on the road it must be raised up and not passed by; that one must not speak deceitfully with a neighbor; that a poor man’s pledge must not be kept until evening; that in the seventh year sown grain must not be reaped, and all the fruits of that year are to be left to proselytes, widows, and orphans; that in the same year freedom is to be given to Hebrew slaves; that tithes and first fruits of all produce are to be brought into the house of the Lord; that when the seventh year is completed a debt is not to be demanded back, and pledges released; and that in the fiftieth year all estates bound by securities are to be returned without the money being received. And all that the commandments of the new and the old contain, as I said, when examined, are found in no respect contrary to each other; since in the New Testament too examples of punishment, not small but terrible, have appeared: when the proud man is handed over to an unclean spirit, that he may learn not to blaspheme; when adulterers are handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus; when the deceitful liars Ananias and Sapphira are struck with sudden death; when he who did not have a wedding garment is sent into the outer darkness with hands and feet bound, the garment which is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. And whatever else from the old signs is known to be fulfilled in the new has been consecrated, as was said, together with the people itself, by the sacred blood of the Mediator.

Of the house of God in the holy Church. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Exodus. It is said to the same Moses: “See that you make the tabernacle as it was shown you on the holy mountain.” And it is declared from what offerings that tabernacle should rise. “The sons of Israel,” God says, “shall give as an offering hyacinth wool, twisted fine linen, purple, scarlet twice dyed.” From these, with varied work, the hangings of the tabernacle and also the priestly vestment were made, so that all mysteries might be revealed in the time of the future Church. For the coverings of the tabernacle divine authority commands hyacinth skins, others dyed red, and eleven curtains to be made of goats’ hair. That all these were signs, the testimonies of the law itself proclaim. In the hyacinth color there is a certain paleness agreeing with brightness, fitting fasts and alms. Hence the holy archangel Raphael says to Tobit: “Prayer is good with fasting and alms.” In fasts paleness, in alms brightness shines out, which show the figure of hyacinth. The clean fine linen, as the Apocalypse says, is the righteous deeds of the saints. As for “twisted”: through many tribulations the just must enter the kingdom of God. Purple is the royal garment, with which our King himself, Christ the Lord, was clothed in his passion. In the scarlet twice dyed the holy martyrdoms glow, which are dyed once in the baptism of Christ in blood and dyed again in the gore of their own shedding. For so the Lord himself was dyed, once in the Jordan, again in his passion, of which he says to his disciples: “I have a baptism to be baptized with, which you do not know.” This the red-dyed and hyacinth skins attest. Two sides of the tabernacle extend a hundred by a hundred cubits, and the two ends fifty by fifty: as mercy and truth meeting each other, justice and peace kissing each other, showing from four sides with joined corners a worthy tabernacle, the future temple of God, the Church, which in the hundredth and fiftieth number of the Psalms sings to its Lord mercy and judgment. Nor without mystery is the tabernacle covered above with eleven curtains of goats’ hair, so as to show that the whole world is guilty before God and lives under penance. For the psalm of that number has as its beginning: “Save me, God, for the holy man has failed.” And it tells why he failed: “For truths have been diminished among the sons of men”; to save them, Truth itself came down from heaven, deigning to dwell with men on earth. The interior of the tabernacle is adorned with these things. Twenty columns on each side of incorruptible wood prefigure not only the holy apostles but also the teachers of the churches, whom Paul too shows, saying: “Peter and John, who seemed to be columns, gave the right hand of fellowship to me and Barnabas.” For Barnabas was received into the apostolate in order, the Lord commanding and saying: “Set apart for me Barnabas and Paul for the work to which I have called them.” In this work Wisdom herself, building herself a house, set up seven columns; when the earth had melted away under the onset of sins, she herself strengthened its columns. The number of these columns on the two sides of the tabernacle is forty, showing the fortieth day of the Lord’s ascension, on which he said to his disciples: “Stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” The columns are joined by three bars, because the teachers of the churches are bound together healthfully by the bond of the trinity of faith, hope, and love; on silver bases and with golden capitals, as in works of mercy, so that all the beauty of the columns may rise in virginal holiness. The holy of holies is in the inner part of the tabernacle, holding the ark of the covenant full of mysteries. Into it the priest enters once a year with the blood of another; receiving from it the divine answer, he sounds that word which the Word, taking flesh for our redemption, consecrated as the ark not of the old but of the new Testament, “in which are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” To it the true chief of priests himself entered once with his own blood into the holy place; for Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To him the prophet says: “Arise, Lord, into your rest, you and the ark of your holiness.” The table placed there and the altar, which received the flesh being consecrated and the offerings of the one sacrificing, what else do we understand in these than the cross on which our Lamb was sacrificed? He, priest and victim, confirming on his table the sanctified bread, his consecrated body. For him the lamp, lit with the sevenfold Spirit, gives light to the whole tabernacle, for his lightning is like light. The courts of this spiritual tabernacle are the hearts of the devout who confess and praise God, of whom the prophet David says: “Into his courts with hymns; confess to him.”

Of the priesthood figured in Aaron, in Christ. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Exodus. The Lord commanded Moses to consecrate his brother Aaron to the priesthood, anointed with sanctified oil, so that the very name of anointing might show our Christ the Lord, anointed above his fellows. Aaron’s vestment too is described in mystic detail. “You shall clothe him,” he says, “with a tunic reaching to the feet of hyacinth wool, and put the ephod on his shoulders.” Two emerald stones, each engraved with the names of the sons of Israel, from which little chains of purest gold, running along, would hold the outer bosses of the ephod. Also a square of twelve precious stones of different colors, the breastpiece of judgment, to be placed on the priest’s breast, binding together the two principal parts of the ephod. A girdle too was to be given for his loins, and at the hem of the long tunic fifty golden bells and as many pomegranates were ordered to be set among the bells, so that the whole vestment, made with varied work of these kinds, might shine. For his head these were commanded: a turban of fine linen, and a miter from which a plate inscribed as a title hung, to consecrate the head and forehead of the priest. Each of these fits our priest, Christ the Lord: for the turban of fine linen on his head is, as we said, the righteous deeds of the saints; for Christ is the head of every man, from whom is all righteousness. The royal miter signifies the priesthood and the spiritual marriage. The inscribed title Pilate placed on our priest in his passion. The long tunic is the heart of the mercy of our God, of which the Apostle says: “Put on, as God’s chosen ones, the heart of mercy.” The ephod shows his rule, of which Isaiah says: “A son is born to you, and the rule is upon his shoulders.” The two stones on the shoulders are the two commandments of love of God and neighbor, in which the engraved names of the twelve tribes are contained, already marking in this number the twelve disciples whom our priest carried on his shoulders with perfect love. For “when he had loved his disciples,” says John the evangelist, “he loved them to the end.” The little chains from these, holding the bosses, are the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, continence. The breastpiece on the breast is all the teaching of the high priest drawn from precious morals, so that he may have, as the Apostle says, a reasonable service. That our priest is girded the ninety-second psalm shows: “The Lord has clothed himself with strength and girded himself.” In the fifty bells and as many pomegranates are the tongues of the churches, which through the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost rested on the disciples, divided in the form of fire. As the number itself shows; from which the pomegranates are the whole Church throughout the world, holding the peoples joined together, like the seeds within, in the bond of peace and grace, so that one covering of love may cover them. For as the bells, the apostles, rang out, the pomegranates were at once moved, saying in the Acts of the Apostles: “Are not these who speak Galileans by birth? And how do we each recognize in them the language in which we were born?” And it continues: “For in various tongues they magnified God.” But all these are moved by the steps of the free priest as he enters the holy of holies, where our Mediator has now gone up for us, to appear before the face of God.

Of punishment on the peoples who transgressed and did not keep the commandments of Christ. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Exodus. While the things we spoke of above were being commanded to Moses to be done on Mount Sinai, the people transgressed against God and fell into the crime of idolatry. It makes a calf of gold through Aaron, and offered victims and sacrifices to it in insult to the true God, saying: “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” “And they forgot God who freed them, who did great things in Egypt, wonders in the land of Ham, and terrible things at the Red Sea.” Through our priest too such apostate souls are rebuked in the Gospel. For he says thus: “If I had not done among them the signs that no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.” And punishment follows from the grave fault. “The Lord said to Moses: Go down quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have transgressed. They have made themselves gods of gold and said to them: These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And now let me alone, that I may destroy them, and I will make you a great nation, greater than this one.” The merciful Lord gives time for intercession when he says, “Let me alone.” For God did not depend on the will of man, but man on the will of God. And when Moses had entreated the Lord in many ways, offering himself for the sin of the people, he expressed in figure our Mediator, who laid down his life for the impious. For Christ, as the Apostle says, died for the impious. Yet that great sin does not lack punishment, for sin cannot be left unpunished. For Moses, coming down from the mountain and seeing the people running riot, stood in the midst of the camp and said: “Whoever is the Lord’s, let him come to me.” And when only one of the twelve tribes came over to him, he gave it this command: “Thus says the Lord: let each of you take his sword in his hand and go through from camp to camp, and let each one strike father, brother, son.” When they had done it without hesitation, Moses said: “You have filled your hands today for the Lord, each in his son and in his brother, that a blessing may be given you.” In these he shows such disciples of our Mediator as those to whom the Lord Jesus says: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father, mother, brothers, children, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” And again it is written: “Those who said to their father and mother, I do not know you, and to their brothers, I do not know you, and hated their children, these will keep your covenant.” This the holy martyrs did, called through grace, rewarded with perpetual felicity.

Of Christ the Lord figured in all the sacrifices. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Exodus. Again Moses is ordered to go up the mountain a second time. And he is commanded what the people should offer in sacrifices of animals and birds, under a fixed measure of fine flour mixed with oil, for sin, for solemnities, for vows, or for certain new moons and feast days. A calf, it is said, without blemish, referring to Christ, the truth of which these things are signs. “It will please God,” it is said, “more than a young calf that puts forth horns and hoofs.” The year-old lamb without blemish is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. The sheep from the flock is the same one of whom Isaiah says: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter.” The ram from the flock is the same Christ the Lord, who says through the prophet: “My horn shall be exalted like that of the unicorn.” And Habakkuk: “Horns,” he says, “are in his hands.” The kid from the flock is Christ the Lord, who, bearing not his own sins but those of others, brought into his tabernacle the skins of which the haircloth of the penance that is laid on is woven; who also says through David: “I will break all the horns of sinners, and the horns of the just shall be exalted.” In the turtledove and the dove we recognize the Church. For “the turtledove has found itself a nest where it may lay its young.” And he says that his bride, his chosen one, is one dove. Its young he orders to be offered in sacrifice when the Lord Jesus says: “Let the little children come to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” For little children too, when they are consecrated by his baptism, are buried with him in death, so that in them too the body of sin may be destroyed. The distinction between sins of ignorance and of knowledge, for which the sacrifice of a contrite heart, like fine flour fried in oil, is offered, is also distinguished in our sacrifice, when the soul says: “Do not remember the sins of my youth and of my ignorance.” Blessed Peter, less careful, fell into these when, as the Lord foretold his passion, not knowing that it had been promised through the Law and the Prophets, he said: “Far be it from you, Lord; be merciful to yourself; this shall not happen.” And the Lord: “Get behind me, Satan; for you do not mind the things of God but those of men.” This sin of ignorance, and the sin of knowing denial, and also of youth (presuming on which he had said to the Lord, “I will lay down my life for you”), he blotted out entirely by weeping, when he was looked upon and pierced with remorse. And he taught the sinner and presumptuous man in these things to say: “You turned away your face, and I was troubled.” “Heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.” What the people of Christ the Lord should offer for vows and solemnities the apostle Paul shows: “Let us offer,” he says, “the sacrifice of praise continually to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. But do not forget to do good and to share; for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”

That heretics are like the various kinds of leprosy, in the inspection of leprosy. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Leviticus. God commands Moses that the inspection and cleansing of leprosy be expiated by sacrifices of this kind. A pair of birds is to be offered to the priest, of which he offers one and lets the other go. Similar things are done with goats and other cattle. But these mysteries our priest, the Lord Jesus, showed plainly in the Gospel, saying: “Two will be in the field; one will be taken, the other left; and two women at the mill; one will be taken, the other left.” How great a difference there is between being taken and being left, the dove and the raven sent out of the ark show. For Noah, taking the dove back to himself into the ark, kept it to be preserved for sacrifice; the raven, roaming and wandering, he left. So he willed lambs to be distinguished from goats, so the wise virgins to be separated from the foolish, namely souls through grace, which, purifying them with a worthy offering, the sacrifice of a contrite heart (which the fine flour fried in oil signified), he brings with him into the eternal Jerusalem, whose spiritual bridegroom he is, into the homeland; the heretics being driven out, because lepers are sent outside the camp. Nor do I think the distinction of leprosy itself should be passed over, but should be discussed in some part, as far as is given. For leprosy in the head marks the Manichaeans, the Priscillianists, and their accomplices. For since Christ is the head of man, and God the head of Christ, while they oppose to God himself, the head, some prince of darkness or other in their disputations, they themselves, spattered with leprosy in the head of their error, deserved to be driven outside the camp. Leprosy in the beard marks the Arians, Photinians, and Nestorians, who, preaching our high priest Christ as less in divinity, or as a mere man, not God and man, and thinking otherwise of Christ than the Catholic faith holds and has handed down, as lepers in the beard attack him whom the prophet David introduces in the likeness of Aaron, calling Christ the Lord the true chief of priests: “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity. Like the ointment on the head, which runs down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron.” These, then, who leaving Catholic unity thought the ointment that ran down on our high priest’s beard should be defiled by the doctrine of their error, being found lepers in the beard, were themselves also driven outside the camp. Leprosy in the body: the Donatists, Maximianists, Luciferians, and others wrapped in similar errors, while they attack the body of Christ, the Lord’s Church throughout the whole world, with human slanders, cast out for the leprosy of their own body, are not received into the camp of God’s people unless they are cleansed by love by the true priest, Christ. But the Pelagians are disfigured on every side by the spot of leprosy, while they strive to pour the clouds of their perverse teaching on both head and body. On the head, in that they say God made man mortal before sin, he who did not make death and does not rejoice in the destruction of the living; for he created all things that they might be. On the body, in that they hold that God’s grace did not seem necessary to man, though one baptism has been consecrated for the remission of all sins. So, defiled in the whole by the spot of leprosy, they too were driven from the Lord’s camp. And when our priest inspects these and distinguishes the various sores, whether it is black in the Manichaeans, red in the Arians, or white or spotted in the Pelagians: “For there must be heresies,” says Paul, “so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you.” As long as souls are held in these various errors, as in the spots of leprosy, the Lord’s camp, as was said, does not admit them. When, pierced by God’s grace, they return from all these heresies to be cleansed, they present themselves in some way to our priest in those ten lepers. When, according to the precept of the Law, he sends them to the priest of the Jews, he cleansed them by the power of the Word as they went on the way, that is, in this life. For their cleansing that precious hen offered herself as a sacrifice, who says: “How often I wished, Jerusalem, to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!” She gathers even the unwilling, whom she knows to belong to the members of her unity; for the Lord knows those who are his. For one of the ten who were cleansed came back and gave thanks to our high priest; for unity knows that glory is to be not in itself but in the Lord, unity which would not put its hope in man, which understood that the good will is prepared by the Lord, which willed to be truly free because it knew that the Son had freed it. But those who are ungrateful to the one who cleanses, or persist in the spots of the leprosy of their error, cannot be received at all into the Lord’s camp. Against them, shut out, our high priest, closing the door, will say: “I do not know you”; so that, sent far off, they may remain outside: dogs, sorcerers, and all who love and make a lie. It was not fitting to say much here, since Origen, discussing each point in his work on Leviticus, has assigned to Christ the Lord what he understood with right faith.

That all things are made clean by alms, in clean and unclean foods. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Leviticus. Among all the commandments delivered by God to Moses on Mount Sinai for instructing God’s people, once the order of sacrifices was complete, the clean animals that the people might take for food were marked off from the unclean by this distinction: those that chew the cud and those with divided hoofs are to be held clean and taken for food. These signify souls that chew the cud of God’s word, with divided hoof, that is, of the two commandments. Of birds and fish too it was commanded by name which the people should touch and which refuse. That this law was given on tablets of stone in keeping with the hardness of heart of the Jews, the Lord testified in the Gospel. But since our earlier fathers, to whom it was revealed, have written out all the allegorical discussions of each of these in long volumes and splendid style, what need is there (given that Christ did not die for nothing, that one baptism has been given for small and great) to pursue them all? For in brief our Mediator, the Lord Jesus, in whom all these things sounded, rebuked the senseless Jews who followed the Law in the letter, not in the spirit, saying: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you tithe mint and cumin and every herb, cleaning the dish and the cup, while inside you are full of robbery and iniquity.” And passing among them alone, he showed a singular sacrifice, saying: “But I tell you, give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you.” O how short and concise a sacrifice, which cleanses the whole man inside and out! Alms free from death, and they purge sins. Alms do not allow one to go into darkness. Alms are a good gift for all who give them, before the most high God. These are what put out the perpetual fires; these resist sins; these feed Christ hungry in the poor; these clothe the naked; these visit the sick; these receive the stranger as guest; these take away all the distress of prison; these end all want; these bring remedies to the rich; these buy eternal life; these lend to God at interest; these hold the kingdom of heaven; these separate the lambs from the goats; these place us at the Judge’s right hand; these join us to the angels; these make sons of God out of slaves. Run together, sinners of every kind; run together, all who are lepers by vices and errors; run together, all who are stained and unclean with any crime whatever, penitent and making vows; run together to so great, concise, and single a sacrifice, offering with all joy. “For God loves a cheerful giver.” As each has what to offer, let the hand offer it. Our chief of priests so instituted this and commanded it to be acceptable above all, that he extended the measures of this sacrifice down to two mites and a cup of cold water, promising peace, even if these are lacking, to men of good will. These are the back parts of God, which, when Moses could not see his face, were revealed to him by the prophetic Spirit, in Christ Jesus, Lord and man, who is the eternal chief of all priests. These things are known to be fulfilled in Leviticus.

That the Jews rejected Christ, the manna, longing for the foods of Egypt. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in the book of Numbers. In the book of Numbers the people, with leaders appointed for themselves by Moses, is shown under a fixed census as to how great it was. Becoming forgetful too of their freedom and of grace, longing for the foods of Egypt, it was found to have murmured against God and Moses. “Who will feed us with meat?” they say. “For we remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing, the melons, the leeks, the garlic, and the onions. But now,” they say, “our soul is dried up, and there is nothing but manna before our eyes.” Sweet things are rejected; bitter things longed for. A dangerous and grave sickness of the soul brings this about, that it wishes to take harmful things and despises and refuses what is useful and profitable for health. So they rejected the manna, Christ, saying: “We know that God spoke to Moses; but as for this man, we do not know where he is from.” And rebuking them he says: “If you believed Moses, you would surely believe me too; for he wrote of me.” “For I am the living bread which came down from heaven.” Did they not reject the holy manna when they said to Pilate, who wished to release Jesus: “Do not release him, but Barabbas”? Barabbas was a notorious robber; asking that he be released to them, they professed that they longed for the robber’s crimes, as for leeks, onions, garlic, and the sharp, tear-bringing foods of Egypt. To those who murmured the divine majesty gave meat, not to refresh but rather to torment those who ate it. Since, then, the natural man does not perceive the things of the Spirit of God, and every lazy man is in desires, and the spiritual man rightly asked that the desires of the belly be taken from him, it has been shown that it is impious to desire or ask from God things harmful to the soul, and especially what is asked with murmuring. Let the soul flee offending God with such desire, if it wishes to enter the land of promise.

