Prophetic Extracts 2.13–3.5

It is plainly agreed by all who have soundly believed in Christ that the opening of the psalm in hand, which runs thus, “O God, my God, attend to me; why have you forsaken me?”, was spoken by him at the time of the passion; for the cry on the cross, “Elōi, elōi, lama sabachthani,” showed this. But before we begin to take the prophecy in the psalm as referring to him, we shall ask those who boast of circumcision who it could be who says the things in the psalm. For he appears to be no ordinary person who says, among other things, this: “For you are the one who drew me out of the womb, my hope from my mother's breasts; on you I was cast from the womb; from my mother's belly you are my God”; and who adds, “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the midst of the assembly I will sing your praise”; and again, “He did not turn his face away from me, and when I cried to him he heard me. From you is my praise; in the great assembly I will confess you; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.” Besides these, let them say whether they can fit the rest of the psalm to any of the holy men. For whom do they know who became such as the word described beforehand: “All who saw me mocked me”? Or about whom did they speak with their lips and shake the head, saying, “He hoped in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him save him, since he delights in him”? Whom did many calves, and of what nature, and dogs and fat bulls surround, and open their mouth against him like a lion ravening and roaring? And besides, whom did the assembly of evildoers surround, and so surround that they dug his hands and feet, counted all his bones, and divided his garments among themselves, casting lots for his clothing? For the person in the psalm says such things, and after suffering so much he adds, “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the midst of the assembly I will sing your praise.” Let them solve these things, and at the same time explain the rest of the psalm, especially from “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him,” as far as “The generation that is coming will be told of the Lord, and they will declare his righteousness to a people that will be born, whom the Lord has made.” Let them show the generation that did not yet exist then, but was prophesied to come in a future time, and the people that did not yet exist before, but was foreseen to be born in later times; and let them say what they would say about the church gathered from all the nations through Jesus Christ our Saviour. In view of such great multitudes who have come to know the God of the universe through Christ, would they not admit that “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord” and “All the families of the nations will bow down before him” have been fulfilled? It is time, then, for those willing to judge fairly to confess that the prophecy has been fulfilled in no one other than our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ alone, at whose coming the turning of the nations also began, when the prophesied generation arrived, and the people that was to be born, foretold not only here but also in the hundred and first psalm, through “Let this be written for another generation, and the people that is being created will praise the Lord.” This is the people of whom it was said also in the seventeenth psalm, “A people whom I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me.”

This Saviour and Lord of ours, then, who took flesh and on account of it was called a worm, who became a reproach of men and despised by the people: “All who saw me mocked me,” especially at the time of the passion, when what is in the prophecy reached its fulfilment, and those passing by blasphemed him and mocked him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself.” Then too they spoke with their lips and shook their heads at him, saying in these very words, “He hoped in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him save him, since he delights in him”; for these very words are recorded in the Gospels as said to him at the passion. To him, then, and to him alone, it is fitting to say to the Father, “For you are the one who drew me out of the womb, my hope from my mother's breasts; on you I was cast from the womb; from my mother's belly you are my God.” Besides this, the word teaches us that certain wicked and beastlike powers also worked the plot against him, on account of which he said, “Many calves surrounded me; fat bulls closed me in.” And about the synagogue of the circumcision that rose up against him he says, “Many dogs encircled me; an assembly of evildoers closed me in.” These also dug, not only his hands but also his feet; or, according to Aquila, who says “they disfigured,” “They disfigured my hands and my feet.” This was truly accomplished when, hanging him on the wood, they pierced both his hands and his feet with nails. It is good, if anyone demands that it be shown from Scripture that Christ was foretold to endure a cross, to set out, along with the other passages that show it, “they dug,” and still more “they disfigured my hands and my feet.” After these words it adds, “They divided my garments among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.” Aquila rendered this, “They will divide my garment among themselves, and over my clothing they will cast lots”; and Symmachus, “They distributed my garments among themselves, and for my raiment they drew lots.” This too was fulfilled at the time of the passion, when those who crucified him took his garments and made four parts, a part for each soldier, and the tunic; but it was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. So they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be”; to which the evangelist adds, saying, “that the Scripture might be fulfilled, ‘They divided my garments among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.’” So much the prophecy. … Concerning him the Hebrew has something like “hōsanna”; following which the psalm adds, just as the Gospels do, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” This seems to me to mean something like: “Save, then, blessed one who comes in the name of the Lord,” the Father and God of the universe.

