Book of the Promises and Predictions of God 1.12–1.23

Of the royal priesthood of the Church, in the priesthood of Abraham. A promise in which Abraham, when God asks a sacrifice, is shown to be a priest. Believed and seen in Genesis. In a second oracle the Lord said to Abraham: “I am he who brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans, to give you this land and that you might possess it.” And he said: “Lord, how can I know that I shall possess it?” And the Lord said: “Take a heifer three years old, and a she-goat three years old, and a ram three years old, a turtledove also and a pigeon.” Taking all these, he divided them in the middle and set each part opposite the other; but the birds he did not divide. And birds came down upon the divided carcasses, and Abraham drove them away. And when the sun was setting, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham, and a great and dark horror seized him. And it was said to him: “Know for certain that your seed shall be strangers in a land not their own, and they will bring them into slavery and afflict them four hundred years. But the nation which they serve I will judge, says the Lord. Afterwards they shall come out with great substance. But you shall go to your fathers, nourished in a good old age. And in the fourth generation they shall return here; for the iniquities of the Amorites are not yet complete.” In this promise and in this threefold sacrifice (which was done in the present in such a way that it yet signified other things to come), recognize, spiritual reader, in these three animals the three times mentioned above: the three-year-old heifer, the people before the law, frisking without the yoke of the law; the three-year-old she-goat, under the law, which the people transgressing the law must sacrifice for sin; the three-year-old ram, under grace, the perfect sacrifice, which Abraham offered figuratively in place of his son, our ram Christ, three years old, proclaimed in three times, received on the altar of the cross for the sin of the people (see Augustine, City of God 16.24). For “for the iniquity of the people,” says Isaiah, “he was led to death, and by his bruises we are all healed.” That these animals were set divided opposite one another, the apostle Paul shows to mean the divisions and schisms to come, by which they would fight one another, saying: “There must be heresies, so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you.” For before the law Cain’s sacrifice was rejected, as a heretic’s; and in the law the earth swallowed alive Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the authors of heresies and schisms. And under grace the doctrines of many heresies, the birds settling on the divided carcasses of the dead, are driven off by Paul when he says: “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Abraham was commanded in that sacrifice not to divide the chaste turtledove and the simple dove. For spiritual sons who are chaste and virgins who are simple, while they offer in love the sacrifice of unblemished faith, cannot be divided at all. That the seed of those who sing to their Lord is a stranger in this life, David testifies, saying: “I am a sojourner and a stranger, as all my fathers were.” And that they were oppressed in Egypt four hundred years, while they groan and say, “Woe is me, for my sojourning is prolonged,” is plain enough. That they return to freedom from this Egyptian slavery in the fourth generation shows our freedom rescued from sin, which, filling out the three times so often mentioned, will rise up as our whole freedom in the fourth, which the Lord calls the regeneration, declared through the true resurrection, when the sins of the Amorites have been filled up, that is, of those who do not believe the Gospel of God. For “whoever does not believe,” as the Lord says, “is already judged.”

Of the perfection of the name, by which Abraham is father of the nations in faith. A promise in figure. Believed and seen in Genesis. In a third oracle the divine promise is confirmed even in his name. He was called Abram before; the Lord his Creator calls him Abraham, and the meaning of the name is marked: “I have made you,” he says, “the father of many nations”; so that this promise might be believed to belong not only to the fleshly offspring of Abraham, from which the Jewish people came. Glorying in this they said in the Gospel: “We have Abraham as our father”; and they were answered by him who had given both such a name and faith: “Do not glory in this,” he says; “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham”; so that Abraham might be, in Christ, father of many nations through faith, though he was father of only one nation by generation.

Of circumcision, by which the Christian is circumcised in heart. A prediction in figure. To this Abraham, already called through faith, a certain covenant of circumcision is enjoined, as a sign of the old testament which he and his descendants are commanded to keep; and every soul that has not observed circumcision is to perish from the people. It is asked, perhaps, why it pleased God that only every male of those who had vowed themselves to obey God should be circumcised. This was done as a great sacrament, which looked to the middle and past times and to the future. For by reason of the first transgression man was struck in that part of the body by the serpent’s venom, and, burning with the heat of lust, was ashamed of things that had not been created shameful; and he decided in modesty to cover what had been immodestly laid bare. Therefore God, the Creator and Judge, enjoined the sign of circumcision in that part of the body, tempering the disease of lust wrongly conceived from the due union, so that through the good of continence and the beauty of integrity he might repair what had been corrupted. For the circumcision of the heart, which shines in the New Testament, was figured in that sign: for there are eunuchs who have castrated themselves for the kingdom of God. And God rebukes and reproaches the sons of Israel, uncircumcised in heart.

