Against the Jews 10–13

Concerning the outcome of his suffering you are plainly in doubt, denying that the suffering of the cross was foretold of Christ, and arguing besides that it is not to be believed that God would have exposed his Son to that kind of death, since he himself said: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” But the reason of the matter precedes the sense of this curse. For he says in Deuteronomy: “But if someone is in some offence liable to the judgment of death, and he dies, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain on the tree, but you shall bury him with burial on the same day, since everyone who has been hanged on a tree is cursed by God; and you shall not defile the land which the Lord your God will give you as your lot.” So he did not curse Christ with a view to this suffering, but made a distinction: that whoever had in some offence incurred the judgment of death and died hanged on a tree, he would be cursed by God, since he was hanged on a tree for the deserts of his own offences. Christ, on the other hand, who spoke no deceit with his mouth, and who showed all righteousness and humility, was (as we mentioned above that it had been foretold of him) exposed to that kind of death not for his own deserts, but so that the things foretold by the prophets as going to befall him through you might be fulfilled; just as in the Psalms the Spirit of Christ himself was already singing, saying: “They repaid me evil for good,” and “What I had not seized, I then paid back”; “They destroyed my hands and feet”; and “They put gall into my drink, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink”; “Over my garment they cast the lot”; as also the other things you were going to commit against him were foretold. And having endured all these things himself, he suffered not for any evil deed of his own, but that the Scriptures from the mouth of the prophets might be fulfilled.

And certainly the sacrament of his suffering had to be figured in the prophecies: the more incredible it was, the more of a stumbling block it would be if it were proclaimed openly; and the more magnificent it was, the more it needed to be veiled, so that the difficulty of understanding might seek the grace of God. So first Isaac, when he was being led by his father as a victim and was himself carrying the wood, already then signified the death of Christ, who was given up by the Father as a victim and carried the wood of his own suffering. Joseph too prefigured Christ, if only in this (not to delay my course), that he suffered persecution from his brothers and was sold into Egypt on account of the favour of God, just as Christ too was sold by Israel, his brothers according to the flesh, when he was betrayed by Judas. For Joseph is also blessed by his father in these words: “His beauty is that of a bull; his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them he will toss the nations together to the very end of the earth.” Surely it was not a one-horned rhinoceros that was meant, nor a two-horned minotaur, but Christ was signified in him: a bull because of his twofold character, fierce to some as judge, gentle to others as saviour, whose horns would be the extremities of the cross. For in a ship's yard too, which is part of a cross, the ends are called horns, while the upright post in the middle is the unicorn. By this power of the cross, then, and horned in this way, he now tosses all nations through faith, lifting them from earth to heaven, and will then toss them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth.

The same will be the bull elsewhere in the same Scripture. When Jacob extended his blessing to Simeon and Levi, he prophesies about the scribes and Pharisees, for from them their order is derived. For it is interpreted spiritually thus: “Simeon and Levi completed iniquity out of their sect,” that is, by which they persecuted Christ. “Into their council let my soul not come, and on their station let my inward parts not rest, since in their anger they killed men,” that is, the prophets, “and in their desire they hamstrung a bull,” that is, Christ, whom they killed after the slaughter of the prophets, and whose sinews they savagely pierced by fastening him with nails. Otherwise it would be pointless if, after murder had already been committed by them, he reproached others and not them with the butchery.

And now Moses: why did he pray at that time, while Jesus was fighting against Amalek, sitting with his hands spread out, when in so alarming a situation he ought rather to have commended his prayer on bended knees, with hands beating his breast and his face rolled on the ground, unless because there, where the name of the Lord Jesus was spoken, one who would one day fight against the devil, the shape of the cross was also necessary, by which Jesus was to win the victory? Again, the same Moses, after forbidding the likeness of anything, why did he set up a bronze serpent placed on a wood in the posture of one hanging, as a saving sight for Israel, at the time when they were being destroyed by serpents after their idolatry, except that here he was pointing to the Lord's cross, by which the serpent, the devil, was signified, and salvation was brought about for everyone wounded by such snakes, that is, by his angels, who turned from the sinfulness of offences to the sacraments of Christ's cross? For whoever then looked to it was freed from the bite of the serpents.