That his brothers spoke against Christ the Lord and the Church in Moses. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in the book of Numbers. “Moses,” says Scripture, “was meek above all men who were on the earth.” In this meekness our Mediator resounds, to whom David says: “You, Lord, are sweet and mild.” And he himself in the Gospel: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” Aaron and Miriam spoke against Moses their brother because he had taken an Ethiopian wife. And his brothers spoke against our Lord because he ate with tax collectors and sinners. When he said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a physician but the sick; I came not to call the just but sinners to repentance,” he showed that he had taken that Ethiopian woman from the nations, who says: “I am dark and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem.” Miriam, who had spoken against him, at once received the penalty of leprosy as punishment, which souls ought to fear that speak against Christ and the Church. For he says of such through the prophet: “Instead of loving me, they spoke against me; but I prayed.” For by Moses’ prayer Miriam was cleansed and obtained pardon, so that such a soul, with so great a high priest praying, may be healed of every fault. By divine command Moses sent twelve men chosen from the people to spy out the land of the Canaanites, and commanded them not only to look at the cities and people but also to bring back with them some of the fruits of the land. As they went and did what was commanded, a certain valley received them, from which they cut a cluster of grapes, which for its size was put on a pole, and, carrying it with pomegranates and figs, they returned to the camp, showed the fruits, and told what they had seen. In these three fruits the mysteries of Christ the Lord and of the Church resound. The cluster is Christ; the voice of the Church in the Song of Songs: “My beloved is a cluster of henna.” That it is carried on wood, recognize the Crucified. That it is between two spies, the prophet Habakkuk: “In the midst of two living creatures,” he says, “you will be known.” Again the Church says of herself in the same Song: “The vine has flowered, the pomegranates have flowered.” The fig, of whose leaves the first human transgressors made themselves aprons, shows original sin, which is absolved through the pomegranates of the Church, and the blood of the vine, which was shed for the remission of all sins. But those who had gone up with the spies terrified the people with these words: that the men of that promised land were bold, great men, and the cities fortified. They declare that they saw giants there too, in whose sight they themselves were like locusts on the earth. Struck with fear of these, the people murmured again against Moses and resolved to choose a leader to take them back to Egypt. This is the evil of those who, freed through baptism, from fear of demons look not ahead but back; forgetting God’s benefits and his wonderful deeds, and despairing that God’s promises will be fulfilled toward them, they choose to return to him whom they had already renounced, despising him in whom they had believed and denying his power. Rebuking them he says: “They have turned their backs to me, and not their faces.” And the apostle Peter: “It would have been better for them not to know the way of salvation than, knowing it, to look back from the holy commandment handed down to them. The true proverb has happened to them: The dog has returned to its vomit, and the washed sow to its wallowing in the mud.” But Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who had looked over the land, lying prostrate with Moses and Aaron the priests, do the duties of piety and call the people back from the purpose of their despairing will, saying: “Do not fear the people of the land, for they are food for us. Their time has departed from them, but the Lord is with us; do not fear them.” All these things resound for the Christian people too in the overthrow of idols, that they should not be apostates from God, fearing demons from whom they have already been freed by God’s grace. Describing their empty pomp, Jeremiah says among other things: “When you have entered Babylon, you will see there gods of gold and silver carried on shoulders. But they are made by hands and empty; they can neither help nor harm, because they are nothing: so do not fear them.” “But sanctify the Lord in your hearts, and he will be your fear,” as Isaiah says. And writing of the worshipers of demons Jeremiah says: “There were those famous giants, skilled in war. The Lord did not choose them, nor give them the way of knowledge. And they perished because they had no counsel.” And Solomon: “From the beginning,” he says, “when the proud giants perished.” Against their pride the humble people of Christ rises victorious. But when the Hebrew people, indignant, wanted to stone those who were pleading with them, the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle. For so the boldness of the wicked is always checked by the presence of divine power. And when the Lord wished to destroy those who provoked him, Moses, meek above all, found what to bring forward for the grace of intercession: “The Egyptians will hear,” he says, “when you have crushed this people, and they will say: Because he could not bring them into the land he swore to them, he laid them low in the desert. And now let your hand be exalted, Lord, as you said: I am God, patient, and very merciful, and true.” Appeased by these prayers, God so tempered his anger that worthy punishment still followed the sinners. He foretold with an oath that they would not enter into the rest of the promised land, except Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh; and when all had died in the desert, their sons, obedient, received the inheritance which they, stubborn, had lost. So our Mediator, the Lord Jesus, when the same people rebelled against him and conferred with Herod about his death, spurned the Jews, dead in the desert of this life even in soul, and gave the everlasting inheritance to their sons, whom impious Herod killed in his place.

Of the confirmation of the priesthood of Christ the Lord, in the budding rod of Aaron. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in the book of Numbers. When the present judgment of God punished Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, despisers of his commandments who wished to usurp the priestly office, condemning in them all heretics, as we set out above (part 1, chapter 12), he enjoined on Moses a certain sign by which to confirm the chief of priests chosen by him. The Lord said to Moses: “Tell the sons of Israel that all their leaders shall give their rods, one for each tribe.” So Moses, receiving twelve rods, and Aaron’s rod among their rods, placed them before the Lord and brought them into the tabernacle of testimony. And it happened that on the next day Moses and Aaron entered the tabernacle. And behold, Aaron’s rod of the house of Levi had budded, and put forth a shoot, a flower, and had produced nuts. By this sign he orders the people to be quiet, saying: “Let their murmuring against me cease, that they may not all die so.” The heretics perish murmuring against the lawful priest of the Lord. That Aaron’s rod, flowering, produced nuts, these things point to our Christ the Lord as priest, of whom Isaiah says: “A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise from his root.” Whoever devoutly seeks understands that in the nut the world and the Church in the world are shown. For from two parts joined together, as within the vault of heaven and the expanse of the earth, like the four parts of the world, are contained within, as with peoples, having a thin skin in its midst, like the seas spread through the parts. The mysteries of the Church too are in it, covered by the secrets of the two Testaments, old and new, and the four horns of the cross, by which the world is redeemed, having the water of baptism in its midst, by which it ever flourishes green and fruitful. The tree of this fruit, reaching high, with shady branches, spread through slender and soft shoots, producing them like gems, either single in unity, or in twos in the two commandments, or in threes in the number of the Trinity, or joined in fours in the four Gospels, declares the beauty and wonderful works of its maker. Their juice pressed from the husk colors certain white things that are dyed, and is applied for healing to sore throats. These coverings, clothed with the leaves of green groves, refresh those burning with heat in the rest of their leaves, and temper with their breath the fevers of the sick. Not without reason the Lord commands the prophet Jeremiah to make himself a staff of nut wood, by which the whole Church in the world and the world in it may be sustained by Christ’s help and borne by his grace, which sings in the Psalms and says: “Your rod and your staff, they have comforted me.”

Of Christ the Lord, freeing from the devil’s bite, in the bronze serpent. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in the book of Numbers. Thirsting again in another part of the desert, the people murmured against Moses and against the Lord. Moses, who had already done such and greater signs, doubted that water could be brought forth from the rock which had given it before; and for this he incurred offense, because he did not glorify God before the sons of Israel; that he would not bring the people into the land of promise, the avenging divine sentence confirms. There Aaron died on Mount Hor and left his son Eleazar as priest. Moses is kept a little longer; into his place passes Joshua son of Nun, who led the people into the land of promise. Rightly was the distribution of the earthly inheritance too kept for this name, since the apostolic sentence has laid it down that there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved; which shows our leader, Christ Jesus the Lord, distributing himself to his own as an everlasting inheritance, and those who receive him say: “My inheritance is splendid to me.” While the same people was going on through certain nations which the Lord had commanded it to root out, for whom, their sins filled up through the guilt of idolatry, the end had already come, wearied by the journey and murmuring against the Lord, it was tormented in the desert by the bites of serpents; and repenting, it begged Moses with prayers to become a suppliant to the Lord for them. But God, ever merciful and compassionate, who in judging by degrees gives place for repentance, gave the remedy of a serpent lifted up on wood against the deadly bites of the serpents. For Moses is ordered to make a bronze serpent and, fixing it on a high pole, to command the people that if anyone felt himself wounded by the bite of any serpent, he should at once look at the bronze serpent, by the sight of which he would be healed at once. So that serpent, the devil, is mocked, of whom it is said through David: “The dragon which you formed to mock him.” For when in the desert of this life the devil has fixed his deadly bites through various vices in those already consecrated in baptism as in the Red Sea, let one at once look to the Lord Jesus lifted up on the wood of the cross, that is, let him not withdraw from the heavenly physician, so that everyone who sees and believes in him (as he himself says in the Gospel) may not perish but have eternal life.

That blessing comes upon those who for Christ’s sake have despised their kin. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Numbers. Balak king of Moab hired Balaam, a prophet from the nations (though a seer of the one true God), and invited him to curse the people blessed by God, believing he could easily overcome it once cursed. But the prophet asks the Lord whether he should go or stay. He is forbidden by the Lord to come, and sends the king word of the prohibition. With other messengers the king, promising greater gifts, presses the prophet to come. Again Balaam, with a perverse heart, asks the one who had already forbidden him, testing whether leave to go would be given. Here Scripture rightly sounds: “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” So leave to go is given to the bad mind, on condition that whatever the Lord put in his mouth he should say. While he was already captive in heart to his avarice, the angel meeting him chose to show himself to the beast that carried him rather than to him; for man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he was compared to senseless beasts, and became not like them but worse. For the beast of burden (as the apostle Peter says in his letter), answering with a human voice, restrained the prophet’s madness. Then that prophet, brought before the king, while he meant to curse, blessed, counted among those whom the prophet David marks, saying: “They will curse, and you will bless”; and elsewhere: “They blessed with their mouth.” The later outcome taught this. For the prophetic blessing was fulfilled, by which God promised the nations, even through such a man, the coming of his only Son from that people. Moved by this prophecy he said among other things: “A star shall rise from Jacob, and a man shall rise up from Israel, and shall shatter all the kingdoms of the earth.” That this was said of Christ the Lord the divine Gospels attest. He, then, who wanted to curse and could not, gave the king the most wicked counsel of the serpent he had sought out: that beautiful women from among his own people, whose beauty and adornment would soften the iron and strength, should be sent to the Hebrew people to stir up lust. Persuaded by desire for them, sacrificing to idols and eating what was sacrificed, God being offended, they led almost all Israel captive into death. For when they were struck by the divine hand and a very great multitude fell in the desert, almost the whole synagogue would have perished, had not Phinehas the priest, running through with the sword those who were adulterers in mind and body, appeased God’s wrath by this deed. The apostle John is told in the Apocalypse to write to the angel, that is, the ruler, of the church of Pergamum, that there were among his people those who held the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the eyes of the sons of Israel, to eat of the sacrifice and commit sexual immorality; showing that such people exist even now, whom either the avenger consumes thus, or, rebuked under penance, the grace of the priest frees.

Of the Lord Jesus as ruler, signified in Moses’ passing. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Deuteronomy. When Moses knew he was near his burial, he summarized the whole law for the people, and bound the whole synagogue with blessings and curses and with that terrible song of Deuteronomy, calling heaven and earth to witness that he had hidden nothing of the Lord’s commands from them and had acted with all watchful care so that nothing should arise to harm the people; and he warns that they must not depart from the Lord’s precepts nor turn aside from him in anything, and that in prosperity they must fear lest adversity follow. He adds too, with prophetic spirit, marking out the future for them: that after his death, leaving the true God, they would run after the vain and harmful idols of the nations, and, weighed down by the burden of sins from their worship, would sink to the depths; and that they would be forsaken by God if they forsook God. Having said this, sealing all the tribes with a mystic blessing, and handing over the people to be governed by Joshua son of Nun, he himself, now advanced in age, departed from this life to the Lord. Our Mediator, the Lord Jesus, too, passing from this world to the Father, commended his faith and peace to his disciples, and, as John the evangelist says, loving them to the end, instructed them. That prophetic warning too he gave to those who learned, through his apostle Paul: that after his departure fierce wolves would come in, not sparing the flock, and that from the disciples themselves false prophets would arise, speaking perverse things. Of them he says in his letter: “Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the mutilation.” And commending them all to God and to the word of his grace, Paul declares that they would not see his face again, and handed them over to be governed by the Lord Jesus, who is with his own until the end of the world.

Joshua son of Nun shows the figure of the Lord Jesus conquering the earthly city. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Joshua. Joshua son of Nun, at God’s command consecrated by Moses’ hand, became leader of the people. For, as must often be said, it was not fitting that anyone should bring the people of God into the land of promise except him who bore the sacraments and salvation of both the name and the thing. He sends two spies into Jericho, which seemed to be the first among the cities of the promised land. Our Lord Jesus too sent two spies, to shake the earth by proclaiming his first coming, namely Zechariah the priest and his son John, of whom the same father and priest says to his son: “You, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you shall go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.” And of the same John the angel says: “He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah.” The spies of that land were received by Rahab the harlot, who hid them and freed them from their pursuers. And those whom the Lord Jesus sent a soul given to fornication received, who, awaiting the salvation of the name of Jesus, was freed from the prostitution of idolatry through the scarlet cord, the sign of his sacred blood. Such souls coming out of this fornication Tamar too, Judah’s daughter-in-law, signifies in her twins, when her younger son first began to put his hand out of the womb, and, having received the scarlet sign, was born later: showing in herself the people of the nations, which, wandering, though it had first put its hand to the rites of idols, came later to Christ, reborn in baptism through the sign of his blood. Rahab hid the spies under flax. That the spies of our Lord Jesus too were hidden under flax the prophet Isaiah testifies, saying: “A bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench”: signifying the Jewish nation itself, which, like flax, smoking in sacrifices, kept all prophecy covered until Christ; and his forerunners, by whom it is preserved until now, not quenched, so that what still lies covered in it may be revealed in the future. For the woman betrayed to the spies her fellow citizens, terrified by fear of Joshua the leader, so that this too might be fulfilled which was said of our Lord Jesus: “At your face the nations shall be troubled, when you do wonders.” When the spies returned to Joshua and had told all they had done, by divine command he orders the camp of the twelve tribes of Israel to move and all to cross the Jordan together, with the ark going before, which, as has been said, already bore in figure the sacraments of our leader Jesus. While it stood in the middle of the river, the lower water flowing away in divided parts and the upper standing unmoved, the riverbed itself gave dry ground to those crossing. And at once, at the Lord’s command, Joshua ordered twelve stones to be taken from the middle of the river, one by each tribe, by which, in the sacred number, the twelve apostles of our Jesus were signified. When the people had crossed, the heap which the water had formed at God’s command being complete, the river, running back on itself, gave back the crossers joyful. Here too the likeness of baptism is expressed, so that those born in the desert, who had not known the sacraments of the Red Sea, washed in the crossing of the Jordan, received circumcision with knives of stone. For everyone consecrated in baptism under our Jesus is circumcised in heart by the rock, because all his strength is made firm on the rock. That this rock is Christ has already been shown above.

That souls are freed from the prostitution of idols through the Lord Jesus. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Joshua. The people of God, coming to Jericho with Joshua as leader, and seeing it a city fortified on every side, besieged it. Wonderful in the divine commands the conflict seems to have been entered upon there; it was in a way a spiritual contest: with the blasts of seven trumpets seven times a day, recurring through a whole week, on the last day, as the trumpets sounded together and all shouted, that whole proud construction of walls, shaken not by human but by divine hand, fell. The city overthrown and burned with its peoples, only Rahab with her own could be freed from it through the sign of blood. With these trumpets, with this shouting of those who rejoice, at the command of the Lord Jesus our army too fights. For with the sevenfold Spirit, of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and piety, and of the fear of God, when those sing who sing on beaten trumpets and with the voice of the horn trumpet, and the people shout in the sight of the king, the Lord, seven times a day as they say praises over the judgments of his justice, all the pride of the earthly city of Jericho is vanquished. It is burned up with fire by him of whom it is said: “Fire shall go before him and burn up his enemies round about.” In it the hope of salvation is given to the penitent soul given to fornication, when, freed by the sign of the blood of the Lord Jesus, it is said to the proud and swollen: “Harlots and tax collectors will go before you into the kingdom of God.” Such souls our Lord Jesus found, whether among the Jews or among the nations. By their example, so that one might pass from prostitution to a lawful husband, the prophet Hosea is ordered to take a woman given to fornication and to beget sons by her, so that she who shortly before had been a harlot might now be a wife, and might have sons who had striven not to have sons, and might serve no longer lust but the begetting of offspring. This is set out for us more plainly through the prophet Jeremiah, when the whole of Judea is reproached: “If a woman has been defiled, will her husband return to her? And you have committed fornication with many shepherds, and yet return to me, says the Lord.” And through Hosea: “I will call not my people, my people; and her not beloved, beloved.” The apostle Paul too rebukes such souls for their good, saying: “It is reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such immorality as is not even among the nations.” But our Lord Jesus, when he receives such by his grace to salvation, by that divinity of his power makes the harlot a virgin. Paul, as matchmaker, brings her into chaste and spiritual marriage, saying: “For I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” Receiving sons from her not by flesh but by the Spirit, he makes the Church a virgin, a mother rejoicing in the fruitfulness of children. These the apostle John admonishes with him, saying: “Beloved, we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be.” And Paul adds: “But if children, then heirs; heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ.”

That all vices are to be conquered through the Lord Jesus. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Joshua. Joshua son of Nun conquers the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, and the other nations whose lands the Lord had promised to his people as an inheritance. And our Lord Jesus conquers idolatry, pride, envy, luxury, and the other vices, to prepare himself as an eternal inheritance for his own. Joshua son of Nun divided the land by the measuring line to the victorious people. And our people, triumphant in Christ Jesus, says: “The lines have fallen to me in splendid places; for my inheritance is splendid to me.” The Lord commands the daughters of Zelophehad, because he left no male heir, to take their father’s inheritance, so that in them souls destitute of human help might be signified, who, when God looks upon them, say: “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup; it is you who will restore my inheritance to me.” Each tribe keeps the boundaries set with inviolate faith. And it is said to our people: “You shall not cross the eternal boundaries which your fathers set.” About to depart from the world, Joshua, like Moses, gave the people these last words of his testimony: that they must not depart from the Lord’s commands if they wished always to be free and safe from the plots of enemies; and he declares that he had received nothing from them nor harmed them in anything. And our Lord Jesus, passing away, binds his own by this covenant: “If you do,” he says, “what I command you, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” And when he had given them power to work miracles, so that they should hope for nothing from anyone, which they had not given, he said: “Freely give.” After Joshua’s departure that people received not a leader but judges to rule them. And when our Lord Jesus passed from this world to the Father, he appointed rulers of his Church throughout the whole world.

