Book of the Promises and Predictions of God 1.1–1.11

From the book of Genesis: of the creation, that is, of Christ and the Church in Adam and Eve. In the beginning God made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them: in heaven the shining things, on earth the walking things, in the air the flying things, in the waters the swimming things. When these were finished, God said: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” And when he had been formed from the mud of the earth, he breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone: let us make him a helper like himself,” a counselor. And a little later: “God cast a deep sleep upon Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs,” and formed it into a woman, “and brought her to Adam, to see what he would call her. And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken from her man. For this reason,” he says, “a man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh.” That this was done so as to be both an event and a figure, the apostle Paul is witness. For explaining this passage in the letter to the Ephesians, he says: “This sacrament is great; but I speak in Christ and in the Church.” The great sacrament, then, which Adam hoped for as promised, saw joined to him, and believed to be his wife, signified to us through faith the Church to come; he called her mother of all the living, for this reason: as Eve was formed from the side of the sleeping Adam, he foresaw that the Church would be formed, as happened, from the side of Christ hanging on the cross, and she is truly the mother of all the living. For this is that woman who is kept for a time, and times, and half a time from the sight of the serpent, as is said of the Church in the Apocalypse.

That two deaths follow on contempt of the commandment. God foretold to Adam and his wife that death would follow if they touched what was forbidden, saying: “From every tree of paradise you shall eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. On the day you eat of it, you shall die the death.” But contemning the precept, as the devil deceived them, they touched what was forbidden. While the man excuses this sin through the woman, and the woman through the serpent, they served the foretold death not only to themselves but also to their descendants. For the whole human race together pays this death, which signifies another, perpetual death, from which everyone who keeps Christ’s commandments will be free; but whoever thinks the saving warnings of our Lord Jesus Christ worth despising will without any doubt undergo it. “For blessed and holy,” says John the apostle, “is he who has a part in this first resurrection; over him the second death has no power.” And the Lord says: “Whoever hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life; and he does not come into judgment, but will pass over from death to life.”

That the devil’s sentence remains on those who do his will. Believed and seen in Genesis. There follows the sentence pronounced and foretold against the serpent, the devil, in which something to be feared is found that was said to him among other things: “You shall eat earth all the days of your life.” For souls that gape after earthly desires are compared to earth, and the prophet David marks them as impious in the first psalm, saying: “They shall be like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth.” And the prophet Jeremiah: “Those who depart from you,” he says, “shall be written in the earth.” Job too says: “The earth has been given into the hands of the wicked.” Again David: “Remember, Lord, that we are earth.” And that he himself is freed from the earth which the serpent received to eat as the desert of sin, he says in another psalm: “Save me from the mire, that I may not stick in it.” Again elsewhere: “Our belly has cleaved to the earth; arise, Lord, help us, and redeem us for your name’s sake.” Again elsewhere: “Do not hand me over, Lord, from my desire to the sinner.” Therefore the divine mercy has decreed that we be admonished daily through the priests to lift up our hearts, and we profess that we have them lifted to the Lord; if only our promise be firm, so that what we utter in words we may also fulfil in deeds by continual grace.

That original sin follows in the curse of the woman. Original sin foretold. Believed and seen in Genesis. And God said to the woman: “I will greatly multiply your groaning and your pains; in sorrow you shall bear children.” That the children of transgressors are born so, the prophet David confirms: “In iniquities,” he says, “I was conceived, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb.” Solomon too testifies the like: “A heavy yoke,” he says, “is upon the sons of Adam, from the day they come out of their mother’s womb until the day of their burial in the mother of all.” Again he says: “And I too, when I was born, received the common air, and fell upon the earth that is made alike, and uttered my first cry like all, weeping; I was nursed in swaddling clothes and with cares. For no king had any other beginning of birth. For there is one entrance into life for all, and a like exit.” And a little later: “For the seed was accursed from the beginning.” And Isaiah: “Wicked seed,” he says, “sons of crime, you have forsaken the Lord.” Job too says: “No one is free from defilement, not even an infant whose life on earth is one day.” Again he says: “No one can make clean what is conceived of unclean seed but you, who alone are clean.” For the expiation of this accursed seed, the uncleanness of the woman who gives birth and of the infant, the sacrifices of the law were instituted, until Christ reigned, who by offering the sacrifice of his body saves small and great. For it was said: “He will save his people from their sins.” Yet these things that were foretold are seen to be fulfilled in such a way that they are taught still to be in fulfilment until the end of the world.

