And in very truth, although in the nation of the Idumeans—which was born from the elder, who had two names (for he was called both Esau and Edom, whence the Idumeans)—this may seem to have been fulfilled, because it was afterward to be overcome by the people that sprang from the younger, that is the Israelite, and was to be made subject to it: nevertheless it is more fittingly believed that this prophecy, in which it was said, 'One people shall overcome the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger,' was directed toward something greater. And what is this, but what is evidently fulfilled in the Jews and Christians? Isaac too received such an oracle as his father had received several times. Concerning which oracle it is thus written:
'Now there was a famine over the land, besides the famine that first happened in the time of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines in Gerar. And the Lord appeared to him and said: Go not down into Egypt; but dwell in the land which I shall tell you, and sojourn in this land; and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and to your seed I will give all this land, and I will establish the oath which I swore to Abraham your father; and I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and I will give to your seed all this land, and in your whole seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because your father Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my precepts and my commandments and my ordinances and my statutes.'
This patriarch had neither another wife nor any concubine, but was content with the posterity of the two twins procreated from a single embrace. (He too indeed feared danger on account of his wife's beauty, when he dwelt among strangers, and did as his father did, so as to call her his sister and keep silent that she was his wife; for she was related to him by both paternal and maternal blood; but she also, when the strangers learned that she was his wife, remained untouched by them.) Yet we ought not on that account to prefer him to his father, because he knew no woman besides one wife. For the merits of his father's faith and obedience were without doubt greater—so much so that for his sake God says that he does to this son the good things he does.
'In your seed,' he says, 'shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because your father Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my precepts and my commandments and my ordinances and my statutes'; and again in another oracle: 'I am,' he says, 'the God of Abraham your father; fear not, for I am with you and have blessed you and will multiply your seed for the sake of Abraham your father.' So that we may understand how chastely Abraham acted in what, to shameless men who seek from the holy Scriptures patronage for their own wickedness, seems to have been done out of lust; and then that we may also know this: that we should not compare men with one another by individual goods, but consider in each single man all things together.
For it can happen that someone has something in his life and morals whereby he surpasses another, and that this is far more excellent than the thing wherein he is surpassed by that other. And through this, by a sound and true judgment, although continence is to be preferred to marriage, yet a faithful married man is better than an unbelieving continent one. But an unbelieving man is not only less to be praised, but even most to be detested. Let us set both down as good: even so, assuredly, a most faithful and most obedient married man is better before God than a continent man of lesser faith and lesser obedience. But if all else be equal, who would doubt to prefer the continent to the married? Therefore Isaac's two sons, Esau and Jacob, grow up together.
The birthright of the elder is transferred to the younger by a pact and agreement between them, in that the elder immoderately craved the lentils which the younger had prepared as food, and for that price sold his birthright to his brother with an oath interposed. Whereby we learn that in eating a man is to be blamed not for the kind of food, but for immoderate greed. Isaac grows old and by old age sight is taken from his eyes. He wishes to bless his elder son, and in his place unknowingly blesses the younger, who, in place of his hairy elder brother, submits himself to his father's hands, having fitted upon himself little goatskins, as if bearing another's sins. Lest this deceit of Jacob be thought a fraudulent deceit and no mystery of a great matter be sought in it, Scripture had said above:
'And Esau was a man skilled in hunting, a man of the field; but Jacob was a plain man, dwelling at home.' This some of our writers have interpreted 'without guile.' But whether it be said 'without guile' or 'plain' or rather 'without pretense,' which in Greek is *aplastos*: what guile is there in that man without guile, in the receiving of this blessing? What is the guile of the plain man, what the pretense of one who does not lie, but the deep mystery of truth? But what kind is that blessing itself? 'Behold,' he says, 'the smell of my son is as the smell of a full field which the Lord has blessed.