Deborah, in the figure of the Church, overcame the enemy. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Judges. Judah was the first among the other judges who judged Israel. From his tribe, as we have often said, the Lord Christ was presented to this world in the flesh as Judge of all souls. But the people of Israel, leaving God and forgetting the commands of Moses and Joshua, servants of God, served the idols of the nations, and punishment following them vexed them through neighboring enemies. This is done now too, when the sons of God, reborn through baptism, are entangled in vain superstitions and the cares of this world, and each one is bound with the cords of his sins. The sons of Israel cried to the Lord when they suffered oppression: “And he freed them from their distress.” Our Lord too says through the prophet: “It shall be that when you cry to me and say, Father, I will hear you as a holy people.” In its manifestation the devoted father in the Gospel receives with great compassion the lost son who, repenting, returns crying to his father. Afterwards among the judges Deborah, the prophetess, arose as a mother in Israel, who judged the people forty years. In her time divine power shut up in a woman’s hand Sisera, captain of King Jabin, who rebelled against the people of the Lord: him, that is, terrible with chariots and horsemen and to be feared with his peoples. And not with iron, but a woman fixed the man with wood, piercing his temples with a peg and a hammer; she bore the likeness of our mother the Church, so as to sound with her voice in the Psalms: “Some in chariots and some in horses, but we will be magnified in the name of our God. They were bound by the feet and fell, but we have risen and stand upright.” These and other things holy Church sings, fighting down idols and the worshipers of idols, and also her neighboring enemies, the heretics. When they pitch their camp against her, she says her heart does not fear; and, “If war rises against me,” she says, “in this I will hope.” And in another psalm: “Often they have fought against me from my youth, but they could not prevail over me.” For the just Lord has broken the necks of sinners through the wood of the cross.

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.

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.

Of Christ’s disciples receiving a double spirit, in Elisha. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Kings. Elijah left his disciple Elisha, for, knowing by the Lord’s revelation the time of his taking up, he said to the disciple: “Ask some request for yourself before I am taken from you.” And he said: “I wish that the spirit which is in you may be double in me.” And Elijah said to him: “You have asked a hard thing; yet if you see me as I go, it shall be done for you.” Made certain by this promise, Elisha, so that he might obtain his wish in every respect, so clung to his master that no necessity separated him from him. And when the prophet wished to exercise his disciple’s zeal, he orders him, bearing it patiently, to follow necessarily on a byway. But he said: “As the Lord lives and as your soul lives, I will not leave you wherever you go.” This was done until they came to the place where, taken up in a fiery chariot, he was carried as it were into heaven. And the disciple’s intention so watched that he followed his master as he was snatched away, with weeping and a loud voice, saying: “My father Elijah, my father, charioteer of Israel!” Struck by these words, Elijah let fall to him his mantle, as provision for the journey and gift of a pledge. Receiving it, and striking with it the river Jordan, which he could not have divided by himself, he crossed by the help of the mantle. Hence the sons of the prophets say: “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.” In this mystic action too is the likeness of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. For when he had said to his disciples, “Whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do,” to show that he, Christ, had given a double gift, he added: “And he will do greater ones than these.” But this to those who cling to him and do not turn aside from him in any direction, whom he taught, saying: “If anyone serves me, let him follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be too.” On these he poured the double spirit in this way: once after the resurrection, when he breathed on their faces, saying: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they will be forgiven; if you retain anyone’s, they will be retained in heaven”; and a second time when, taken up in a cloud, borne by angels, the disciples too following with their eyes, he said: “Stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” And on the day of Pentecost he sent the holy gift, the Spirit, in tongues of fire. We must not understand two Spirits here, since there is one Holy Spirit; but the same Spirit, dispensing the gifts of the charisms, poured out in manifold ways by the undivided Trinity itself, so that in it there are not two, but one Spirit. For, as the apostle Paul says: “One God, one faith, one baptism, one Spirit.” Hence Elisha himself did not say to his master, “Let the spirit that is in you be two,” but, “double in me.” This double the Lord explained when he said, “Until you are clothed with power from on high,” so as to do greater things through them than he had done through himself. By the touch of his fringe he healed the woman of her flow of blood; but the shadow of the disciples healed all infirmities. Even the disciples themselves scarcely believed him when he rose, though they touched and saw him; when he ascended to heaven and they preached, the whole world believed in him whom it had not seen. Finally, it is greater to justify the impious than to raise the dead. All these things the same one did through his disciples, who gave them this power, saying: “Without me you can do nothing.”

Of the same Elisha, when Christ the Lord by grace raised the dead one figured. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Kings. The same Elisha, while he went about in various places proclaiming the word of the Lord, was received as a guest by a certain Shunammite woman. As a reward, her barrenness taken away, he obtained a son for her from the Lord. She received the little one and brought him up. But when he was grown and went to his father in the field, struck by the heat of the sun he ran back home and, burning with fever, breathed his last in his mother’s lap. At once the woman ran back to the man of God, threw herself at his feet on Carmel, and told him that the son whom she had received by his grace was dead. The prophet wonders that this was hidden from him by the Lord, so that the prophet might fulfil the figure of our Lord Jesus, who, though he knows all things, pretends not to know some things. As in that of Lazarus: “Where have you laid him?” And: “Of the day and the hour no one knows, neither the angels, nor the Son,” though the Son himself will come on that day and that hour. And that, when two disciples were telling of his passion and saying to him, “Do you not know what has been done in Jerusalem these days?”, he, by whom those things were done, says, like one who does not know: “What things?” But these things that are hidden are either done in a great mystery, or so that the heart’s attention may be stretched toward God, so that it seeks more eagerly to know what it does not grasp; and, when it has not understood it, fears the more, knowing that whatever is denied to mortals to know is divine and deep. Elisha does things that are sacraments of the Lord’s action. He sends his staff by his servant, to be laid on the lifeless body and restore the dead to life. The Lord sent through his servant Moses the law, which, like that staff, could not give life to the dead world; because if a law had been given that could give life, as the Apostle says, righteousness would indeed be from the law; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Afterwards Elisha himself comes down, the great to the small, the saviour to the one to be saved, the living to the dead. Our Lord too came down. He who came down is the same who also ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. What all things? Those Elisha did in mystery. For, to raise the dead child, he covered the youthful limbs. The Lord Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a servant; he fitted himself, small, to that small one, so as to make this body of our lowliness conformed to the body of his glory. Lying on the cold one beneath him, he kindled him with his warmth. So too our Saviour, the Lord, from whose heat there is no one who can hide, breathed three times on the world lying dead, that a threefold confession might be poured into the believer. So the dead was raised, when the impious was justified from perpetual death. Many and various signs the Spirit of the Lord did through Elisha, as the same history of Kings relates. To go through them all would be long. Yet I will set out a few, since all are signs of things to come, to be fitted to Christ the Lord, who says through Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to send the bruised into rest, to give the captives freedom and the blind sight.” Elisha crossed the Jordan by the working of that Spirit by which our Lord Jesus consecrated the same river in his baptism. The prophet handed over to the beasts the boys who mocked him. And our Lord Jesus says of little ones through Paul: “Do not be children in your minds.” Of these he handed some over to beasts, that is, to unclean spirits, that they might learn not to blaspheme. The king of Israel sent fifty men three times, with their captains, to kill Elijah, and the prophet consumed them with heavenly fire. It is said of our prophet and Lord too that a fire will burn before him and set his enemies ablaze round about. Afterwards, when the king with his whole army besieged him, he struck the enemies with a kind of blindness and led them captive into Samaria, and when their sight was restored, he also obtained pardon for them. Though these things are signified in many, the Lord showed them more plainly in Paul and those who with him persecuted the Church. For, blinded and thrown down on the road, while he became God’s captive, when his sight was restored, the persecutor became a preacher; and in him God showed all his patience as an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life. Again, Naaman the Syrian, friend of the king, was sent to the king of Israel to be cleansed by Elisha of the spot of leprosy. The man of God, looking at him, ordered him to be dipped seven times in the Jordan if he wished the spots of his body taken away. When he did it, he was cleansed. He thought gifts should be offered to the man of God, which the prophet by divine right refused, prefiguring the grace of our Christ the Lord freely given, which he commended to his disciples in the Gospel, saying: “Freely you have received, freely give.” That the soul is cleansed by the sevenfold Spirit from the vices by which the inner and outer man is polluted, the water too shows, in which those are dipped who are consecrated in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Gehazi, the prophet’s servant, who followed Naaman the Syrian and, making up a lie, wished to sell what the prophet had given freely, was struck with the same spot of leprosy of which the other had been cleansed; he shows the figure of the heretics, who, driven by the sharpness of their greed, while they sell to their own, as it were, expiations of sins, are themselves marked with the spots with which those had been stained. So that they rightly hear from the Lord: “I do not know you. Depart from me, all you who work iniquity.” [32] Of Hezekiah, in whom Christ teaches his own not to be puffed up in good. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Kings. While the kings of Israel in turn, some turning aside from the ways of the Lord, were entangled in errors, and others walked faithfully in the way of the Lord, the order comes to King Hezekiah. He, rooting out all images and overturning all worship of idols, turned almost all erring Israel to the Lord. To him a divine answer was given, that he should set his house in order, because he was now going to death. When he prayed weeping, saying, “Remember, Lord, how I have walked in your way,” fifteen years were added to his life under this sign: the sun went back the degrees by which it had gone up. When the neighboring kings noticed that this had wonderfully happened, they sent messengers to Hezekiah, asking what that portent was. And, puffed up in good, he not only told what had been done for him, but also, out of boastfulness, showed them all the royal things of his house and the vessels. And the Lord, angered, rebuked the king through the prophet Isaiah, declaring that days would come in which all the things he had shown would be said to be captive in Babylon with the people. Not without reason does our King admonish us through the apostle John in the Apocalypse, saying: “Hold fast what you have, lest another take your crown.” Again elsewhere: “Blessed is he who keeps awake and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked.” And in the Gospel: “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing”; admonishing that in good works, which are God’s gifts, one must glory not in oneself as a man but in the Lord, lest what the humble receives the proud lose.

Of sinning kings, who lead the people with them into captivity. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Kings. When Josiah and his son Zedekiah reigned, the whole people of Israel, breaking the useful bonds of the law by which it was ruled, provoked God, the author of its piety, to great anger by many grave faults. The Lord sent the prophet Jeremiah to rebuke and correct the king and the people, foretelling that, if they turned and kept the commands of the law, they would always remain unharmed in their place; but if they despised him who warned them, they would go captive into Babylon. So, the commands and the preacher’s words despised, while king and people were pressed on by their sins pushing them toward evil ends, Jeremiah expressed the divine sentence by letter to the people already taken and to the kings, saying: “Because of the sins you have sinned before God, you will be led to Babylon, and you will be there a long time, to the generations.” So King Nebuchadnezzar, having seized the kings of Judah, carried all Israel captive to Babylon, putting out Zedekiah’s eyes; so that the words of the prophets about him, which seemed to conflict, were both fulfilled: Jeremiah said that he would see the king of Babylon; Ezekiel, that he would not see Babylon. While they seemed to contradict each other, both are seen fulfilled in this way: Zedekiah, brought to Babylon with his eyes put out, both saw, because he was present, and did not see, because he lost his eyes on the way. Our Lord admonishes his own by this example and says: “Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you.” That those who despise his commands, even kings, are blind, the same Lord says in the Gospel: “They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both fall into the pit,” which is the hard captivity of the unrepentant soul, of which it is said: “I gave her time to repent, and she will not repent.” So, until the measure of seventy years was filled, that people was captive in Babylon. The same king Nebuchadnezzar carried off through his men all the vessels of the temple of God. Woe to the sins of men, when for them the very sacrifices, which were always remedies for salvation, are trampled on by foreigners! With what groaning, with what most bitter weeping, with what anguish of mind Jeremiah described these things, his Lamentations show: that the Lord’s tabernacle was defiled, the feast day brought to forgetfulness, the sabbaths and all the solemnities abolished; that the sword devoured part of the priests and princes, the little ones, the old, the young men and the virgins, and part remained captive. See the sores of our sorrows; see the mourning of our reproach; see the great sins, for whose sake we too have deserved to see these things, and with a greater wound of punishment we refuse, as it were, to have our wounds healed. Crushed, we think we are whole; driven out and exiled, as was deserved, we do not grieve; no satisfaction, no sorrow; the wrath remains, and we do not ask for pardon. “Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to foreigners.” Thus chastised we do not lament; thus corrected we refuse to accept discipline. Let us depart from the evils by which we have offended the Lord; let us repent of the insults we have inflicted on his sacred things. Let our pride be cured by humility. Let us not spurn the time granted for remedies, lest he whose calm and gentle mercy we have felt fix an eternal sentence of punishment for those who do not repent. For that Lord is ready to forgive who says: “Turn to me, and I will turn to you”: if only the devoted Father recognizes the voice of the son returning with repentance. History relates that in the same captivity Daniel and Ezekiel prophesied. Daniel, the man of desires (who was named Belteshazzar by the king), had three friends of his race, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael. Though all his prophecy is full of mysteries, yet one part of it shines with such clearness of its brightness that it even marked the time when the Savior and Lord himself would come. Though there are twelve prophetic visions of his, ten are found in the Hebrew. These twelve, God granting, I shall run through with a sure comparison. In the first, he defended the chastity of Susanna against the unchaste elders. This the Lord Jesus does when he guards the integrity of his Church against the wicked heretics, who strive to corrupt it with their perverse disputations. These too he marks through the apostle Paul, saying: “Of these are those who creep into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led by various desires.” In the second, Daniel himself and his friends resolved, keeping the commands of their law, not to be defiled by the foods of the king’s table, which their other companions ate. Not only was our Teacher and Lord not defiled by the desires of this world, but he also forbade his friends, saying: “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the ambition of the world.” All these he shows must be rejected, like those royal foods. And through the apostle Paul commanding more plainly: “Food for the belly,” he says, “and the belly for food; but God will destroy both the one and the other”; so that the one food of the soul may be the Savior himself, who shows it various and diverse flavors. In the third, the sacrament of the divine plan which had been shown to the king, which he had so forgotten, Daniel told to the king, both the dream and the interpretation of the dream, not by human learning in which he had been instructed, but by the Lord’s revelation: that four kingdoms in four metals, of which the statue standing before his face was formed, would rise in the world: the golden head was the Babylonian kingdom of the East; its silver breast and arms, the Macedonian of the North; its bronze belly and thighs, the Punic of the South; its iron legs and the toes of its feet, partly iron and partly clay, the last, the Roman, namely of the West, as that most learned man, the historian Orosius, has set out. Which kingdom, like iron, crushed and subdued all things. And Daniel adds the kingdom of Christ too in the stone cut from the mountain without the hands of hewers, as without the hands of those embracing, God-man born of a virgin. When it had struck that statue, it reduced all its parts to dust, and the breath of the wind carried them away, and no place was found for them; but the stone itself, which struck the statue, became a great mountain and filled the whole face of the earth. For when all kingdoms have been emptied, the kingdom of Christ the Lord will rise, which will be left to no other people, for it will remain for ever. This his whole Church now asks in prayer when it says: “Your kingdom come.” In the fourth, when the three aforesaid friends of Daniel refused to adore the statue and image of himself which Nebuchadnezzar had set up to be adored, they were thrown into the furnace, and God showed that wonder, that, the fire being driven off, the greedy flame consumed rather the ministers of the king’s command. And the three men, unharmed, while they sang a hymn to the true King in the midst of the furnace, were found worthy to have the Son of God with them. Him, by the revelation of grace, the king himself recognized, who leads his true worshipers, who despise most vain idols, triumphant from the flames of the present world to heavenly glory.

Of Daniel, who told of Christ the Lord in his visions. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Daniel. The fifth vision contains the dream of the same king, which Daniel interpreted thus: that the magnificent tree he had seen, under whose branches all beasts, cattle, and birds dwelt, was the king himself; that when the Lord ordered it to be cut down, only the root being kept, his kingdom would be taken from him and he would dwell with the beasts; that his hair would grow like a woman’s and his nails like an eagle’s, that he would eat grass like an ox until seven times divinely ordered were fulfilled; giving the king counsel that he ought to redeem his sins by almsgiving. When he neglected to do it, all that had been foretold came upon the king, and when the measure of the times was fulfilled, he recovered the kingdom he had lost. So the presumptuous are cut down, so the proud are chastised by him who gives drink in tears by measure, for his judgments are sweet. So he restored the apostle Peter, who denied, to the place which in his presumption he had lost, when, looked upon, he saw him weeping. So, in his killers who shed his sacred blood, for whom he prayed, he gave the same blood to drink, so that they might receive the royal dignity. So daily our King restores the fallen, for whom he keeps the gift of the heavenly kingdom of the grace bestowed for the future. In the sixth, from the four beasts that appeared to him, he confirms the kingdoms of the four parts of the world mentioned above. Of these the same prophet testifies that the fourth beast was greater and terrible, having ten horns, and from their midst another small horn rose, before whose face three of those horns were struck off, until the Ancient of Days sat in judgment. But these are explained in the same way as those four kingdoms succeeding one another. The fourth beast, which, rising above all kingdoms, subdued the whole earth and made it subject. After it ten kings will rise at one time, and after them he who is to bear the name of his perdition, that is, the Antichrist. Of him, as already promised, divine testimonies will be brought forward in their place. In the seventh, from the ram and the goat, he describes the wars of the Persians and Greeks revealed to him; under the person also of the Antichrist, who will be magnified in his heart and will corrupt many, until he comes who is to come, the Lord Jesus, and will not delay. In the eighth, the same man of desires, Daniel, suggests the provident justice of God judging proud kings, in this way: King Belshazzar, making a supper for his princes, brought out the vessels of the temple of God which his father Nebuchadnezzar had carried off, drank from them with his concubines and princes, praising his gods of gold and silver, wood and stone; and at once there came out before his eyes the fingers of a man’s hand and wrote on the wall of the king’s house. Troubled by this vision, when none of the curious men he had could read the writing, Daniel was summoned, and firmly rebuking the king that this had happened because of the vessels of the house of God, he also read the writing, “Mene, Tekel, Peres,” and interpreted it: “Mene: God has numbered your kingdom and fulfilled it. Tekel: you have been weighed and found wanting. Peres: your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” When the king had conferred on the prophet the gifts promised, which Daniel had refused, at the end of his life, as had been foretold, he left the kingdom to the Medes and Persians. Let proud kings see, let them see, who have dared to plunder the vessels of the house of God, which he justly handed over to them for the sins of his ministers, and handling them without any reverence seem to have inflicted insults on God, in whose name they were consecrated. Their end is surely death, which has no end.