“The Lord swore truth to David, and he will not set it aside: ‘Of the fruit of your belly I will set upon your throne.’” And again: “There I will make a horn spring up for David; I have prepared a lamp for my anointed. His enemies I will clothe with shame, but upon him my holiness shall flourish.” Here too a promise about the Christ is clearly given to David by God with an oath, as one who would be born of his offspring and would hold his throne. The passages would need much examination, since Christ does not seem to have sat bodily on the throne of David and on his kingdom; we shall put this off, because it does not belong to the present treatise to spend our leisure, against the purpose before us, on explaining the psalm. But one must, with good sense, not set aside what is clearly said about him in many places because of one Scripture that cannot be fitted to Christ in the bodily sense. Rather, following true reason and standing by the divine Scripture itself, one should notice that it sometimes prophesies that he will come poor, mean, and without honour, having no form or beauty, and at other times calls him an honoured king. Of these, some can be fulfilled even bodily, others only according to the spiritual sense of Scripture, and some must be expected to be fulfilled at his second coming. Nevertheless our Lord was also called King of the Jews at his first coming, not by chance, when Pilate ordered that “This is the King of the Jews” be written on his cross in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew letters.

It seemed good to note also “He who sends his oracle to the earth; his word will run swiftly,” since here too the Scripture teaches that the Word of God is a subsisting reality, being other than the Father who sends him. See how it adds next, “His word will run swiftly”; and this too can be seen fulfilled after Christ's coming, since his teaching ran through in a very short time and in not many years prevailed in all the earth, even to the ends of the inhabited world.

And what is said here, “Let them praise the name of the Lord; for he spoke, and they came into being; he commanded, and they were created,” we have gathered among the testimonies about the Word, God, who was in the beginning with God, having learned that the Word of God is also called his name, according to one of the titles among the concepts applied to him. For after saying first, “Praise the Lord,” for such and such reasons, the Spirit accordingly bids praise, after the Father, his name, adding that “he spoke, and they came into being; he commanded, and they were created.” The one who orders and commands, then, would be the God and Father of the universe, and the one who serves would be the Word of God, ministering to the Father's will for the creation of generated things. It should be observed that in the thirty-second psalm too the words “He spoke, and they came into being; he commanded, and they were created” occur word for word; but there they are said about the earth and those who dwell in the inhabited world, while here they are said about those in the heavens and the angels and powers spoken of as in the highest, and further about sun and moon and stars and all that are listed with them. In these words the divine Scripture teaches us that through the Word, according to the holy apostle, all things were created, those in the heavens and those on earth, “whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and in him,” and “without him not one thing came into being.” So much for the extracts from the Psalms. Since our account has received a moderate and sufficient compass, we shall make the extracts from the remaining books in verse, and after them those from the prophets, from a new beginning.

And what is said here, “The righteous will wait for me until you repay me,” seems to be said in the person of the Saviour. For whom else will the righteous wait for until God repays him, but him? For as it is said somewhere about the righteous of old, that “though attested, they did not receive the promises, God having foreseen something better for us, so that they should not be made perfect without us.” That the text looks to him is clear from the fact that the events of his passion too are signified beforehand in the psalm, in keeping with the other prophecies. For it is written, “I will pour out my prayer before him; I will declare my affliction before him. When my spirit failed within me, you knew my paths; in this way in which I was walking they hid a snare for me”; and again, “Deliver me from those who persecute me, for they have become stronger than I.” After this, praying also about his resurrection from the dead, he says, “Bring my soul out of prison, to confess your name”; to which he adds, “The righteous will wait for me until you repay me.” All those righteous men, then, waited for the Christ until the Father should repay him for having emptied himself and become obedient to him even to death. And what would he repay him but the nations as inheritance, and the ends of the earth as his possession, so that when the fullness of the nations has come in, then all Israel too may be saved? And everything in the psalm, containing what concerns his incarnation, in which he was plotted against, would fit Christ.

In the psalm in hand it is said, “Lord, bow the heavens and come down,” and in the seventeenth, “And he bowed the heavens and came down.” We noted the text there too, and here, doing the same, we have taken these words to be said about the Word of God. For having bowed the heavens by emptying himself of the heavenly glory that was in the form of God, he came down to the lower parts of the earth, through the dispensation he took up for the salvation of humans. Hence, before the text set out, the word marvels and says, “Lord, what is man, that you became known to him, or the son of man, that you take account of him?” For to this end the Word of God, bowing the heavens so called, came down: that by becoming man he might be known to the human race, which formerly did not know him; and he did not despise or count as nothing the one who became the son of man, that is, every rational soul made in the image of God. The rest of the psalm too you would understand by taking it spiritually.