And may God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth, and abundance of grain and wine; and let nations serve you, and let princes adore you, and be lord of your brother, and let your father's sons adore you. He who curses you, cursed; and he who blesses you, blessed.' The blessing of Jacob, therefore, is the proclamation of Christ among all nations. This comes to pass, this is being done. The Law and the prophecy is Isaac; even through the mouth of the Jews Christ is blessed by it as by one unaware, because it itself is unaware. With the fragrance of the name of Christ, like a field, the world is filled; his is the blessing of the dew of heaven, that is, of the rain of divine words, and of the fatness of the earth, that is, the gathering together of peoples;
his is the abundance of grain and wine, that is, the multitude which grain and wine gather together in the sacrament of his body and blood. Nations serve him, princes adore him. He is the lord of his brother, because his people rules over the Jews. Him the sons of his father adore, that is, the sons of Abraham according to faith; because he too is a son of Abraham according to the flesh. Whoever curses him is cursed, and whoever blesses him is blessed. Our Christ, I say, is blessed even from the mouth of the Jews, though they err, yet chant the Law and the prophets—that is, he is truthfully spoken of; and another is thought to be blessed, who is awaited by those erring ones.
Behold, when the elder repeats the promised blessing, Isaac is terrified and recognizes that he has blessed one in place of another; he marvels and inquires who that one may be; yet he does not complain that he was deceived; rather, at once, a great mystery being revealed to him within in his heart, he puts away indignation and confirms the blessing. 'Who then,' he says, 'is he that hunted venison for me and brought it to me, and I ate of all before you came? And I blessed him, and let him be blessed.' Who would not here rather expect the curse of an angry man, if these things were carried out not by heavenly inspiration but in an earthly manner? O deeds done, but done prophetically; on earth, but from heaven; through men, but divinely!
If individual things, fruitful in such great mysteries, were to be examined one by one, many volumes would have to be filled; but a due measure, to be moderately imposed on this work, compels us to hasten on to other matters. Jacob is sent by his parents into Mesopotamia, that there he might take a wife. The words of his father sending him are these: 'You shall not take a wife of the daughters of the Canaanites; arise and flee into Mesopotamia, into the house of Bethuel, your mother's father, and take yourself a wife from thence, of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. And may my God bless you and increase you and multiply you; and you shall become gatherings of nations; and may he give you the blessing of Abraham your father, to you and to your seed after you, that you may become heir of the land of your sojourning, which God gave to Abraham.'
Here now we understand the seed of Jacob to be separated from the other seed of Isaac, which came to be through Esau. For when it was said, 'In Isaac shall thy seed be called'—the seed pertaining assuredly to the City of God—there was separated from it another seed of Abraham, which was in the handmaid's son, and which was to be in the sons of Keturah. But hitherto it had been ambiguous concerning the two twin sons of Isaac, whether that blessing pertained to both or to one of them; and if to one, which of them it should be. Which is now declared, when Jacob is prophetically blessed by his father and it is said to him: 'And you shall become gatherings of nations, and may he give you the blessing of Abraham your father.'
So Jacob, journeying into Mesopotamia, received an oracle in a dream, concerning which it is thus written: 'And Jacob went out from the well of the oath and set out for Haran, and came to a place and slept there; for the sun had set; and he took of the stones of the place and put them at his head and slept in that place and dreamed. And behold, a ladder set firmly upon the earth, whose top reached to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending upon it, and the Lord leaned upon it and said: I am the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; fear not; the land on which you sleep, to you will I give it and to your seed;
and your seed shall be as the sand of the earth, and shall be spread abroad to the sea and to the south and to the north and to the east; and in you shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed, and in your seed. And behold, I am with you, keeping you in every way wherever you go, and I will bring you back into this land, for I will not forsake you, until I have done all that I have spoken to you.' And Jacob rose from his sleep and said: 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.' And he was afraid and said: 'How terrible is this place; this is nothing else but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' And Jacob rose and took the stone which he had set there under his head, and set it up as a pillar and poured oil upon the top of it; and Jacob called the name of that place:
the house of God. This pertains to prophecy; nor did Jacob pour oil on the stone after the manner of idolatry, as though making it a god; for neither did he adore that same stone nor sacrifice to it; but since the name of Christ is from chrism, that is, from anointing, assuredly something was here figured that pertains to a great sacrament. That ladder, moreover, the Savior himself is understood to call back to our memory in the Gospel, where, when he had said of Nathanael, 'Behold a true Israelite, in whom is no guile'—because Israel had seen that vision (for he is Jacob)—in the same place he says: 'Amen, amen, I say to you, you shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.'
