City of God 16.38–17.2

Chapter 38. On Jacob's being sent to Mesopotamia to take a wife, on the vision he saw in a dream on the journey, and on his four women, though he had sought one wife.

Jacob is sent by his parents into Mesopotamia to take a wife there. The words of his father sending him are these: “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of the Canaanites; arise, flee into Mesopotamia, to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father, and take a wife from there, from the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. And may my God bless you and increase you and multiply you, and you shall become assemblies of nations; and may he give you the blessing of Abraham your father, to you and to your seed after you, that you may inherit the land of your sojourning, which God gave to Abraham.” Here we now understand that the seed of Jacob was separated from the other seed of Isaac, which came through Esau. For when it was said, “In Isaac shall your seed be called”, the seed that certainly belongs to the city of God, another seed of Abraham was separated from it, that which was in the slave woman's son and that which was to be in the sons of Keturah. But it was still uncertain about the two twin sons of Isaac whether that blessing belonged to both or to one of them, and, if to one, which of them it was. This has now been made clear, when Jacob is prophetically blessed by his father and it is said to him: “And you shall become assemblies of nations, and may he give you the blessing of Abraham your father.”

So, as Jacob was going into Mesopotamia, he received an oracle in a dream, of which it is written thus: “And Jacob went out from the well of the oath and set out for Haran, and came to a place and slept there, for the sun had set; and he took of the stones of the place and put it under his head and slept in that place and dreamed. And behold, a ladder set up on the earth, whose top reached to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it, and the Lord leaned upon it and said: I am the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; do not fear; the land on which you are sleeping I will give to you and to your seed; and your seed shall be like the sand of the earth, and it shall spread abroad over the sea and to the south-west and to the north and to the east; and in you and in your seed all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed. And behold, I am with you, keeping you in every way you go, and I will bring you back into this land, for I will not forsake you until I have done all that I have spoken to you. And Jacob rose from his sleep and said: The Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said: How terrible is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose and took the stone which he had put under his head there, and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on the top of it; and Jacob called the name of that place House of God.” This belongs to prophecy; Jacob did not pour oil on the stone in the manner of idolatry, as though making it a god; for he neither worshipped that stone nor sacrificed to it; but since the name of Christ comes from chrism, that is, from anointing, something was surely figured here which pertains to a great sacrament. The Savior himself is understood to recall this ladder to our memory in the Gospel, where, after he had said of Nathanael, “Behold, truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile”, because Israel had seen this vision (for he is Jacob), he says in the same place: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Jacob, then, went on into Mesopotamia to take a wife from there. And how it happened that he had four women, from whom he begot twelve sons and one daughter, although he desired none of them unlawfully, divine Scripture shows. For he had come to take one; but when another had been substituted for her, he did not send away even her whom he had unknowingly used in the night, lest he seem to have made sport of her; and at a time when no law forbade several wives for the sake of multiplying posterity, he also took the one to whom alone he had already pledged the faith of future marriage. Since she was barren, she gave her slave woman to her husband, so that she herself might receive sons from her; and her elder sister did the same, imitating her, although she had borne children, because she wished to multiply offspring. Jacob is not read to have sought any but one, nor to have used several except for the duty of begetting offspring, keeping the right of marriage, so that he did not even do this unless his wives, who had lawful authority over their husband's body, had urged that it be done. So he begot twelve sons and one daughter from four women. Then he entered Egypt through his son Joseph, who, sold by his envious brothers, had been taken there and exalted in that place.

Chapter 39. Why Jacob was also named Israel.

Jacob, as I said a little earlier, was also called Israel, a name which the people descended from him held more. This name was given him by the angel who wrestled with him on the way as he was returning from Mesopotamia, most evidently bearing the type of Christ. For Jacob's prevailing over him, who was certainly willing, so that he might figure a mystery, signifies the passion of Christ, in which the Jews appeared to prevail over him. And yet he obtained a blessing from the same angel whom he had overcome; and so the giving of this name was a blessing. Israel means “seeing God”, which will be the reward of all the saints at the end. And the same angel touched the breadth of his thigh, as he was prevailing, and in this way made him lame. So one and the same Jacob was both blessed and lame: blessed in those of that people who believed in Christ, and lame in the unbelieving. For the breadth of the thigh is the multitude of the race. For there are more in that stock of whom it was prophetically foretold: “And they limped away from their paths.”

Chapter 40. How Jacob is said to have entered Egypt with seventy-five persons, when many of those recorded were born at a later time.