Of the same, when he rescued him from the lions’ den, as Christ the Lord from the Jews. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Daniel. In the ninth, Darius the Mede succeeded to the kingdom; when he had set a hundred and twenty satraps over his kingdom, he appointed three over them. Daniel was one of the three, having favor in the king’s eyes. The envious seek counsel against God’s servant and persuade the king that for thirty days no petition should be asked of any god or man except the king alone, adding a penalty that whoever despised the king’s command should be sent into the den and given to the lions as food. Finding this decree published, the prophet prayed to his Lord three times a day with his usual prayer. They bring him, seized as stubborn, to the king; and when the king could not rescue him from the envious, he handed the prophet over to his God with this confession, that he alone could rescue him from the danger of death. And so it was done. Yet from this grief the king, going without supper and taking neither food nor sleep, himself went at dawn to see Daniel. Seeing him alive and unharmed, giving glory to the true God, he ordered him to be brought out of the den, and sent into the den those who had accused Daniel; and they were devoured at once before his eyes. In them too the prophecy was fulfilled which says: “Whoever digs a pit for his neighbor will fall into it; and whoever sets a snare for his neighbor will perish in it.” And our Lord Jesus himself, in whom all these figures arose, says through the prophet: “They dug a pit before my face, and fell into it.” And again: “The Lord sent his mercy and his truth, and delivered my soul from the midst of the lions’ whelps.” In the tenth, as the end of the seventy years of the desolation of Jerusalem drew near, which the Lord had foretold through the prophet Jeremiah, Daniel with all penance and fasting poured out prayer for himself and for the sins of his people, imploring the Lord’s mercy. As he prayed, the archangel Gabriel stood by him and revealed future mysteries to him: that seventy weeks were shortened upon his people and upon the holy city, that sins might be finished and offenses sealed, and that injustice might be ended and everlasting justice brought in; and that the visions of the prophets would be fulfilled, and the Holy of holies anointed, from the going out of the word for answering. “And Jerusalem will be built again, until Christ the leader, seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. And the street and walls will be built again in the straits of the times. And after sixty-two weeks the anointing will perish, and judgment will not be in it”; or, as the Hebrew translator has it: “Christ will be killed, and his people will not be his, who are to deny him. And a people with a leader who comes will destroy the city and the sanctuary, and its end will be devastation, and after the end of the war the appointed desolation. And one week will confirm the covenant with many, and in the middle of the week the victim and sacrifice will fail, and in the temple there will be the abomination of desolation, and the desolation will continue until the consummation and the end.” Daniel wrote down these things revealed to him to refute the error of the Jews. Those, then, who still await Christ to come will believe the Antichrist. For so the Lord Jesus rebukes them in the Gospel, saying: “I have come in my Father’s name, and you did not believe me; another will come in his own name, and him you will believe.” With great labor and talent Jerome, of blessed memory, by computing the years of the kings of Babylon, brought the seventy weeks down to the birth of our Christ the Lord, four hundred and ninety years, separating the seven weeks for the building of the temple, and sixty-two up to the birth, and up to the passion and the devastation done by Vespasian and his son Titus. The Jews, then, enemies of the Lord, deceiving themselves, while they strive to refer the many prophecies of Christ to the persons of their various kings, willing or unwilling bow their necks to this prophet Daniel, who not only wrote all the signs written above but also marked the very times of the Lord’s coming. All of these the whole world now recognizes as fulfilled more clearly than light. The glory of Christ the Lord, then, spread among the nations, and, as it is written, the whole earth worshiping him, the Jews still will not believe, while they see with us that everything foretold by the oracles of the prophets is fulfilled. In the eleventh, there were revealed to the same prophet, under the person of warring kings, the deeds of the Antichrist himself, and the straits of the last time, the resurrection too of the dead, how the impious and how the saints will rise. These were also shown to Isaiah and Ezekiel, in such a way that the authority of the Gospel confirms their words. In the twelfth, Daniel showed a most joyful spectacle, not only to the king but also to spiritual minds. For Bel, the idol which all the Babylonians worshiped together with the king, seemed to eat great royal provisions daily, which the priests with their families consumed, entering by a hidden door. Daniel, showing their fraud by subtle skill, ordered his men to sprinkle ashes on the floor of the temple. The doors sealed with the king’s ring, when they came on the next day, the imprinted footprints of men and women showed that the food had not been consumed by that idol. By the priests’ confession too that hidden door was betrayed, by which they entered and devoured everything. When the idol had been crushed by royal command, Daniel killed the dragon, which they also revered as divine, without sword or club, as he knew that what is corruptible can be destroyed, teaching and showing that the one and only true God must be worshiped, vain superstitions abandoned, by which the prophet saw not only the Babylonians but the whole world held captive under the power of demons. That it would be freed from their dominion by the grace of Christ the Lord he marked in his proclamation for the future time. But since, as someone says, “truth begets hatred” (whence our Paul too says, “Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?”), as a reward for showing the true religion the Babylonians sent the prophet into the lions’ den to be devoured. Nor was divine power lacking, which provided its usual guard for him and brought him a meal through its companion while he was shut in. For the merit of his grace it changed the savage rushes of the lions into the gentleness of sheep. When Daniel was brought out and the king marveled that he was unharmed, his enemies were given to the lions as food to perish. These things were not done without the sign of his Lord, who prays for his own, saying: “Do not hand over to the beasts the soul that confesses you.” For that roaring lion, the devil, who goes about seeking whom to devour, consumes, with the power he has received, the enemies of our prophet Christ the Lord whom he finds.

Of the resurrection made manifest through Christ the Lord, in Ezekiel. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Ezekiel. The prophet Ezekiel too, among the other hidden things he wrote, made known in this way the resurrection of the dead shown to him, which is to come: that he was led into a certain plain that was full of the bones of the dead. There he saw, by the power of the word of God, each bone joined to its parts, flesh, sinews, and skin come up on them, and the breath of life poured into them, by that Spirit by which we hope for and believe the resurrection to come. Telling also many things of the Antichrist under the figure of the king of Tyre, he describes too the city gathered from the nations out of living stones, the heavenly Jerusalem, whose eastern gate he shows always shut, saying: “This gate shall be shut; the prince of priests alone shall pass through it, and it shall be shut to the prince”: signifying Mary’s virginal womb, who, ever virgin, brought forth the Savior intact. For Christ the Lord alone, as Augustine the bishop of blessed memory says, brought out the limbs of an infant through the inviolate virginal womb of his mother, and after the resurrection brought in the limbs of a young man through closed doors; alone without sin at the beginning of infancy, he had no sin in the progress of a greater age, he himself saying: “Behold, the prince of this world comes, and he will find nothing in me.” In this captivity of Babylon there was also Ezra, priest and prophet, who, while he was favored in the king’s sight, and the king, seeing him weeping, asked why he was sad, declared that the solemnities of the religion of his people were usually held at that time, from which he showed he was excluded. The king gives him leave to go and orders the temple of God to be restored. Ezra, coming to Jerusalem, burning with zeal for the law, decided first that the people must be purged of vices. For “a wise king,” as the prophet says, “is the stability of the people.” Finding the book of Moses, he showed among other things that the wrath of God had been kindled for this reason too, that against God’s command the people had taken wives from foreigners; and by such censure as he could, he persuaded each to send away his wife with her children. Held back by no fleshly sweetness, since they wished God to be favorable to them, they did without hesitation what had been ordered, so as to show the figure of the Christian people, whom the prince of all priests too admonishes, saying: “Whoever leaves house, or field, or wife, or children for my name’s sake, will receive manifold here and will obtain eternal life.”

Of the house of God, that is, its restoration through Christ the Lord, in Ezra. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Ezra. While Ezra was restoring the temple of God, through the envy of certain wicked men who wanted to be partners in the building but not partners in religion, since Ezra would not receive them uncircumcised, they maliciously informed the king, and the work on the temple was stopped until the reign of Cyrus. He, moved by divine command, when the seventy years were completed which Jeremiah had foretold from the mouth of the Lord, let all the people go from the Babylonian captivity to Jerusalem, together with the vessels of the house of God, the king adding gifts, from which he commanded that the building of the temple should rise. From its beginning under Darius to its completion, which Cyrus both ordered and helped to be done, forty-six years passed. Of these the Jews spoke, when the Lord promised the restoration of his body and said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”; not understanding the sacrament of that saying, they said: “It was built in forty-six years, and how does this man say, In three days I will raise it?” For it was built by Solomon with the speed with which he had found everything prepared by his father David. So the Jews did not speak of the time taken by Solomon’s building, but of Ezra’s, who had been forbidden to finish it. When the temple and the wall of Jerusalem had been repaired, according to the times set by Daniel (at whose entreaty, together with Zechariah, the people stayed in Jerusalem), the times of the seventy weeks ran on until the birth of Christ the Lord, as we said above. By his pardon even now souls are freed from the captivity of the world, with compunction of heart, the measure being filled, by grace and mercy. For they rejoice for the days in which they were humbled, for the years in which they saw evils, until he looks upon his servants and upon his works. Let us serve the Lord, then, in fear, and rejoice in him with trembling, until we are brought back to the city which our King and Priest restores, the heavenly Jerusalem, so that in the temple of his body, which he raised in three days, we may continually offer him the sacrifice of praise.

Of the same, when he sets out a parable in the figure of the Church. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Ezra. When Artaxerxes, king of Babylon, wished to exercise his captives, he chose three wise Jews, whose sayings Ezra the priest wrote down. One preferred wine to everything; another the king; the third, Zerubbabel, women, and above all, truth. When they had given their opinions, Zerubbabel was judged wiser than all, who had maintained that women, and above all truth, were strongest. And truly, what is stronger than woman, who so enticed the first man, Adam, that he despised the commands! What is stronger than woman, whose beauty raises itself above every desire? What is stronger than woman, who softens both royal strength and a man? What, too, is stronger in good than woman, who believed that she would bear Christ, the whole truth? What is stronger than woman, who, while the disciples fled, looked upon the mysteries of the cross itself undaunted and full of confidence? What is stronger than woman, who, running ahead of all the men, was found worthy first to see the Lord risen? Since Ezra wrote these things as a type of the Church, a figured action followed too. For Esther, who had been brought up as a daughter by Mordecai, while Mordecai looked after the royal court, was brought to royal dignity by God, who exalts the humble. When she understood that her people, through the doing of Haman, the king’s friend, on account of Mordecai, had been handed over to death, and the sword hung over their necks, Esther, laying down her life for her people and calling on divine help, entered the king’s inner chamber, where a woman not summoned was not allowed to approach. When the king looked at her angrily, and she too was faint with shame, God, as it is said, turned his heart to gentleness; and the king, promising her many good things, while he sought to restore her well-being, did not refuse to come to the banquet with Haman, as the queen had asked. There, as she told what had been done to her and her people, the king decreed that Haman be hanged on the very wood on which Haman had resolved to hang the innocent Mordecai; so that, as the prophet says, the most wicked schemes might roll back upon the schemer himself. So the holy Church slays her enemies with the wood of the cross. So she sets herself against the dangers of this world for her own. So, when they are given over to death, she ministers by her labors, conferring life; as a queen who is admonished by her King, bridegroom, and Lord, and is told: “Rescue those who are being led to death, and redeem those who are being killed.” Even her enemies seek the refuge of her benefits. In no unequal place too holy Judith is set, following in order, who herself also takes on the figure and person of the holy Church. For when Holofernes, general of the army of the king of Babylon, had surrounded Bethulia with a siege, and, the water cut off, was afflicting the whole city with thirst, its leaders decided to surrender it to Holofernes. Judith opposed those who planned this, asking for a respite of a few days. In these, with fasts and prayers, she entreated as a suppliant the King of kings and Lord of lords. Putting off her widow’s garment, she made herself ready in every respect, in mind, body, and manners, and showed herself admirable to all, using that counsel by which, God guarding her, she believed that the enemy, captured by her beauty, could be killed, her chastity being kept by him who is the giver and guardian of chastity. When she brought back unharmed the enemy’s head, the woman restored to her country the freedom which men had not been able to. If you recognize in her, as we said, our Church, whose figure she bore, you see how, after her husband, Christ the Lord, suffered, rose, and ascended into heaven, she put off all sadness like a widow’s garment and was clothed with beauty by him of whom she says in the prophet Isaiah: “He has clothed me with the garment of salvation and surrounded me with the robe of joy, like a bride adorned with her jewels.” For she too was sent to wound the head of the enemies, since she is the body of him who crushed the head of the great dragon. She too, like Judith, did not spare her life, since it is she who says through the apostle John: “As Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” That she has done this in the holy martyrs is certain, she who is blessed before almighty God.

Of demons put to flight and the blind given light by the fish, Christ, in Tobit. A prediction made and figured. Tobit too was a captive in Nineveh, endowed with such patience in his religion because he knew that the Lord’s anger must be borne with an even mind. Satisfying God with worthy works and confessions, he brought up his son too in holy ways. He instructed him not to fear the want of poverty nor the labors of long exile, provided that, persevering in the Lord’s commands, he departed from all iniquity and did good. And while he, blind in body, was showing his son right paths by the shining justice of the inner light, Raphael the archangel, sent by God, ministered not only comfort to the captives but also heavenly benefits to those who prayed: guiding the son to recover the money, he gave him Raguel’s daughter as wife, from whom he drove out the most wicked demon Asmodeus, who had already killed her seven husbands. When the son returned rich with his wife, he took away the spots from Tobit’s own eyes with the liver of the fish with which he had also put the demon to flight, and restored his former sight. And he warned them always to glorify God and persevere in good works. Here Tobit prophesied Christ the Lord among the other proclamations of his praise, saying: “Many nations will come from afar, inhabitants from the furthest parts of the earth, to the name of the Lord God, and having their gifts in their hands, they will offer them with joy to the King of heaven”: which we now see fulfilled. The mystery of this action is that from the inward parts of the fish both the demon was put to flight and Tobit was given light. This the great fish, Christ, did from his passion, cleansing Mary, from whom he cast out seven demons, taking away despair from a soul so captured; for even a soul which the seven more wicked spirits have tormented must be cleansed and healed by the liver of our fish, if, turning back repentant, she understands that the evil spirits are put to flight from her, and guards against them as enemies. For the spirit of Baal is the spirit of pride; more wicked than it is the pretense of humility. An evil spirit is the spirit of envy; more wicked than it is the pretense of love. An evil spirit is the spirit of lying; more wicked than it is the pretense of truth. An evil spirit is the spirit of luxury; more wicked than it is the pretense of chastity. An evil spirit is the spirit of avarice; more wicked than it is the pretense of mercy. An evil spirit is the spirit of intemperance; more wicked than it is the pretense of frugality. An evil spirit is the spirit of error; more wicked than it is the pretense of religion. Possessed by these, since her last state is worse than the first, she is freed by the medicine of our fish, because where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more. He paid the tribute for himself and for Peter, and gave back light to blinded Paul, satisfying the disciples on the shore from himself, and offering himself to the whole world as ichthys. In Latin the word means “fish”; our elders interpreted this in the sacred letters, gathering from the Sibylline verses that it is: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior; the fish cooked in his passion, by whose inward remedies we are daily given light and fed.

Of the Maccabees, who both accepted martyrdom and received Christ himself born as king. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in the Maccabees. After freedom had been restored from the Babylonian captivity, the Maccabees provided leadership for the Hebrew people. Their valor so shone out that not only the Macedonians and Ptolemy king of Egypt, but even the Romans themselves invited them into treaties of friendship. There, among the Jews, in a certain part which the Romans had already taken, under the reign of Antiochus, that illustrious woman, the mother of the Maccabees, for the hope of eternal life and her own laws, so that her sons would not touch forbidden pork, brought forth seven martyrs to God in one day, whom, despising the earth, she bore not to this world but to heaven itself: admonishing us by her example to despise perishing things, to seek the everlasting, to finish more quickly what must be finished, so that, contending and conquering, they might take hold of that which has no end. So she herself, soon to follow, sent her sons ahead to life, which, knowing it to be true and free of all fear, she gained for herself and her sons by faithful witness. For its sake Judas Maccabeus also sent twelve thousand talents to Jerusalem for others who died in battle, to offer sacrifice for the dead, thinking well and rightly of the resurrection. With this prayer holy Church urges her sons, impressing on them contempt of death, and compels them to pass to Christ, the true life, so that she herself may be perfected in the kingdom of God with her sons, who say to her: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation? Or distress? Or persecution? Or famine? Or nakedness? Or danger? Or the sword?” The last leader and high priest among the Maccabees was Hyrcanus. For Pompey, magistrate of the Roman people, when he took Jerusalem, sent his brother Aristobulus bound with his children to Rome, as the History of Josephus relates. Yet the prophecy of the patriarch Jacob was fulfilled, saying: “A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom all things are laid up, and he will be the expectation of the nations.” We see that the order of the kings of Judah and Israel, or the Levitical priesthood, came to rest when Herod, a foreign king, ruled the Hebrew people; the anointing also ceasing, which the prophet Daniel had foretold would cease, so that that people should not follow anointed kings or priests, since the eternal King and Priest, Christ, who is the expectation of the nations, was now present. Herod, then (whose father, Josephus says, was of the Idumeans and his mother of Arabia), took the rule of that nation, assigned to him by Caesar Augustus, at the time when Caesar ordered a census of the whole pacified world to be made by edict. So in the year of that enrollment, which was made when Quirinius was governor of Syria, Christ the Lord was born; in that census Paul too came. For so must we understand what he said to the tribune Lysias: “But I was born a Roman.” For all bought the dignity of this name for a price; but this man, a Jew, when he said he was born a Roman, showed more clearly that he came in that census, John the forerunner and herald of the true King and Judge being already born, from whom the time of grace took its beginning. Thus far, with the Lord’s help, I have been able to gather, as it was given, the promises and predictions figured under the Law. Here too the second time, like a second day rising from the four parts of the world, of the prophet fathers, the eastern region migrating, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel placed in three parts; here too with the twelve of the minor prophets, as with the number of hours, closing the second day as toward evening; so that the third time, of grace made manifest, together with the eternal day itself, with chapters appended, the third part of the book may begin. Amen.

Of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ. A promise believed and seen. The prophet Isaiah says: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low. And the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways plain. And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” John the evangelist confirms this, saying: “This is the testimony of John concerning Christ, when the chief priests sent to ask him whether he was the Christ. And he confessed, and did not deny, saying: I am not. They said to him: Are you Elijah? And he said: No. Who then are you? they said: tell us, that we may give an answer to those who sent us; what do you say of yourself? He said: I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah says.” Peter too testifies in the Acts of the Apostles, saying: “When John was finishing his course, he said: I am not the one you suppose me to be; but behold, one comes after me, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” The Erythraean Sibyl too acknowledges it, saying: “Sign of judgment: the earth will be drenched with sweat. Now the mountains are made level with the plains, and the blue of the sea.” And explaining herself she added: “There will be nothing lofty or high in human affairs.” This we ourselves know and see fulfilled through Christ the Lord.

Of Christ, King and Judge, to come from heaven. A promise believed and seen. The prophet David says: “His going forth is from the highest heaven.” And again: “Your kingdom is the kingdom of all ages.” Again he says: “The Lord has reigned over all the nations.” And Isaiah: “You will see the King with glory.” Again: “Behold, your King,” he says, “comes sitting on a light cloud,” namely flesh that has no weight of sin. The Gospel of Matthew confirms this, saying: “Magi came from the East, saying: Where is he who has been born King of the Jews?” And Paul testifies: “To the King of the ages,” he says. And again: “The blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, will show.” And the Sibyl acknowledges: “From heaven will come the King who will reign through the ages.”

