Against the Jews

It happened recently: a disputation was held between a Christian and a Jewish proselyte. Taking turns, as in a tug-of-war, each of them dragged the day out into the evening. And since some supporters of each side also made a din, the truth was overshadowed as by a cloud. So I decided that what could not be fully cleared up amid the clamor of the disputation should be examined more carefully, and that the questions should be settled by going over them again in writing. For the occasion of defending divine grace even for the Gentiles had this advantage: that it was a man from the Gentiles, not a Jew of the stock of the Israelites, who undertook to claim God's law for himself. For this is enough: that the Gentiles can be admitted to God's law, so that Israel may no longer boast that the Gentiles are reckoned as a drop from a bucket or dust from the threshing floor. And yet we have God himself as a sufficient promiser and faithful guarantor, who promised Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed, and that from Rebecca's womb two peoples and two nations would come forth: the Jews, that is, Israel, and the Gentiles, that is, ours. Each, then, is called both a people and a nation, so that no one may dare to claim a privilege of grace from the name. For God appointed that two peoples and two nations should come forth from the womb of one woman, and grace made its distinction not in the name but in the order of birth, so that the one who was to come out of the womb first should be subject to the lesser, that is, the later. For thus God spoke to Rebecca: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will be divided from your belly, and people will overcome people, and the greater will serve the lesser.” So since the people or nation of the Jews is earlier in time and greater through the grace of first favor in the law, while ours is understood to be lesser in the age of time, having obtained the knowledge of divine mercy in the last span of the world, without doubt, by the decree of the divine utterance, the earlier and greater people, that is, the Jewish, must serve the lesser, and the lesser people, that is, the Christian, must overcome the greater. For according to the records of the divine Scriptures, the people of the Jews, the older one, forsook God and served idols, abandoned the Godhead and gave itself to images, when the people said to Aaron, “Make us gods to go before us.” And when the gold from the women's necklaces and the men's rings had been melted in the fire and a bull's head had come forth for them, all Israel, forsaking God, gave honor to this figure, saying, “These are the gods who brought us out of the land of Egypt.” So too in later times, when kings ruled over them, they worshiped golden cows and groves along with Jeroboam, and gave themselves over to Baal. Hence it is proved from the documents of the divine Scriptures that they have always been marked out as guilty of the crime of idolatry. But our people, the lesser, that is, the later, has left the idols it formerly served and turned to the same God from whom Israel, as we recalled above, had departed. Thus the lesser, that is, the later, people has overcome the greater, since it obtains the grace of divine favor from which Israel has been rejected.

Let us, then, come to close quarters and mark out the sum of the question itself with fixed lines. For why should God, the founder of the universe, the governor of the whole world, the fashioner of man, the sower of all nations, be believed to have given the law through Moses to one people, and not be said to have assigned it to all nations? For unless he had given it to all, he would in no way allow proselytes from the Gentiles to have access to it. But, as befits the goodness of God and his fairness, since he is the fashioner of the human race, he gave the same law to all nations, and commanded it to be observed at fixed and appointed times, when he willed, through whom he willed, and as he willed. For in the beginning of the world he gave Adam and Eve themselves a law, that they should not eat of the fruit of the tree planted in the middle of paradise; and if they did otherwise, they would die the death. That law would have sufficed for them if it had been kept. For in this law given to Adam we recognize, laid up in it, all the precepts that later sprouted forth when they were given through Moses: namely, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul”; and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”; and “You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and mother”; and “You shall not covet what is another's.” For the primordial law was given to Adam and Eve in paradise as the womb, so to speak, of all the precepts of God. In short, if they had loved the Lord their God, they would not have acted against his precept; if they had loved their neighbor, that is, each other, they would not have believed the persuasion of the serpent, and so would not have committed murder against themselves by falling from immortality through acting against God's precept. They would also have abstained from theft if they had not secretly tasted the fruit of the tree, nor would they have sought to hide under a tree from the sight of the Lord their God; nor would they have become partners with the devil when he asserted a falsehood, by believing him that they would be like God; and so they would not have offended God, as a father, who had formed them from the clay of the earth as from a mother's womb. If they had not coveted what was another's, they would not have tasted the forbidden fruit. So in this general and primordial law of God, which God had ordained to be observed in the fruit of the tree, we recognize that all the precepts of the later law were specifically contained, which sprouted forth when they were published in their own times. For it belongs to the same God afterwards to bring in a law who had first sent ahead a precept, since it is also his afterwards to train those whom he had earlier undertaken to form as righteous. What wonder is it if he who instituted discipline increases it, if he who began it advances it? In short, I contend that before the law of Moses written on tablets of stone there was an unwritten law, which was naturally understood and kept by the fathers. For how was Noah found righteous, if the righteousness of the natural law did not go before him? How was Abraham counted the friend of God, if not by the fairness and righteousness of the natural law? How was Melchizedek named priest of the Most High God, if before the priesthood of the Levitical law there were no Levites who offered sacrifices to God? So after the patriarchs named above the law was given to Moses, at the time after they had left Egypt, after an interval and span of many ages. In fact, the law was given four hundred and thirty years after Abraham. Hence we understand that God's law existed even before Moses, and not first at Horeb only, or at Sinai and in the desert, but older: first in paradise, then to the patriarchs, and so also to the Jews, reformed at fixed times; so that we should not now attend to the law of Moses as though it were the principal law, but as a subsequent one, which God at a certain time presented to the Gentiles too, and, having promised it again through the prophets, reformed for the better; and he forewarned that, just as the law was given through Moses at a certain time, so it would be believed to have been observed and kept for a time. And let us not take away from God this power of reforming the precepts of the law according to the conditions of the times for man's salvation. In short, let him who contends that the sabbath must still be kept as a remedy for salvation, and circumcision on the eighth day because of the threat of death, teach that righteous men in the past kept the sabbath or were circumcised and so became friends of God. For if circumcision cleanses a person, why did God, when he made Adam uncircumcised, not circumcise him, or at least after he had sinned, if circumcision cleanses? Certainly, when he placed him in paradise, he set him there uncircumcised as the tiller of paradise. So since God created Adam neither circumcised nor keeping the sabbath, consequently he also praised his offspring Abel, who offered him sacrifices uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, accepting what he offered in simplicity of heart, and rejecting the sacrifice of his brother Cain, who did not rightly divide what he offered. Noah too, uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, God delivered from the flood. And Enoch, a most righteous man, not circumcised and not keeping the sabbath, he translated from this world, and he has not yet tasted death, so that as a candidate for eternity he might show us already that we too can please God without the burden of the law of Moses. Melchizedek too, priest of the Most High God, uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, was chosen for the priesthood of God. And Lot, the brother of Abraham, proves that he was delivered from the burning of the Sodomites for the merits of righteousness without observance of the law.

