On the Catholic Faith Against the Jews – St. Isidore of Seville

Complete English Translation

On the Catholic Faith Against the Jews

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DEDICATORY LETTER

To his holy sister Florentina, Isidore sends greetings.

Certain things which were foretold at various times in the books of the Old Testament concerning the nativity of the Lord and our Savior according to his divinity, or concerning his incarnation, and also concerning his passion and death, or concerning his resurrection, kingdom and judgment—from innumerable testimonies I have thought to bring forward a few according to the strength of my knowledge, so that the authority of the prophets may strengthen the grace of faith and prove the ignorance of the unfaithful Jews. These things therefore, holy sister, at your request, I have dedicated to you for the edification of your study, so that she with whom I enjoy the fellowship of blood, I may make also a co-heir of my labor.

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BOOK ONE

CHAPTER I: That Christ Was Begotten by God the Father

1. The Jews, denying with wicked unbelief that Christ is the Son of God, impious and hard-hearted, unfaithful to the ancient prophets, obstinate against the new ones, prefer to ignore the coming of Christ rather than to know it; to deny rather than to believe. For him whom they accept as coming, they refuse to believe has already come. Him whom they read will rise again, they do not believe has risen.

2. But they pretend not to understand these things because they recognize that they have been fulfilled through their sacrilege. To refute their perfidy we have gathered certain testimonies from the Old Testament, by which they may acknowledge Christ of the nations from the almighty Father, as he himself testifies: “With you is dominion in the day of your power, in the splendors of the saints; from the womb before the morning star I begot you.”

From the womb therefore, that is, from that intimate and incomprehensible substance of the Father, or from that divine and immense secret of the paternal breast, by which the Father as begetter brings forth the good Word from his heart.

3. Just as he himself says elsewhere: “My heart has brought forth a good Word.” And elsewhere the Father himself thus says: “You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession.” This was not said to David, nor to any of the following kings. For there it is added: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession”—which was granted neither to David nor to the Hebrew nation, but only to Christ, whose name is spread throughout all nations, to whom both kings obey and nations serve, as it is also written elsewhere concerning him: “All the kings of the earth shall adore him, all nations shall serve him.”

4. Likewise Solomon, wishing to make known the name of the Father and the mystery of the nativity of Christ according to his divinity, proclaims with these words in Proverbs, saying: “Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the waters as in a garment? Who has raised up all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is the name of his son, if you know?”

5. That impious king, seeing this Son of God in Daniel, said: “Behold, I see four men loose and walking in the midst of the fire, and there is no harm in them, and the appearance of the fourth is like the Son of God”—whom we faithfully believe and in no way doubt is the Lord Savior. But it is objected that in Daniel this Son of God is also called an angel above. I agree. For Christ the Son of God is also called an angel. For thus the prophet says concerning him: “The Lord whom you seek will come to his holy temple, and the angel of the Testament whom you desire.”

6. For Christ, in that he was begotten by the Father, is called the Son of God; but in that he is often read as having been sent by the Father to announce to the fathers, he is called an angel. Concerning whom the Father himself also testifies to the lawgiver thus, saying: “Behold, I send my angel who shall go before and guard you in the way, and bring you into the place which I have prepared; observe him and hear his voice, and do not think him contemptible, because he will not forgive when you have sinned, and my name is in him.”

7. For he is the Son who, always sent by the Father, appeared visibly to men. Therefore from this very sending he is rightly called an angel. But Isaiah, more openly confirming the Son begotten by God, thus announces: “The voice of the Lord rendering retribution to his enemies,” namely to those who do not believe, the Jews: “Before she was in labor, she gave birth; and before her delivery came, she brought forth a male child.”

8. As if he were saying openly: Before the Virgin gave birth to Christ in the flesh, the Father begot his son in divinity, and before the time of the Virgin’s delivery came, the Father begot him outside of time. Whence below he says: “Who has ever heard such a thing? Or who has seen the like of this?” Truly, because nothing like this has happened among men, or anything similar. And after these things he adds: “Shall I who make others give birth not myself give birth? says the Lord; and I who give generation to others, shall I be sterile? says the Lord.” By all these testimonies the unbeliever is compelled to choose one of two things: either to believe Christ is the Son of God, or to think the prophets who sang these things are liars.