What Isaac, whose name means laughter, shows in Christ by his birth. A promise in figure. Believed and seen in Genesis. Again the divine majesty appeared to the same Abraham at the oak of Mamre in three men, bringing the promise of a son to be received very soon and confirming what had been said before; and by him Sarah his wife is also asked after. For God said to Abraham: “Where is Sarah your wife?” He said: “She is in the tent.” And the Lord said to him: “I will return to you at this season, in due time, and Sarah shall have a son.” Hearing this, Sarah, who was at the door of the tent behind him, laughed within herself, saying: “It has not happened to me up to this time, and my lord is old.” The Lord said to Abraham: “Why did Sarah laugh within herself, saying, Shall I truly bear, now that I am old? Is anything impossible for the word of God?” And again he confirms: “I will return to you in due time, and Sarah shall have a son.” Sarah, afraid, denies that she laughed; that she laughed is proved by the truth. When she conceived and gave birth, his name was called Isaac, which is interpreted “laughter.” For this reason Sarah herself, when she was already carrying the little one in her arms, said: “God has made laughter for me. For everyone who hears that an old and barren woman has given birth will rejoice with me in laughter.” The offspring of laughter is received, in whom Abraham received the promised blessing of all the nations. For the nations which now believe in Christ, who came in the flesh through that old man, confess their Savior, who was turned into a laughingstock by the Jews, and, glorifying him, acknowledge that his shameful passion is their true freedom.

Of the day of the future judgment, in Sodom and Gomorrah. A prediction made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. The Lord showed the same faithful servant Abraham the foretold overthrow of the impious cities of the Sodomites and Gomorrahites, saying: “The cry of the Sodomites and Gomorrahites has multiplied, and their sins are exceedingly great. Going down,” he says, “I will see whether they have done according to the cry that has come to me; and if not, that I may know.” God went down, as is said here, because he did not hide his just judgment from his most dear servant; and through a kind of agreement which the humble suppliant intercessor had received, knowing that God rightly wished to destroy those cities, he sought to soften him in his anger, in this way: “Do not destroy,” he says, “the just together with the impious. Shall the just be as the unjust? If there are fifty just in the city, will you destroy them? Will you not spare the whole place for the sake of those fifty just?” And when God had promised that he would not destroy them if he found fifty just in those places, he took from this the boldness to speak, using the devout words of one who prays, confessing himself mud and dust, and with wonderful calm he held back God’s sentence from fifty down to ten. Even that small number, it is said, he did not find there. And rescuing Lot with his wife and two daughters from the peoples and cities which he was about to consume with heavenly fire, he warned those he freed not to stay in all that region and not to look back. Lot’s wife, despising the command and looking back, was made a pillar of salt, and by her example seasoned the foolish, so that those who make progress in the holy purpose to which they strive should not look back with harmful curiosity; and this woman showed that such people cannot escape the appointed punishments, for she lost what she had escaped. Such people the Lord rebukes in the Gospel, saying: “It will be more tolerable for the land of the Sodomites on the day of judgment than for you.” But those whom Christ’s grace frees he admonishes through the Apostle: “Come out from their midst, and be separate, says the Lord.” Again the Apostle: “Forgetting what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead.” “No one who looks back and puts his hand to the plow is fit for the kingdom of God.” When the Lord spoke, he said: “Remember Lot’s wife.” Those, then, await the day of judgment without fear who glory in the cross of the Lord, by which the world has been crucified to them, and they to the world. For the Lord strikes the hearts of the faithful with fear, saying: “As it happened in the days of Lot, so will be the coming of the Son of man”; lest that day find them suddenly weighed down with carousing and drunkenness. Of it the Apostle says: “For the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