Jacob therefore went on into Mesopotamia to receive a wife thence. But how it came about that he had four women, from whom he begot twelve sons and one daughter, when he had lusted after none of them unlawfully, the divine Scripture makes clear. For he had come to receive one; but when one had been substituted for another, he did not dismiss even her whom, unwitting, he had used in the night, lest he should seem to have had her in mockery; and, at that time when—for the sake of multiplying posterity—no law forbade several wives, he took also her to whom alone he had already pledged the faith of future marriage. And she, since she was barren, gave her handmaid, from whom she herself might receive sons, to her husband;
which her elder sister also imitated, although she had borne children, because she desired to multiply offspring, and so did the same. Jacob is nowhere read to have sought any woman besides one, nor to have used the several except in the duty of begetting offspring, the conjugal right being preserved—so that he did not even do this unless his wives demanded that it be done, they who had lawful power over their husband's body. He therefore begot twelve sons and one daughter from four women. Then he entered into Egypt through his son Joseph, who, sold by his envious brothers, was brought there and there exalted. But Jacob was also called Israel, as I said a little before, which name the people procreated from him rather obtained.
But this name was imposed on him by the angel who had wrestled with him on the way as he returned from Mesopotamia, most evidently bearing the type of Christ. For that Jacob prevailed over him—the angel willing it, of course, so that he might figure the mystery—signifies the passion of Christ, where the Jews seemed to prevail over him. And yet Jacob obtained a blessing from that same angel whom he had overcome; and thus the imposition of this name was a blessing. Now 'Israel' is interpreted 'seeing God,' which will be in the end the reward of all the saints. Moreover, that same angel touched, as it were, the breadth of the thigh of him who was prevailing, and in this manner made him lame. And so one and the same Jacob was both blessed and lame;
blessed in those who, from that same people, believed in Christ, and lame in the unbelieving. For the breadth of the thigh is the multitude of the race. For there are many in that stock concerning whom it was prophetically foretold: 'And they went lame from their paths.' They are accordingly reported to have entered into Egypt together with Jacob himself, seventy-five persons, counting himself with his sons. In which number only two women are mentioned, one a daughter, the other a granddaughter. But the matter, carefully considered, does not indicate that so great a number existed in Jacob's progeny on the day or in the year in which he entered Egypt.
For among them are also mentioned the great-grandsons of Joseph, who could in no way have existed at that time; since Jacob was then a hundred and thirty years old, while his son Joseph was thirty-nine. And since it is established that Joseph took a wife in his thirtieth year or later, how could he within nine years have had great-grandsons from the sons whom he begot of that same wife? Since, therefore, Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of Joseph, did not yet have sons, but Jacob, on entering Egypt, found them to be boys less than nine years old, how is it that not only their sons but even their grandsons are numbered among those seventy-five who then entered Egypt with Jacob?
For there is mentioned Machir, the son of Manasseh, grandson of Joseph, and Machir's son, that is Gilead, grandson of Manasseh and great-grandson of Joseph; there too is one whom Ephraim, the other son of Joseph, begot, that is Utalaam, grandson of Joseph, and Edem the son of this Utalaam, grandson of Ephraim and great-grandson of Joseph. These could in no way have existed when Jacob came into Egypt and found the sons of Joseph, his grandsons and the grandfathers of these, to be boys less than nine years old. But without doubt Jacob's entrance into Egypt, when Scripture commemorates it as occurring in seventy-five persons, was not a single day nor a single year, but that whole span of time during which Joseph lived, through whom it came about that they entered. For concerning Joseph himself the same Scripture speaks thus:
And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he and his brethren and all the household of his father; and he lived a hundred and ten years, and Joseph saw the children of Ephraim unto the third generation. This is that great-grandson of his, the third from Ephraim. For by the third generation he means son, grandson, great-grandson. Then it follows: And the sons of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were born upon the knees of Joseph. And this is that very grandson of Manasseh, great-grandson of Joseph. But they were named in the plural, as Scripture is accustomed to do, which also called the one daughter of Jacob his 'daughters'; just as in the usage of the Latin tongue children are called in the plural 'sons,' even if there be no more than one.