Of the Word, God and man. A promise believed and seen. The prophet David says: “He sent his Word and healed them.” And Jeremiah: “This is our God, and there is no other besides him, who found every way of prudence and gave it to Jacob his chosen one; after this he was seen on earth and lived among men.” And the prophet Habakkuk: “The Word walked,” he says, “and went out into the fields.” John the evangelist confirms this, saying: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And Paul testifies: “Though he was 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, made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man.” And the Sibyl acknowledges: “present, that is, in the flesh, to judge the world.”

Of Christ born of the Virgin. A promise believed and seen. The prophet Isaiah says: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel,” which is interpreted, “God with us.” Luke the evangelist confirms this, saying: “The angel Gabriel was sent to a virgin betrothed, whose name was Mary; and coming in he greeted her thus: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” And a little later: “The Holy Spirit,” he says, “will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the holy one to be born of you will be called Son of God.” Paul too testifies, saying: “But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman,” following the Hebrew idiom, which calls all females “women.” The Sibyl too acknowledges: “unbeliever and believer will see God,” she says. Maro says: “Now a new offspring is sent down from high heaven; now the Virgin too returns.” He said “returns” because, as the virgin Eve brought death into the world, the virgin Mary, returning, brought forth the Savior.

Of Christ laid in the manger. A promise believed and seen. The prophet Isaiah says: “The ox knew its owner, and the ass its master’s crib.” And Habakkuk: “In the midst of two living creatures,” he says, “you will be known.” Luke the evangelist confirms this, saying: “When the days of Mary were fulfilled, she bore a son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the inn.” And the angel to the shepherds: “To you is born,” he says, “Christ the Lord in the city of David; and this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Paul too testifies, saying: “He became poor, though he was rich, so that by his poverty we might be made rich.” And the Sibyl acknowledges: “when the world lies untilled in thick thorn-brakes.”

Of the sign of the star. A promise believed and seen. Balaam, the prophet from the nations, says: “A star shall rise from Jacob, and a man shall rise up from Israel, and shall shatter all the kingdoms of the earth.” And the prophet Isaiah: “The people of the nations,” he says, “sitting in darkness, saw a great light.” And David said: “The kings of Tarshish and the islands shall offer gifts; the kings of the Arabs and of Sheba shall bring presents.” Again Isaiah: “All will come from Sheba, bringing gold, incense, and precious stone, proclaiming well the salvation of the Lord.” Matthew the evangelist confirms this, saying: “Behold, the star which the Magi had seen in the East went before them, until it came and stood over the place where the child was. Seeing the star, they rejoiced with great joy. Entering, they found the child and his mother. And opening their treasures they offered him gifts: gold, as to a King; incense, as to a Priest; and myrrh, as to one who would die for us.” Paul too testifies: “God,” he says, “who said that light should shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Christ Jesus”; and the Sibyl acknowledges, saying: “fire will burn up the lands, and sea and sky.” Maro too says some fitting things: “A star leading a torch ran with much light”; “they heap it with gifts, and adore the holy star.”

Of the peace and salvation of his birth. A promise believed and seen. Through the prophet Isaiah: “A son,” he says, “has been given to us.” And a little later: “I will bring peace upon his rule; peace and salvation are great for him; of his power and peace there will be no end.” Luke the evangelist confirms this, saying: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising and saying: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” And he himself says: “My peace I give you, my peace I leave you.” The apostle Paul too testifies, saying: “For he is our peace, who has made both one.” And Maro acknowledges: “and he shall rule a world made peaceful by his father’s virtues.”

Of the flight into Egypt. A promise believed and seen. Through the prophet Hosea: “Out of Egypt,” he says, “I called my Son.” The evangelist Matthew confirms this: “An angel of the Lord,” he says, “appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying: Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee into Egypt. For Herod is about to seek the child to destroy him.” For Christ was brought into Egypt for this, that, as the apostle Paul says, where sin abounded, grace might abound all the more.

Of the little ones killed for Christ. A promise fulfilled. In the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice,” he says, “was heard in Ramah, weeping and wailing, Rachel weeping for her sons, and she would not be comforted, because they are not.” And through David, saying: “The innocent and the upright have clung to me.” Again elsewhere: “Out of the mouth of infants and sucklings you have perfected praise.” The evangelist Matthew confirms this: “Herod,” he says, “when he saw that he had been deceived by the Magi, was very angry, and sent and killed all the boys in Bethlehem and in all its region, from two years old and under, according to the time he had ascertained from the Magi.” John too testifies in the Apocalypse: “These,” it is said, “are those who have come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” And their number from every tribe of Israel was shown as a hundred and forty-four thousand sealed, whom Christ joined to his number even from unwilling Jerusalem; because, as Paul says: “Those whom he predestined, he also called.” To this Maro adds: “and the souls of infants weeping on the threshold.” Again: “Your very cradle will pour out caressing flowers for you.”

Of the boy Jesus, who in the temple convicted the elders of the Jews from a prophet. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Isaiah, in the person of Christ the Lord: “The Spirit of the Lord,” he says, “is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim release to the captives, and sight to the blind.” The Gospel of Luke confirms this, saying: “Jesus came into the temple and took the book of Isaiah.” When he had read what is set down above, he said to them: “Truly I say to you, today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And all who were in the temple marveled, saying: “How does this man read, who has not learned letters?” The apostle Peter testifies: “For no prophecy was ever brought by human will, but men of God spoke moved by the Holy Spirit.” And Paul says: “Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone.”

Of Christ anointed by the dove, after John baptized him in the Jordan. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Isaiah says: “The deserts of the Jordan shall be exalted.” And it continues: “My people shall see the height of God and the glory of the Lord.” And David says: “The rush of the river gladdens the city of God.” Again he says: “God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.” The Gospel of Matthew confirms this, saying: “Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. And John forbade him, saying: I ought to be baptized by you, and you come to me? Jesus answered him: Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he baptized him; and when Jesus had been baptized, he at once came up from the water, and the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Holy Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and remaining on him. And a voice came from heaven, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The apostle Peter testifies to this, saying: “And we heard this voice borne from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.” For this voice sounded from heaven three times, as those know who read or hear the Gospels attentively. By the dove he understands the anointing who knows that after the flood the dove brought an olive branch to the ark.

Of the choosing of the disciples. A promise fulfilled. Through the prophet Jeremiah: “I will send,” he says, “fishers to them, and they will fish them; and hunters, and they will hunt them.” The Gospel of Mark confirms this: “Jesus found,” it says, “Simon Peter and Andrew his brother by the sea of Galilee, mending their nets, and said to them: Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” To the hunters he gave the high mountains for the stags, the rock as refuge for the hedgehogs and the hares; to the fishers, the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea, which pass through the paths of the sea. David explains this briefly, saying: “The princes of the peoples have gathered together with the God of Abraham.” The Sibyl too acknowledges: “exalted with the saints, at the very end of time.”

Of the miracles of Christ. A promise believed and seen. The prophet Isaiah says: “Encourage one another, you who are faint-hearted; be strong, and now do not fear. For behold, our God will repay judgment; he himself will come and save us. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will hear. Then the lame will leap like a stag, and the tongue of the mute will be clear.” The Gospel of Mark confirms this, saying: “John’s disciples came, sent by him to Jesus, and said to him: Thus says our master: Are you the one who has come, or do we wait for another? Jesus answered them: Go, tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, lepers are cleansed, the poor have good news preached to them, and blessed is he who is not offended in me.” Peter too testifies in the Acts of the Apostles: “Jesus,” he says, “who went about doing good and healing every infirmity among the people, because God was in him.” And Maro says to this: “He will receive the life of the gods.”

Of Christ, that he walked on the sea with his feet. A promise believed and seen. The prophet David says: “Your way is in the sea, and your paths in many waters.” And Habakkuk says: “Scattering the waters of the way, the deep gave forth its voice.” The Gospel of Matthew confirms this, saying: “In the fourth watch of the night Jesus came to his disciples, walking on the sea. Seeing him, the disciples were afraid, saying: It is a phantom. But Jesus, coming near to them, said to them: It is I; do not be afraid.” Solomon too says: “You have given a way in the sea and a most firm path among the waves, showing that you can save even those who cross the sea without a ship.” This Jesus is known to have done also in Peter. Paul too testifies that in the shipwreck Jesus stood by him, saying: “Do not fear, Paul; for behold, God has given you all who sail with you.” Of whom no man perished, but only the ship. And the Sibyl mentioned above answers to both: “fire will burn up the lands, and sea and sky.”

Of Jesus, that he wonderfully fed the peoples in the desert. A promise believed and seen. The prophet David says: “He satisfied the empty soul, and filled the hungry soul with good things.” And Isaiah says: “He will feed you with the inheritance of your father Jacob.” The evangelists confirm this: that Jesus ordered his disciples to make them recline on the grass in fifties, and from five loaves and two fish fed five thousand men in the desert, and twelve baskets were filled with the leftovers. Paul too testifies: “For we all partake of the one bread.” And again: “All things are sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” And to this sign the Sibyl mentioned above resounds.

Of Jesus, that he was carried by a donkey. A promise believed and seen. The prophet Zechariah says: “Say to the daughter of Zion: Behold, your King comes to you, just and saving; he is meek, sitting on a beast of burden, a donkey and a young colt.” All the evangelists confirm this, that Jesus sat on the colt and the people spread their garments for him. In this deed Jesus showed Cornelius coming from the nations to faith, on whom the grace of the one calling sat. For in that vessel the Lord showed Peter the nations cleansed, when Cornelius believed.

Of Jesus, that he drove the merchants [another reading: sinners] out of the temple of God. A promise believed and seen. Through the prophet David he himself says: “Zeal for your house has consumed me,” because “my enemies have forgotten your words.” Again in the same place: “Because I have not known trading, I will enter into the power of the Lord.” The evangelists too confirm this, that the Lord Jesus, with a whip of cords, drove out of the temple those who bought and sold doves; and he overturned the tables of the money-changers, saying: “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.” Paul too testifies: “If anyone,” he says, “violates the temple of God, God will destroy him.” And again: “These things were written for our correction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.” In this he also marks, among others, lovers of money, and traitors who, like doves, sell off the innocent by betraying them. Hence too that saying of Maro: “By degrees a worse and discolored age, and the madness of war and the love of having, came in.”

Of Christ the Lord, who pointed out his betrayer. A promise believed and seen. Through the prophet David he himself says: “He who ate my bread has lifted up his heel against me.” Again in the same place: “He went outside and spoke of the same thing; all my enemies whispered against me; against me they devised evils for me.” And again: “If an enemy had cursed me, I would surely have borne it; and if one who hated me had spoken great things against me, I would surely have hidden from him. But you, a man of one mind with me, my leader and my acquaintance, who took sweet food together with me.” And more plainly: “I was handed over, and did not go out.” He says too through Zechariah: “They gave thirty pieces of silver as my wage.” All the evangelists confirm this: that the Lord Jesus said to the disciples as they reclined: “Do you know that one of you will betray me?” And when they said one by one, “Is it I, Rabbi?”, he said: “He to whom I give the dipped morsel, he is the one.” When Judas said, “Is it I, Master?”, Jesus said to him: “You have said it.” And immediately, when he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. And he went away and went out, to betray him to the Jews. And again Judas went and brought back the silver to the chief priests, saying: “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.” Paul too testifies: “The Lord Jesus,” he says, “on the night when he was betrayed, took bread,” and the rest that was done up to the betrayal. And the Sibyl acknowledges: “will be given; the guilty the eternal flame will burn.”

Of the insults against Jesus. A promise fulfilled. Through the prophet Isaiah: “I gave my back to the scourges,” he says, “and my cheeks to blows, and I did not turn away my face from the filth of spitting.” And Jeremiah says: “He will give his cheek to the one who strikes him; he will be filled with reproaches.” All the evangelists confirm this, that Pilate handed Jesus over to them scourged to be crucified, and they struck him with palms and fists, saying: “Prophesy to us, Christ: who struck you?” The apostle Peter testifies in these things, saying: “Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” Another Sibyl acknowledges: “He will afterwards come,” she says, “into the hands of the impious; they will give God blows with unclean hands, and with polluted mouth they will spit poisoned spittle. He will give his holy back to the scourges, and receiving the buffets he was silent, so that no one may know what Word he is, or whence he comes.” All of which the whole world now recognizes as fulfilled in Christ the Lord.

Of Christ crowned with thorns. A promise fulfilled. Through David he himself says: “I was turned in my misery, while the thorn was fixed in me.” And the evangelists confirm this, that they placed a crown of thorns on his head, and he went out carrying his cross. That ram too signified this, which, caught by its horns in thorns, was sacrificed in place of Isaac. And the Sibyl acknowledges: “that he may speak to those below, and be crowned with a crown of thorns” (cited in Augustine, City of God 18.23).

Of the cross and wounds of Christ. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Isaiah says: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer he did not open his mouth.” And again: “For the iniquity of my people he was led to death.” He says too through David: “They dug my hands and my feet; they numbered all my bones.” Jeremiah also says: “Before our face Christ the Lord was taken in their corruption.” Again he says: “Come, let us put wood into his bread.” All the evangelists confirm this, that coming to the place called Golgotha, which is the place of the skull, there they crucified him. The apostle Peter testifies to this, saying: “He bore our sins in his body on the wood.” And Paul says: “Though he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by the power of God.”

That Christ was crucified between robbers. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Isaiah says: “He was counted among the wicked, he who committed no sin, by whose bruise we have all been healed.” The Gospel of John confirms this, saying: “With him they crucified two other robbers, one on each side, and Jesus in the middle.” To this the apostle Peter says: “Let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a slanderer; but if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but glorify God in this name.”

That they divided his garments and cast lots for his tunic. A promise fulfilled. Through the prophet David: “They divided my garments among them,” he says, “and for my clothing they cast lots.” John the evangelist confirms this: “The soldiers,” he says, “when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts. Likewise the tunic, which was woven from the top throughout; they said: Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be.” That this tunic is the one Catholic Church the apostle Paul shows, saying: “Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of water in the word, that he might present the Church to himself glorious, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she might be holy and immaculate.”

Of Christ, who was given gall and vinegar to drink. A promise fulfilled. Through the prophet David he himself says: “They gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” All the evangelists confirm this. “Jesus, knowing,” says John, “that all things were now finished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said: I thirst. A vessel full of vinegar was standing there, and putting a sponge full of vinegar on hyssop, they brought it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar full of gall, he said: It is finished; and bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.” And through David he did not keep silent about this plant, saying: “You will sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” And the Sibyl acknowledges: “For food they gave gall, and for his thirst vinegar; this table of inhospitality they will show” (in Augustine, as above). To this that saying of Virgil also answers: “The serpent too shall die, and the deceitful poisonous herb.” “Shall die”: for then the devil was conquered.

Of Christ, that he was pierced by a lance, and blood and water flowed from his side. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Zechariah says: “They will look on him whom they pierced.” And again it was said in the law: “You shall not break a bone of it.” And Jeremiah says: “He will give his mouth to the pit.” The evangelists confirm this, John saying: “When the soldiers came to Jesus and saw that he was dead, they did not break his legs, as they did the robbers’; but one of the soldiers opened his side with a lance, and at once there came out blood and water.” The apostle Peter testifies to these things: “Knowing,” he says, “that you were redeemed from your futile way of life inherited from your fathers, not with gold or silver, but with the precious blood of the spotless Lamb.” And John the apostle says: “There are three that bear witness, the spirit, the blood, and the water.” And it continues: “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater.” And the Sibyl acknowledges (as above), rebuking the Jewish nation: “For you yourself, foolish one, did not understand your God, who played with the minds of mortals, but crowned him with thorns and mixed bitter gall.”

That at Christ’s passion the sun and moon were darkened. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Joel says: “Before his face the earth will be confounded and the heaven moved; the sun and moon will be darkened, and the stars will hide their light.” And the evangelists confirm this, saying: “After Jesus was crucified, darkness came over the whole earth from the sixth hour until the ninth.” And again: “After Jesus gave up his spirit, the veil of the temple was torn in two parts from top to bottom.” And the apostle Paul says: “When they turn to Christ, the veil will be taken away.” And the Sibyl acknowledges: “The veil of the temple will be torn, and at midday there will be exceedingly dark night for three hours.”

Of the burial of Christ the Lord. A promise fulfilled. Through the prophet David he himself says: “I have become like a man without help, free among the dead, and like the wounded sleeping, cast out in the tombs.” Again in the same: “You will not leave my soul in the underworld, nor let your holy one see corruption.” Here too Matthew and the other evangelists testify that Joseph of Arimathea, Pilate permitting, received the body of Jesus and, wrapping it in linen cloths, laid it in a new tomb. And Paul testifies, saying to the Corinthians: “For I handed on to you first of all what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose on the third day according to the Scriptures.” And the Sibyl acknowledges (as above): “And he will die in death, taking sleep for three days.”

That at Christ’s death the bodies of the saints rose. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Isaiah says: “The dead will rise, and those in the tombs will be raised, and all who are on the earth will rejoice. For the dew that is from you is healing for them.” Matthew the evangelist confirms this, saying: “The earth shook, and the rocks were split, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep rose. And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.” And Paul says: “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” The apostle Peter too testifies, saying: “For this reason the gospel was preached even to the dead.” And the Sibyl acknowledges: “and the earth, gaping, showed the chaos of Tartarus; searching, it will break the gates of grim Avernus; but free light to all the flesh of the saints …”

That he rose from the dead on the third day. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Hosea says: “After two days he will heal us; on the third day we shall rise, and before the dawn we shall find him ready.” He says too through David: “I myself will rise before the dawn.” Again in the same place: “The Lord awoke as one sleeping, like a mighty man drunk with wine.” Matthew and the other evangelists confirm this, that the chief priests came and said to Pilate: “Lord, we remember that that deceiver said while he was still alive: After the third day I will rise. So order the tomb to be guarded.” For he had said to them: “This generation is a wicked generation; it seeks a sign, and no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet. For as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so must the Son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.” “Late on the sabbath, as it was dawning toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and coming near rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was fearful, and his garment like snow; for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women: Do not fear, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified: he is not here; for he has risen, as he said.” Paul too testifies to Timothy: “Remember,” he says, “that Christ Jesus has risen from the dead, according to my gospel.” And to the Corinthians: “Christ,” he says, “has risen from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Here it is asked how he is called the first fruits, since he himself raised the dead, and Elijah and Elisha raised them from the dead. The answer is that those who were raised died again and still rest today with those who sleep; but the apostle Paul calls Christ the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep because, rising from the dead, he no longer dies, and death will no longer have dominion over him. And the Sibyl acknowledges: “Then, returning from those below, he will come first to the light, showing the beginning of the resurrection to those called back.”