Of Christ’s passion, in Isaac to be sacrificed. A prediction in figure. Believed and seen in Genesis. God tested Abraham, saying: “Abraham, Abraham.” And he said: “Here I am.” And the Lord said: “Take your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go into the high land, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will tell you.” He orders that one to be offered to him as a burnt offering in whom he himself had promised by so many divine oracles that the seed of Abraham would be multiplied like the stars of heaven and the nations be blessed in him. Yet the father does not hesitate to fulfil in his son what was commanded, knowing, as Paul says, that the Lord could raise him even from the dead. But in the one tested in his son, the strength of the faith conferred on him is shown not only for itself but also as set before us for imitation, and so that the authority of the new precept from the Gospel might stand: “Whoever loves father or mother above me is not worthy of me; or whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” For though Abraham knew that he was not yet fit for offspring, he obeyed God’s command with this intention, that he knew God was not forgetful of his promises, and that a mystic sacrament of the Lord’s future passion was being enacted: looking, that is, to that day of our redemption of which the Lord, rebuking the Jews in the Gospel, says: “Your father Abraham longed to see my day; and he saw it and was glad.” Abraham saw the day of the passion of the Son of God figured in his own son: in that he did not spare his only son; in that he hastened for three days with the innocent victim as though to the altar of the cross; in that the son, patient and without a word, like a lamb before its shearer, offered his devoted neck to his father to strike; in that Isaac did not resist being bound on the wood which he himself had carried; in that the ram caught by its horns in a thicket, showing Christ crowned with thorns, appeared to be sacrificed in Isaac’s place; in that Isaac was not sacrificed, because the resurrection was reserved for the Son of God. Believing all this, Abraham was found worthy to see in figure what we know to be fulfilled through grace.

Of God’s oath, by which Abraham’s seed is extended beyond number in Christ. A promise to Abraham in figure. Believed and seen in Genesis. “By myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you did not spare your most beloved son for my sake; I will bless you and multiply your seed like the stars of heaven and like the sand on the shore of the sea. And your seed shall possess the cities of their enemies, and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you obeyed my voice.” The book of Numbers shows that Abraham’s seed was indeed multiplied and reached a great number; yet we read that it was not beyond number. But God’s promise contains “like the stars of heaven and like the sand of the sea,” which cannot be numbered; and the very order of things shows that this blessing has been fulfilled in Christ through the faith of the nations, whose father Abraham is; and so do the oracles of the prophets, which testify through David and the others that the children of Abraham, not only by the seed of the flesh but by faith, are called to an infinite number. “In him,” he says, “all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed; all nations shall call him blessed.” Again: “All the kings of the earth shall adore him; all nations shall serve him.” And Isaiah: “There shall be the root of Jesse, and he who shall rise to reign over the nations; in him the nations shall hope.” The apostle Paul too says that the Jews are broken branches through unbelief, and that the nations have been grafted, like a wild olive, into the faith of the root, Abraham. Again he says: “That the nations should glorify God for his mercy”: the mercy by which, as he promised, taking away the heart of stone, he would give them a heart of flesh. For he calls stones those who worship gods of stone, when he says: “I tell you, if these are silent, the stones will cry out.” In a wonderful way those who were stones, made sons through grace, cry out: “Our Father, who are in heaven”; and those who were sons, made stones, say: “Make us gods to go before us”; for forsaking the living God, they served Baal and the idols of the nations. The nations, on the contrary, scorning idols, followed the living God. These things we see being fulfilled: those, namely, which were promised in his future seed through Christ, which Abraham also believed.

That Christ would take manhood from the thigh of Abraham. The mystic act that follows shows that Christ’s flesh was foretold to come from the thigh of Abraham. Believed and seen in Genesis. Abraham calls the steward of his house and says to him: “Put your hand under my thigh and swear by the God of heaven that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of this land among whom I dwell; but from my own tribe you shall take a wife for him.” That the God of heaven was in the thigh of Abraham, this order shows: Abraham begot Isaac; Isaac, Jacob; Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, among whom was Judah, from whose tribe came David; from him, through the series of generations, the virgin Mary, who bore Christ, who is the God of heaven, because all things were made through him.