Come now, if you have read in the prophet in the Psalms, “God has reigned from the tree,” I wait to hear what you understand, lest perhaps you think some carpenter king is meant, and not Christ, who from then on reigned, having overcome death by the tree of his suffering. So too Isaiah says: “For a child is born to us, and a son is given to us.” What is new in that, unless he speaks of the Son of God? “And he is born to us, the beginning of whose rule was placed upon his shoulder.” What king at all bears the emblem of his power on his shoulder, and not a diadem on his head, or a sceptre in his hand, or some mark of his own dress? But only the new King of the ages, Christ Jesus, bore his new glory and power and exaltation on his shoulder, namely the cross, so that, according to the earlier prophecy, the Lord from then on reigned from the tree. For of this tree too God intimates through Jeremiah what you would say: “Come, let us put wood into his bread, and wear him away from the land of the living, and his name will be remembered no more.” Wood was indeed put into his body. For so Christ revealed it, calling the bread his body, whose body the prophet formerly announced under the figure of bread.

If you still ask for prophecies of the Lord's cross, the twenty-first psalm will be able to satisfy you, containing the whole suffering of Christ, who was already then singing of his own glory. “They dug my hands and feet,” he says, which is the particular cruelty of the cross. And again, when he implores the help of his Father: “Save me,” he says, “from the mouth of the lion,” that is, of death, “and my lowliness from the horns of the unicorns,” that is, from the ends of the cross, as we showed above. That cross neither David himself suffered nor any of the kings of the Jews, so that you may not think the suffering of anyone else is prophesied than of him who alone was so notably crucified by the people.

Now, if the hardness of your heart rejects and mocks all these interpretations, we shall prove that the prophecy of Christ's death can be enough, so that, from the fact that the manner of death was not stated, it may be understood that it came about by the cross, and that the suffering of the cross must be ascribed to no one but him whose death was foretold. For I wish to show his death and suffering and burial in a single utterance of Isaiah: “Because of the misdeeds of my people,” he says, “he was led to death, and I will give the wicked for his burial and the rich for his death, because he did no wrong, nor was deceit found in his mouth; and God willed to deliver his soul from death,” and so on. He says further: “His burial has been taken away from the midst.” For he was not buried unless he died, nor was his burial taken away from the midst except through his resurrection. Then he adds: “Therefore he himself will have many as his inheritance and will divide the spoils of many.” Who else but he who was born, as we showed above, “because his soul was handed over to death”? For when the reason for the favour shown him was shown, namely as recompense for the injury of death, it was shown at the same time that he would obtain these things on account of death, and after death, that is, after the resurrection.

For that which happened at his suffering, that midday grew dark, the prophet Amos announces, saying: “And it will be on that day, says the Lord, that the sun will set at midday, and the day of light will grow dark over the earth; and I will turn your feast days into mourning and all your songs into lamentation, and I will put sackcloth on your loins and baldness on every head, and I will make it like mourning for a beloved one, and those with him like a day of grief.” For Moses too prophesied that you would do this at the beginning of the first month of new things, when he foretold that the whole multitude of the sons of Israel would sacrifice a lamb at evening and would eat this solemnity of this day, that is, of the passover of unleavened bread, with bitterness; and he added that it was the Lord's passover, that is, the suffering of Christ. And this was fulfilled in this way too: on the first day of unleavened bread you killed Christ, and, that the prophecies might be fulfilled, the day hastened to make evening, that is, to bring on darkness, which came at midday; and so God turned your feast days into mourning and your songs into lamentation. For after the suffering of Christ captivity and dispersion also befell you, foretold beforehand through the Holy Spirit.