Of the unbelieving disciples rebuked. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Hosea says: “The Lord has roared like a lion, for he himself will roar, and the sons of the eagles will be astonished.” In line with that saying of Jacob: “You went up, lying down; you slept like a lion.” The Gospel of Mark confirms this: “As the eleven were reclining,” it says, “Jesus appeared to them and rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen him risen.” And to Thomas, in John, he said: “Put your finger here and see my hands; and put out your hand into my side, and do not be unbelieving but believing.” John too testifies in his letter, saying: “What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; and the life was made manifest to us.” And Paul says: “He appeared to Cephas, then to the eleven. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, of whom most remain until now.” Again: “If Christ is preached as risen from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” And Maro says: “Under your leadership, if any traces of our crime remain, made void, they will free the lands from perpetual fear.”

Of Christ’s ascension into heaven, and of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. A promise fulfilled. The prophet David says: “He ascended on high, he led captivity captive, he gave gifts to men.” Again he says: “He mounted on the cherubim and flew; he flew on the wings of the winds.” And again: “The taking up is the Lord’s, and of the Holy One of Israel, our King.” Again he says: “Send forth your Spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth.” The evangelists confirm this, he himself saying in Mark: “These signs will follow those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues.” And elsewhere: “I,” he says, “will send you the promise of my Father; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” And after he had said this, he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God. The Acts of the Apostles testify: “A cloud,” it says, “took him up, and he was lifted up from the disciples. And as they were gazing while he went into heaven, two men stood by them in white, who also said: Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven.” And again: “On the day of Pentecost all the disciples were together in one place with one mind. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole place where they were sitting. And tongues as of fire appeared to them, divided, and rested on each of them, and they spoke in various tongues, as the Spirit gave them to speak.” And again: “By the Holy Spirit,” he says, “sent from heaven, whom he poured out most richly on us and on all who believe.”

Of the rise of the Church. A promise fulfilled. The prophet David says: “He makes the barren woman dwell in the house, the joyful mother of children.” And Isaiah: “Rejoice,” he says, “barren one, who do not bear; break forth and cry out, you who are not in labor, for the children of the desolate are more than of her who has a husband.” And how she gives birth the Lord himself shows in the Gospel of Mark: “Go,” he says to the disciples, “baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Again he says: “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of God.” And in the Acts of the Apostles: “You will be my witnesses,” he says, “in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” And Peter says: “Like newborn infants, long for the reasonable milk without guile, that by it you may grow to salvation.” And Paul testifies: “Though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet you have not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel.” [33] Of the new Testament, the new song, the new man. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Jeremiah says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will accomplish over the house of Israel and over the house of Judah a new Testament, not according to the Testament that I gave their fathers.” And a little later: “This is the Testament that I will make with them: putting my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts; and each will not teach his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all will know me, from the greatest to the least of them.” And through Isaiah: “Behold, I make new things, which will now spring up.” And again: “To those who serve me a new name will be given.” This is surely understood as “Christian,” a name which has taken possession of the earth. And David says: “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.” Who but one blind of heart does not see these things fulfilled? The Lord confirms this in the Gospel of Matthew: “Every scribe trained in the kingdom of God,” he says, “is like a man who brings out of his treasure new things and old.” And again: “What is born of the Spirit is spirit.” And Paul testifies: “The first man,” he says, “was from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us also bear the image of him who is from heaven.” And again: “Be renewed,” he says, “in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who is created according to God.” Again: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away, and behold, new things have come.” And Maro says: “in which the iron race first ceases, and a golden race rises in the whole world.”

Of the martyrs. A promise fulfilled. Through the prophet David they say: “For your sake we are put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.” And again: “You have given us like sheep to be eaten.” Again in the same place: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” He himself confirms this in the Gospel, saying: “Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves.” And again: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will keep it for eternal life.” Again: “You will be handed over by brothers, kinsmen, and friends, and they will put some of you to death; and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But whoever endures to the end will be saved.” And in John: “Unless,” he says, “a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” John the apostle too testifies, saying: “As Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” And Paul says: “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come (and he concludes), nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” To this that saying of Maro: “He shall see heroes mingled with the gods, and shall himself be seen by them.” The historian Orosius wrote that there were ten persecutions from Nero to Diocletian and Maximian, like the ten plagues of Egypt. Blessed Augustine, of venerable memory, set down very many others in his writings, which he felt and saw not far from us, and handed down to us shrines of martyrdom consecrated to be venerated, himself believing in the growth of the Church which we see fulfilled. In our own times we know a persecution was carried out among the Persians, when Arcadius, a devout and Christian prince, was emperor, who, rather than hand over the Armenians who had fled to him, waged war with the Persians. Behold a sign: before he won the victory, as the soldiers were already engaging in battle, crosses of light appeared on their garments. For this reason the victor ordered a gold coin to be made with the same sign of the cross, which is in use throughout the world, and especially in Asia, to this day.

Of the calling of the nations. A promise fulfilled. The prophet David said: “The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.” And Isaiah: “Many nations will marvel at him, and kings will shut their mouths. Those to whom it was not told of him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.” Again: “They will proclaim his powers in the islands.” Again Isaiah says: “Nations that did not know you will call upon you, and peoples who did not know you will flee to you.” Again he says of the apostles: “Who are these who fly like clouds, to bring your sons from a distant land?” And again: “Behold, these come from afar; these from the north and the sea; these from the land of the Persians.” And through David it is said: “A people I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear it obeyed me.” The Lord confirms this in the Gospel: “Many,” he says, “will come from the east and west and recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of his Father.” Peter too testifies: “You who once,” he says, “were not a people, but now are the people of God.” And Paul says: “I speak to you Gentiles: inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if somehow I may provoke my flesh to jealousy and save some of them.” And again: “Blindness has come upon part of Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, and so all Israel will be saved.” “All,” it is said, “who are written in the book of life of the Lamb, who was slain from the foundation of the world.”

That kings who persecute Christ in the Church will be brought humbled to her. A promise fulfilled. In David the prophet: “All the kings of the earth will adore him; all nations will serve him.” And the prophet Isaiah: “The nations,” he says, “and kings who do not serve you will perish.” And again: “Behold,” says the Lord, “I lift up my hand to the nations, and I will raise my sign to the islands; and they will bring your sons in their bosom, and carry your daughters on their shoulders. And kings will be your foster fathers, and their princesses your singers. And they will bow down to you with their faces to the earth, and lick the dust of your feet.” The Lord confirms this in the Gospel, saying: “The queen of the South will rise in the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And behold, something greater than Solomon is here.” It is greater here because to him one kingdom came, to this one all kingdoms came; as now we, who have long believed and believe, both discern and have seen these things fulfilled. And the Sibyl acknowledges, saying (in Augustine, as above): “And here kings will be set before the Lord, all together.”

That kings too have taken up the yoke of the law of Christ. A promise fulfilled. The prophet David says: “Now, kings, understand; be instructed, all who judge the earth. Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in him with trembling. Lay hold of discipline, lest the Lord be angry and you perish from the right way.” And again: “When the peoples gather together, and kings, to serve the Lord.” And Solomon says: “Love justice, you who judge the earth.” The Lord confirms this in the Gospel, saying: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” And again: “With the measure you measure, it will be measured back to you.” The apostle James testifies to this: “Judgment without mercy,” he says, “to him who has not shown mercy. For mercy triumphs over judgment.” Paul too commands that we pray for kings and for those in high places, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life. To this Maro says: “Warned, learn justice and not to scorn the gods.”

Of the overthrow of idols and temples. A promise fulfilled. In his law the Lord says through Moses: “You shall overturn their altars, cut down their groves, and burn their carved images with fire.” And the prophet Isaiah: “All the things made by hand in Egypt will flee.” Again he says: “They will hide their gods in caves and caverns of the rocks, and not even there will they conceal them.” Jeremiah too says: “The gods who did not make heaven and earth, let them perish from under heaven and earth.” And through Zechariah the Lord says: “I will destroy the names of the idols from the earth.” David too says: “All the gods of the nations are demons.” The Lord confirms this in the Gospel of Luke, saying: “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste. And if Satan too is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges.” Paul too testifies, saying: “We know that an idol is nothing in this world, and that there is no God but one.” And the Sibyl acknowledges (as above): “Men will cast away their idols and all their treasure.” These many things, then, which were said of Christ and done in Christ, we believe; the people before us, seeing these things, believed what we see fulfilled. For, to say something of our own times: when Constantine, a Christian emperor, reigned, the Donatist schism was refuted by his judgment, and Arius was punished by divine authority. Under the rule of Theodosius, a devout prince, who of us is allowed not to know that all the temples were closed through the counts Jovius and Gaudentius and the vain idols despoiled? When Symmachus, a man endowed with wonderful eloquence and learning, yet a pagan, having recited a panegyric in the consistory, suggested with what subtle skill he could to the prince, Christian as he knew him to be, that the altar of Victory be restored in the senate, the emperor at once drove him from his sight and ordered him that day to be put on an unfurnished carriage and to stay at the hundredth milestone. Eutropius too, the all-powerful patrician, a pagan in heart and mind, when he surreptitiously extracted from the Christian emperor Arcadius an edict insulting to the Church, that anyone who fled to it should be dragged even from the altar and suffer greater penalties, by divine judgment was himself the first to be served with his own sentence. For, incurring the said emperor’s displeasure, he fled for refuge to her whom he hated. The holy mother received her enemy in the bosom of mercy; obtaining pardon for him through the venerable bishop John, she gave the proud man life and safety, by his example warning all enemies that it is vain for them to kick against the goad. Honorius too, the younger son of Theodosius, endowed with Christian religion and devotion, gave all the temples with their adjoining grounds to the churches, and at the same time gave them power to break their idols. What was done in this promise of God under the same emperor, as far as divine grace has helped my memory, I will run through briefly from memory in two or three places. At Alexandria, in the temple of Serapis, there was this device of the demon. An iron four-horse chariot, supported by no base, fastened to the walls by no hooks, hanging in the air, presented to the eyes of mortals an astonishment to all and, as it were, a divine support. But a magnet, the stone that holds up iron attracted to it, fixed in that place in the vault, sustained that whole machine. So when a certain servant of God, inspired, understood this, as soon as he removed the magnet from the vault, that whole showpiece, falling broken and shattered, showed that what mortal man had made firm was not divine. At the city of Rome there was a certain cave in which a dragon of wonderful size, formed by mechanical art, carrying a sword in its mouth, with eyes of flashing gems, appeared fearful and terrible. To it every year consecrated virgins, adorned with flowers, were given in sacrifice in this way: as, unknowing, bringing gifts, they trod on the step of the stair from which that dragon hung by the devil’s art, the rush of the descending sword killed them, so that it shed innocent blood. A certain monk, well known for his merit to Stilicho, then patrician, overthrew it in this way. Feeling each step with his staff and hand, as soon as he touched that step and found the devil’s fraud, he passed over it, went down, cut the dragon apart, and threw it down in pieces, showing here too that those made by hand are not gods. In Africa, at Carthage, there was, they said, a temple of Caelestis, very large, surrounded by the shrines of all their gods. Its court, paved with mosaic and adorned with precious columns and walls, stretched for nearly two miles. When, closed for a long time through neglect, thorny thickets surrounding it covered it up, and the Christian people wished to claim it for the use of the true religion, the pagan people cried out that there were dragons and asps there to guard the temple. All the more were the Christians kindled with fervor, and removed everything unharmed with such ease that they consecrated the temple to their true heavenly King and Lord. For when the holy and solemn feast of Easter was being kept, and a multitude had gathered there, coming from everywhere even out of curiosity, the father of many priests and a bishop worthy to be named with memory, Aurelius, now a citizen of the heavenly homeland, set his chair there in the place of Caelestis and sat on it. I myself was present then with companions and friends; and (as the age of youth, impatient, turned about in every direction), while we curiously examined each thing for its greatness, something wonderful and incredible presented itself to our sight: a title written in large bronze letters on the front of the temple: AURELIUS PONTIFEX DEDICAVIT (“Aurelius the high priest dedicated it”). Reading it, the people marveled. Things done then by a presaging spirit, which the foreknowing order of God had closed with this sure end. And when a false prophecy was brought forward by a certain pagan, as though from this same Caelestis, that the way and the temples would again be restored to the ancient rite of sacrifices, he, he, I say, the true God, whose prophetic oracles cannot lie or deceive at all, under Constantius and Augusta Placidia, whose son, the devout and Christian Valentinian, now reigns, with the tribune Ursus pressing it on, brought all those temples down to the ground and left the field for the burial of the dead; and the Vandal hand has now overthrown even the road itself without a memory of it. I myself also know that in a certain part of the province of Mauretania ancient idols that had been hidden were brought out of caves and caverns, so that that whole city, with its clergy, was held in the sacrilege of perjury. What was done in this matter through the other provinces is known to all, and the outcomes themselves show it. That Hermes Trismegistus grieved at these things to come, and lamenting wrote among other things: “Then this land, the most holy seat of shrines and temples, will be most full of tombs and corpses.” But the Spirit of God foretold it; and the spirits of the demons too, confessing, could not keep silent, especially those who said to the Lord: “Why have you come before the time to destroy us?” Here that great crowd of gods, certain and uncertain, which Varro sets out; those chief and select gods with their king Jupiter brandishing his thunderbolts, to be feared for counsel and power (as their worshipers say), and terrible in arms: here, here they ought to have done something, if not for the world, at least for themselves, so that one Crucified should not destroy them. That they have perished, we too know, and the prophet David confirms, saying: “Their memory has perished with a noise, and the Lord remains for ever.”

That kings, the middling, and the poor will come together equally to the one table of Christ. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Isaiah says: “Then the wolf will feed together with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid, and the ox and the lion and the lamb will eat straw together, and a little child will lead them.” And David says: “For behold, the kings of the earth were gathered and came together; they themselves, seeing, marveled.” Again he says: “Who is like the Lord our God, who dwells on high and looks upon the lowly? Who raises the needy from the earth and lifts the poor from the dunghill, to set him with princes, with the princes of his people?” And Solomon says: “He himself made the small and the great, and he cares equally for all.” And again: “Wisdom,” he says, “has built herself a house and set up seven columns; she has slain her victims, mixed her wine in the bowl, and prepared her table; she has sent her servants, calling and saying: Come, eat of my bread, and drink the wine I have mixed for you.” The Lord confirms this in the Gospel, in that supper which the great rich man himself prepared for his son. He sent his servants, he says, that those invited should come, and they made excuses in this way. One said: “I have bought a farm; I am going to see it; have me excused.” Another said: “I have bought five yoke of oxen.” Another said: “I have married a wife.” In these three excuses are the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the world; held by these, the Jews who were invited refused to come to Christ’s supper. “Go,” says the householder, “into the squares and streets, and bring in whomever you find.” From these the nations were brought in. “There is still room,” he says. “Go,” he says, “along the hedges and roads, and whomever you find, compel them to come in.” From these he brings in, compelled, the rich, kings, and certain heretics (whom he has outside his fold), he who says: “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” And to those who come he says: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Who these are, the apostle Paul shows: “There is,” he says, “neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.” For this chapter too, the words of the Sibyl we set down above speak of this gathering: “He will cast down the hills, raise the valleys from the depth. There will be nothing lofty or high in human affairs.” In harmony with this Maro says: “nor will the herds fear great lions.”

That when all nations have believed, the end will come. A promise fulfilled. The prophet Isaiah says: “All the islands of the nations will worship him, each from its place.” And through the prophet Malachi: “From the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be glorious among the nations, says the Lord. And a pure sacrifice will be offered to my name in every place.” Again Isaiah: “For the earth is filled with the knowledge of God, like much water covering the sea.” The Lord confirms this in the Gospel of Matthew, saying: “And this Gospel will be preached as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Of the end of the world these signs were given through the prophet Haggai: “Behold, I, says the Lord, will once more shake the heaven and the earth, and I will make the world a desert, and the cities so that they are not inhabited.” And Habakkuk says: “The consummation will come upon the impious.” And again: “The fig trees,” he says, “will not give their fruit, and there will be no produce in the vines. The work of the olive will fail, and the fields will yield no food. The sheep will fail for food, and there will be no oxen in the stalls. But I,” he says, “will exult in the Lord.” The wise men of the world themselves have also attested this, as in that saying of Sallust: “Everything that has arisen must perish, and what has grown must grow old.” The new Academics too thought all things, tending toward destruction, to be uncertain. And Plato: “If he gave a beginning to the world, he gave also an end.” Hence another too says: “What is this? That in which there is something last.” These things the Lord of all things himself confirms by giving signs: “When you see all these things happen,” he says, “know that the end is near.” And John the apostle says: “The world will pass away, and its desire.” The last things to come, the half of the time that follows, will be shown with the chapters appended; so that we may close this third time, like a third day rising from the four evangelists as from the four corners of the world, with John the evangelist, the eastern ray, moving, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke placed in three parts, and in the twelve disciples as the number of hours, the evening in which the Lord suffered. So that the very day which rose from the dead, when he comes eternal in majesty, may make us live eternally with him, and grant us to praise God for ever without end.

How the angel was created who through pride became the devil. A prediction fulfilled. Through Ezekiel the Lord says of him: “You were the seal of likeness, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty; you were in the paradise of your God. Every precious stone was your covering; you walked in the midst of stones of fire, perfect in your ways from the days of your creation, until iniquity was found in you.” And Isaiah: “How,” he says, “has Lucifer fallen, who rose in the morning?” The Lord confirms this in the Gospel: “You,” he says to the Jews, “are from your father the devil. He was a murderer from the beginning, and did not stand in the truth.” He was made in the truth in which he did not stand, because he would not be subject to the Creator, whose power even in his wickedness he did not escape.

By what pride the devil fell. A prediction fulfilled. The prophet Isaiah says of him: “You said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of God I will raise my throne; I will sit on the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the height of the clouds, and I will be like the Most High.” And in Ezekiel: “Your heart was lifted up,” he says, “in your beauty; you lost all wisdom.” The Lord confirms this in the Gospel: “Now,” he says, “is the judgment of the world; now the prince of this world is cast down.” The apostle Peter too testifies in his letter to the nations: “For God,” he says, “did not spare the angels when they sinned.” Yet he spares sinning men, because man sinned with the devil seducing him, but the devil seduced himself by sinning.

Where the devil was cast down. A prediction fulfilled. The prophet Isaiah says: “But you will be sunk into the underworld, into the depth of the pit.” And a little later: “But you have been cast out of your tomb like a useless shoot.” And through Ezekiel the Lord says of him: “I have cast you to the earth; I have set you before the face of kings, that they may see you and the multitude of your iniquities. And by the iniquity of your trading you have lost your holiness.” The Lord confirms this in the Gospel, saying: “I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.” For then he fell further, when Jesus allowed himself to be tempted by him, showing the wickedness of his seduction and teaching his own how they ought to resist the tempter. And the apostle Peter says: “Thrusting them down into the prisons of the darkness of the underworld, he handed them over to be kept for punishment at the judgment.” And in the Apocalypse of John it is said: “That great dragon was cast out, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; and he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him,” following his swollen pride. “Woe,” it is said, “to the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you with great wrath, knowing that he has a short time” in the trading of his seduction. What he did by deceiving the proud and the covetous, the earlier parts of this book contain. Now let us set out in brief, that is, at the end of time, what his deceits will be, with signs, as was said, going before.