“But Abraham,” you say, “was circumcised.” Yes, but he pleased God before he was circumcised, and yet he did not keep the sabbath. For he had received circumcision, but as a sign for that time, not as a privilege of salvation. In fact, subsequent patriarchs were uncircumcised, like Melchizedek, who, uncircumcised, offered bread and wine to Abraham himself, already circumcised, as he returned from battle. “But,” he says, “the son of Moses would have been choked by the angel then, if Zipporah his mother had not circumcised the infant's foreskin with a stone. Hence,” he says, “there is the greatest danger if anyone does not circumcise the foreskin of his flesh.” Yet if circumcision brought salvation in every way, Moses himself would not have failed to circumcise his son on the eighth day, since it is agreed that Zipporah did it on the journey, compelled by the angel. Let us consider, then, that the compelled circumcision of one infant could not prescribe for a whole people and lay down a law, as it were, of this precept. For God, foreseeing that he would give this circumcision to the people of Israel as a sign, not for salvation, therefore urged that the son of Moses, the future leader, be circumcised, so that when he began to give the people the precept of circumcision through him, the people would not despise it, seeing the example already carried out in the leader's son. For circumcision was to be given, but as a sign by which Israel might be distinguished in the last time, when, according to its deserts, it would be forbidden to enter the holy city, through the words of the prophets saying: “Your land is desolate, your cities burned with fire; strangers will devour your country in your sight; and the daughter of Zion will be left desolate and overthrown by foreign peoples, like a hut in a vineyard, like a watchman's shelter in a cucumber field, and like a city that is being besieged.” Why so? Because the prophet's following word reproaches them, saying: “I have begotten sons and raised them up, but they have rejected me.” And again: “And if you stretch out your hands, I will turn my face from you; and if you multiply prayers, I will not hear you; for your hands are full of blood.” And again: “Woe, sinful nation, a people full of sins, wicked sons; you have forsaken God and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” This, then, was God's providence in giving circumcision to Israel as a sign by which they could be distinguished when the time came in which, for their deserts mentioned above, they would be forbidden admission into Jerusalem; which, because it was to come, was announced, and because we see it done, we recognize. For just as carnal circumcision, which was temporary, was imposed as a sign on a stubborn people, so spiritual circumcision has been given for salvation to an obedient people, as the prophet Jeremiah says: “Renew yourselves, and do not sow among thorns; be circumcised to God, and circumcise the foreskin of your heart.” And in another place he says: “For behold, the days will come, says the Lord, and I will arrange for the house of Judah and the house of Jacob a new covenant, not such as I gave their fathers on the day I led them out of the land of Egypt.” Hence we understand both that the former circumcision then given would cease, and that a new law is announced to come forth, not such as he had already given to the fathers; as Isaiah proclaimed, saying that in the last days the mountain of the Lord and the house of God would be manifest above the tops of the mountains: “And it will be exalted,” he says, “above the hills, and all nations will come upon it, and many will walk and say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob”: not of Esau, the elder son, but of Jacob, the later one, that is, of our people, whose mountain is Christ, cut out without the hands of cutters, filling the whole earth, as was shown in Daniel. Then Isaiah announces in the following words that a new law also will come forth from this house of the God of Jacob, saying: “For out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he will judge among the nations” (that is, among us, who have been called from the nations), “and they will beat,” he says, “their swords into plows and their spears into sickles, and nation will not take up sword against nation, and they will no longer learn to fight.” Who, then, are meant but we, who, taught by the new law, observe these things, now that the old law has been blotted out, whose coming abolition the very deed shows? For the old law avenged itself by the vengeance of the sword, and plucked out an eye for an eye, and repaid injury with vengeance; but the new law pointed to clemency, turned the former ferocity of swords and spears into tranquility, and reshaped the former waging of war against the rivals and enemies of the law into the peaceful acts of plowing and tilling the earth. So, as we showed above that the old law and carnal circumcision were declared to be ceasing, so also the observance of the new law and of spiritual circumcision has shone forth in the obedience of peace. “A people,” he says, “whom I did not know has served me; at the hearing of the ear it has obeyed me.” The prophets announced it. And what people was ignorant of God but ours, who formerly did not know God? And who listened to him at the hearing of the ear but we, who have left idols and turned to God? For Israel, which had been known to God, which had been exalted by him in Egypt and carried across the Red Sea, which was fed with manna in the desert for forty years, brought into a likeness of eternity, not defiled by human passions nor fed on the foods of this world, but fed with manna, the bread of angels, and bound firmly enough to God by his benefits, forgot its Lord and God, saying to Aaron: “Make us gods to go before us; for that Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt has abandoned us, and we do not know what has happened to him.” And therefore we, who formerly were not the people of God, have become his people by receiving the new law spoken of above and the new circumcision foretold before.