CHAPTER II: That Christ Before the Ages Was Ineffably Begotten by the Father

1. But if it is asked when or how the Father begot the Son, the answer is: Why is time sought when the Son of God was begotten, since by his nativity he is eternal? Just as it is written concerning him: “His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity.” And again: “Before the sun his name remains, and before the moon his throne.”

2. But the Father also testifies that he begot the same one before the morning star, that is, before all times, which the Son of God himself, the Word, power and wisdom, confirms concerning his own nativity, saying: “The depths were not yet, and I was already conceived; the fountains of waters had not yet burst forth, the mountains had not yet been established with their heavy mass; before the hills I was brought forth; he had not yet made the earth, and the rivers, and the poles of the world: when he prepared the heavens, I was present; when with a certain law and circle he enclosed the abysses; when he weighed the foundations of the earth, I was with him, arranging all things.”

3. By such authority therefore it is declared that the Son was begotten by the Father before all ages, since all things are known to have been created by the Father through him. That question is again asked: how is he the same begotten, since the Apostle does not tell the sacred secrets of his nativity, nor has the prophet discovered them, nor has an angel known them, nor has a creature understood them, as Isaiah testifies, who says: “Who shall declare his generation?” Therefore, if his nativity could not be narrated by the prophet, who will profess to know how the Son could be generated by the Father?

4. Hence is that saying in the book of Job: “Wisdom (of God the Father) where will you find it? For it is hidden from the eyes of men, and concealed from the birds of heaven”—that is, it is unknown even to the angels themselves. Likewise there: “To whom has the root of wisdom been revealed?”—namely the origin of the Son of God. And therefore, what is even above the intelligence and knowledge of angels, what man can narrate?

5. But it is clearly manifest that only the Father knows how he begot the Son, and the Son how he was begotten by the Father. Indeed the manner of begetting the Son is sought, since the Son is not born except from two; however, let such a mode of generation have its origin in the perishable condition of mortals; for Christ shone forth from the Father just as splendor from light, as a word from the mouth, as wisdom from the heart.

CHAPTER III: That Christ Is God and Lord

1. After declaring the mystery of Christ’s divine nativity, let us next demonstrate with examples from the Holy Scriptures that he is God and Lord. If Christ is not God, to whom is it said in the Psalms: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the scepter of equity is the scepter of your kingdom; you have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions”?

2. Who then is this God anointed by God? Let the Jews answer us. Behold, God anointed by God is spoken of, and certainly Christ is shown by this very anointing, since God anointed is insinuated. For when you hear God anointed, understand Christ; for Christ is called from chrism, that is, from anointing. The Father testifies that this Christ under the person of Cyrus king of the Persians through Isaiah is God and Lord, saying: “Thus says the Lord to my Christ Cyrus, whose right hand I have taken hold of, to subdue nations before his face, and to turn the backs of kings, and to open doors before him, and gates shall not be shut. I will go before you and humble the glorious ones of the earth. I will break in pieces gates of brass and shatter bars of iron, and I will give you hidden treasures and secret riches, that you may know that I am the Lord who call your name, the God of Israel.”

3. For in the person of Cyrus, Christ is prophesied; where also nations were subjugated in faith, and kingdoms. Moreover, because no Cyrus is mentioned in the kingdom of Israel. But if anyone believes this was prophesied concerning Cyrus king of the Persians, let him know it is absurd and profane that an impious man dedicated to idolatry should be called Christ, and God, and Lord. Whence also in the translation of the Seventy it is not read “to my Christ Cyrus,” but “Thus says the Lord to my Christ the Lord.” Which is specifically received in the person of Christ our Lord.

4. If Christ is not God, let the Jews tell us whom God addressed in Genesis when he said: “Let us make man in our image and our likeness”? For thus it follows: “And God created man in his image; in the image of God he created him.” Therefore let them seek who the God was who created, or in the image of which God he made the man whom he created.