After the extracts from the Psalms, let us gather those from the remaining books in verse and from the prophecies that follow, in this third book of the Prophetic Extracts concerning Christ, which is the eighth of the General Elementary Introduction. We note first that it is not possible to show the prophets' words to be true unless faith in our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ is taken along with them, nor can our faith in Christ be made firm more rationally unless the prophets of old confirm the proofs concerning him. Hence one might rightly blame both the Jews, who have not accepted the Christ, and the heretics who reject the prophecies, for falling into untenable positions. The former, accepting the prophecies as God's, prove them false by leaving them unfulfilled, because they cannot accept the outcomes of the prophecies fulfilled in Christ. The latter, confessing Christ, keep faith in him untenable and undemonstrated, by not making use of the wonderful prophets of God, who bore witness beforehand to the things about him. But we, confirming the prophecies through the coming of Christ, and his coming through the prophecies, set forth the clear and solid truth by irrefutable demonstrations. So much by way of preface; let us go on to the subject before us.

The whole book of Proverbs seems to be spoken in the person of Wisdom, who sometimes sets out the moral life, sometimes gives voice to the words of others; sometimes puts forward riddles, and at other times teaches certain things about herself and instructs us about her own divine dignity. Of these we shall gather the passages from which we learn that Wisdom is a divine living being, wholly virtuous by nature, being the same as the second cause of the universe after the first God, the Word who was God in the beginning with God, and the providence of God that governs and administers all things and reaches even to affairs on earth; who was also created before every substance and subsistence, being the beginning of the ways of the whole creation. The words spoken as by Wisdom herself run as follows: “I, Wisdom, made counsel and knowledge my dwelling, and I called upon understanding. The fear of the Lord hates evil, insolence and arrogance and the ways of the wicked; and I have hated the perverse ways of evil men. Counsel and safety are mine; I am understanding, and strength is mine. Through me kings reign, and princes decree righteousness. Through me great men are magnified. I love those who love me, and those who seek me will find favour. Wealth and glory are mine, and the possession of many things, and righteousness. It is better to have my fruit than gold and much precious stone, and my produce is better than choice silver. I walk in the ways of righteousness, and I move about in the midst of the paths of justice, that I may distribute substance to those who love me and fill their treasuries with good things. If I declare to you the things that happen day by day, I will remember to recount the things from of old. The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the age he founded me, in the beginning, before he made the earth, and before he made the depths, before the springs of the waters came forth; before the mountains were settled, and before all the hills, he begets me. The Lord made countries and uninhabited places, and the inhabited heights of the land under heaven. When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him, when he marked out his own throne upon the winds; when he made strong the clouds above, and made secure the springs of the land under heaven, when he set for the sea its boundary, and the waters shall not pass his mouth; when he made strong the foundations of the earth, I was beside him, fitting things together. I was the one in whom he delighted day by day, and I rejoiced in his presence at every time, when he rejoiced at having completed the inhabited world and rejoiced among the sons of men.” This is what Wisdom teaches about herself. Who she is, the holy apostle teaches, saying, “Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God”; and again, “who became wisdom for us from God.” So it is Christ who says the things quoted. He is the Wisdom and Word of God, through whom all things came into being; for “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him”; and “In him all things were created, those in the heavens and those on earth, whether visible or invisible,” according to the apostle. Just as, under one concept, he is called the Word of God, and under another life, and again truth and the true light, and all the other things that the divine Scriptures call him, in the same way he is also called Wisdom, being the servant of the Father for the providence and administration of the universe.

“In the light of a king's son is life; and those acceptable to him are like a late cloud.” And in the light of what other king's son is there life, but in the Word of God, who is the Son of God, the King of all? For he is the true light that enlightens every human coming into the world; and in this light there is life, according to the word of the Gospel that says, “In him was life, and the life was the light of humans.” And those acceptable to him, whom we take to be his apostles and disciples, have become like a late cloud at the last of the days and at the consummation of the age, watering the land once desert and waterless, that is, the church of the nations, with the spiritual rain of reverent teaching.

