Prophetic Extracts 4.34–4.35

“And the Lord remembered the days of old: he who brought up from the earth the great shepherd of the sheep, who put the Holy Spirit among them.” And who else could be the one brought up from the earth by the Lord, the shepherd of God's sheep, but our Saviour, who came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? For he is the good shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep, whom the Father brought up from the earth and highly exalted, granting him the name above every name.

“The city of your holy one has become a wilderness; Zion has become as a wilderness, Jerusalem a curse; the house, our sanctuary, and the glory that our fathers blessed, has been burned with fire, and all our glorious things have fallen; and in all these things you held back, Lord, and were silent, and humbled us exceedingly. I became manifest to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me; I said, ‘Here I am,’ to a nation that did not call on my name. But over you I stretched out my hands all day long to a disobedient and contradicting people, who did not walk in a true way, but after their sins.” Here too, after the casting off of Israel is first prophesied, next the choosing of the nations that came about through Christ is signified. For when the prophet has sent up a prayer in the person of the people, the word answers, convicting the hardness and disobedience of the former people and showing its own love for humankind. “For how,” it says, “do you say these things, as though I were slow to save you? Why, I showed myself openly even to those who did not ask for me or seek me.” And it is evident how the Word of God, formerly unknown to the nations, at the consummation of the ages, by the goodness and love for humankind of the Father and God of the universe, became manifest to them, though because of their error about idols they had never asked him about what they needed; and he was found by us who did not seek him; and to those who did not call on his name he answered by becoming man, all but crying out, “Here I am.” These things the word clearly prophesies about the calling of the nations; and next again, most shamingly toward the word of the Jews, it adds, saying, “But over you I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contradicting people.” Through these words the form of his passion on the cross can also be signified. So much, too, from Isaiah. Having completed the subject of the Extracts in four books in this ninth book of the General Elementary Introduction, in the tenth we shall try to provide another fitting approach for those whose reasoning has been harmed by the godless heresies.