Seventy-five persons, then, are reported to have entered Egypt together with Jacob himself, counting him with his sons. In that number only two women are mentioned, one a daughter, the other a granddaughter. But the matter, carefully considered, does not show that there was so large a number in Jacob's progeny on the day or in the year when he entered Egypt. For among them are mentioned even Joseph's great-grandsons, who could in no way have existed then, since Jacob was then a hundred and thirty years old and his son Joseph thirty-nine; and since it is certain that Joseph took a wife in his thirtieth year or later, how could he in nine years have great-grandsons from the sons he had by that wife? Since, then, Ephraim and Manasseh, Joseph's sons, did not even have sons, but Jacob, when he entered Egypt, found them boys under nine, how are not only their sons but even their grandsons counted among the seventy-five who then entered Egypt with Jacob? For there is mentioned Machir, son of Manasseh, Joseph's grandson, and the son of the same Machir, that is, Gilead, grandson of Manasseh and great-grandson of Joseph; there too is the one Ephraim, Joseph's other son, begot, that is, Shuthelah, Joseph's grandson, and the son of that Shuthelah, Eran, Ephraim's grandson and Joseph's great-grandson; who could in no way have existed when Jacob came into Egypt and found Joseph's sons, his own grandsons, the grandfathers of these, boys under nine years old. But evidently the entry of Jacob into Egypt, when Scripture records him with seventy-five persons, is not one day or one year, but the whole time as long as Joseph lived, through whom it came about that they entered. For of Joseph himself the same Scripture speaks thus: “And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he and his brothers and all his father's household, and he lived a hundred and ten years; and Joseph saw Ephraim's children to the third generation.” That is the great-grandson, third from Ephraim; for by the third generation it means son, grandson, great-grandson. Then follows: “And the sons of Machir, son of Manasseh, were born upon Joseph's knees.” And this is that very grandson of Manasseh, Joseph's great-grandson. But they are named in the plural, as Scripture is accustomed to do, which called even Jacob's one daughter “daughters”; as in the usage of the Latin language children are called liberi in the plural even if there is no more than one. Since, then, Joseph's own happiness is proclaimed because he was able to see great-grandsons, they are by no means to be thought to have existed already in the thirty-ninth year of their great-grandfather Joseph, when his father Jacob came to him into Egypt. What misleads those who look at these things less carefully is that it is written: “Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who entered Egypt together with Jacob their father.” For this was said because seventy-five are counted together with him, not because all were already together when he himself entered Egypt; but, as I said, the whole time during which Joseph lived, through whom he is seen to have entered, is counted as his entry.

Chapter 41. On the blessing which Jacob promised to his son Judah.

For the sake of the Christian people, then, in whom the city of God is on pilgrimage on earth, if we look for the flesh of Christ in the seed of Abraham, setting aside the sons of the concubines, Isaac presents himself; if in the seed of Isaac, setting aside Esau, who is also Edom, Jacob presents himself, who is also Israel; if in the seed of Israel himself, setting aside the others, Judah presents himself, because Christ sprang from the tribe of Judah. And so let us hear how Israel, when about to die in Egypt and blessing his sons, blessed Judah prophetically: “Judah,” he says, “your brothers shall praise you. Your hands shall be on the back of your enemies; the sons of your father shall bow down to you. Judah is a lion's whelp; from the sprouting, my son, you have gone up; lying down you slept like a lion and like a lion's whelp; who shall rouse him? A prince shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until the things laid up for him come; and he is the expectation of the nations; binding his foal to the vine, and his ass's foal to the haircloth, he shall wash his robe in wine and his garment in the blood of the grape. His eyes are tawny from wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.” I have expounded these words in disputing against Faustus the Manichaean, and I think it is sufficient how clearly the truth of this prophecy shines out. In it the death of Christ is foretold by the word “sleep,” and not necessity but power in death by the name of “lion.” This power he himself proclaims in the Gospel, saying: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again. No one takes it from me; but I lay it down of myself, and I take it up again.” So the lion roared, so he fulfilled what he said. For to that power belongs what is added about his resurrection: “Who shall rouse him?” That is, no man, but only he himself, who also said of his body: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The very manner of his death, that is, the height of the cross, is understood in the one word, “You have gone up.” And what is added, “Lying down you slept”, the evangelist explains when he says, “And bowing his head he gave up his spirit”; or certainly his burial is recognized, in which he lay sleeping, and from which no man raised him, as the prophets raised some or as he himself raised others, but he rose himself as from sleep. And his robe, which he washes in wine, that is, cleanses from sins in his own blood, the sacrament of which blood the baptized know (hence he adds, “and his garment in the blood of the grape”), what is it but the Church? “And his eyes are tawny from wine”: his spiritual ones, made drunk with his cup, of which the psalm sings, “And your cup that inebriates, how glorious it is!” “And his teeth whiter than milk”, the milk which the little ones drink in the apostle, that is, nourishing words, for those not yet fit for solid food. He, then, is the one in whom the promises to Judah were laid up; and until they came, princes, that is, kings of Israel, were never lacking from that stock. “And he is the expectation of the nations”; this is clearer by seeing than it becomes by explaining.