“Thus says the man to those who believe God, and I cease. For I am the most foolish of all men, and the understanding of men is not in me. But God has taught me wisdom, and I have known the knowledge of the holy. Who has gone up into heaven and come down? Who has gathered the winds in his bosom? Who has wrapped up water in a garment? Who has taken hold of the ends of the earth? What is his name, or what is the name of his children?” And what other man could be the one who says this, but our Lord who became man? He says it either because of our follies, which he took upon himself, or because of the foolishness of the preaching, which is wiser and stronger than the wisdom of humans. Here he says, “For I am the most foolish of all men,” and in the sixty-eighth psalm, “You know my folly.” He also says, “and the understanding of men is not in me,” glorying as in an exploit that he has had none of the understanding of men who have been compared to the senseless cattle and made like them; or of those whose wisdom God made foolish, who think of nothing more than the things on earth, whatever belongs by nature to flesh and matter. For this reason they are attested to be wise in their generation, (by) seeking only the things on earth and thinking (still) on evil from their youth. There was no human understanding at all in the man mentioned, but clearly a divine one, above the human; which is why he adds, “But God has taught me wisdom, and I have known the knowledge of the holy.” Then he asks, “Who has gone up into heaven and come down?”, as if rousing us to search for the one who teaches such great things about himself, concerning whom the rest is also said, which needs leisure of its own. The divine apostle, teaching us about him, says, “He who came down to the lower parts of the earth is the same who also went up above the heavens.” He puts first that he came down, then brings in that he went up, and then that he came down; since after the resurrection from the dead he said to Mary, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father”; after this he was seen by the disciples for forty days, eating with them, having clearly gone up to the Father and come down again because of the dispensation he was carrying out. Hence it is also said, “Having gone up on high he led captivity captive; he gave gifts among humans.” And what are these but the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which he brought down from heaven? This is why here too Aquila says, “Who has gone up into heaven and brought down?” He also took hold of the ends of the earth, so that his word went out into all the earth, and his sayings to the ends of the inhabited world. The one to whom a word of knowledge is given will know how the rest of the passage should be understood. It urges us to ask what his name is and the name of his children. To this we shall answer from what we have learned by experience: his name is Jesus, which is interpreted “salvation of God”; this name those related to him according to the flesh gave him, following the oracle of Gabriel, the angel also giving the reason for such a title: “For he will save his people from their sins,” he says. And the name of his children, to whom he said, “Little children, yet a little while I am with you,” and of those after them in all the churches, his sons, grandsons, and descendants, what else could it be but the blessed name Christian?

“Better is a youth, poor and wise, than a king old and foolish, who no longer knew how to take heed. For out of the house of prisoners he will come forth to reign, for even in his kingdom he became poor. I saw all the living who walk under the sun with the second youth, who will rise up in his place. There is no end to all the people, to all who were before them; and yet those who come later will not rejoice in him; for this too is vanity and a choice of the spirit.” Since Christ, being the wisdom of God, became poor for our sake though he was rich, I think “Better is a youth, poor and wise, than a king old and foolish” is said about him. The old king I think is the devil, “grown old in evil days,” who is king of those over whom the sin worked by him reigns, but foolish because he is deprived of the virtuous understanding that is according to God. The good and wise youth mentioned came forth out of the house of prisoners, either the region around the earth or the places in Hades, at his resurrection from the dead, and was set up by the Father as king on Zion, the heavenly mountain of God; and in his very kingdom he became poor, not counting equality with God a thing to be grasped, but humbling himself and coming down from the highest glory for the sake of those who could not receive the riches of his wisdom. The one said to rise up in his place, the second youth, I take to be the Antichrist, with whom the word says it saw all who live and walk under the sun; and who would they be but all who cherish what is called the vanity of vanities under the sun?

“This too I saw as wisdom under the sun, and it is great to me. There was a small city, and few men in it; and a great king came against it and surrounded it and built great siegeworks against it; and he found in it a man poor and wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom; yet no one remembered that poor man. And I said, ‘Wisdom is better than power; yet the wisdom of the poor man is despised, and his words are not heard.’” Here too the one who wages war is said to be a king, and the one who saves the city besieged by him a poor and wise man. Since in the previous chapter it was said, “Better is a youth, poor and wise, than a king old and foolish,” and we took the foolish king to be the devil and the poor and wise one to be the Word of God, who emptied himself and became poor for our sake, for this reason we have noted the present passage too, thinking that the warlike king described here is no other than the foolish king spoken of there, and likewise that the one who here saves the besieged city by his wisdom is the poor and wise one there, whom we said to be Christ. He ransomed the small city, that is, the region around the earth, which is very small compared with the whole cosmos, and those in it, who are few in comparison with the multitude of all rational beings, all the nations being like a drop from a bucket. They were besieged by the kingdom of the devil, who surrounds on every side the region around the earth and those in it, and builds great siegeworks against it: the rulers, the authorities, the world-rulers of this darkness, and the spiritual forces of wickedness. Him no one else brought down but the poor and wise man alone, our Saviour and Lord, who emptied himself and became poor for our sake in the riches of his own mercy; and having brought him down, he saved by his wisdom the small city, which in another interpretation is, presumably, the church, and those in it who are few; since narrow and hard is the way that leads to life, and few are those who go through it. Those who see so great a dispensation say, “Wisdom is better than power,” clearly the power of the enemies. But also, it says, “no one remembered that poor man.” For it was God who remembered him through the prophets and proclaimed beforehand his sojourn among humans; but of those worked upon by the wisdom of the rulers of this age, not one ever remembered him, since they were not even able to know the mystery hidden before the ages, the dispensation of the incarnation of the Word of God. Besides this it is said, “and the wisdom of the poor man is despised”; for God was pleased through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe. And “his words,” it says, “are not heard”; for not all can hear the Saviour's words, but only those who have ears to hear; for the gospel of Christ is veiled, though not to his disciples, for it is veiled to those who are perishing.