Of the devil bound and sent into the abyss. A prediction fulfilled. The prophet David says: “The dragon which you formed to mock him.” And again: “You crushed the heads of the dragons on the waters; you broke the head of the great dragon, and gave him as food to the peoples of Ethiopia.” And in the book of Job it is said: “This is the beginning of the Lord’s creation, which he made to be mocked by his angels.” The Evangelist confirms this, saying: “The demons begged Jesus not to send them into the abyss.” And elsewhere Jesus said to his disciples: “Behold, I have given you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and they will not harm you.” Again the Lord says: “No one enters the house of the strong man to plunder the goods of his house unless he first binds the strong man.” Beyond these the Apocalypse of John testifies: “I saw,” it says, “an angel coming down from heaven, having a great chain in his hand; and he seized that great dragon, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and sent him into the abyss. And he shut and sealed it over him, that he should no longer deceive the nations until the thousand years are finished; after this he must be loosed for a short time.” Here he explained what is said in the same book, Gog and Magog, Hebrew words (which in Latin are said to mean “roof” and “uncovered”), so that we may take “roofed,” that the devil was sent into the abyss, shut and sealed over him; and “uncovered,” because he must be loosed and brought out for a short time. The thousand years are to be taken either as the whole from a part (as the apostle Peter says: “For one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”), or from the going out of the word, when the seventy weeks were fixed by Daniel to run until Christ the leader. For then the war took place in which Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the angel showed Daniel this, saying that he had been sent to fight with the prince of the kingdom of the Persians: “And there is no one,” he says, “who helps me except Michael your prince.” In that war the devil was conquered, thrown down, and bound, as was shown to that same prophet at the beginning, and to John at the end of time; so that those four hundred and ninety years, and these that run from the Savior’s coming until the same devil is loosed, make up the thousand years in which the devil is bound, that he may no longer deceive the nations which he had before possessed in idolatries. “But with what strength,” as Augustine of blessed memory says, “will the saints then be endowed who are to wrestle with the devil loosed, when we fight with such dangers against him bound?” For already, as Paul says, the mystery of iniquity is at work. But what its mysteries are, with the Lord’s help, will be contained in the chapters appended below.

How the devil works the mysteries of iniquity through all his own. A prediction fulfilled. The Apocalypse of John says: “The beast was seized, and with it the false prophet who had done the signs, by which signs he deceived those who received the mark of the beast on their forehead and on their hand.” The mark on the forehead and hand is this: not only to imitate the devil’s deeds, but also to glory in his evil works, so that under the figure of Christ they carry out the deeds of the Antichrist. These the Lord Jesus too testified of in the Gospel, saying: “Many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many; do not go after them.” And the apostle John: “You have heard,” he says, “that the Antichrist is coming; now many antichrists have arisen.” And he shows who they are: “They went out from us,” he says, “but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us.” He shows all heretics, and especially the Arians, whom we now see deceiving many, either by temporal power, or by the industry of a vain talent, or certainly by the abstinence of frugality, or by the deceit of any signs whatever; as the Apostle says: “For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. It is no great thing, then, if his ministers transform themselves as ministers of justice; their end will be according to their works”; since the Lord will say to those boasting of themselves in wonders: “I do not know you. Depart from me, all who work iniquity.” Their iniquity is to tear unity, as the garment of Christ, as tearing the nets of the fishing apostles. From their fellowship all heretics are found estranged, who, abandoning the peace of the communion and of the bread of God and of the apostles, preach in their own, not churches, but caves, and do not communicate with their memorials; separated from the whole, they take to themselves the name of Catholic; though in Jerusalem itself James and Stephen the first martyr, John at Ephesus, Andrew and the others throughout all Asia, the apostles Peter and Paul in the city of Rome, handing down to posterity the Church of the nations (in which they taught the doctrine of Christ the Lord) peaceful and one, consecrated it with their blood and their memorials from the Lord’s passion. The Christian who communicates with this universal Church is Catholic. Separated from it, one is a heretic and an Antichrist; and when the Antichrist has been openly revealed, what greater signs he will work, what follows will show.

Of the signs of the Antichrist. A prediction fulfilled. In the book of Job it is said of the Antichrist: “His strength is in his loins, and his power above the navel of his belly.” And again: “There is no power on earth,” he says, “to be compared with him who was so made that he should fear no one. He sees every high thing; he is king over all the sons of pride.” And the apostle Paul says: “According to the working of Satan, with all power, signs and lying wonders, and with every deception of iniquity for those who perish.” And the Lord in the Gospel: “False christs and false prophets will arise,” he says, “and will give great signs and wonders, by which, if it can be said, even the elect themselves may be deceived. Behold,” he says, “I have told you beforehand.” Although the apostle Paul silently mentions some who have their conscience seared, and others openly, like Hymenaeus and Philetus, Demas, Hermogenes, and Alexander the coppersmith, whose errors, various teachings, and many evils he recalls. Nor does he omit, after his departure, the fierce wolves, and him who even now works in the sons of disobedience, as he himself testifies. In our own times too, when Asper was consul at Carthage, what citizen of that country does not know this devilish and monstrous sign that happened there? A certain young woman, Arab by nation, wearing the habit of a handmaid of God, while she bathed in the baths, looked shamelessly at a certain statue of Venus and, likening herself to it, gave the devil a dwelling. At once that lion, who goes about seeking whom he may devour, found whom he sought. Seizing her throat, therefore, so that she swallowed no food and no drink for about seventy days and as many nights, the devil showed himself the master of the vessel he had seized and possessed. The girl’s parents, hoping this monster could be removed in so many days, when they could no longer endure the continual evil, brought themselves with their daughter to the bishop, faithfully telling what had happened. The girl declared only this, that a certain bird appeared in the middle of the night, which poured something or other into her mouth. Then amazement seized all at seeing the girl, after so long a fast, not disfigured, not wasted by any pallor or decay or weakness, but rather robust in the moisture of her flesh and the bulk of her limbs. And since what was said seemed incredible, the bishop, after taking counsel, commended the girl to the monastery in which the relics of Saint Stephen are placed, and to its superior. She declared that the bird had appeared there only on the first day, and that it had warned her that, compelled neither by hunger nor thirst, she should approach that place, which she was not allowed to come near. For two weeks she stayed in the monastery taking no food or drink. It happened that the fifteenth Lord’s day dawned. When the bishop went up with us, so that the morning sacrifice might be offered there as usual, the superior brought the girl to the altar, with that gait and look with which women usually come, flushed, from banquets and cups. But as she prostrated herself at the altar, with the cry of her weeping she moved all who stood by to groans and tears, with which the people present begged the Lord that so great an evil be taken away. For there was already a murmur growing among the people. When the sacrifice had been completed, and she, among the others, received a small portion of the Lord’s body dipped, from the bishop, though she chewed it, she could not swallow it, since he had not yet been driven out of whom the Apostle says: “What harmony has Christ with Belial?” And again: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” So, while the bishop held up her face with his hand, lest she throw out the holy thing, it was suggested by a deacon that the bishop put the saving cup to her throat. As soon as this was done, the devil left that place which he had occupied, at the Savior’s command, and the girl cried out that she had swallowed the sacrament she carried in her mouth, with praise of the Redeemer. Then joy, then voices in God’s glory, because after eighty-five days, the devil driven out, the girl was rescued from the power of the enemy. So again an offering of thanksgiving was made for her, and, receiving a fixed part of the sacrifice, she was restored to her former habit. Then too, while these things were being done, the deacon of that same church, moved by the divine Spirit, took away that statue and broke it into dust, and the divine majesty overcame all the cunning of the plotter. We also know that a certain man came there in the appearance of a monk, who professed that he worked certain signs of healing. When he performed certain illusory tricks on the blind and lame, and anointed them with oil into which some dead man’s bone had been dipped, they thought their sight and walking were restored to them; but as they went away they remained in the infirmities by which they had been held before. But that deceiver, knowing himself betrayed in these things, fled. In Asia, either he himself or another did such things, as a certain devout and noble Christian related. In Italy too, when we were settled in Campania, while the venerable pope Leo, to be named with apostolic honor, was overthrowing the Manichaeans and crushing the Pelagians, and especially Julian, a certain man named Florus, seized by a spirit of seduction, claiming for himself the power and merit of the holy martyr Sosius, when not far from the city of Naples he promised and did certain unlawful things for the subversion of souls, was detained and restrained by the brother of the venerable bishop Nostrianus and by the presbyter Herius, together with the clergy of that church, and so was driven from the borders of that province. Indeed he who seeks companions of his perdition does many things through various lands. Therefore I thought a few of his deeds should be made known in this work, so that those who come after us may know by reading with what caution, God helping, they can overcome the enemy.

Of the woman and the beast by which she is carried. A prediction to be fulfilled. In the Apocalypse John the apostle says: “One of the seven holy angels came and spoke with me, saying: Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters. And he carried me away in the spirit, and I saw a woman sitting on a beast with seven heads and ten horns, holding a cup in her hand full of the abominations of uncleanness and of the fornication of the whole earth.” And a little later: “I saw that woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Christ Jesus.” This is that great Babylon, to be stripped of her trophies throughout the world; and wretched is her daughter, whoever imitates her deeds and pride. And do not think of her as a city in one place, for she is scattered through the whole world. Of her too the prophet David says: “Wretched daughter of Babylon, blessed,” he says, “is he who will repay you the repayment you repaid us.” And in the Apocalypse of John it is said: “Repay her as she herself has repaid you; in the cup in which she mixed for you, mix double for her. As much as she glorified herself and had power, so much give her torment and mourning. For she says: I sit as queen, and I am not a widow, and I shall not see mourning. Therefore in one hour her plagues have come, death, famine, and mourning. And she will be burned with fire, for strong is the Lord who will judge her.” Who does not understand what he means by her holding a cup full of the abominations of uncleanness and of the fornication of the whole earth? That she is called eternal, who is temporal, is surely a name of blasphemy; since mortals, even kings, are called gods in her, and suppliants say to them, “To your divinity, to your altars, to your eternity,” and the rest, which vanity, not truth, hands down, and which are abominable. For these are due to the eternal God. Indeed in her sacrilegious rites, and with effeminate priests then, inviting all nations to the fornication of idolatry, she defiled herself in her subjects. Of these the holy psalm sounds: “You have destroyed all who go whoring away from you.” Yet because there are in her citizens of the heavenly homeland, Jerusalem, who say, “But for me it is good to cling to God,” it is said to them: “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins and be struck by her plagues.” For those come out who follow not her pride but the humble way, Christ; who love not robbery but mercy, and keep peace and holiness, without which no one will be able to see God; who groan and grieve over the iniquities done in their midst, and do not bear the yoke with unbelievers. These too the Lord exhorts in the Gospel with his address, saying among other things: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And Paul testifies, saying: “Only he who now holds, let him hold, until he is taken out of the way; and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth, and destroy by the brightness of his presence.”

Of the ten kings whom the Antichrist will find. A promise to be fulfilled. In the Apocalypse John says: “The angel said to me: Why are you amazed? I will tell you the mystery of this woman and of the beast that carries her. The beast that you saw was and is not; but it will come up out of the abyss and go to destruction. Its seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits; and they are seven kings: five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he comes he must remain a short time. The beast that was and is not is itself the eighth, though it is of the seven, and it goes to destruction. And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings, who have not yet received a kingdom, but they will receive power as kings for one hour after the beast.” This was shown by Daniel: the fourth beast, which was greater than all the beasts, having so many horns. But whereas there he says that a smaller horn rose and drove out three horns before it, here he names seven kings, those three expelled; and he himself, the eighth, is the Antichrist, though he is of the seven. So, as far as conjecture is allowed, either he recalls the earlier kings who were more savage against the Christian religion, or that out of the ten, three being destroyed, there will be seven who themselves will rage against the Church. He means all the Arian heretics to be understood when he says: “These will fight against the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them.” For they fight by breathing out over and rebaptizing the members of the Lamb, which Christ had already consecrated with his blood. “But none has perished,” says the Lord, “except the son of perdition.” Some want the eighth king, whom he calls the Antichrist, to be understood as Nero, so that he himself is the beast that was and is not, and is to come again. But whether he takes the form and appearance of his body and appears in it (as, on the contrary, the holy angel in the book of Tobit took the appearance and likeness of Azarias, son of the great Ananias), or the Antichrist appears in the appearance of another, the prophet Daniel testifies that he will have the luxury, filth, and savagery of Nero’s ways, which are to be shown in the following chapter.

Of the ways of the Antichrist. A prediction to be fulfilled. The prophet Daniel says that the angel said to him: “The sons too of the transgressors of your people will be lifted up to fulfil the vision.” And a little later: “There will stand in the king’s place one most vile and unworthy of royal honor, and in a few days he will be crushed, not in fury nor in battle. And the king will do according to his will, and will be lifted up and magnified against every god, and against the God of gods he will speak great things, and he will prosper until the wrath is accomplished; for the decree has been carried out. And he will not regard the God of his fathers, and he will be in the lusts of women, and he will worship a god whom his fathers did not know, and he will set up the god Maozim in his place.” Here it is shown that the Antichrist will come from the Jews, of the tribe of Dan, which is in Persia to this day, according to the prophetic blessing of the patriarch Jacob, who says: “Dan will judge his people like the other tribes. Let Dan be a serpent on the way, a horned snake on the path, biting the horse’s hoofs, so that its rider falls backward.” And at once he shows that the true Christ the Lord will come, saying: “I will wait for your salvation, Lord.” This too the Lord testified in the Gospel, as we set down above, saying to the Jews: “I have come in my Father’s name, and you did not believe me; another will come in his own name, and him you will believe.” Paul, refuting these transgressors of the law, shows that they will believe the Antichrist: “Because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved, therefore God will send them the working of error, so that they believe the lie, and all may be judged who did not believe the truth but consented to iniquity.” It must be noted that all these things will come after the beast: that is, when the kingdom in which the woman sits, drunk with the blood of the saints, has been taken away; which we, believing, leave to our descendants to see.

Of the persecutions of the Antichrist. A prediction to be fulfilled. In the vision of Daniel it is said of the Antichrist: “His heart,” he says, “will be against the holy covenant.” Again in the same place: “Arms will rise from him, and they will pollute the sanctuary of strength, and take away the continual sacrifice, and set up the abomination of desolation, and the impious will deceitfully feign toward the covenant.” Here too he marks the Arians, forerunners of the Antichrist. “But the people,” he says, “that knows its God will prevail, and very many learned among the people. And they will be in sword, and in flame, and in captivity, and in plunder for days. And when they have fallen, they will be raised up by a little help, and very many will join them deceitfully. And some of the learned will fall, that they may be refined and chosen and made white, until the appointed time.” Again in the same place: “At that time,” it is said, “Michael the great prince will arise, who stands for the sons of your people; and there will come a time such as has not been from the beginning, since nations began to be, until that time. And at that time your people will be saved, everyone who is found written in the book of life.” The Lord confirms this in the Gospel: “When you see,” he says, “the devastation of desolation spoken of in the prophet Daniel, let the reader understand.” And again: “In those days there will be tribulation and distress such as has not been from the beginning. And unless God had shortened those days, no flesh would remain; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.” John too testifies in the Apocalypse: “There was given to the beast,” he says, “power to speak great things; and it opened its mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle. And power was given it to make war with the saints and to conquer and kill them. And power was given it over every tribe and tongue and nation; and all will worship it who are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world.” Here too the martyrdoms of Christ the Lord shine out, so that as his first coming filled thousands of infants, so his second will fill up the number of the elect.

Of the pride of the Antichrist. A prediction to be fulfilled. The prophet Ezekiel says: “Your heart was lifted up, and you said: I am God, and I sit in the seat of God in the heart of the sea; though you are a man and not God. And you set your heart as the heart of God.” And the apostle Paul says: “When the apostasy has come first, and the man of sin, the son of perdition, is revealed, who exalts himself above all that is called God or worshiped, so that he sits in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God.” And the Lord in the Gospel: “When they say to you, Behold, here is the Christ, or there, do not believe it.” And in the Apocalypse of John: “I saw,” he says, “a beast coming up out of the earth, and it had two horns like a lamb’s, and it spoke like a dragon.” And a little later: “And it did great signs, so that it made fire come down from heaven to earth before the eyes of men, and it deceived those who dwell on the earth by the signs which it was given to do.” Here let the curious fear, and especially the Jews. For the Jews ask for signs, as the Apostle says, and the Greeks seek wisdom. Hence some conjecture that the Antichrist will sit in the temple of Solomon, or will exalt himself by signs by which he may be believed to be Christ. For it has been shown that he will have heralds of his lie, since it was said he will have two horns like a lamb’s. John too says in the Apocalypse: “I saw,” he says, “coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet three unclean spirits like frogs; for they are spirits of demons, doing signs. They will go out to the kings of the whole world to gather them for battle, for that great day of the Almighty.” What was said in Daniel, “Arms will rise from him,” is said here openly, that three unclean spirits go out as his heralds, as into the three parts of the world, that is, Asia, Europe, and Africa, to persuade by signs that the Antichrist himself is the Christ. But that he is not, what follows will show.

Of convicting the Antichrist that he is not the Christ. A prediction to be fulfilled. With what pride the Antichrist will come, what was said above declares. His coming, then, will not be humble, as every prophecy resounds of Christ, Isaiah saying: “In humility his judgment was taken away; but who will declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth.” He will not be led like a sheep to the slaughter, that is, to the passion, as the Gospels and the prophecies testify that Christ was led. He will not give his cheek to the one who strikes him, nor will he receive spitting and blows in silence: things we believe were done in Christ just as all prophecy foretold them. He will not give his back to the scourges, nor be filled with reproaches: which the whole Gospel and prophecy proclaim that Christ fulfilled. His garments will not be divided, and no one will cast lots for his tunic: which the Gospels and prophecies testify was done with Christ’s clothing. He will not be crucified, nor will he receive gall and vinegar: which the Gospels and the prophecies say Christ received. His side will not receive a lance, and the wounds of the nails will not be in him: which the Gospels and prophecies testify were in Christ even after the resurrection. He will not redeem the world with his blood: which all prophecy proclaims of Christ. He will not die and rise on the third day: which the Gospels testify Christ did, and the apostolic letters and the prophecies too. He will not ascend into heaven, nor pour out the Holy Spirit in tongues of fire on disciples: which the whole Gospel and prophecy sound that Christ fulfilled. Beyond these the whole world itself is now a witness. So, these things having been examined and considered, let those who will come after us understand that the Antichrist is not the Christ. His end the Apocalypse itself shows. “An angel came,” it says, “and seized the dragon and the beast and the false prophets. These were sent alive together into the lake burning with fire and sulphur, and they will be tormented there for ever and ever.” This will be the end of the devil and his angels, and of those men who under his mark and sign passed into his company; of whose end the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel also testify. In what has been said, those who live then will do well to attend to the prophecy, as to a lamp in a dark place, until the day itself that is to come dawns in the hearts of believers. The other last signs that are to come, what follows will show.

