Against Marcion 4.24

He appointed also seventy other apostles besides the twelve. For why twelve, after the number of the springs at Elim, if not also seventy, after the number of the palm trees there? The Antitheses were produced mostly by a difference of circumstances, not of powers. But one who paid no attention to the difference of circumstances easily supposed it to be a difference of powers. The Creator led the departure of the sons of Israel out of Egypt loaded even with that plunder of gold and silver vessels and garments, besides the burdens of dough, whereas Christ directed his disciples not to carry even a staff on the journey. For the former were being sent forward into a wilderness, the latter were being sent into cities. Consider the difference of circumstances, and you will understand that it is one and the same power which arranged the expedition of its people according to want and plenty: cutting down the supplies of those who would have abundance through the cities, just as it had equipped those who would be in want through the wilderness. He forbade them even to carry shoes. For he was the very one under whom the people, even in the wilderness for so many years, had not worn out their shoes. “Salute no one,” he says, “on the way.” O Christ, destroyer of the prophets, from whom he received even this! Elisha, when he sent his servant Gehazi on the way to raise the Shunammite woman's son from death, gave him, I think, this command: “Gird up your loins and take my staff in your hand and go: whomever you meet on the way, do not bless him,” that is, do not greet him, “and whoever blesses you, do not answer him,” that is, do not return his greeting. For what is a blessing on the roads but the mutual greeting of those who meet? So too the Lord's command, that in whatever house they entered they should say “peace” to it, comes from the same example. For Elisha commanded this too: when he came to the Shunammite woman, he should say to her: “Peace to your husband, peace to your son.” These rather will be our antitheses, which compare Christ with the Creator, not separate him. And who would more fittingly declare “The worker is worthy of his wage” than God the judge? For this very thing is judging: deeming a worker worthy of his wage. No repayment has ever been settled except by a judgment. Now here too the Creator's law is sealed, since he judges even working oxen to be workers worthy of their wage: “You shall not bind the mouth,” he says, “of the ox that treads out the grain.” Who is so generous toward men as one who is so even toward cattle? And if Christ too declares workers worthy of their wage, he has vindicated that command of the Creator to carry off the gold and silver vessels of the Egyptians. For those who had worked on estates and cities for the Egyptians, surely workers worthy of their wage, were not incited to fraud but to the settling of their wage, which they could not otherwise exact from their masters.

He confirmed in this way too that the kingdom of God was neither new nor unheard of, when he commanded that it be announced as having drawn near. For what was once far off can be said to have drawn near. But if it had never existed before it drew near, it could not have been said to have drawn near, since it had never been far off. Everything new and unknown is sudden. Everything sudden, when it is announced, only then first takes on an appearance and only then first receives a time. Moreover, it could neither have been delayed in the past, so long as it was not announced, nor have drawn near from the time it began to be announced. He adds also that they should say to those who had not received them: “Know nevertheless that the kingdom of God has drawn near.” If he does not command this by way of threat as well, he commands it quite pointlessly. For what was it to them if the kingdom drew near, unless it draws near with judgment? — for the salvation, that is, of those who had received its announcement, … So, since a threat is impossible without execution, you have in the one who threatens a God who executes, and a judge in both. So too he orders the dust to be shaken off against them, as a testimony that even their soil was renounced, much more any other fellowship. For if inhumanity and inhospitality were to receive no vengeance from him, for what purpose does he send a testimony ahead, which surely portends threats? Moreover, since the Creator too in Deuteronomy forbids the Ammonites and Moabites to be received into the assembly because they had inhumanly and inhospitably cheated the people setting out from Egypt of provisions, it will be clear that the ban on fellowship flowed into Christ from there, where it has its pattern. “Whoever despises you despises me.” This the Creator said to Moses too: “They have not despised you but me.” For Moses was as much an apostle as the apostles were prophets. The authority of both offices had to be made equal by one and the same Lord of apostles and prophets.

Now who will give power to tread upon snakes and scorpions? The Lord of all animals, or the god of not even one lizard? But it is well that the Creator promised this power even to little children through Isaiah: to put their hand into the hole of asps and into the den of young asps and not be harmed at all. And surely we know — without prejudice to the plain sense of Scripture, for even the beasts themselves will not be able to harm where there is faith — that scorpions and snakes figuratively signify the spiritual forces of wickedness, whose prince himself is reckoned by the Creator under the name of the serpent and the dragon and every most prominent beast; and that the Creator granted this power first to his own Christ, as the ninetieth psalm says to him: “You will walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you will trample the lion and the dragon”; and as Isaiah too says: “In that day the Lord God will bring his holy sword, great and strong” — his Christ, that is — “upon that dragon, the great and twisting serpent, and will kill it in that day.” And when the same prophet says, “It will be called a clean way and a holy way, and nothing unclean will pass over it, nor will there be an unclean way there; but those who have been scattered will walk in it and will not go astray; and there will no longer be a lion there, nor will any of the evil beasts go up on it, nor will one be found there,” since he shows the way to be faith, by which we shall reach God, he is already then promising to that same way, that is, to faith, this disabling and subjection of the beasts. In fact you will find that the times of the promise also agree, if you read what precedes: “Be strong, hands that hang down and knees that are loosened: then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will hear; then the lame man will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will be clear.” So when he had brought out the benefits of healing, then too he subjected scorpions and serpents to his saints: he, namely, who had first received this power from the Father, so that he might grant it to others also, and who displayed it in the order in which it had been foretold.