5. But if they respond: in the image of the angels—does an angel have an equal image with God, since the image of a creature differs greatly from him who created? Or could an angel make man with God? Which to think thus is of great madness. To whom therefore is it said? Or in whose image is man believed to have been made, except in his, to whom there is one image with God and one unique name of divinity?

6. Likewise, if Christ is not Lord, who rained fire on Sodom from the Lord? For thus it says in Genesis: “And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord.” In which sentence no one doubts there is a second person. For who is that Lord from the Lord, except the Lord from the Lord, undoubtedly the Son from the Father, who always descends and ascends, being sent from him? By which testimony both the deity and the distinction of the persons of the Father and the Son are demonstrated more clearly than light.

7. Likewise, if Christ is not Lord, concerning whom did David say in the psalm: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool”? Who, while the same Christ according to the flesh is the son of David, is nevertheless in spirit his Lord and God. If Christ is not Lord, concerning whom does David say in the books of Kings: “The man said, to whom it was established concerning the Christ of the God of Jacob, the excellent psalmist of Israel: The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me, and his word through my tongue”?

8. Likewise, if Christ is not Lord, who is that Lord of hosts who is sent by the Lord of hosts, as he himself says in Zechariah: “Thus says the Lord God of hosts: After glory he sent me to the nations who despoiled you. For he who touches you touches the pupil of his eye. Because behold, I will raise my hand over them, and they shall be prey to those who served them, and you shall know that the Lord of hosts sent me”?

9. See now whose voice this is, except the Savior’s, because almighty God testifies he was sent by the almighty Father. But he was sent to the nations after the glory of divinity which he had with the Father, when he emptied himself and, taking the form of a servant, became obedient unto death. Who also in what follows speaks, saying: “Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Zion, because behold I come, and I will dwell in the midst of you.”

CHAPTER IV: On the Significance of the Trinity

1. It is clear from the writings of the Old Testament that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are God. But these people do not consider the Son and the Holy Spirit to be God, because on Mount Sinai they heard the voice of God thundering: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God”—not knowing that in the Trinity there is one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not three gods, but in three persons one name of individual majesty.

2. Therefore let us seek this same Trinity in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. For in the second book of Kings it is thus written: “David the son of Jesse said. The man said, to whom it was established concerning the Christ of the God of Jacob, the excellent psalmist of Israel: The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me, and his word through my tongue.” But who he was, he added: “The God of Israel spoke to me, the strong one of Israel, the ruler of men, the just one.”

3. For by saying the Christ of the God of Jacob, he showed both the Son and the Father. Likewise by saying: “The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me,” he clearly revealed the Holy Spirit. The same also in the Psalms: “By the Word of the Lord,” he says, “the heavens were established, and all their power by the Spirit of his mouth.” In the person of the Father we receive the Father; in the Word we believe in the Son; in the Spirit of his mouth we understand the Holy Spirit. By which testimony both the number of the Trinity and the communion of cooperation is shown.

4. Thus also in what follows the same prophet says: “He shall send forth his word and melt them; his Spirit shall blow, and the waters shall flow.” Behold three: the Father who sends, and the Word which is sent, and his Spirit who blows. For when it is said in Genesis: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth, and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters,” there the Father is understood in the word God; the Son is recognized in the beginning, who says: “In the head of the book it is written of me, that I should do your will”; because God said, and God made; but in him who was borne over the waters, the Holy Spirit is signified.

5. For when God says there: “Let us make man in our image and our likeness,” through the plurality of persons there is a clear signification of the Trinity. Where nevertheless, to show the unity of the deity, he immediately warns, saying: “God made man in his image and his likeness.” And when the same God says: “Behold, Adam has become like one of us,” this very plurality of persons demonstrates the mystery of the Trinity.

6. The sacrament of this Trinity, Haggai the prophet thus revealed, saying from the person of the Lord: “My Spirit shall be in the midst of you.” Behold God who speaks, behold his Spirit; after these things concerning the third person, that is, concerning the Son, he thus added: “Because behold I will move heaven and earth, and the desired of all nations shall come.”