It follows, then, that just as the abolition of carnal circumcision and of the old law is shown to have been carried out at its own time, so the observance of the sabbath too is shown to have been temporary. For the Jews say that from the beginning God sanctified the seventh day, resting on it from all his works which he had made, and that from this Moses too said to the people: “Remember the day of the sabbaths, to sanctify it; you shall do no servile work on it, except what pertains to life.” From this we understand rather that we ought always to keep sabbath from all servile work, and not only every seventh day but at all times. And so we must ask what sabbath God wants us to keep. For the Scriptures mark out an eternal sabbath and a temporal sabbath. For the prophet Isaiah says, “My soul hates your sabbaths”; and in another place he says, “You have profaned my sabbaths.” From this we discern that the temporal sabbath is human, while the eternal sabbath is reckoned divine; of this he preaches through Isaiah: “And it will be,” he says, “month after month, and day after day, and sabbath after sabbath, and all flesh will come to worship in Jerusalem, says the Lord.” We understand this to have been fulfilled in the times of Christ, when all flesh, that is, every nation, came to worship in Jerusalem God the Father through Jesus Christ his Son, as was foretold through the prophet: “Behold, proselytes will go to you through me.” So, then, before this temporal sabbath there was also an eternal sabbath shown beforehand and foretold, just as before carnal circumcision there was also a spiritual circumcision shown beforehand. In short, let them teach, as we have said before, that Adam kept the sabbath, or that Abel pleased God by observing the sabbath when he offered him a holy victim, or that Enoch, when he was translated, was a keeper of the sabbath, or that Noah, the builder of the ark, observed the sabbath on account of the immense flood, or that Abraham offered his son Isaac in observance of the sabbath, or that Melchizedek received the law of the sabbath in his priesthood. But the Jews will say that from the time this precept was given through Moses it had to be observed from then on. It is clear, then, that the precept was not eternal or spiritual, but temporal, to cease at some time. Indeed, this solemnity is so far from having to be celebrated by resting on the sabbath, that is, the seventh day, that Joshua son of Nun, at the time when he was conquering the city of Jericho, said he had been commanded by God to order the people that the priests should carry the ark of God's covenant around the city for seven days, and that when the circuit of the seventh day was completed, the walls of the city would fall of their own accord. So it was done, and when the span of the seventh day was finished, as had been foretold, the walls of the city fell. From this it is plainly shown that the sabbath day fell within the number of those seven days. For seven days, from whatever point they begin, must include a sabbath day; and on that day not only did the priests work, but the city was made spoil at the edge of the sword by all the people of Israel. Nor is there any doubt that they did servile work when they took the spoils of war at God's command. In the times of the Maccabees, too, they acted bravely by fighting on sabbaths, conquered foreign enemies, and by fighting on sabbaths restored their ancestral law to its former state of life. Nor should I think they were defending any other law than the one in which they remembered that the command about the sabbath day was laid down. Hence it is clear that precepts of this kind were valid for a time and for the necessity of a present cause, and that God did not formerly give them such a law to be observed for all time.

So too we have shown that sacrifices of earthly offerings and of spiritual sacrifices were foretold; and indeed that from the beginning the earthly sacrifices of the elder son, that is, Israel, were foreshown in Cain, and the different sacrifices of the younger son Abel, that is, of our people, were displayed. For Cain, the elder, offered gifts to God from the fruit of the earth, but the younger son Abel from the fruit of his sheep. God looked on Abel and on his gifts, but on Cain and on his gifts he did not look. And God said to Cain: “Why has your face fallen? If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned? Be still. For your turning is toward you, and he shall rule over you.” And then Cain said to Abel his brother, “Let us go into the field,” and he went off with him there and killed him. And then God said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And he said, “I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?” To him God said, “The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the earth. Therefore cursed is the earth, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood. Groaning and trembling you will be upon the earth, and everyone who finds you will kill you.” From this event, then, we observe that the twofold sacrifices of the two peoples were foreshown even then, from the beginning. Then, when the priestly law was written down through Moses in Leviticus, we find it prescribed to the people of Israel that sacrifices should be offered to God in no other place than in the land of promise, which the Lord God was to give to the people of Israel and their brothers, so that, once Israel had been brought in, sacrifices and whole burnt offerings, both for sins and for souls, should be celebrated there and nowhere else but in the holy land. Why, then, does the Spirit afterwards proclaim through the prophets that sacrifices would be offered to God in every place and in every land? As he says through Malachi the angel, one of the twelve prophets: “I will not receive a sacrifice from your hands, for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among all the nations, says the Lord almighty; and in every place they offer pure sacrifices to my name.” Likewise in the Psalms David says: “Bring to God, you families of the nations” (undoubtedly because the preaching of the apostles was to go out into all the earth), “bring to God glory and honor, bring to God the sacrifices of his name; take up victims and enter into his courts.” For that God is to be propitiated not with earthly sacrifices but with spiritual ones, we read as it is written: “A heart crushed and humbled is a sacrifice to God”; and elsewhere: “Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High.” So spiritual sacrifices of praise are pointed out, and a crushed heart is shown to be a sacrifice acceptable to God. And so, just as carnal sacrifices are understood to be rejected, of which Isaiah too speaks, saying, “What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? says the Lord,” so spiritual sacrifices are proclaimed accepted, as the prophets announce. “For even if you bring me fine flour,” he says, “it is a vain supplication, an abomination to me.” And again he says: “Your whole burnt offerings and your sacrifices and the fat of goats and the blood of bulls I do not want, nor that you come to be seen by me; for who has required these from your hands?” “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among all nations, says the Lord.” And of the spiritual sacrifices he adds: “And in every place they offer pure sacrifices to my name, says the Lord.”