That labor, sweat, and pain come upon all Adam’s descendants. The sentence foretold and propagated. Believed and seen in Genesis. And God said to Adam: “Because you listened to the voice of your wife more than to me, and touched the tree of which alone I had commanded you not to eat, and you ate: cursed is the earth in your works; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; in sorrow and groaning you shall eat the fodder of your field; in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken; for you are earth, and to earth you shall go.” Of this foretold penalty of sin, which Adam, the root of the human race, received as his sentence and passed on to his descendants as to branches, the Apostle says that through one man sin entered the world, and so passed through to all men, in whom all sinned. For the ground, which at the Creator’s command was fertile and before brought forth healthful plants of itself without any cultivation by man, was afterwards filled with hardships and briars, so that every man must eat bread from it in sweat and toil until he runs back into death. We have deserved not only to hear these things foretold but also to pay them, as proved. Hence David says: “Man shall go out to his work and to his labor until evening.” And again: “You shall eat the labors of your hands.” The Apostle too says: “Whoever will not work, let him not eat.” And the Lord sent workers into the vineyard up to the eleventh hour.

Of the two peoples, Christians and Jews, in Cain and Abel. A prediction in figure, namely of the two peoples. Believed and seen in Genesis. From the first human beings, then, who had already been made mortal, two sons were born, both mortal: Cain the elder and Abel the younger, one a shepherd of sheep, the other a farmer. While they tilled the earth, already subject to toil by the judgment of the divine sentence, and strove to expiate themselves from their own and their father’s offenses, they offered sacrifices from the first fruits of their produce. The sacrifice of the younger, Abel, offered from the sheep, is received as acceptable; Cain’s is rejected, since he did not rightly divide his portion of the earth. Envy is born from this, and the Godhead, foreknowing what was to come, enjoins patience on the angry man, and it is said to Cain: “You have sinned; be quiet; its turning is toward you, and you shall rule over it,” that is, he should rule over his sin and not become the slave of sin, if he humbly obeyed the one who commanded. But Cain, stubborn and unable to bear himself, leapt upon Abel in the field and killed him. O crime! Are these, Cain, the bonds of brotherhood? Are these the beginnings of a good nature? Is this the hope of a good disposition, that your father should know you as a murderer before he knew you as a son? But by these acts of daring Cain bound his crime with many more bonds. He became a despiser of the divine command, the head of pride, the author of envy, the first to inflict death, and the first fratricide among men. He laid the foundations of war, so that the guilty shed innocent blood, and, full of spite, he attacked another’s glory. For from here glorious martyrdoms shone forth, as the just are killed by the impious. But so that divine providence might show that everything that was done profits us, God asks the brother about the brother whom he already knew to be killed, and when he denied it, convicted him with the earth as witness: “The voice of your brother’s blood,” he says, “cries to me from the earth.” That Cain prefigured the Jewish people, gaping after earthly desires, and Abel Christ the shepherd of the sheep, killed by that people, no Christian now doubts; every land now receives his sacred blood and cries “Amen” (that is, “True”), so that to the Jew who denies having killed Christ it is rightly said by God: “The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the earth.” In place of Abel, whom Cain killed, Seth was born, from whom in order of succession came Enoch, who, because he pleased God, was taken up so as not to taste death, to be joined to Elijah, so that two suitable witnesses may be prepared for Christ’s second coming, to refute the Antichrist and for the glory of the Son of God as judge; of these we shall bring forward testimonies in their place.