Chapter 42. On the sons of Joseph, whom Jacob blessed with a prophetic crossing of his hands.

Just as the two sons of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, provided a figure of two peoples, the Jews and the Christians (although, as regards descent in the flesh, neither did the Jews come from the seed of Esau, but the Idumaeans; nor the Christian nations from Jacob, but rather the Jews; for the figure was valid only for what was said: “The elder shall serve the younger”), so it happened also in the two sons of Joseph; for the elder bore the type of the Jews, the younger that of the Christians. When Jacob was blessing them, placing his right hand on the younger, whom he had on his left, and his left on the elder, whom he had on his right, it seemed a grave matter to their father, and he warned his father, as though correcting his error and showing which of them was the elder. But he would not change his hands, but said: “I know, my son, I know. This one too shall become a people, and this one shall be exalted; but his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.” Here too he shows those two promises. For the one shall become “a people,” the other “a multitude of nations.” What is more evident than that these two promises contain the people of Israel and the whole world in the seed of Abraham, the one according to the flesh, the other according to faith?

Chapter 43. On the times of Moses, of Joshua son of Nun, and of the judges, and then of the kings, of whom Saul was the first, but David is held pre-eminent both in sacrament and in merit.

After Jacob died, and Joseph too, during the remaining hundred and forty-four years until they came out of the land of Egypt, that nation grew to an incredible degree, even though worn down by such persecutions that at one time male children were killed at birth, when the excessive increase of that people alarmed the astonished Egyptians. Then Moses, stolen away from the killers of little children, came to the royal house, God preparing great things through him; and, reared and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter (Pharaoh was the name of all the kings in Egypt), he became so great a man that he himself brought that nation, wonderfully multiplied, out of the very hard and very heavy yoke of slavery which it bore there; or rather God did so through him, who had promised this to Abraham. For first he fled from there because, in defending an Israelite, he had killed an Egyptian and was afraid; afterwards, sent by God, in the power of the Spirit of God he overcame Pharaoh's magicians who resisted him. Then through him the ten memorable plagues were brought on the Egyptians when they would not let God's people go: water turned into blood, frogs and gnats, dog-flies, the death of cattle, sores, hail, locusts, darkness, the death of the firstborn. Finally the Egyptians, while pursuing the Israelites, whom, broken by so many and such great plagues, they had at last let go, perished in the Red Sea. For as the Israelites went away, the sea divided and made a way; but as the Egyptians pursued, the returning wave overwhelmed them. Then for forty years God's people was led through the desert under Moses' leadership, when the tabernacle of the testimony was named, where God was worshipped with sacrifices foretelling things to come, the law having already been given on the mountain with great terror; for the divinity testified to it by most evident wonderful signs and voices. This took place soon after they came out of Egypt and the people began to be in the desert, on the fiftieth day after the Passover was celebrated by the sacrifice of a lamb; which is so much a type of Christ, foretelling that he would pass from this world to the Father through the sacrifice of his passion (for Pascha in the Hebrew language means “passing over”), that when the new covenant was revealed, after Christ our Passover was sacrificed, the Holy Spirit came from heaven on the fiftieth day; he is called in the Gospel the finger of God, so that he might recall our remembrance to the memory of the first prefigured event, since those tables of the law too are reported to have been written by the finger of God.

After Moses died, Joshua son of Nun ruled the people, brought them into the land of promise, and divided it among the people. By these two wonderful leaders wars were waged most successfully and wonderfully, God testifying that those victories came to them not so much because of the merits of the Hebrew people as because of the sins of the nations that were being conquered. After these leaders there were judges, the people now being settled in the land of promise, so that the first promise to Abraham began meanwhile to be paid, concerning one nation, the Hebrew, and the land of Canaan, not yet concerning all nations and the whole world; which the coming of Christ in the flesh, and not the observances of the old law but the faith of the Gospel, was to fulfil. A prefiguring of this was that it was not Moses, who had received the law for the people on Mount Sinai, but Joshua, whose name too had been changed at God's command so that he should be called Jesus, who brought the people into the land of promise. In the times of the judges, according as the sins of the people and the mercy of God stood, prosperity and adversity in war alternated. Then came the times of the kings, of whom Saul reigned first; when he was rejected and laid low by defeat in battle, and his stock cast off so that kings should not arise from it, David succeeded to the kingdom, whose son Christ is especially called. In him a certain turning point came about and, in a way, the beginning of the young manhood of God's people; the adolescence, as it were, of this race was reckoned from Abraham himself to this David. For it is not without reason that the evangelist Matthew recorded the generations in such a way as to mark this first interval with fourteen generations, namely from Abraham to David. For it is from adolescence that a man begins to be able to beget; that is why he took the beginning of the generations from Abraham, who was also made father of the nations when he received his changed name. Before him, then, there was as it were the childhood of this race of God's people, from Noah to Abraham himself; and that is why it was found in a language, namely Hebrew. For a man begins to speak in childhood, after infancy, which is so called because it cannot speak. That first age oblivion certainly submerges, as the first age of the human race was blotted out by the flood. For how many are there who remember their infancy? So in this course of the city of God, as the preceding book contained the one first age, so this book is to contain two ages, the second and the third; in the third, because of the three-year-old heifer, the three-year-old she-goat, and the three-year-old ram, the yoke of the law was imposed, the abundance of sins appeared, and the beginning of the earthly kingdom arose, where spiritual people were not lacking, whose sacrament was figured in the turtledove and the pigeon.