So since it is clear that a temporal sabbath has been shown and an eternal sabbath foretold; that carnal circumcision was foretold and spiritual circumcision indicated beforehand; that a temporal law and an eternal law were announced; that carnal sacrifices and spiritual sacrifices were foreshown; it follows that, after all these precepts had been given in a carnal way to the people of Israel in the time before, there should come a time when the precepts of the ancient law and the old ceremonies would cease, and there would come the promise of a new law, the recognition of spiritual sacrifices, and the pledge of a new covenant, as the light from on high shone upon us, who sat in darkness and were held in the shadow of death. So the necessity lies upon us, since we have said that a new law was proclaimed by the prophets, and not such as had already been given to their fathers at the time when he led them out of the land of Egypt, to show and prove both that the old law has ceased and that the promised new law is now at work. And indeed it must first be asked whether there is awaited a giver of a new law, an heir of a new covenant, a priest of new sacrifices, a purifier by a new circumcision, and an observer of an eternal sabbath, who would restrain the old law, establish the new covenant, offer the new sacrifices, repress the ancient ceremonies, restrain the old circumcision together with its sabbath, and announce a new kingdom which cannot be corrupted. This giver of the new law, I say, this observer of the spiritual sabbath, high priest of eternal sacrifices, eternal ruler of an eternal kingdom: it must be asked whether he has already come or not, so that, if he has already come, he may be served; if he has not yet come, he may be waited for; provided it is clear that at his coming the precepts of the old law are to be restrained and the beginnings of the new law must arise. And first of all it must be laid down that the ancient law and the prophets could not have ceased unless he had come who was announced by that same law and those same prophets as the one to come.

So let us join battle on this: whether the Christ who was announced as coming has already come, or is still hoped for as one to come. To prove this very point, we must also search out the times at which the prophets announced that Christ would come, so that, if we recognize that he came within those times, we may believe without doubt that he is the one whom the prophets sang of as coming, in whom we, that is, the Gentiles, were announced as going to believe; and, once it is established that he has come, we may believe without doubt that a new law has been given by him, and not deny that a new covenant has been arranged for us in him and through him. For we know that the Jews too do not dispute that Christ will come, since they stretch out their hope toward his coming. Nor need we inquire at length about this, since all the prophets of old preached about him, as Isaiah: “Thus says the Lord God to my Christ the Lord, whose right hand I have held, that the nations may hear him: I will break the strength of kings, I will open gates before him, and cities will not be closed to him.” This we see fulfilled. For whose right hand does God the Father hold but Christ's, his Son? Him all nations have heard, that is, in him all nations have believed; and his preachers, the apostles, are shown in the Psalms of David: “Their sound,” he says, “has gone out into the whole earth, and their words to the ends of the earth.” For in whom else have all nations believed but in Christ, who has already come? In whom have the nations believed: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and those who live in Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, those dwelling in Pontus and Asia and Pamphylia, those staying in Egypt and living in the region of Africa beyond Cyrene, Romans and sojourners, then too Jews in Jerusalem, and the other nations: by now the various peoples of the Gaetulians and the many territories of the Moors, all the borders of the Spanish provinces, the different nations of the Gauls, and places of the Britons inaccessible to the Romans but subject to Christ, and places of the Sarmatians, Dacians, Germans, and Scythians, and of many hidden nations and provinces and many islands unknown to us, which we can scarcely enumerate? In all these places the name of Christ, who has already come, reigns, since he is the one before whom the gates of all cities have been opened and to whom none are closed, before whom iron bars have been broken and bronze doors opened. Although these things are also to be understood spiritually (that the hearts of individuals, besieged in various ways by the devil, have been unlocked by faith in Christ), yet they have been plainly fulfilled as well, since in all these places the people of Christ's name dwell. For who could have reigned over all nations but Christ, the Son of God, who was announced as going to reign over all forever? For if Solomon reigned, it was only within the borders of Judah; the limits of his kingdom are marked from Beersheba to Dan. If Darius reigned over the Babylonians and Parthians, he did not have power over all nations; if Pharaoh, or whoever succeeded him in the hereditary kingdom, reigned over the Egyptians, he held the dominion of his kingdom there only; if Nebuchadnezzar with his petty kings, he had the borders of his kingdom from India to Ethiopia; if Alexander of Macedon, he held no more than all Asia and the other regions, after he had conquered them. The Germans are still not allowed to cross their frontiers; the Britons are shut in within the circuit of their ocean; the nations of the Moors and the barbarous Gaetulians are hemmed in by the Romans lest they overstep the bounds of their regions. What shall I say of the Romans themselves, who fortify their empire with the garrisons of their legions and cannot extend the strength of their rule beyond these nations? But the name of Christ extends everywhere, is believed everywhere, is worshiped by all the nations listed above, reigns everywhere, is adored everywhere, is given equally to all everywhere. With him a king has no greater favor, a barbarian no lesser joy; no one's merits are distinguished by rank or birth; to all he is equal, to all king, to all judge, to all God and Lord. Nor should you hesitate to believe what we assert, since you see it happening.

