Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 18 part 4/4

at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me." This people of the nations, therefore, whom Christ did not know by bodily presence, yet who believed in this Christ announced to them, so that it was rightly said of it, "at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me"—because faith comes by hearing—this people, I say, added to the true Israelites both in flesh and in faith, is the City of God, which also bore Christ himself according to the flesh, when it existed only among those Israelites. For from thence indeed was the Virgin Mary, in whom Christ took on flesh, that he might be man. Of which city another psalm says: "'Mother Zion,' a man shall say, 'and a man has been born in her; and the Most High himself has founded her.'" Who is this Most High but God?

And through this, Christ, being God, before he became man in that city through Mary, himself founded it in the patriarchs and the prophets. Since, therefore, it was said to this queenly city of God so long beforehand through prophecy—which we now see fulfilled: "Instead of your fathers, sons are born to you; you shall set them as princes over all the earth" (for from her sons throughout all the earth are her overseers and fathers, since the peoples running together to her confess to her in that confession of eternal praise, unto ages of ages)—then beyond doubt whatever has here been said somewhat obscurely in figurative expressions, in whatever way it be understood, ought to agree with these most manifest facts.

[XVII] So also in that psalm where Christ the Priest, just as here the King, is most openly proclaimed: "The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet." That Christ sits at the right hand of the Father is believed, not seen; that his enemies also are placed beneath his feet does not yet appear; it is being brought about, it will appear at the end; this too is now believed, later it will be seen. But what follows: "The Lord will send forth the rod of your power out of Zion, and rule in the midst of your enemies"—this is so clear that it can be denied not only unfaithfully and unhappily, but even shamelessly.

For his very enemies confess that from Zion was sent forth the law of Christ, which we call the Gospel, and we acknowledge it to be that rod of his power. But that he rules in the midst of his enemies—these very ones, in whose midst he rules, bear witness by gnashing their teeth and wasting away and prevailing nothing against him. Then, as to what he says a little later: "The Lord has sworn, and he will not repent"—by which words he signifies that what he adds is to be immutable:

"You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek." From the fact that nowhere now is there a priesthood and sacrifice after the order of Aaron, and that everywhere there is offered under Christ the Priest that which Melchizedek brought forth when he blessed Abraham, who is permitted to doubt of whom these things are said? To these manifest matters, then, are referred those things which are set down somewhat more obscurely in the same psalm, when they are rightly understood; which we have already done in our sermons to the people. So too in that psalm where through prophecy Christ declares the lowliness of his passion, saying: "They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones;

but they themselves observed and looked upon me" (by which words assuredly he signified his body stretched out on the cross, with hands and feet fastened and pierced through by the driving of nails, and in that manner presenting himself as a spectacle to those observing and gazing upon him), adding also: "They divided my garments among themselves, and over my garment they cast lots." In what manner this prophecy has been fulfilled the Gospel history narrates; and then indeed the other things too are rightly understood which are said there less openly, when they agree with those things which have shone forth with so great a manifestation;

especially since even those things which we believe to be not yet accomplished, but behold as present—just as in the same psalm they are read as foretold so long beforehand—are now seen already exhibited throughout the whole world. For there, a little after, it is said: "All the ends of the earth shall be reminded and shall turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight; for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he himself shall rule over the nations." [XVIII] Of his resurrection too the oracles of the psalms have by no means been silent. For what else is it that is sung in the third psalm from his person: "I slept and took my sleep; I rose up, because the Lord will take me up"?

Or does anyone perchance so lack sense as to believe that the prophet wished to indicate to us as some great thing that he slept and rose up—unless that sleep were death, and the awaking from it a resurrection, which of Christ had thus to be prophesied? For in the fortieth psalm too this is shown much more manifestly, where from the person of the same Mediator, after the customary manner, things are narrated as though past which were being prophesied as future; since those things which were to come were already, as it were, done in the predestination and foreknowledge of God, because they were certain. "My enemies," he says, "have spoken evil things of me: When will he die, and his name perish? And if he came in to see, his heart spoke vain things; he gathered iniquity to himself."