Chapter 1. On the times of the prophets.

How the promises of God made to Abraham, to whose seed, as we have learned from God's pledge, both the nation of Israel according to the flesh and all nations according to faith were due, are fulfilled, the city of God, running its course through the order of times, will show. Since, then, the preceding book ended with the reign of David, we now touch on the rest that follows from that reign, as far as seems sufficient for the work undertaken. This period, then, from the time when holy Samuel began to prophesy, and onward until the people of Israel was led captive into Babylonia and then, according to the prophecy of holy Jeremiah, the house of God was restored after seventy years when the Israelites returned, is the whole time of the prophets. For although we may not undeservedly call the patriarch Noah himself, in whose days the whole earth was washed away by the flood, and others before and after him down to this time when there began to be kings among God's people, prophets, because of certain things to come which were either signified in some way or foretold through them and which pertained to the city of God and the kingdom of heaven, especially since we read that some of them were expressly so called, like Abraham and Moses, yet those days are called the days of the prophets principally and chiefly from the time when Samuel began to prophesy, who at God's command anointed first Saul as king and, when he was rejected, David himself, from whose stock the rest were to succeed, as long as it was fitting that they should so succeed. If, then, I wished to record all that was foretold by the prophets about Christ, while the city of God ran its course through these times with its members departing by death and succeeding by birth, it would go on without limit. First, because that very Scripture which, setting out in order the kings and their deeds and fortunes, seems to be occupied with narrating events with a historian's diligence, will be found, if it is examined and treated with the help of God's Spirit, to be intent more, or certainly not less, on foretelling the future than on relating the past (and who that gives this even moderate thought does not know how laborious and lengthy it is to investigate this by searching and show it by discussion, and how many volumes it would need?); then, because the things themselves which undoubtedly pertain to prophecy are so many, about Christ and the kingdom of heaven, which is the city of God, that a larger discussion is necessary to open them up than the measure of this work demands. So I will, if I can, so govern my pen that in completing this work according to God's will I neither say what is superfluous nor leave out what is sufficient.

Chapter 2. At what time God's promise about the land of Canaan was fulfilled, which carnal Israel too received in possession.

In the preceding book we said that from the beginning of God's promises to Abraham two things were promised: one, that his seed was to possess the land of Canaan (which is signified where it is said, “Go into the land that I will show you, and I will make you into a great nation”); the other, far more excellent, concerning not the carnal but the spiritual seed, through which he is the father not of the one nation of Israel but of all the nations that follow in the footsteps of his faith; which began to be promised in these words: “And in you all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed.” And thereafter we showed by very many other testimonies that these two things were promised. The seed of Abraham according to the flesh, that is, the people of Israel, was therefore already in the land of promise, and there had already begun to reign, not only holding and possessing the cities of its adversaries but also having kings; God's promises concerning that people had already been fulfilled in great part: not only those made to those three fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and any others in their times, but also those made through Moses himself, through whom that same people was freed from Egyptian slavery and through whom all past things were revealed, in his times, when he led the people through the desert. But neither through the famous leader Joshua son of Nun, through whom that people was brought into the land of promise and who, when the nations had been conquered, divided it among the twelve tribes as God had commanded, and died; nor after him in the whole time of the judges, had God's promise about the land of Canaan from a certain river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates been fulfilled; yet it was no longer being prophesied as future but awaited as to be fulfilled. It was fulfilled through David and his son Solomon, whose kingdom was extended over as great an area as had been promised; for they subdued all those peoples and made them tributary. So under these kings the seed of Abraham had been established in the land of promise according to the flesh, that is, in the land of Canaan, in such a way that nothing further remained for the fulfilment of that earthly promise of God except that in that same land, as regards temporal prosperity, the Hebrew nation should remain through the succession of its posterity in an unshaken state until the end of this mortal age, if it obeyed the laws of the Lord its God. But since God knew that it would not do this, he used even temporal punishments on it, to exercise his few faithful ones in it, and to warn those who were later to be in all nations, who needed to be warned, and in whom he was to fulfil the other promise by revealing the new covenant through the incarnation of Christ.