Of the flood and the ark, which signified the Church. A prediction believed and seen in Genesis. The flood foretold. When the sons of God fell away from their purpose of holiness, God warned the just Noah thus: “The end of all flesh,” he says, “has come before me; for the earth is filled with their iniquity, and I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of squared timbers; you shall make the ark with three chambers, and pitch it inside and out; and so you shall make it. The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. You shall make a window in the ark, and finish it in a cubit. And you shall set the door of the ark in its side. Behold, I will bring a flood of water upon the earth, and kill all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven.” While faith, then, fits and prepares the mind, and believes that what it hopes for will be fulfilled, Noah, obedient to the mystic command and to the work, built the ark in which he was to shelter himself with the clean and unclean animals, as had been commanded: with a geometric measure which, as is said, extends six times as far as ours. Gathering a few things about these numbers set down, as far as God helps me, I will bring in the opinion of our architect, the apostle Paul, who, referring the figured construction of that ark and all its spiritual building to the holy Church, expressed in it the likeness of the cross. For he says in the letter to the Ephesians: “I bend my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he may give you, according to the riches of his grace, strength, that Christ may dwell through faith in your hearts, rooted and grounded in love, so that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the height, breadth, length, and depth; to know also the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.” He spoke five statements in five clauses, as one who had said: “I would rather speak five words with my mind in the church.” These five statements are shown to belong to the measures of the ark in this way. For the number five, made of even and odd, contains two and three: three from the Trinity, two from the two commandments, which joined form five. To this one is added, for the unity of the undivided Trinity, and the perfect number six is made, corresponding to itself on every side, in its first part, its third, and its half. Many of our elders have already spoken of this number. These numbers five and six, then, joined and multiplied by each other, extend to the measures of the ark, which are multiples of five. For this reason God made all that was created on the fifth day, except man; all the commands of the law were written in the five books of Moses; and, to fulfil the law, the Savior and Lord himself was handed over to the gibbet on the fifth day of the week. The number six contains this: that man was formed on the sixth day; that in the sixth age of the world the Word of God took up man for the world’s redemption; and that on the sixth day of the week, hung on the cross, he poured out from his side, as through the door of the ark, his precious blood, the price of us all, from which the dove, the Church, came forth, endowed with such blood. For this reason the crooked heretic, the raven, going out, shipwrecked by his greed for a human corpse, would not return to the ark, the Church. Of him the clean animals placed inside cry out: “He went out from us, but he was not of us; for if he had been of us, he would surely have remained with us.” These two numbers, then, as I said, five and six, when multiplied by each other make up thirty. For five times six and six times five make thirty. And these are the thirty cubits which were commanded to be built in the height of the ark, belonging to the lofty part, hope, in which the head of the Crucified was fixed on high. For all hope is in the head. For this reason our head himself deigned to be crucified at thirty years. Again, the number five is multiplied by the decalogue, because of the ten commandments of the law: ten times five and five times ten make fifty. And these are placed in the breadth of the ark, which on the cross mark the expanse of love, in which the hands of the Crucified were fastened. For the ten commandments are said to have been written by the finger of God, and we ourselves are commanded to lift up our hands in the holy places. Again, the numbers five and six multiplied by fifty fill out the length of the ark. For fifty times six and sixty times five make three hundred, which are assigned to the length of our ark, patience, in which the body of the Crucified was stretched out; to whom it is said: “Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” For our old man was fixed to the cross together with him, and we are commanded to be patient until the coming of the Lord. The depth of the cross signifies the greatness of the flood, by which both that ark and ours are borne. For the judgments of God, as it is written, are like a great abyss. As for what was said, “You shall make it with three chambers,” our architect Paul expressed this construction: “There remain,” he says, “faith, hope, love, these three.” For while in the first and second dwellings beasts, cattle, serpents, and birds remained in faith and hope, in the third Noah with his family, remaining in love (for the greatest of all these is love), could not fear the flood. For whoever remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him; for God is love. The window of the ark we better take as regard for the salvation of souls, which are joined and bound together inside and out with pitch in the unity of the Holy Spirit and in the bond of peace. It was said that the ark was finished in a cubit; for so it was fitting to signify the unity of the Church: for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Hence that rich man in the Gospel, fearing the flood of this life, said to the Lord of all things himself: “Good teacher, what shall I do to obtain eternal life?” And the Lord, showing him the measures of that ark: “You know the commandments?” he says. And when he had told him many of them in number, the man, as though wishing to be joined to the ark as squared: “All these commandments,” he says, “I have kept; what yet remains for me?” And the Lord, showing that the perfection of our ark consists in one cubit: “If you wish to be perfect,” he says, “go, sell all you have, give to the poor, and come, follow me.” When he could not do this, because he was not squared on every side, he did not deserve to reach the cubit of the ark’s perfection. For he went away, as it is said, saddened. That the flood came upon the earth for forty days and forty nights shows in this number not so much the past as the present flood of souls, which are sunk on the rocks of the world and in the whirlpool of shameful deeds, in the shipwrecking waves of various pleasures. To escape these, Moses for forty days, Elijah for forty days, and the Savior himself for forty days are shown to have hallowed fasts, for this threefold reason: as necessary for the three times, before the law, under the law, and under grace. The end of the flood, then, which came in Noah’s six hundred and first year, signifies the end of the world after the six ages of the world, as was said, and the short span of the Antichrist. For even a long-lived man’s life is stretched through as many ages, until from infancy he runs on to old age. Now the Church, like the ark, is known to carry good and bad, like clean and unclean animals, until the end mentioned; of which our Lord and Savior testified in the Gospel, saying that his coming would be as it was in the days of Noah, suddenly upon people eating and drinking, buying and selling. Noah, then, believed what he saw foretold in the ark. He believed what was to be shown to us, the Church; with us he hopes for what will be declared at the last judgment.

