Against Marcion 3.19

Come now, if you have read in David, “The Lord has reigned from the tree,” I wait to see what you understand by it; unless perhaps you think some carpenter king of the Jews is meant, and not Christ, who, having overcome death by his passion on the tree, has reigned from then on. For if death reigned from Adam until Christ, why should Christ not be said to have reigned from the tree, since by dying on the tree of the cross he shut out the reign of death? So too Isaiah: “For a child is born to us” (what is new in that, if he does not speak of the Son of God?) “and is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder.” What king at all displays the emblem of his power on his shoulder, and not either a diadem on his head, or a scepter in his hand, or some mark of his own dress? But Christ Jesus alone, the new King of the new ages, of a new glory, has lifted up his power and his majesty on his shoulder, namely the cross, so that, according to the earlier prophecy, the Lord might reign from then on from the tree. This tree Jeremiah too suggests to you, foretelling what the Jews would say: “Come, let us cast wood into his bread,” that is, into his body. For so the Lord revealed in your gospel too, calling the bread his body, so that from this you may understand that he gave the figure of his body to the bread, whose body the prophet long before figured as bread, the Lord himself being later to interpret this mystery. If you still ask for the foretelling of the Lord's cross, the twenty-first psalm can now satisfy you, containing the whole passion of Christ, who even then sang of his glory: “They dug my hands and my feet,” which are the particular atrocities of the cross. And again, when he implores the Father's help: “Save me,” he says, “from the mouth of the lion,” namely of death, “and my lowliness from the horns of the unicorn,” that is, from the ends of the cross, as we showed above. Neither David himself suffered this cross, nor any king of the Jews; so do not think the passion of any other is prophesied but his who alone was so notably crucified by the people. Now even if heretical hardness rejects and laughs at all these interpretations, I will concede to it that no cross of Christ is signified by the Creator, since not even from this will it prove that the one who was crucified is another; unless perhaps it shows that this death of his was foretold by its own god, so that a difference of passions, and through that of persons too, may be established from a difference of foretellings. Besides, since not even its Christ was foretold, let alone his cross, the prophecy of his death alone is enough to point to my Christ. For since the manner of death was not stated, it could have come about through a cross too, and would then have to be assigned to another only if it had been foretold of another. Unless he will not have even the death of my Christ prophesied; all the more should he blush, if he announces that his own Christ died, whom he denies was born, but denies that mine is mortal, whom he confesses capable of birth. But I want to show the death and burial and resurrection of my Christ with one saying of Isaiah: “His burial has been taken away from the midst.” For neither would he have been buried unless he had died, nor would his burial have been taken away from the midst except through resurrection. Finally he added: “Therefore he will himself inherit many and will divide the spoils of many, because his soul was handed over to death.” For with the reason for this favor shown, namely for the wrong of the death that was to be healed, it is likewise shown that he would obtain these things after death, namely through resurrection.