Since therefore the happiness of Joseph himself is proclaimed, in that he was able to see his great-grandsons, they are in no way to be supposed already to have existed in the thirty-ninth year of their great-grandfather Joseph, when his father Jacob came to him in Egypt. But that which deceives those who consider these matters less carefully is that it is written: These are the names of the sons of Israel who entered into Egypt together with Jacob their father. For this was said because seventy-five are reckoned together with him, not because all were already present at once when he himself entered Egypt; but, as I have said, the whole span of his entering is understood, during which Joseph lived, through whom the entering is seen to have taken place.
[XLI] Therefore, for the sake of the Christian people, in whom the City of God sojourns as a pilgrim upon earth, if we seek the flesh of Christ in the seed of Abraham, then, the sons of the concubines being set aside, Isaac presents himself; if in the seed of Isaac, then, Esau being set aside, who is also called Edom, Jacob presents himself, who is also called Israel; if in the seed of this same Israel, then, the rest being set aside, Judah presents himself, because Christ arose from the tribe of Judah. And accordingly, when Israel, about to die in Egypt, blessed his sons, let us hear in what manner he prophetically blessed Judah: Judah, he says, thy brethren shall praise thee. Thy hands shall be upon the back of thine enemies; the sons of thy father shall adore thee. Judah is a lion's whelp; from the sprouting forth, my son, thou hast gone up;
lying down, thou hast slept as a lion, and as a lion's whelp; who shall rouse him up? The ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until there come the things that are laid up for him; and he is the expectation of the nations; binding his colt to the vine, and washing his robe in wine and the covering of the she-ass's colt in the blood of the grape. His eyes are more sparkling than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk. I have expounded these words in my disputation against Faustus the Manichaean, and I judge it sufficient, in so far as the truth of this prophecy shines forth; wherein both the death of Christ is foretold by the word 'sleeping,' and not the necessity but the power in death by the name of the lion. Which power he himself proclaims in the Gospel, saying:
I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again. No one taketh it from me; but I lay it down of myself, and take it up again. Thus the lion roared, thus he fulfilled what he had said. For to that power belongs what was added concerning his resurrection: Who shall rouse him up? That is, because no man could, save he himself, who also said concerning his own body: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. But the very kind of his death, that is, the loftiness of the cross, is understood in one word, when it says: Thou hast gone up. And what it further added, Lying down, thou hast slept, the Evangelist expounds, where he says: And bowing his head, he gave up the spirit;
or else his burial is here recognized, in which he lay down sleeping, and whence no man raised him, as the prophets raised certain persons, or as he himself raised others, but he himself rose as from sleep. Moreover his robe, which he washes in wine, that is, cleanses from sins in his own blood — of which blood the baptized know the sacrament — whence also he adds: And his covering in the blood of the grape; what is this but the Church? And his eyes are more sparkling than wine: his spiritual ones, made drunk with his cup, of which the psalm sings: And thy cup that maketh drunk, how excellent it is! And his teeth whiter than milk, that is, the words which nourish, which the little ones drink in the Apostle, being not yet fit for solid food.
He, therefore, is the one in whom were laid up the promises made to Judah, until whose coming the princes, that is, the kings of Israel, never failed from that stock. And he is the expectation of the nations; which is clearer to see than to expound. [XLII] But just as the two sons of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, afforded a figure of the two peoples among the Jews and Christians (although, so far as concerns the propagation of the flesh, the Jews did not come from the seed of Esau, but the Idumaeans; nor the Christian nations from Jacob, but rather the Jews — for the figure availed only for this, namely what was said: The elder shall serve the younger): so it happened also in the two sons of Joseph; for the elder bore the type of the Jews, but the younger of the Christians.
When Jacob blessed them, placing his right hand upon the younger, whom he had on his left, and his left hand upon the elder, whom he had on his right: it seemed grievous to their father, and he admonished his father as though correcting his error, and showed him which of them was the elder. But Jacob would not change his hands, but said: I know, my son, I know. And this one also shall become a people, and he shall be exalted; but his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations. Here too he sets forth those two promises. For the one shall become a people, the other a multitude of nations. What could be more evident than that by these two promises are contained the people of the Israelites and the whole world in the seed of Abraham — the former according to the flesh, the latter according to faith?
[XLIII] After the death of Jacob, and after the death of Joseph also, throughout the remaining one hundred and forty-four years, until the departure from the land of Egypt, that nation increased in an incredible manner, even though worn down by such great persecutions that at a certain time the male children born were put to death, when the Egyptians, marvelling, were terrified by the excessive increase of that people.