Of the sending of Elijah and Enoch. A promise to be fulfilled. In the prophet Malachi: “Behold,” he says, “says the Lord, I will send you Elijah the Tishbite before the great and manifest day of the Lord comes, who will turn the heart of the father to the son, and the heart of a man to his neighbor, lest when I come I strike the earth utterly.” For so these prophets will turn the hearts of the fathers to the sons, showing what the patriarchs and prophets said of Christ in his humble coming, convicting the Antichrist that he is not the Christ. The Apocalypse of John shows this more plainly: “I will give,” says the Lord, “to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the Lord of the earth.” And a little later: “These have power to shut the heaven, so that no rain falls during the days of their prophecy. And they have power over all the waters, to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every plague, as often as they wish.” See here too the threefold division of witnesses. Against Pharaoh two witnesses of God were sent, Moses and Aaron, and two magicians of Pharaoh, Jannes and Jambres, resisting Moses, who perished together with their king; against Nero two, the apostles Peter and Paul, and on the other side Simon Magus, who both destroyed himself and deceived Nero; and against the Antichrist two, the prophets Enoch and Elijah, against whom three false prophets of the Antichrist will rise. So here one more, because above one fewer: so that the number six may be filled from both pairs, because of the six days of creation arranged in the beginning, and the six angels sounding trumpets and bringing as many plagues on the world; so that the seventh may signify the end of labors and the rest of the saints, like the seventh day, which will have only morning and no evening. This rest of the sabbath the Godhead itself commends to be kept with every precept, so that, free from every evil work, we may stand in the morning, that we may contemplate him who crowns all in compassion and mercy, judging justly and condemning no one unjustly. But Tyconius wrote much about these things. The completion and perfection of the times, three years and six months, which are called one thousand two hundred and sixty days and make forty-two months, not only the Apocalypse of John but also the prophet Daniel commends; in which the holy city is thought to be trampled by heretics, and especially the Arians, who were then most powerful; Gog and Magog, as some have said, Goths and Moors, Getae and Massagetae, through whose savagery the devil himself is already laying waste the Church, and then will persecute it more. They will also make the continual sacrifice cease; for which reason the Lord admonishes, saying: “I come quickly. Blessed is he who keeps watch and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked.” What the garments to be kept are, the following chapter will show.

Of the garment to be kept by Christians. A prediction to be fulfilled. The apostle Paul says: “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” And the Lord in the Gospel: “He who has once been washed has no need to wash except his feet, for he is wholly clean.” So everyone rebaptized by the heretics either willingly lost his garment, Christ, or, failing in persecution, lost the clothing he had. While there is time, then, let him who has been stripped and is naked run back by repentance to the devoted Father, who orders the best robe to be given back to the lost son on his return, together with the ring of dignity. Whoever still longs to feed on the twisted disputations of the heretics, like the pods of the pigs, let him remember the bread and the father; let him flee the robbers who stripped him; let him be ashamed that a son of God has become the slave of the Antichrist. Let him return of his own accord or pierced with compunction, that he may be clothed, lest he be shown naked and judged. These things the witnesses of God will do with the lost sons. In these Elijah and Enoch will complete their martyrdom, as the authority of the following chapter relates.

Of the passion of Elijah and Enoch. A prediction to be fulfilled. In the Apocalypse of John it is said: “When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the abyss will make war on them, and conquer them, and kill them, and their bodies will lie in the street of that great city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord too was crucified.” This street is the conscience of all the impious in the world applauding the death of the saints, because they are rid, as it were, of their fiercest enemies. For this reason they will not let their bodies be laid in tombs, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth. When they have been killed, “when they say, Peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them, like the pains of a woman with child, and they will not escape.” For the day of the Lord (as the apostle Paul says) will come like a thief in the night.

Of the resurrection of Elijah and Enoch. A promise to be fulfilled. The Apocalypse of John says: “After three days and a half the spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood on their feet.” Of these I think the apostle Paul said: “And the dead in Christ will rise first.” The three days and a half, then, correspond to the three years and six months in which the Antichrist will have power; and when these are completed, Elijah and Enoch, ascending into heaven before the eyes of their enemies, will go to meet Christ, the true King and Judge, as he comes; who will kill the Antichrist and all his own with the breath of his mouth, so that he may reign in the house of Jacob, of whom it is said: “Of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Of the coming in glory of the Son of God and of man. A promise to be fulfilled. The prophet David says: “God will come manifest, our God, and will not keep silent. Fire will burn before him, and round about him a mighty storm.” And the prophet Malachi says: “Woe to those who desire the day of the Lord; why do you want it?” Again: “The Lord, whom you do not know, will suddenly come to his temple, and the Angel of the covenant, whom you desire. Behold, he comes, says the Lord. And who will endure his entrance, or who will stand at his appearance? For he will enter like the fire of a refiner.” And Isaiah says: “Behold, the day of the Lord will come like fire, and his chariots like a whirlwind, to render vengeance in wrath and retribution in flames of fire.” And the Lord says in the Gospel: “For as the lightning goes out from the east and passes to the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man.” And again: “The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken; and then they will see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.” The Apocalypse of John too testifies, saying: “The sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood, and the stars fell, as a fig tree shaken by a great wind drops its unripe fruit. And the heaven departed like a book being rolled up; and every mountain and island was moved from its place; and the kings of the earth and the greatest tribunes, and the rich and the nobles and the slaves hid themselves in caves and in the rocks of the mountains, saying to the mountains and rocks: Fall on us and hide us from the face of the Father who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come. And who will be able to stand?” And the apostle Paul says: “The Lord himself will come down from heaven with a command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God.” And the Sibyl acknowledges, saying among other things (in Augustine, City of God 18.23): “The sun’s radiance is snatched away, and the dance of the stars dies; the sky will be rolled up; the moon’s splendor will perish. But then the trumpet will send a mournful sound from on high over the world, lamenting wretched crime and manifold toils, and the earth, gaping, will show the chaos of Tartarus.” I have passed over many necessary testimonies too under each heading, mindful of the size of the work undertaken. Therefore the coming of the Son of God, as it brings joy to the good, brings destruction to the wicked. Now, then, while we live and there is time for amendment, let us change our acts and our ways. The resurrection of the dead follows.

Of the resurrection of the flesh. A promise to be fulfilled. The prophet Ezekiel says: “The Lord said to me: Son of man, prophesy over these bones and say: Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will bring you out of your tombs, and I will bring sinews on you, and put flesh on you, and stretch skin over you. And I will give my Spirit into you, and you will live, and you will know that I am the Lord.” And Isaiah: “The dead will rise, and those in the tombs will be raised.” And he himself in the Gospel: “The hour will come,” he says, “when all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who have done good will come forth to the resurrection of life; those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.” And Paul testifies that this will happen in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: “For the trumpet will sound,” he says, “and the dead will rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” And the Apocalypse: “The sea gave up the dead that were in it,” it says, “and likewise death and the underworld.” Here that question to be answered presents itself, which is put forward by the mouth of the foolish and the pagans: how those will rise whose corpses beasts have eaten, and who have themselves been consumed by other beasts, birds, and dogs. They do not know that everything created from the earth falls back, dissolved, into the same matter; and that it is easy for the power of the Creator to restore from it again what had been, he who among other things could first form from it man, who did not exist. If anyone is troubled by what is written in the first psalm, that the impious do not rise in the judgment, let him understand that they rise not to judgment but to punishment, according to that saying of the Lord: “Whoever does not believe,” he says, “is already judged.” And the Sibyl acknowledges (as above): “So souls will be present with their flesh, whom he himself judges.” When all have risen, the judgment follows.

Of the judgment of Christ the Lord. A promise to be fulfilled. The prophet David says: “The heavens will declare his justice, for God is judge.” Again: “He has called the heaven above and the earth, to judge his people.” Again: “He himself will judge the world of the earth in equity.” The Lord confirms this in the Gospel: “When the Son of man comes,” he says, “in his glory, all nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right, but the goats on his left. Then he will say to those on his right: Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me to eat,” and the rest that belongs to the works of mercy, in which is the great sacrifice that purges every sin, the Lord himself saying: “I desire mercy rather than sacrifice.” But to those on the left he will say: “Go into the eternal fire which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry,” he says, “and you did not give me to eat,” and likewise the rest that belongs to the ruin of cruelty, which plunges a man into ruin and destruction, when the avaricious do not feed Christ hungry in the poor, who says: “As long as you did not do it to one of my least ones, you did not do it to me either.” And the sentence of the judge between the parties follows: “The impious,” it is said, “will go into eternal burning.” The apostle Paul too testifies to this: “We shall all stand,” he says, “before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive according to what he did through the body, whether good or evil.” And the Apocalypse of John says: “I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne of God. Then books were opened, and another book was opened, which is of the life of each man; and the dead were judged from what was written in the books, according to their deeds.” The books opened are the consciences of each. The other book, which contains the acts of all, is the justice of God bringing everything to light; of which Paul says: “Until the Lord comes, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the thoughts of the heart, and then each will have praise from God.” The Apocalypse of John concludes: “Death and the underworld were thrown into the lake of fire, and those who were not found in the book of life were thrown into the lake of fire,” in which they will be tormented for ever and ever. As Isaiah too says: “Their worm will not die, and their fire will not be quenched, and they will be a sight to satiety for all flesh.” And the Sibyl acknowledges (as above): “Uncovering hidden deeds, then each will tell his secrets, and God will open hearts to the light. Then there will be mourning; all will gnash their teeth.” And a little later: “And here kings will be set before the Lord, all together. A river of fire and of sulphur will fall from the heavens.” After this follows the purging of certain faithful men and of the elements themselves by purifying fire. [20] Of the purifying fire [Rheims manuscript: purgatorial]. A promise to be fulfilled. The prophet David says: “All things will grow old like a garment, and like a covering you will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the same.” Again he says: “You have tried us with fire, as silver is tried.” And again: “We passed through fire and water, and you brought us into refreshment.” And the prophet Malachi: “He will enter,” he says, “like the fire of a refiner, and will sit refining and purifying like silver and gold; he will purify the sons of Levi.” And in the Gospel Matthew confirms this of the Lord, saying: “He it is who baptizes in the Holy Spirit and fire, holding the winnowing fan in his hand, and he will cleanse his threshing floor. He will store the wheat in the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” And again the Lord himself says: “Before heaven and earth pass away, not one iota or one stroke will fall from the law without being fulfilled.” And the apostle Peter: “But the heavens that now exist have been stored up by the same word, reserved for fire on the day of judgment.” And a little later: “Hastening,” he says, “toward the presence of the Lord, through which the heavens will be dissolved in burning, and the elements melted by the heat of fire.” And Paul says: “For creation itself too will be set free from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” And the Sibyl acknowledges, saying (as above): “All things will cease; the earth will perish, broken up. So springs and rivers alike are scorched with fire.” When these things have been done, when the impious, looking at the just, say: “These are those whom we once held in derision and as a byword of reproach. We fools thought their life madness and their end without honor: how have they been counted among the sons of God, and their lot is among the saints?”, doing fruitless repentance then, since it is written, “But in the underworld who will confess to you?”; and when the wicked have been driven into the outer darkness, in which there will be no light and no day, and that terrible and fearful voice has sounded, “Let the impious be taken away, and let him not see the glory of the Lord of the saints”: then will follow the eminent and illustrious glory, which is to be made known in other chapters.

Of the new heaven and the new earth. A promise to be fulfilled and to be believed. The Apocalypse of John says: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth.” Peter too testifies: “But we await, according to his promises, new heavens and a new earth, in which justice dwells.” And David says: “I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.” These the impious will not see.

Of the changing of the saints. A promise to be fulfilled, and first to be believed. The apostle Paul says: “Until we all attain to the perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ.” Into which the saints, of every age and of both sexes, with this glory pass to the youth of thirty years (in which Christ the Lord suffered), together with their King himself, whom the impious will not see.

Of the new Jerusalem. A promise to be fulfilled, and first to be believed. The Apocalypse says: “I saw the new Jerusalem coming down from God, prepared and adorned like a bride for her husband.” And Paul says: “The Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother.” In this city there will be no night, nor will there be need of the light of a lamp; no mourning, nor death, nor crying, nor any pain, because the former things have passed away. And the glory of this homeland the impious will not see.

That the saints will shine like the sun. A promise to be fulfilled and to be believed. The Lord in the Gospel: “Then,” he says, “the just will shine like the sun in the sight of their Father”; for they will be equal to the angels of the Lord. And this glory the impious will not see.

Of the difference of the saints in glory, like the stars. A promise to be fulfilled and to be believed. The apostle Paul says: “Star differs from star in glory; so also is the resurrection of the dead.” How some for the confession of martyrdom, others for virginal integrity, others for widowed continence, others for married chastity, will shine with different honors without envy, the impious will not see.

Of the virginity of the saints. A promise to be fulfilled and to be believed. The Apocalypse of John says: “These are those who have not defiled themselves with women, for they have remained virgins. These are those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes.” Where virgins follow him, where non-virgins cannot follow him, the impious will not see.

Of the inexpressible gift of the saints. A promise to be fulfilled and to be believed. The apostle Paul says: “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.” When the saints have received these things, the impious will not see them.

Of seeing God face to face. A promise to be fulfilled. The apostle Paul says: “Now we see through a mirror in a riddle, but then face to face.” How the saints will see God the Trinity, the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father, the Holy Spirit both in the Father and in the Son, the impious will not see.

Of the unveiled face of the saints. A promise to be fulfilled. The apostle Paul says: “We,” he says, “with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.” And these things the impious will not see.

That the Son hands over the kingdom to God the Father. A promise to be fulfilled. How the Son hands over the kingdom to God and the Father, as the apostle Paul says, the impious will not see.

Of the continual song of Alleluia. A promise to be fulfilled. How the saints, as the Apocalypse says, will sing Alleluia in a continual song, without failing, without end, the impious will neither hear nor see.

Of the renewal of all things. A promise to be fulfilled. How all things will be renewed, as the prophet Isaiah and the Apocalypse say, and will remain for ever; and how the saints will take food from the tree of life without corruption, and drink from the fountain, Christ, not of necessity but by power, the impious will not see.

That God will be all in all. A promise to be fulfilled. How God will be all in all, as Paul says, the impious will not see; for the saints and redeemed alone will enjoy these pleasures and heavenly delights. This is our city, our life, and our salvation. This is the heavenly, everlasting Jerusalem. For the saints placed in it the true God the King “sets neither bounds of things nor times: he has given an empire without end.” These are those who reign with Christ the King, of whom Daniel says: “His kingdom will not be left to another people”; for he will reign for infinite ages, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

The peroration and conclusion of this most faithful and most useful book. With the help of God’s grace I have concluded this book, noting forty chapters in each of its first three parts, as the forty days in which Moses, Elijah, and the Lord Jesus kept fasts in the course of this life. For three times forty make a hundred and twenty. Twenty others are added in the half part, of the end of the world, and they make a hundred and forty. Thirteen too are added in the glory of the saints, and they complete a hundred and fifty-three. In this number the great fish, caught in the net of truth, were taken after the Lord’s resurrection, signifying the thousands of the saints whom the Lord, gathering from every race, tribe, and tongue through all time, has consecrated to himself, an infinite number known to him. You have here, spiritual reader, if you love this thing, the first pleasure of fishing; for in this book, as I think, you will find all pleasures and all affections. Come in here, then, young man, and pass your leisure here; play here, and pursue your thoughts. For if perhaps the game of the board invites you, in the one ace you have two and three, fives and sixes, the numbers from which the measures of the ark arise, rolling the dice of the threefold unity; moving the pieces too, white in good works, purple in the passion, as he watches who says: “To the one who conquers I will give a white stone, and on the stone a new name, which no one knows except the one who receives it.” On ivory tablets the names of the proconsuls, written, were read out at Carthage in the forum before the people by the presiding judge under fixed titles, and the citation of the roll was a solemn day. Those who, overcoming avarice, had managed the commonwealth faithfully, without crimes and favoritism, were honored even when absent; but those whom rapacity had conquered, the people marked with abuse and hisses. You have, then, what you may conquer, you who play by conquering avarice, which is the root of all evils; and let no longer earthly powers, which slip away in every manner, but heavenly and eternal ones attract you. If you love hunting, you have the highest mountains, the stags, apostles and prophets swiftly running through their sayings. You have also the rock as refuge for the hedgehogs and the hares, whom Christ the Lord hunts in simplicity of heart through his dogs, so that they may be rid of the thorns of offenses. If you love spectacles, you have here the spiritual charioteer, Christ’s Elijah, who was carried in a fiery chariot to the very goal of heaven, and Pharaoh’s chariots sunk in the deep. For a gladiatorial show you have holy Daniel, conquering the lion not by iron but by prayer, and the bears tearing those who had mocked the prophet Elisha with insults. You have in a holy spectacle not the obscenities of the mime but virgins consecrated to Christ. In place of the pantomimes you have Rebecca’s twins mystically playing. You have David dancing before the ark, and Christ stripped in his passion before his servants and maidservants, displaying that very history of his. You have finally the weeping and laments of Jeremiah, sung not by the tragic art but by the prophetic. If you love building, you have the fabric of the world, the measures of the ark, the circuit of the tabernacle, the pinnacle of Solomon’s temple, and the members of the Church itself throughout the world, which all those things figured. If you take delight in feasts, you have here the table prepared by Wisdom, on which is the bread of angels, and the fatted calf, and the saving cup which soberly makes drunk. Nor are holy flowers lacking at this banquet: the lilies of virgins, the violets of the continent, and the rosy crowns of the martyrs. There remains, I think, the pleasure of music: you have an organ fitted from the various pipes of the holy apostles and of all the teachers, with certain accents, grave, acute, and circumflex, which the musician, the Holy Spirit, touches, fills, and makes resound through the Word; you have the key of David, who shuts and no one opens, opens and no one shuts, consecrating and adorning everything with the oil of chrism and the water of baptism. To the most sweet and pleasant sounds of this organ the princes came, joined with the singers, in the midst of the young women playing timbrels. And what follows? “In the churches bless the Lord.” These young women of the Church play the timbrel, that is, the skin of a dead animal stretched on wood, namely Christ crucified. The great sound of this timbrel now soothes the hearing of the whole world. Nor is the ten-stringed psaltery lacking at this banquet, while in the songs and conclusion of the hundred and fifty psalms they praise the holy Lord with the sound of the trumpet, with psaltery and harp, with timbrel and dance, with strings and organ, with well-sounding cymbals, with cymbals of jubilation, for every spirit praises the Lord. Looking forward to these things in the temple of my God, in which everyone says, Glory: since still the passions which are through the law work in our members, to bear fruit for death, and we are held entangled in many vices in this life, which is all temptation, I have vowed in this book, and with confession, and sacrificed on the altar of a contrite heart, a sacrifice of the fat of calves, of the patriarchs and prophets, of rich goats and rams, of the apostles, the leaders of the flock, for the sin of my soul and the cleansing of my whole man, not without the incense of the prayers of all the saints, by which I trust I have been expiated from all sin. Let the envious reader be quiet, lest, like Cain with iron, he strike with tooth or tongue. For “the sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.” But if anything displeases him, if he is devout, let him correct it in mercy and rebuke it in gentleness, and let him pray for us, that, found together in the ark among the clean animals, joined alike in the cubit of its perfection, we may all follow, grace leading, the love of the Lord, the unity of the threefold majesty, the more excellent way; abiding at the same moment in us and we in him, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, who is God blessed for ever. Amen.