So we must search out the times of Christ's birth, foretold and then to come, and of his passion, and of the extermination of the city of Jerusalem, that is, its devastation. For Daniel says that both the holy city and the holy place will be exterminated together with the leader who is to come, and the pinnacle destroyed to ruin. So the times of Christ, the leader who was to come, must be searched out; these we shall investigate in Daniel, and when they have been computed we shall prove that he has come, both from the times prescribed and from the fitting signs and from his works. These things we also prove from the consequences which were announced to happen after his coming, so that we may believe that all has been fulfilled just as it was foreseen. Daniel, then, preached about him in such a way as to show both when and at what time he would free the nations, and that after the passion of Christ that city was to be exterminated. For he says thus: “In the first year under Darius son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who reigned over the kingdom of the Chaldeans, I, Daniel, understood in the books the number of the years. And while I was still speaking in prayer, behold, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying, touched me, about the hour of the evening sacrifice, and made me understand, and spoke with me and said: Daniel, I have now come out to fill you with understanding; at the beginning of your supplication the word went out. And I have come to announce it to you, for you are a man of desires; consider the word and understand the vision. Seventy weeks have been cut short upon your people and upon the holy city, until sin grows old, and sins are sealed, and righteousness is obtained by prayer, and everlasting righteousness is brought in, and that the vision and the prophet may be sealed, and the holy of holies anointed. And you will know and perceive and understand: from the going forth of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, to Christ the leader, seven and a half weeks and sixty-two and a half weeks; and he will turn, and it will be built in height and entrenchment, and the times will be renewed; and after these sixty-two weeks the anointing will be exterminated and will not be; and he will exterminate the city and the holy place together with the leader who comes, and they will be cut down as in a flood, until the end of the war, which will be cut down to ruin. And he will confirm the covenant with many. In one week and half a week my sacrifice and libation will be taken away, and in the holy place the abomination of desolation, and until the end of time a consummation will be given upon this desolation.” Let us notice, then, the limit: how truly he foretells that there will be seventy weeks, in which, if they receive him, it will be built in height and length, and the times will be renewed. But God, foreseeing what would happen, that they would not only not receive him but would even persecute him and hand him over to death, went over it again and said that in sixty-two and a half weeks he would be born and the holy of holies anointed; that when the seven and a half weeks were being fulfilled he was to suffer; and that the city was to be exterminated after one and a half weeks, namely, when the seven and a half weeks had been completed. For he says thus: “And the city and the holy place are to be exterminated together with the leader who is to come, and they will be cut down as in a flood, and he will destroy the pinnacle to ruin.” How, then, do we show that Christ came within sixty-two and a half weeks? We shall count from the first year of Darius, since the vision itself was shown to Daniel at that very time. For he says: “And understand and infer that I am answering you these things for the completion of the word.” Hence we must compute from the first year of Darius, when Daniel saw this vision. Let us see, then, how the years are fulfilled up to the coming of Christ. Darius reigned 19 years. Artaxerxes reigned 41 years. Then King Ochus, also called Cyrus, reigned 24 years. Argus one year. Another Darius, also called Melas, 21 years. Alexander of Macedon 12 years. Then after Alexander, who had reigned over both Medes and Persians, whom he had conquered, and had established his kingdom in Alexandria, when he also called it by his own name, there reigned after him there in Alexandria Soter, 35 years; Philadelphus succeeds him, reigning 38 years. Euergetes succeeds him, 25 years. Then Philopator, 17 years. After him Epiphanes, 24 years. Likewise another Euergetes, 29 years. Likewise another Soter, 38 years. Ptolemy, 37 years. Cleopatra, 20 years and 5 months. Cleopatra further reigned jointly with Augustus 13 years. After Cleopatra, Augustus ruled another 43 years; for all the years of Augustus's rule were 56. We see, then, that in the forty-first year of the rule of Augustus, when he had ruled 28 years after the death of Cleopatra, Christ is born. And the same Augustus lived on for 15 years after Christ was born. And the remaining periods of years up to the day of Christ's birth, into the forty-first year, which is the twenty-eighth year of Augustus after Cleopatra's death, make 437 years and 5 months. Hence the sixty-two and a half weeks are fulfilled, which make 437 years and 6 months, on the day of Christ's birth. And everlasting righteousness was made manifest, and the holy of holies, that is, Christ, was anointed, and the vision and the prophet were sealed, and sins were forgiven, which through faith in the name of Christ are washed away for all who believe in him. What does he mean by saying that the vision and prophecy are sealed? That all the prophets announced of him that he would come and would suffer. So, since prophecy was fulfilled by his coming, he said that the vision and prophecy were sealed, because he himself is the seal of all the prophets, fulfilling all that they had formerly announced about him. For after the coming of Christ and his passion there is no longer any vision or prophet to announce that Christ will come. Indeed, if this is not so, let the Jews produce some volumes of prophets after Christ, some visible miracles of angels, such as the patriarchs formerly saw up to the coming of Christ, who has already come, from which time vision and prophecy were sealed, that is, established. And rightly the evangelist says: “The law and the prophets until John the Baptist.” For when Christ was baptized, that is, when he sanctified the waters in his baptism, the whole fullness of the former spiritual gifts ceased in Christ, as he sealed the vision and all the prophecies, which he fulfilled by his coming. Hence he says most firmly that his coming seals vision and prophecy. So, having shown both the number of years and the time of the sixty-two and a half weeks fulfilled, on whose completion Christ came, that is, was born, let us see in what event the other seven and a half weeks, which are marked off in the division from the former weeks, were fulfilled. After Augustus, who lived on after Christ's birth, 15 years are reckoned. Tiberius Caesar succeeded him and held rule 20 years, 7 months, and 28 days. In the fifteenth year of his rule Christ suffered, being about thirty years old when he suffered. Then Gaius Caesar, also called Caligula, 3 years, 8 months, and 12 days. Nero Caesar, 11 years, 9 months, and 13 days. Galba, 7 months and 6 days. Otho, 3 days. Vitellius, 8 months and 27 days. Vespasian, in the first year of his rule, conquers the Jews, and the total is 52 years and 6 months. For he ruled 11 years. And so, on the day of their conquest, the Jews fulfilled the seventy weeks foretold in Daniel. So when these times too had been completed and the Jews conquered, the libations and sacrifices ceased there, which from then on could not be celebrated there; for the anointing too was exterminated there after the passion of Christ. For it had been foretold that the anointing would be exterminated there, as was prophesied in the Psalms: “They exterminated my hands and feet.” The suffering of this extermination was accomplished within the times of the seventy weeks, under Tiberius Caesar, in the consulship of Rubellius Geminus and Fufius Geminus, in the month of March, at the time of the Passover, on the eighth day before the Kalends of April, the first day of unleavened bread, on which they killed the lamb at evening, as Moses had commanded. And so the whole synagogue of Israel killed him, saying to Pilate, when he wished to release him, “His blood be on us and on our children,” and, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend,” so that all the things written about him might be fulfilled.