Then Moses, snatched by stealth from the slayers of the little ones, came to the royal house — God preparing great things through him — and, being reared and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter (which name belonged in Egypt to all the kings), grew into so great a man that he himself led forth that wondrously multiplied nation from the most hard and grievous yoke of servitude which it bore there; nay rather, God did so through him — the God who had promised this to Abraham. For at first he fled from thence, because, while defending an Israelite, he had killed an Egyptian and had been afraid; but afterward, being divinely sent, he overcame in the power of the Spirit of God the magicians of Pharaoh who resisted him.
Then through him ten memorable plagues were brought upon the Egyptians, when they would not let the people of God go: the water turned into blood, frogs and gnats, dog-flies, the death of cattle, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn. At last the Egyptians, who, broken at length by so many and so great plagues, had finally let the Israelites go, were destroyed in the Red Sea while pursuing them. For as those departed, the sea, divided, made a way for them; but as these pursued after them, the wave, returning upon itself, submerged them.
Then for forty years, with Moses as their leader, the people of God were led about in the desert, when the tabernacle which was called the tabernacle of the testimony was set up, where God was worshipped with sacrifices that foretold things to come, after the law had already been given on the mountain with much terrifying majesty; for the divinity bore witness by most manifest wondrous signs and voices. This was done as soon as they had gone out of Egypt and the people had begun to be in the desert, on the fiftieth day after the Passover celebrated through the immolation of the lamb;
which Passover is a type of Christ, foretelling that he would pass over from this world to the Father through the victim of his passion (for 'Pascha' in the Hebrew tongue is interpreted 'a passing over'), so much so that, when the New Testament was now being revealed, after our Passover, Christ, had been immolated, on the fiftieth day the Holy Spirit came from heaven — who was called in the Gospel 'the finger of God' — to recall our remembrance to the memory of the first prefigured event, since those tables of the law also are recorded as having been written by the finger of God. After the death of Moses, Joshua the son of Nun ruled the people and led them into the land of promise, and divided it among the people.
By these two wondrous leaders wars also were waged most prosperously and marvellously, God bearing witness that those victories came to them not so much on account of the merits of the Hebrew people as on account of the sins of those nations which were being subdued. After these leaders came the judges, the people being now settled in the land of promise, so that meanwhile the first promise to Abraham began to be fulfilled — concerning one nation, that is, the Hebrew, and the land of Canaan — not yet concerning all nations and the whole world; which the coming of Christ in the flesh, and the faith of the Gospel, not the observances of the old law, was to fulfil.
A prefiguration of this matter was made in that it was not Moses, who had received the law for the people on Mount Sinai, but Joshua — whose very name had been changed by God's command so that he should be called Joshua (Jesus) — who led the people into the land of promise. And in the times of the judges, prosperity and adversity in wars alternated, according as stood both the sins of the people and the mercy of God. Thence came the times of the kings, of whom the first to reign was Saul; and when he was rejected and laid low by defeat in war, and his stock cast off lest kings should arise from it, David succeeded to the kingdom, of whom especially Christ was called the son. In him a certain turning-point was reached and, in a manner, a beginning of the youth of the people of God;
a certain adolescence, as it were, of which race was led from Abraham himself down to this David. For not without reason did Matthew the Evangelist so recount the generations that he set apart this first interval by fourteen generations, namely from Abraham down to David. For it is from adolescence that a man begins to be able to beget; therefore he took the beginning of the generations from Abraham, who also was constituted father of the nations when he received his changed name. Before him, then, there was, as it were, the childhood of this race of the people of God, from Noah down to Abraham himself; and therefore in it a language was found, that is, the Hebrew. For from childhood a man begins to speak after infancy, which was so named because it cannot speak.
Which first age assuredly oblivion sinks into forgetfulness, just as the first age of the human race was blotted out by the flood. For how few there are who remember their own infancy? Wherefore in this course of the City of God, just as the former book contained one and the same first age, so let this book contain two ages, the second and the third; in which third age, on account of the three-year-old heifer, the three-year-old she-goat, and the three-year-old ram, the yoke of the law was both imposed and the abundance of sins appeared, and the beginning of an earthly kingdom arose, wherein there were not lacking spiritual men, whose sacrament was figured in the turtle-dove and the pigeon.