"He went forth outside and spoke together as one. Against me all my enemies whispered together; against me they devised evils for me. They arranged an unjust word against me: Shall he who sleeps not add that he should rise again?" Here certainly these words are so set down that nothing else is understood to have been said than if he had said: "Shall he who dies not add that he should come back to life?" For the preceding words show that his enemies had contemplated and arranged his death, and that this had been brought about through him who came in to see and went out to betray. And to whom here does not Judas occur, who from being his disciple became his betrayer?

Because, then, they were about to do what they were plotting, that is, they were about to slay him, showing that with vain malice they would slay in vain one who would rise again, he thus added this verse, as though he said: "What are you doing, O vain ones? What is your crime will be my sleep": "Shall he who sleeps not add that he should rise again?" And yet that they would not do so great a wickedness with impunity, he indicates in the following verses, saying: "For the man of my peace, in whom I hoped, who ate my bread, has enlarged his heel over me"—that is, has trodden me down. "But you, O Lord," he says, "have mercy on me and raise me up, and I will requite them." Who now would deny this, who sees the Jews after the passion and resurrection of Christ rooted out utterly from their own dwellings by the slaughter and destruction of war?

For slain by them he rose again, and in the meantime requited them with a temporary chastisement, apart from that which he reserves for the unamended, when he shall judge the living and the dead. For the Lord Jesus himself, pointing out to the apostles this very betrayer of his by the bread held out to him, also called to mind this same verse of this psalm and said it fulfilled in himself: "He who ate my bread has enlarged his heel over me." But that which he says, "In whom I hoped," does not fit the Head, but the Body. For the Saviour himself was not ignorant of him concerning whom he had already said beforehand: "One of you will betray me" and "One of you is a devil." But he is wont to transfer to himself the person of his members and to attribute to himself what was theirs, because the Head and the Body are one Christ;

whence that saying in the Gospel: "I was hungry, and you gave me to eat," which, expounding, he says: "When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me." So then he said that he had hoped for what his disciples had then hoped concerning Judas, when he was numbered among the apostles. The Jews, however, do not hope that the Christ whom they hope for is to die. Therefore him whom the Law and the Prophets announced they do not think to be ours, but some other one of their own, whom they feign for themselves as alien from the suffering of death. Therefore with marvelous vanity and blindness they contend that the words which we have set down signify not death and resurrection, but sleep and awaking. But the fifteenth psalm cries out to them also:

"Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue exulted; moreover my flesh also shall rest in hope; for you will not abandon my soul in hell, nor will you give your holy one to see corruption." Who would say that his flesh rested in that hope—that with his soul not abandoned in hell, but quickly returning to it, he should come back to life, lest he be corrupted, as corpses are wont to be corrupted—except one who rose again on the third day? This assuredly they cannot say of the prophet and king David. The sixty-seventh also cries out: "Our God is the God of saving; and the going forth from death is the Lord's." What could be said more openly? For the God of saving, the Lord, is Jesus, which is interpreted "Saviour" or "salutary."

For the reason of this name was thus given, when, before he was born of the Virgin, it was said: "She shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. For he himself shall save his people from their sins." Since for the remission of these sins his blood was poured out, it was assuredly fitting that he should have from this life no other going forth than that of death. Therefore, when it had been said, "Our God is the God of saving," there was at once subjoined: "And the going forth from death is the Lord's," that it might be shown that by dying he would make men saved. But it was said with wonder: "and the Lord's"; as though it were said:

"Such is this life of mortals, that not even the Lord himself would go forth from it otherwise than through death." [XIX] But that the Jews, even with such manifest testimonies of this prophecy, and even with the facts brought to so clear and certain an effect, should nevertheless not yield at all—assuredly in them is fulfilled that which is written in the psalm which follows this one. For when there too, from the person of Christ, those things which pertain to his passion were prophetically being said, that was called to mind which was made plain in the Gospel: "They gave gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." And as though after such a banquet and such a feast set before him, he presently added: "Let their table become before them a snare and a recompense and a stumbling-block;

let their eyes be darkened that they see not, and bow down their back always," and the rest, which are not said by way of wishing, but foretold by prophesying under the appearance of wishing. What wonder, then, if they do not see these manifest things, whose eyes have been darkened, that they see not? What wonder, if they do not look up to heavenly things, who, that they may be bent down toward earthly things, have their back always bowed? For by these words transferred from the body, the vices of the mind are understood. Let these things about the psalms, that is, about the prophecy of King David, have been sufficiently said, that there be some measure. But let those who read these things and know all those matters pardon me, and let them not complain about those things which perhaps I have passed over as being stronger, whether they understand or suppose so.