Let us begin, then, to prove that the birth of Christ was announced by the prophets. So Isaiah proclaims: “Hear, house of David: it is no small contest for you with men, since God is setting up the struggle. For this reason God himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and you will call his name Emmanuel,” which is interpreted “God with us.” “Butter and honey he will eat, since before the infant knows how to call father or mother, he will receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians.” So the Jews say: “Let us challenge this proclamation of Isaiah and make a comparison, whether the Christ who has already come fits, first, the name that Isaiah proclaimed, and then the signs of him that he announced. Isaiah certainly proclaims that he must be called Emmanuel, and next that he would take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians. But this one who has come,” they say, “was neither called by a name of that kind nor engaged in any warfare.”

We, on the contrary, have thought it right to remind them to recognize also the context of this chapter. For the interpretation of Emmanuel, “God with us,” has been added, so that you may attend not only to the sound of the name but also to its sense. For the Hebrew sound, Emmanuel, has an interpretation, namely “God with us.” Ask, then, whether this expression, “God with us,” which is Emmanuel, has been in use in reference to Christ ever since Christ shone forth. And I think you will not deny it. For those from Judaism who believe in Christ, from the time they believe in him, when they wish to say Emmanuel, mean that God is with us; and so it is established that he who was proclaimed as Emmanuel has already come, because what Emmanuel signifies has come, that is, “God with us.”

They are misled in the same way by the sound of the words when they take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria and the kingdom of the Assyrians as though they foretold Christ as a warrior, not noticing that Scripture puts first: “since before the child knows how to call father or mother, he will receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians.” First you must look at the indication of his age, whether that age could present Christ as already a man, let alone a general. No doubt the infant was going to call men to arms with his wailing, and give the signal for battle not with a trumpet but with a rattle, and point out the enemy not from horseback or from a wall but from the back or neck of his nurse and carrier, and so subdue Damascus and Samaria instead of the breast! It is another matter if among you infants burst into battle, oiled first, I suppose, in the sun, then armed with swaddling clothes and paid in butter, who know how to wield a lance before they know how to tear at the breast. But if nature nowhere allows this, to serve as a soldier before becoming a man, to take the power of Damascus before knowing one's father, it follows that the saying must be seen as spoken figuratively.

“But nature does not allow a virgin to give birth either,” they say, “and yet the prophet must be believed.” And rightly so. For he laid a foundation of belief for an incredible thing by saying that it would be a sign: “For this reason,” he says, “a sign will be given you: behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son.” But a sign from God would not seem a sign unless it had been some unheard-of wonder. Indeed, if, when you are eager to turn some people away from this divine prophecy or to win over the simple, you dare to lie, as though Scripture said that not a virgin but a young woman would conceive and give birth, you are refuted by this very point: an everyday thing, the pregnancy and childbirth of a young woman, cannot be seen as any sign. So the virgin mother set before us as a sign is rightly believed, but the infant warrior is not in the same way. For here the reason for a sign would not apply; rather, after the sign of the new birth has been stated, a different sequence concerning the infant is then declared: that he would eat honey and butter. Nor is this, surely, by way of a sign: it belongs to infancy. But that he would receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians: this is a marvellous sign. Keep to the limit of his age and look for the sense of the prophecy; rather, give back to the truth what you are unwilling to believe, and the prophecy is understood by the report of its fulfilment.

Let those eastern Magi be believed, who honoured the infancy of Christ with gifts of gold and frankincense as a king, and the infant received the power of Damascus without battle and arms. For besides the fact, known to all, that the power, that is, the strength, of the East usually abounds in gold and spices, it is certain that in the divine Scriptures gold also constitutes the power of the other nations. As he says through Zechariah: “And Judah stands guard at Jerusalem, and he will gather all the strength of the peoples round about, gold and silver.” For of this gift of gold David also said: “And there will be given him of the gold of Arabia”; and again: “The kings of the Arabians and of Saba will bring him gifts.” For the East generally held the Magi to be kings, and Damascus was formerly reckoned part of Arabia, before it was transferred to Syrophoenicia when the Syrias were divided. Christ then received its power by receiving its tokens, that is, gold and spices; and the spoils of Samaria were the Magi themselves, who, when they had recognized him and honoured him with gifts and worshipped him on bended knee as lord and king, on the testimony of the guiding star, became the spoils of Samaria, that is, of idolatry, by believing, of course, in Christ. For he marked idolatry by the name of Samaria, as a place disgraced by idolatry, since it had then revolted from God under King Jeroboam. Nor is this new in the divine Scriptures, to transfer names figuratively on the basis of a likeness of crimes. For he calls your rulers “rulers of Sodom,” and your people “people of Gomorrah,” when those cities had long since been destroyed. And elsewhere, through the prophet, he says to the people of Israel: “Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite,” though they were not born of their race, but because of a like impiety; yet once he had even called them his own sons through the prophet Isaiah: “I have begotten sons and raised them up.” So too Egypt sometimes means the whole world in his usage, under the charge of superstition and curse. So too Babylon, in our John, is a figure of the city of Rome, being likewise great and proud in its rule and a warrior against the saints. In this way, then, he also entitled the Magi with the name of Samaritans, as despoiled of what they had had in common with the Samaritans, as we have said: idolatry against the Lord. And “against the king of the Assyrians” means against the devil, who thinks he reigns in this, if he drives the saints away from the worship of God.