Of the two peoples, Christians and Jews, in Rebecca’s twins. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. When the same Isaac had taken Rebecca, his kinswoman, as wife, and perceived that she was barren, he prayed to God, who had promised manifold offspring, for a child; and as soon as he asked, he received. When Rebecca had conceived, twins struggled in her womb. And she, taking it hard, said: “If it was to be so with me, why has this happened to me?” Isaac went with her to inquire of the Lord, and received this answer: “Two peoples,” he says, “are in your womb, and two nations shall come forth from your belly; and people shall overcome people, and the elder shall serve the younger.” Isaac received the two promised sons, recognizing that there would be not only two but two peoples, whom that mystic act has shown us unveiled. For as Esau, hairy, came forth first from the womb, the hand of the younger, Jacob, put out after him, took hold of his heel: a wonderful and great event that went before. This same younger Jacob, smooth, already in his boyhood supplanted his elder brother through the red cooking of lentils and took away his birthright; and the sacrament of so great a mystery could not be empty. That smooth younger Jacob signified the smooth and gentle Christian people, endowed with that gentleness by which the fury of the Gentiles had believed it could be consumed as harmless. This smooth people, then, through the red cooking, that is, the passion of Christ reddened with blood, willingly offered it to the greedy and raging Jewish people, whose figure Esau bore, who was also called Edom, when it asked; and the birthright which that one had, he sold, this one received. The Jew lost by covetousness what he had by birth; the Christian acquired by grace what he did not have by nature.

Of the same, what they did in figure. A promise made and figured. Believed and seen in Genesis. How wonderful, how great, how full of sacraments according to God’s promises are all the things done in these two twins, I will try to explain briefly, as is fitting. Isaac their father, blinded in his outward eyes but shining with inward light, promises the blessing to Esau, his firstborn son, if the son would prepare for his father the food he desired from his hunting. He goes off to carry out the command. The mother, who had heard the blessing promised to the elder, moved by God so that it might come to the younger, Jacob, prepares a mystic artifice composed with prophetic skill. She took the garment of her firstborn, which was with her in the house; she clothed the younger in it, and put the skins of kids on his arms and his bare neck, and fitted him who was what he was so that he could be seen as what he was not; as though she already showed us that one figured as Christ, who took not the flesh of sin but the likeness of the flesh of sin. Receiving also the law of the Old Testament, like the firstborn’s garment, the Lord said that he had come not to abolish it but to fulfil it. So arrayed, that younger son Jacob, who had already taken his brother’s birthright, usurps the blessing besides, offering his father the food prepared by his mother, and says: “Father.” And he: “Who are you, son?” “I am,” he says, “Esau, your firstborn. I have done as you told me.” And when the father recognized the voice of the younger son but, thinking he should feel him, found the limbs of the elder in the clothing, he was confused about his sons and became, as someone says, a pleasant error to his parents. Having received, then, the food which the mother had prepared, which the son offered and the father gladly accepted, he gave this blessing to the younger son: “Behold,” he says, “the smell of my son is like the smell of a full field which the Lord has blessed. May God give you,” he says, “of the dew of heaven and of the fertility of the earth abundance of grain, wine, and oil; and let nations serve you, and princes adore you, and you shall be lord of your brother, and the sons of your father shall adore you; and whoever blesses you shall be blessed, and whoever curses you shall be cursed.” All these things fit Christ the Lord; all the nations, blessed, run after his fragrance. When these things were done, the firstborn son Esau came too, already rejected by the favor shown to the younger. He too offers food to his father and says: “Let my father rise and eat of his son’s game, that your soul may bless me.” At this the father, terrified, said: “Who then is it who hunted game and brought it to me before you came in? And I blessed him, and he is blessed.” Blessed, the later people, the Christian, now says to the Father: “You have put gladness in my heart: from the fruit of their grain, wine, and oil they have been multiplied.” But to the elder people, the Jew, the Father says: “I will not take calves from your house, nor goats from your flocks. The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me.” “For your brother came with guile and took your blessing.” Because God loved Jacob but hated Esau, therefore, when the time was fulfilled, the sacrifices of the Jews having been rejected, the whole Christian people now acknowledges that a pure sacrifice is offered to his name, as was foretold; this people through grace has taken from the Jew both the birthright and the blessing. For of this people it was said: “You shall be lord of your brother.” For in those twins it did not come to pass: the younger offered gifts to the elder, professed himself his servant, and humbly bowed before him; so that what was then signified by the letter might now be made manifest to us in grace.