[XX] David, then, reigned in the earthly Jerusalem, a son of the heavenly Jerusalem, greatly extolled by divine testimony; because even his transgressions were overcome by so great a piety through the most healthful humility of repentance, that he is altogether among those of whom he himself says: "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered." After him Solomon his son reigned over the same whole people, who, as was said above, began to reign while his father was yet alive. He, with good beginnings, had bad endings. Indeed, prosperity, which wearies the minds of the wise, harmed him more than his very wisdom profited him—wisdom memorable even now and hereafter, and then praised far and wide.

He too is found to have prophesied in his books, of which three have been received into canonical authority: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. But the other two, of which one is called Wisdom and the other Ecclesiasticus, custom has obtained that they be called Solomon's, on account of some similarity of eloquence; that they are not his, however, the more learned do not doubt; yet the Church, especially the Western, received them of old into authority. In one of these, which is called the Wisdom of Solomon, the passion of Christ is most openly prophesied. For his impious slayers are recorded as saying:

"Let us lie in wait for the righteous one, because he is displeasing to us and is contrary to our works, and reproaches us with sins against the law, and defames against us the sins of our discipline. He professes to have the knowledge of God, and names himself the son of God. He has become to us a reproof of our very thoughts. He is grievous to us even to behold, because his life is unlike that of others, and his ways are changed. We have been counted by him as triflers, and he abstains from our ways as from uncleannesses; he prefers the last end of the righteous, and boasts that he has God for his Father. Let us see, then, whether his words are true, and let us try what things shall befall him, and we shall know what shall be his last end."

"For if the righteous one is the son of God, he will take him up and deliver him from the hands of his adversaries. Let us examine him with insult and torment, that we may know his reverence and prove his patience. Let us condemn him to a most shameful death; for from his own words there shall be regard for him." These things they thought, and they erred; for their own malice blinded them. In Ecclesiasticus, moreover, the future faith of the nations is foretold in this manner: "Have mercy on us, O Ruler, God of all, and send your fear upon all the nations. Lift up your hand over the alien nations, and let them see your power."

"As you have been sanctified in us before them, so before us may you be magnified in them, and let them acknowledge you according as we also have acknowledged you, that there is no God besides you, O Lord." This prophecy, under the appearance of wishing and praying, we see fulfilled through Jesus Christ. But against gainsayers those things are not brought forward with so great firmness which are not written in the canon of the Jews. But in those three which are agreed to be Solomon's, and which the Jews too hold canonical, in order that it may be shown to pertain to Christ and the Church whatever of this kind is found in them, laborious discussion is necessary, which, if it be now employed, would extend us beyond what is fitting. Nevertheless, that which is read in Proverbs, that impious men say:

"Let us unjustly hide the righteous man in the earth; let us swallow him up alive as hell does, and let us take away his memory from the earth; let us seize his precious possession"—this is not so obscure that it cannot, without laborious exposition, be understood of Christ and his possession, the Church. For something of this sort even the Lord Jesus himself showed the wicked husbandmen to have said, through the Gospel parable: "This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours." Likewise that passage in the same book, which we have already touched upon before, when we were treating of the barren woman who bore seven, is wont to be understood by those who have known Christ to be the Wisdom of God as pronounced of none but Christ and the Church, as soon as it came to be:

"Wisdom has built herself a house, and has propped up seven columns; she has immolated her victims, has mingled her wine in the mixing-bowl, and has prepared her table. She has sent her servants, calling together with exalted preaching to the mixing-bowl, saying: Whoever is foolish, let him turn aside to me. And to those who lack understanding she said: Come, eat of my bread, and drink the wine which I have mingled for you."