This interpretation of ours will be further helped by the fact that elsewhere too the Scriptures describe Christ as a warrior because of the names of certain weapons and words of that kind. But the Jews will be refuted by comparison with the rest of the sense. “Gird your sword upon your thigh,” says David. But what do you read just before about Christ? “Fair in beauty beyond the sons of men; grace is poured out on your lips.” It is quite absurd if he flattered the one whom he was girding with a sword for battle about the fitness of his beauty and the grace of his lips, of whom he said next: “Stretch out and prosper, go forward and reign”; and added: “because of your gentleness and your righteousness.” Who will work with a sword without practising the opposites of gentleness and righteousness, that is, deceit and harshness and injustice, the proper business, of course, of battles? Let us see, then, whether that sword is not another, belonging to another kind of work, namely the divine Word of God, two-edged with the two testaments of the old law and the new law, sharp with the fairness of its wisdom, rendering to each according to his deeds. So it was permitted to the Christ of God in the Psalms to be girded figuratively, without any warfare, with the sword of the Word of God, to whom the foretold fitness of beauty with grace of lips corresponds, and whom David then girded upon the thigh when he was announced as going to come to earth by the decree of God the Father. “The greatness of your right hand will lead you,” he says: the power, namely, of spiritual grace, from which the knowledge of Christ is led forth. “Your arrows are sharp,” he says: the commandments of God flying everywhere, threatening to expose every heart, and piercing and transfixing every conscience. “Peoples will fall beneath you,” that is, in worship. So Christ is mighty in war and bears arms; so he will receive spoils not of Samaria alone but of all nations. Recognize figurative spoils too, since you have learned of his allegorical arms. And so the Christ who came was not a warrior, because he was not proclaimed as such by Isaiah.

“But if the Christ who is believed to be coming,” they say, “is not called Jesus, why is the one who came called Jesus Christ?” Both names, however, will be found to belong to the Christ of God, in whom the name Jesus too is found. Learn the habit of your error. When a successor to Moses was being appointed, Auses the son of Nave is transferred from his former name and begins to be called Jesus. “Certainly,” you say. This, we say, was first a figure of what was to come. For Jesus Christ was going to lead the second people, which we are, the nations who formerly lived as deserted in the world, into the land of promise flowing with milk and honey, that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nothing is sweeter; and this was to come about not through Moses, that is, not through the discipline of the law, but through Jesus, that is, through the grace of the new law, after we had been circumcised with a knife of stone, that is, with the precepts of Christ (for Christ was proclaimed a rock in many ways and figures). Therefore the man who was being prepared as an image of this sacrament was also consecrated with the figure of the Lord's name, so as to be named Jesus. For the one who spoke to Moses was himself the Son of God, who was also always the one seen. For no one has ever seen God the Father and lived. And so it is certain that the Son of God himself spoke to Moses and said to the people: “Behold, I send my angel before your face” (that is, the people's) “to guard you on the way and bring you into the land that I have prepared for you. Attend to him and hear him, and do not be disobedient to him; for he has not hidden you, since my name is upon him.” For it was Jesus, not Moses, who was going to bring the people into the land of promise. He called him an angel because of the greatness of the mighty works he was going to perform (which mighty works Jesus the son of Nave did, as you yourselves read), and because of his office as prophet, one who announces the divine will; just as the Spirit, speaking through the prophet in the person of the Father, calls the forerunner of Christ, John, a future angel: “Behold, I send my angel before your face” (that is, Christ's), “who will prepare your way before you.” Nor is it new for the Holy Spirit to call “angels” those whom God has appointed ministers of his power. For the same John was called not only the angel of Christ but also the lamp shining before Christ. “I have prepared a lamp for my Christ,” David proclaims; and Christ himself, coming to fulfil the prophets, says of him to the Jews: “He was a burning and shining lamp,” since he not only prepared his ways in the wilderness but also, by pointing out the Lamb of God, enlightened the minds of men by his preaching, so that they understood him to be the Lamb whom Moses announced would suffer. So too he was called Jesus because of the future sacrament of his own name; for he confirmed that name of his which he himself had given him, since he had ordered that from then on he be called not angel nor Auses but Jesus. So, then, both names belong to the Christ of God, so that he was also called Jesus.

And since the virgin of whom Christ had to be born had to draw her lineage from the seed of David, as we mentioned above, the prophet says plainly in what follows: “And a rod will be born from the root of Jesse” (which is Mary) “and a flower will rise from his root, and the Spirit of God will rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of knowledge and piety, the spirit of counsel and truth; the spirit of the fear of God will fill him.” For the whole range of spiritual proofs befitted no man except Christ, likened to a flower because of his glory and grace, but reckoned of the stock of Jesse, that is, to be registered from there through Mary. For she was from the home town of Bethlehem and of the house of David, as Mary, of whom Christ is born, was recorded in the Roman census. I ask further whether he has come who was proclaimed by the prophets as coming from the line of Jesse and as going to show all humility and patience and calm. In the same way the man who is shown to be such will himself be the Christ who came. For of him the prophet says: “A man set in affliction, and knowing how to bear weakness, who was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer did not open his mouth.” If he neither strove nor cried out, nor was his voice heard outside; if he did not break the bruised reed, the faith of Israel, nor quench the burning flax, that is, the momentary ardour of the nations, but made it shine the more by the rising of his own light, he cannot be other than the one who was proclaimed.