For Ezekiel too announces that your disaster would come as a result of these deserts of yours, and not only in this age, which has already happened, but on the day of retribution, which will follow. From that disaster no one will be freed except one who has been sealed by the suffering of Christ, whom you reject. For so it is written: “And the Lord said to me: Son of man, you have seen what the elders of Israel are doing, each of them in darkness, each in a hidden chamber; for they said, The Lord does not see us, the Lord has abandoned the land. And he said to me: Turn again and you will see greater misdeeds which these are doing. And he brought me to the threshold of the gate of the house of the Lord which looks toward the north, and behold, there were women sitting and lamenting Tammuz. And the Lord said to me: Son of man, have you seen? Is the house of Judah of little account, that they commit the misdeeds they have committed? And you will yet see their greater passions. And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord, and behold, at the thresholds of the house of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, about twenty-five men had turned their backs to the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east; these were worshipping the sun. And he said to me: Do you see, son of man? Is it a small thing to the house of Judah that they do the misdeeds which these have done? For they have filled up their impieties, and behold, they are as if mocking. I will act in my indignation; my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. They will cry into my ears with a loud voice, and I will not hear them, nor will I have pity. And he cried into my ears with a loud voice, saying: The vengeance of this city has drawn near, and each has had the instruments of destruction in his hand. And behold, six men were coming by the way of the high gate that looked toward the north, and each had in his hand an axe of scattering; and one man in the midst of them was clothed in a long robe, with a sapphire girdle about his loins. And they went in and stood beside the bronze altar. And the glory of the God of Israel went up from the cherubim, which had been over it, in the open court of the house. And he called the man who was clothed in the long robe, who had the girdle upon his loins, and the Lord said to him: Go through the midst of Jerusalem and write the sign Tau on the foreheads of the men who groan and grieve over all the misdeeds that are done in their midst. And to these he said in my hearing: Go after him into the city and strike, and do not let your eyes spare, and have no pity on old or young or virgin; kill both little ones and women, all of them, so that they are utterly destroyed. But do not come near any on whom is the sign Tau; and begin from my holy ones.”

The sacrament of this sign was foretold in various ways: in it life was being prepared for men, and in it the Jews would not believe. As Moses announced beforehand in Exodus, saying: “You will be cast out of the land into which you will enter, and among those nations you will not be at rest, and there will be no stability for the sole of your foot; and God will give you a weary heart and a wasting soul and failing eyes, so that they do not see; and your life will be hanging on a tree before your eyes, and you will not believe in your life.”

So, since the prophecy was fulfilled by his coming, that is, by his birth, which we mentioned above, and by his suffering, which we have clearly set out, Daniel therefore said that vision and prophet were sealed, since Christ is the seal of all the prophets, fulfilling all that had formerly been announced about him; for after his coming and his suffering there is no longer vision or prophet. Hence he says most firmly that his coming seals vision and prophecy. So, showing both the number of the years and the time of the sixty-two and a half weeks completed, we proved that Christ came then, that is, was born; and of the seven and a half weeks, which are subdivided so as to be cut off from the former weeks, within which times we showed that Christ suffered; and so, the seventy weeks being concluded and the city destroyed, that sacrifice and anointing then ceased.

Let it be enough for the present to have run through the course of Christ thus far, by which he is proved to be such as he was announced, also from this agreement of the Scriptures, by which we have spoken against the Jews on the ground of the greater part of the prejudgment. For let them not call into doubt or deny the writings we bring forward, so that from this too they may be unable to deny that they are equal to the divine Scriptures, since the things foretold as to come after Christ are recognized as fulfilled. Or, unless he had come after whom the things announced were to be accomplished, would the things that have been completed also be proved?

Look at all the nations emerging from that time on out of the abyss of human error to the Lord God the Creator and to his Christ; and if you dare to deny that this was prophesied, at once the promise of the Father meets you in the Psalms, saying: “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” Nor will you be able to say that this is the son of David rather than Christ, or that the ends of the earth were promised to David, who reigned within Judea alone, rather than to Christ, who has already taken the whole world by the faith of his gospel; as he says through Isaiah: “Behold, I have given you as an arrangement for my race, as a light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind” (that is, of those who wander), “to release the bound from their bonds” (that is, to free them from their offences), “and from the prison house” (that is, of death) “those who sit in darkness” (namely, of ignorance). If these things come about through Christ, they will have been prophesied of no one else than him through whom we see them accomplished.

Since, then, the sons of Israel affirm that we are in error in receiving Christ, who has already come, let us set against them, from the Scriptures themselves, the proof that the Christ who was proclaimed has already come; although we have proved from the times foretold by Daniel that the Christ who was announced has already come. For he had to be born in Bethlehem of Judah. For so it is written in the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, are not the least among the leaders of Judah; for from you will come forth a leader who will shepherd my people Israel.” But if he has not yet been born, who was the leader announced as going to come forth from the tribe of Judah, from Bethlehem? For he must come forth from the tribe of Judah and from Bethlehem. But we observe that now no one of the race of Israel has remained in the city of Bethlehem, and that since then it has been forbidden for any of the Jews to linger even within the borders of that region, so that this too might be fulfilled through the prophet: “Your land is deserted, your cities burned with fire” (that is, what befell them in time of war); “strangers will devour your country before your eyes, and it will be deserted and overthrown by foreign peoples.” And in another place it is said thus through the prophet: “You will see the King with glory” (that is, Christ, doing mighty works in the glory of God the Father), “and your eyes will see the land from afar”; because you, for your deserts, after the storming of Jerusalem, are forbidden to enter your land and are permitted only to see it with your eyes from afar. “Your soul,” he says, “will meditate on terror”: that is, at the time when they suffered their own destruction. How then will a leader be born from Judea, and how far will he come forth from Bethlehem, as the divine books of the prophets declare, when no one at all of Israel is left there to this day, from whose stock Christ could be born?