Of the nations, in the three sons of Noah, which Christ the Lord found scattered and gathered. The nations foretold: from the three sons of Noah. Believed and seen in Genesis. From the three sons of Noah, then, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and as many wives of theirs, when the fruitfulness of mortals had increased, pride, the root of sin, could not perish, though the world had been struck by the flood. A proud tower is built by the proud, whose top was to reach heaven. Its undertakings are brought to nothing by God, the true artisan, through the confusion of tongues; for so it is written: “Behold, the whole earth has one language, and they have begun to do this, and now nothing that they have undertaken to do will fail them.” And God said: “Come, let us go down and confuse their tongues there.” God the Trinity speaks. For God to go down is to look into human acts or to draw near to their minds. These things, as they were foretold, were soon fulfilled. For the confused tongues not only could not complete what had been planned, but also marked off each of the nations scattered through the world by its own speech. Yet, once the sentence of the Creator and Judge had been fulfilled, love, through the humble grace of Christ, gathered under one teaching what proud impiety had wickedly scattered. So now let every tongue confess as one that the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the tower of strength, is in the glory of God the Father. When he was drunk, like Noah from the vineyard, and stripped in his passion, Ham his son, mocking him, received the curse in his son Canaan and passed it on to the nations. This the Lord Jesus took away, who became a curse for us.

Of the Hebrew nation, in Heber, which handed on its primacy to the Christian people. The Hebrew nation foretold, from whom it arose, holding the primacy among all languages. Believed and seen in Genesis. Among the others whom the confusion of tongues divided into nations, one was called Heber, in whom, it is said, the Hebrew language remained as the first, whence the Hebrew nation too received its name. That Hebrew was the first language is shown by that mystic title written by Pilate. For it was marked in three languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, which, holding the primacy among nearly all languages, were inscribed on the title of the same Creator, in that divine order which the prophet David testified before it happened, saying: “Do not corrupt the inscription of the title.” For the judge had written, of the crucified one, “King of the Jews.” When the Hebrews read this in their own language, which was placed first, and demanded that it be changed, Pilate, moved by God, said, “What I have written, I have written,” so that the integrity of the title might remain inviolate, as was promised, and the language of the Hebrews might rightly be marked, as a testimony, in the chief place, which it afterwards lost. From this Heber, then, the line runs down to Abraham, from whom, as some say, the Abraei [perhaps Abrahaei] were named, as the Hebrews from Heber. That this people is the firstborn, the Lord himself attests, saying, “Israel is my firstborn”; but it is shown more fully in the book of Deuteronomy: “When the Most High divided the nations,” it is said, “he set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God. And his portion became Jacob, Israel the lot of his inheritance.” But let us retrace in order by what path this Jacob, who was called Israel, comes, so that the promises to Abraham, whose grandson he is, may be filled out.

Of the land of the living, to belong to the Christian people, in the calling of Abraham. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. From the seed of Shem, son of Noah, then, Heber was born, whose son was Peleg, in whose time the languages were divided. Peleg begot Reu; Reu begot Serug; Serug begot Nahor; Nahor begot Terah; Terah begot Abram, who was afterwards called Abraham, whose grandson was Jacob. Scripture testifies that this Abraham was born among the Chaldeans. Called out of that nation, because he believed first, he deserved by the grace of the one who called him to be called the father of faith. The Chaldeans, devoted to astronomy, while they cunningly scrutinize the positions of the stars, erred greatly about the worship and religion of God, and not seeking the Creator of all things at all, became futile, as Paul says, in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. From these Abraham, kindled not by cunning about the creature but by the warmth of divine worship, was separated from the foolish and senseless by the Lord’s gift. “Go out,” God said to him, “from your land and from your kindred, and come into whatever land I shall show you.” At the command of the one who called him, leaving his first home and kindred, he believes by faith what he has not seen, until he should deserve to see all that he believes. Going out, then, from the land of the Chaldeans, he lived in Haran, where he was filled with all riches. He received also the future inheritance of that land in the hope of his seed. When, from an aged and barren wife, and himself declining into old age, he awaits an heir through the promise, this father of faith shows us that we need not fear the long outcomes of our sojourning, and that we must always hope in Christ the Lord, by whose grace we shall possess the everlasting inheritance in the land of the living, of which the prophet David says: “I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.”

That the Christian people is multiplied like the stars in the seed of Abraham. The promise of multiplying the seed of Abraham. Believed and seen in Genesis. The word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, saying: “Do not fear, Abraham; I protect you; your reward shall be very great.” And Abraham said: “Lord, what will you give me? For I am without children, and the son of the steward of my house is this Damascus Eliezer.” And Abraham said: “Since you have given me no seed, my home-born servant will be my heir.” And at once the word of the Lord came to him: “This one shall not be your heir; but he who comes forth from your womb, him you shall have as heir.” And he brought him outside and said to him: “Look up to heaven and count the stars, if you can count them.” And he said: “So shall your seed be.” And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. The apostle Paul confirms this, saying: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” And Isaiah says: “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” Faith is the foundation of every future thing; the summit of its building has taken possession of earth and heaven in Christ Jesus, who is of the seed of Abraham.