The activity of the Christ who came must therefore be tested against the rule of the Scriptures. For, unless I am mistaken, we read that he was marked out by a twofold work, of preaching and of power. But let each heading be arranged in turn. So let us go through, point by point, the sequence we have begun, showing that Christ was announced as a preacher, as through Isaiah: “Cry out with strength,” he says, “and do not spare; lift up your voice like a trumpet, and declare to my people their misdeeds, and to the house of Jacob their sins. Day after day they seek me and desire to know my ways, as a people that has done righteousness and has not forsaken the judgment of God,” and the rest. And that he would do mighty works from the Father: “Behold, our God will repay judgment; he himself will come and save us. Then the sick will be healed, and the eyes of the blind will see, and the ears of the deaf will hear, and the tongues of the mute will be loosed, and the lame will leap like a deer,” and so on. That Christ performed these things you do not deny either, since you used to say that you were not stoning him for his works but because he did these things on sabbaths.

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.

Learn now the key to your error, from its very abundance. We say that two conditions of Christ were shown by the prophets, and as many comings of his foretold. One in humility, the first, of course, when he was to be led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer without voice, so he did not open his mouth, not even comely in appearance. “For we announced,” he says, “concerning him, like a little child, like a root in thirsty ground; and he had no form or glory. And we saw him, and he had no form or beauty, but his form was without honour, falling short of the sons of men; a man in affliction, and knowing how to bear weakness”; namely as one set by the Father as a stone of stumbling, and made by him a little lower than the angels, he declares himself a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and an outcast of the people. These marks of lowliness fit the first coming, as those of exaltation fit the second, when he will be no longer a stone of stumbling nor a rock of offence, but the highest cornerstone, taken up after being rejected and exalted to the consummation; and indeed that rock in Daniel cut from the mountain, which will shatter and crush the image of the kingdoms of the world. Of this second coming of his the same Daniel said: “And behold, with the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man came, coming up to the Ancient of Days, and he was present in his sight, and those who stood by brought him near, and royal power was given to him, and all the nations of the earth according to their race, and all glory, will serve him; and his power is eternal, which will not be taken away, and his kingdom one that will not be corrupted.” Then, of course, he is to have an honourable form and an unfailing beauty beyond the sons of men: “fair in beauty beyond the sons of men. Grace,” he says, “is poured out on your lips; therefore God has blessed you for ever. Gird your sword about your thigh, O most mighty, in your fairness and your beauty”; since the Father too afterwards, when he had made him a little lower than the angels, crowned him with glory and honour and put all things under his feet. “And then they will recognize him whom they pierced, and they will beat their breasts, tribe by tribe”: because formerly they did not recognize him when he was set in the lowliness of the human condition. “He is a man,” says Jeremiah, “and who will know him?” For, says Isaiah, “who will declare his generation?”

So too in Zechariah, in the person of Jesus himself, indeed in the very sacrament of the name, Christ, the most true priest of the Father, is sketched in a twofold condition for two comings. First he is clothed in filthy garments, that is, the unworthiness of flesh capable of suffering and mortal, when the devil too opposed him, the instigator, namely, of Judas the betrayer, who had also tempted him after his baptism. Then, stripped of his former filth, he is adorned with a long robe and a mitre and a clean turban, that is, of the second coming, since he is shown to have obtained glory and honour. Nor will you be able to say that this is the son of Josedech, who was never clothed in any filthy garment at all but was always adorned with priestly dress, and was never deprived of the priestly office. But this Jesus is the Christ, the high priest of God the Father, who at his first coming came in human form and capable of suffering, in humility even to his suffering, himself also made a victim in every way for all of us; who after his resurrection, clothed in the long robe, was named priest of God the Father for ever.

So too I shall give an interpretation of the two goats that were offered at the fast. Do not they too show both stages of the Christ who has already come? Equal indeed and alike, because of the same appearance of the Lord, since he will not come in another form, as one who is to be recognized by those by whom he was also wounded. But one of them, wrapped in scarlet, cursed and spat upon and torn and pierced, was cast out by the people outside the city to perdition, marked with the plain signs of Christ's suffering, who, wrapped in a scarlet robe and spat upon and afflicted with every insult, was crucified outside the city. The other, offered for offences and given as food to the priests of the temple alone, signified the marks of the second manifestation, in which, all offences having been expiated, the priests of the spiritual temple, that is, of the church, would enjoy a kind of feast of the Lord's grace, while the rest fast from salvation.

Since, then, the first coming was sung as both obscured by very many figures and cast down in every dishonour, but the second as both manifest and worthy of God, therefore, fixing their eyes only on the one they could easily understand and believe, that is, the second, which is in honour and glory, they were not undeservedly deceived about the more obscure one, and certainly the less worthy, that is, the first. And so to this day they deny that their Christ has come, because he did not come in exaltation, not knowing that he was to come first in humility.

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, so that from this agreement of the divine Scriptures we may now understand, and the things foretold as to come after Christ may be believed to have been accomplished by divine arrangement. For unless he had come after whom they were to be accomplished, the things foretold as to come at his coming would in no way have happened. If, then, you see all the nations emerging from that time on out of the depth of human error to God the Creator and to his Christ (which you do not dare to deny was prophesied, for even if you denied it, at once, as we have already said, the promise of the Father would meet 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”), you will not be able to claim this prophecy for Solomon the son of David rather than for Christ the Son of God, nor that the ends of the earth were promised to the son of David, who reigned within Judea alone, rather than to Christ the Son of God, who has already lit up the whole world with the rays of his gospel. Finally, a throne for ever, too, belongs to Christ the Son of God rather than to Solomon, a temporal king, of course, who reigned over Israel alone. For today the nations call upon Christ, who did not know him, and peoples today flee to Christ, of whom they were formerly ignorant. You cannot contend that something is future which you see happening. Either deny that these things were prophesied, when they are seen before your eyes, or that they have been fulfilled, when they are read; or, if you deny neither, they will have been fulfilled in him of whom they were prophesied.