For if, according to the Jews, he has not yet come, when he begins to come, with what will he be anointed? For the law commanded that in captivity the anointing with the royal chrism could not be performed. And if there is no longer anointing there, as Daniel prophesied (for he says, “Anointing will be destroyed”), then they no longer have anointing, because they no longer have the temple either, where the horn was from which kings were anointed. If, then, there is no anointing, with what will the leader who will be born in Bethlehem be anointed? Or how will he come forth from Bethlehem, when no one at all of the seed of Israel is in Bethlehem?

Let us show once more that Christ has already come, according to the prophets, and has suffered, and has already been received in the heavens, and will come from there according to the proclamations of the prophets. For we read, according to Daniel, that after his coming the city itself was to be destroyed, and we recognize that it has happened so. For Scripture says thus: that the city and the holy place were to be destroyed together with the leader, undoubtedly the one who was to come forth from Bethlehem and from the tribe of Judah. Hence it is also clear that the city was to be destroyed at the same time as its leader was to suffer in it, according to the Scriptures of the prophets, who say: “I have spread out my hands all day long to a stubborn people that contradicts me, which walks in a way that is not good, but after its sins.” And in the Psalms he says: “They destroyed my hands and feet; they counted all my bones; and they themselves gazed and looked on me”; “and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” David did not suffer these things, so that he might seem rightly to have said them of himself, but Christ, who was crucified. And hands and feet are not destroyed except those of one who is hanged on a tree. Hence David himself also said that the Lord would reign from the tree; for elsewhere too the prophet proclaims the fruit of this tree, saying: “The earth has given its blessings”: that virgin earth, of course, not yet watered by rains nor made fruitful by showers, from which man was then first formed, and from which Christ has now been born through the flesh, of a virgin. “And the tree,” he says, “has brought forth its fruit”: not that tree in paradise which gave death to the first-formed, but the tree of Christ's suffering, from which Life, hanging, was not believed by you. For this tree was then in a sacrament, the tree with which Moses sweetened the bitter water, so that the people, who were perishing of thirst in the wilderness, revived by drinking; just as we, drawn out of the calamities of the world in which we were living, perishing of thirst, that is, deprived of the divine word, have revived by drinking, in faith in him, the water of baptism from the tree of Christ's suffering. From this faith Israel fell away, as Jeremiah says: “Send and inquire diligently whether such things have happened, whether the nations will change their gods, and these are not gods. But my people has changed its glory, from which nothing will profit them. Heaven was terrified at this.” And when was it terrified? Undoubtedly when Christ suffered. “And it shuddered,” he says, “very greatly,” “and the sun grew dark at midday.” And when did it shudder very greatly, if not at the suffering of Christ, when the earth also trembled, and the veil of the temple was torn, and the tombs were broken open? “For my people has done these two evils: they have forsaken me,” he says, “the fountain of the water of life, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns, which will not be able to hold water.” Undoubtedly, by not receiving Christ, the fountain of the water of life, they began to have broken cisterns, that is, synagogues in the dispersions of the nations, in which the Holy Spirit no longer lingers, as in the past he dwelt in the temple before the coming of Christ, who is the true temple of God. For the prophet Isaiah had also said that they would suffer this thirst for the divine Spirit, saying: “Behold, those who serve me will eat, but you will hunger; those who serve me will drink, but you will thirst, and from distress of spirit you will howl. For you will leave your name as a surfeit to my chosen ones, but the Lord will kill you; but for those who serve me a new name will be named, which will be blessed on earth.”