Here certainly we recognize the Wisdom of God, that is, the Word coeternal with the Father, to have built for himself a house—a human body—in the virginal womb, and to have joined to this, as members to the head, the Church; to have immolated the victims of the martyrs; to have prepared a table in wine and bread, where there also appears the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek; to have called the foolish and those lacking understanding, because, as the Apostle says, he chose the weak things of this world, that he might confound the strong. Yet to these weak ones he says what follows: "Forsake foolishness, that you may live, and seek prudence, that you may have life." But to become a partaker of that table is itself to begin to have life. For in another book too, which is called Ecclesiastes, where he says:

"There is nothing good for a man except that he should eat and drink," what is understood to be said more credibly than that which pertains to the participation of this table, which the Priest himself, the Mediator of the New Testament, sets forth after the order of Melchizedek out of his own body and blood? For that sacrifice succeeded to all those sacrifices of the Old Testament, which were immolated in the shadow of what was to come; on account of which we also recognize that voice in the thirty-ninth psalm, of the same Mediator speaking through prophecy: "Sacrifice and offering you did not will, but a body you have perfected for me"; because in place of all those sacrifices and offerings his body is offered and is ministered to those who partake.

For that this Ecclesiastes, in this sentiment about eating and drinking, which he often repeats and greatly commends, does not relish the carnal feasts of pleasure, that passage sufficiently shows where he says: "It is better to go into the house of mourning than to go into the house of drinking"; and a little after: "The heart of the wise," he says, "is in the house of mourning, and the heart of the foolish in the house of feasting." But I think that this rather ought to be called to mind from this book, which pertains to the two cities, the one of the devil, the other of Christ, and their kings, the devil and Christ: "Woe to you, O land," he says, "whose king is a youth, and whose princes eat in the morning. Blessed are you, O land, whose king is the son of the freeborn, and whose princes eat in due time, in strength and not in confusion."

He called the young man the devil, on account of folly and pride and rashness and wantonness and the other vices which are wont to abound at this age; but the Christ he called the son of the freeborn, that is, of the holy patriarchs who belong to the free city, from whom He was begotten according to the flesh. The princes of that other city eat in the morning, that is, before the fitting hour, because they do not await the opportune felicity which is the true one, in the age to come, but in their haste desire to be made blessed by the renown of this present world; whereas the princes of Christ's city patiently await the season of a blessedness that does not deceive. This is what he says: In fortitude, and not in confusion, because the hope by which they hope does not deceive them, of which the Apostle says: But hope does not confound;

The psalm also says: For they that wait upon Thee shall not be confounded. Now the Song of Songs is a certain spiritual delight of holy minds in the wedlock of that King and Queen of the city, which is Christ and the Church. But this delight is wrapped in allegorical veilings, that it may be more ardently desired and more joyfully unveiled, and that the Bridegroom may appear, to whom it is said in that same song: Equity has loved Thee; and the Bride, who there hears: Charity is in thy delights. We pass over many things in silence, in our concern to bring this work to an end. [XXI] The other kings of the Hebrews after Solomon are scarcely found to have prophesied, through some enigmas of their sayings or of their deeds, anything pertaining to Christ and the Church, whether in Judah or in Israel.

For thus were the parts of that people named, from the time when, on account of Solomon's offence, in the days of his son Rehoboam who succeeded his father in the kingdom, it was divided by God's avenging judgement. Accordingly the ten tribes which Jeroboam, Solomon's servant, received—being set up as king over them in Samaria—were properly called Israel, although this was the name of that whole people. But the two tribes, namely Judah and Benjamin, which for David's sake, lest the kingdom of his stock should be utterly rooted out, had remained subject to the city of Jerusalem, bore the name of Judah, because this was the very tribe from which David sprang. Benjamin, moreover, was the other tribe belonging to the same kingdom, as I have said, from which came Saul, king before David.

But these two tribes together, as has been said, were called Judah, and by this name were distinguished from Israel; for by that name the ten tribes were properly called, having their own king. For the tribe of Levi, since it was priestly, being bound to the service of God and not of kings, was reckoned as the thirteenth. For Joseph, one of the twelve sons of Israel, made not one tribe, as the others each made single tribes, but two—Ephraim and Manasseh. Yet the tribe of Levi too belonged rather to the kingdom of Jerusalem, where the temple of God was, which it served. When therefore the people had been divided, Rehoboam, king of Judah, son of Solomon, first reigned in Jerusalem, and Jeroboam, king of Israel, Solomon's servant, in Samaria.