Of Esau, from whose seed came Job, and of Christ among the nations through faith. A promise believed and seen in Genesis. Rewards promised to virtue and patience. From the seed of Esau came the Idumean nation, in which, among the other chiefs, that most valiant athlete of God, Job, shone out, brought forward as an example of all patience, so that in the contest of the arena he might overcome the devil, the chief of all warfare, supported by God’s help. For since he was a just man and blameless before God, and God deigned to show what he was, to the devil’s confusion: “Have you considered,” God said to the devil, “my servant Job? For there is no one like him on earth.” And the devil said: “Does Job worship God for nothing? Have you not blessed his house and multiplied his flocks? But put forth your hand and touch all that he has, and you will see whether he blesses you to your face.” “Behold,” God said, “all that he has I give into your hands; only beware not to touch him.” A great contest takes place. The faithless and apostate angel attacks God’s faithful servant, and, as befits the malice he begot from himself, lays waste, routs, and destroys all the innocent man’s goods, and together with the whole inheritance consumed every heir. Yet though so many darts were thrown, Job remains unharmed; and by him, as by a soldier of God, the devil is struck with a single blow. “Naked I came out,” he says, “from my mother’s womb; naked I shall return to the earth. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has been done. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Defeated in this contest, the enemy proclaims another, greater. “Put forth your hand,” he says to God, “and touch his flesh and bones, and you will see whether he blesses you to your face.” “Put forth your hand” means nothing other than “Give power.” For the devil did not have this even over pigs, unless he had given it who under this authority handed Job over to him too, so that he should not exceed the limit of the command. “Behold,” God says, “I hand him over to you; only preserve his life.” When he had been struck with a grievous wound, the structure of his whole body rotting, all his limbs loosened, pus flowing, worms swarming, while his whole mind stood firm in his corrupted body, and the devil felt him strong within whom he had thought weak without, he armed the wife, whom at that moment he had left as necessary to himself, against her husband, and through the wife strikes that most valiant man from his own side. When the woman poured in the poisoned darts which she had taken from the enemy, she said among other things: “Say some word against the Lord, and die.” And at once he, remembering the fall of the first man, overcoming the new Eve, and in her that enemy who was fighting, said: “You have spoken like one of the foolish women. If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why do we not endure evil?” Laid low by these divine darts, the enemy was overcome through grace; the perverse angel gave way to the devout man, and the devotion of humble patience vanquished every assault of pride. For already through the just and mighty man were signified the footsteps of Christ that would pass to the nations, of whom David says in his person: “Into Idumea I will stretch out my shoe.” The apostle James too, strengthening the hearts of believers by the example of patience, says: “You have heard of the patience of Job, and you have seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is merciful and compassionate.” For Job, as victor, received double rewards. But to his own who fight, and conquer with his grace helping them, the Lord promises that he will give a hundredfold here and bestow eternal life in the age to come. We see this fulfilled in Valentinian, brother of Valens, who, when for Christ’s sake he spurned his post as tribune, obtained the rule of this world, and as a true confessor of Christ acquired eternal life.

Of Jacob, to whom Christ the cornerstone was shown in a vision. A promise in figure. Believed and seen in Genesis. Jacob too, son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, received the promise through certain things wonderfully done with him. For as he fled from his brother’s plots, the course of the setting sun gave him a place to lodge. There, with a stone placed under his head, he relates what was revealed to him in a dream: a ladder of wonderful greatness was shown him, whose top reached to heaven, on which the angels of God were ascending and descending, and the Lord leaning upon it and saying to him: “The land on which you sleep I will give to you and to your seed after you.” Waking, he set up on high, as a sacrament, the stone he had had at his head, and anointing it with oil he consecrated for us Christ the cornerstone, of whom the prophet says: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” And Isaiah: “Behold,” he says, “I lay in Zion a cornerstone, chosen, precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” This cornerstone, Christ, explained to Nathanael, who came to him, the dream Jacob had seen: “You will see,” he says, “heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” For he who descended is Christ himself, who also ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And the ladder points to the narrow way that leads to life.