We read the sacrament of this tree celebrated also in the Kingdoms. For when the sons of the prophets were cutting wood with axes by the river Jordan, the iron flew off and sank in the river; and so, when the prophet Elisha came along, the sons of the prophets asked him to raise from the river the iron that had sunk. And so Elisha took a piece of wood and threw it into the place where the iron had sunk; at once the iron floated up and the wood sank, and the sons of the prophets recovered it. From this they understood that the spirit of Elijah had been made present in him. What is plainer than the sacrament of this wood? The hardness of this world, sunk in the depth of error, is freed in baptism by the wood of Christ, that is, of his suffering, so that what once perished through a tree in Adam might be restored through the tree of Christ: for us, at any rate, who have succeeded to the place of the prophets and endure today in the world the things the prophets always suffered for the sake of divine religion. For some they stoned, others they drove away, and still more they handed over to death, which they cannot deny.

This wood Isaac too, the son of Abraham, himself carried for the sacrifice, when God had commanded that he be made a victim to him. But since these had been sacraments reserved to be fulfilled in the times of Christ, Isaac with the wood was spared, and a ram caught by its horns in a thicket was offered; and Christ in his own times carried the wood on his shoulders, clinging to the horns of the cross, with a crown of thorns set around his head. For he had to become a sacrifice for all the nations, he who “was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is without voice, so he did not open his mouth.” For when Pilate questioned him he said nothing; “for in his humiliation his judgment was taken away. But who will declare his generation?” For no human being at all was aware of Christ's birth at his conception, when the virgin Mary was found pregnant by the Word of God; “and because his life would be taken away from the earth.” Why, then, after his resurrection from the dead, which took place on the third day, did the heavens receive him? According to the prophecy of Hosea, uttered in this way: “Before the light they will rise to me, saying, Let us go and return to the Lord our God, for he himself will rescue and deliver us. After two days, on the third day”: which is his glorious resurrection. He received him from earth into the heavens, from where also the Spirit himself had come to the virgin, whose birth and suffering alike the Jews did not recognize.

Since, then, the Jews still contend that the Christ has not yet come, whom we have proved in so many ways to have come, let the Jews recognize their own end, which they were foretold as going to receive after the coming of Christ, for the impiety with which they both despised and killed him. For, first, from the day when, according to the saying of Isaiah, “man cast away his abominations of gold and silver, which they made to worship vain and harmful things,” that is, from the time when we the nations, our hearts enlightened by the truth of Christ, cast away our idols (let the Jews see), what follows has also been accomplished. For the Lord of hosts took away from the Jews and from Jerusalem, among other things, “the wise master builder,” who builds the church, the temple of God, and the holy city, and the house of the Lord. For from then on the grace of God ceased among them. And the clouds were commanded not to rain rain upon the vineyard of Sorek, that is, heavenly benefits were not to come to the house of Israel. For it had produced thorns, with which it had crowned Christ, and not righteousness but a cry, with which it had forced him onto the cross. And so, the former gifts being withdrawn, the law and the prophets were until John, and the pool of Bethsaida until the coming of Christ. Then it ceased to cure the sick of Israel, when through their persistence in their fury the name of the Lord was blasphemed through them, as it is written: “Because of you the name of God is blasphemed among the nations.” For the infamy began with them, and the interval from Tiberius to Vespasian. Since they had committed these things and had not understood that Christ was to be found in the time of their visitation, their land was made desolate and their cities burned with fire; strangers devour their country before their eyes; the daughter of Zion has been left like a watchtower in a vineyard or like a hut in a cucumber field, ever since, that is, Israel did not know the Lord and the people did not understand him, but rather forsook him and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger. So too the conditional threat of the sword: “If you are unwilling and do not obey, the sword will devour you.” From this we prove that Christ was the sword, by not listening to whom they perished; he who in a psalm also asks the Father for their dispersion, saying: “Scatter them in your power”; and who again prays through Isaiah for their burning: “Because of me,” he says, “these things have happened to you; you will sleep in anguish.”

Since, then, the Jews were foretold as going to suffer these things because of Christ, and we find that they have suffered them, and we see them living on in dispersion, it is clear that these things have befallen the Jews because of Christ, the sense of the Scriptures agreeing with the outcome of events and the order of the times. Or, if the Christ has not yet come, on whose account they were foretold as going to suffer these things, then when he comes they will suffer them. And where then will be the daughter of Zion that is to be left, when today she does not exist? Where the cities to be burned, which are already burned to heaps? Where the dispersion of the nation, which is already in exile? Restore Judea to the condition in which Christ is to find it, and then contend that another is coming.