And when Rehoboam wished to pursue with war, as though it were a usurpation, that divided portion, the people were forbidden to fight against their brethren, God declaring through the prophet that He Himself had done this. Whence it appeared that in that matter there had been no sin either of the king of Israel or of the people, but that the will of God the avenger had been fulfilled. This being known, both parts, being at peace between themselves, remained quiet; for the division had been made not of religion, but of kingdom.

[XXII] But the king of Israel, Jeroboam, with a perverse mind not believing God—whom he had proved truthful in the kingdom promised and given to him—feared lest, by coming to the temple of God which was in Jerusalem (whither, according to the divine law, that whole nation was to come for the purpose of sacrificing), the people should be seduced away from him and restored to the stock of David as to the royal seed; and he set up idolatry in his kingdom, and by nefarious impiety deceived the people of God, binding them together with himself in the worship of images. Yet God did not in any way cease to reprove through the prophets not only that king, but also his successors and imitators of impiety, and the people themselves.

For there too arose those great and famous prophets who also did many wonders, Elijah and his disciple Elisha; there too, when Elijah said: Lord, they have slain Thy prophets, they have dug down Thine altars, and I am left alone, and they seek my life, it was answered that there were there seven thousand men who had not bowed their knees to Baal. [XXIII] Likewise in the kingdom of Judah, belonging to Jerusalem, even in the times of the succeeding kings prophets were not lacking; as it pleased God to send them either to foretell what was needful, or to rebuke sins and to enjoin righteousness.

For there also, though far less than in Israel, yet there arose kings who by their impieties gravely offended God and, together with the people, were chastised with moderate scourges. Indeed the merits of the earlier kings there are praised as not small; but in Israel we read that some kings were more, others less, yet all reprobate.

Both parts therefore, according as divine providence commanded or permitted, were now raised up by various prosperities and now pressed down by adversities, and thus were afflicted not only by external wars, but also among themselves by civil wars, so that, when there were certain causes, either the mercy or the wrath of God might be made manifest; until, His indignation growing, that whole nation was by the conquering Chaldeans not only overthrown in its own seats, but also for the greatest part transported into the lands of the Assyrians—first that part which was called Israel, in the ten tribes; and afterwards also Judah, when Jerusalem and that most noble temple had been overthrown; and in those lands it passed seventy years in captive idleness.

After these years, being sent thence, it restored the temple which had been overthrown; and although very many of that people were dwelling in the lands of foreigners, yet it did not thereafter have two parts of the kingdom and two different kings in the several parts; but in Jerusalem their ruler was one, and to the temple of God which was there all came from everywhere, wherever they were and from wheresoever they could, at fixed seasons. Yet neither then were there lacking to them enemies and assailants from other nations; for Christ found them already tributaries even of the Romans.

[XXIV] But throughout all that time, from when they returned from Babylon, after Malachi, Haggai and Zechariah, who prophesied then, and Ezra, they had no prophets until the coming of the Saviour—except another Zechariah, the father of John, and Elizabeth his wife, when the birth of Christ was already at hand, and, He being already born, the aged Simeon and the widow Anna, now well advanced in years, and John himself the last; who, being a young man, did not indeed foretell the young Christ as one to come, but nevertheless pointed Him out, unrecognized, by prophetic recognition; on which account the Lord Himself says: The Law and the Prophets were until John. But the prophecy of these five is known to us from the Gospel, where the Virgin Mother of the Lord herself also is found to have prophesied before John.

But this prophecy of theirs the reprobate Jews do not receive; yet those innumerable ones who from among them believed the Gospel did receive it. For then was Israel truly divided into two, by that division which through the prophet Samuel was foretold to King Saul as immutable. But Malachi, Haggai, Zechariah and Ezra even the reprobate Jews hold as received into divine authority, as the latest such. For their writings also exist, like those of the others who, among the great multitude of prophets, were the very few that wrote such things as should obtain the authority of the canon. Of the predictions of these which pertain to Christ and His Church, I see that some are to be set down by me in this work;

which will be more conveniently done, with the Lord's help, in the following book, lest we burden this one, already so lengthy, still further.