7. In Isaiah also the distinction of the Trinity is shown under the proper person of each, with the same Son saying thus: “I am the first, and I am the last; my hand also founded the earth, and my right hand measured the heavens. I have not spoken from the beginning in a hidden place; from the time before it was made, I was there;” and consequently he added: “And now the Lord God has sent me, and his Spirit.” Behold two persons, the Lord and his Spirit, who send, and the third person of the same Lord, who is sent.

8. Likewise elsewhere through the same prophet the significance of the Trinity is thus demonstrated. “Behold,” he says, “my servant, I will uphold him; my beloved, my soul is well pleased in him; I have put my Spirit upon him.” The Father calls his beloved Son a servant, upon whom he has put his Spirit. Concerning whom the Lord Jesus Christ testifies in his own voice: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

9. Still again the same Isaiah, comprehending the whole Trinity in the number of fingers, thus proclaims, saying: “Who has measured the waters in his fist, and weighed the heavens with his palm? Who has weighed the mass of the earth with three fingers?” For in three fingers the prophet weighed the threefold equality of divine omnipotence under a certain balance of mystery, and from the equality of power he declared the cooperation of power and the unity of substance, which is one and the same in the Trinity, in three fingers.

10. The same prophet elsewhere testifies that he knew the mystery of this Trinity, saying: “I saw the Lord sitting upon a high throne; the Seraphim stood above him, one had six wings and the other had six wings; with two they covered his face, and with two they covered his feet, and with two they flew.” And to show him as threefold in persons and one in divinity, he follows on saying: “And they cried one to another and said: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

11. Behold the heavenly army resounds with threefold sanctification under one confession: the Seraphim proclaim the one glory of the Trinity with threefold repetition. For what does “Holy three times” indicate, except that the glory of the same threefold Omnipotence is demonstrated in the deity of three persons in signification? Not however, just as there are three persons, so also three gods are to be believed, but one divinity is to be proclaimed in those three persons according to the sentence of Moses saying: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God.” And again: “I am God, and besides me there is no other.”

12. But against these things the pernicious perfidy of the Jews objects, saying: If the Father is God, and the Son is God, therefore there are two gods and not one God. Therefore let them hear for me Isaiah, saying that both persons are one God: “You are God, and in you is God.” For in that he says: “You are God,” he shows the Father; but in that he added: “In you is God,” he declared the Son.

13. But nevertheless, to show that the same Father and Son are one God, he added: “There is no God besides you; truly you are a hidden God, the God of Israel.” Elsewhere also the united name of the Father and the Son is proved, with the Father himself testifying thus to Moses the lawgiver: “Take heed, and be not disobedient to him; for my name is in him.”

CHAPTER V: That the Son of God Became Man

1. Thus far we have shown the mystery of the heavenly nativity in Christ and the significance of the divine Trinity. Henceforth let us demonstrate by the authority of Scripture that the same Son of God was born in the flesh, showing first that the same Son of God for our salvation was incarnated and became man. For thus Isaiah prophesies concerning him: “A child,” he says, “is born to us, and a son is given to us, and his government is upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Father of the future age, Prince of Peace; his empire shall be multiplied, and of his peace there shall be no end.”

2. For Christ is a child because he is man; and he is born to us, not to himself; for what he became man profited us, and therefore he is born to us. “And a son is given to us”—whose, except God’s Son? “His government is upon his shoulder”—either because he himself carried the cross on his own shoulders, or because Pilate wrote the title of the kingdom above his shoulders and head.

3. Let therefore the impious Jews blush, and acknowledge that Christ is called the Son of the living God born, and through the assumption of a body made a child, concerning whom David says: “You have made him a little lower than the angels,” because, though he was in the form of God, he did not consider it robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. To whom, when the Father in the Psalms said concerning that eternal nativity: “From the womb before the morning star I begot you,” again showing his future nativity in the flesh, he added, saying: “And as dew from the womb shall come forth to you the dew of your youth.”

4. The Holy Spirit in the Psalms thus foretold this incarnation of the Son of God, saying: “But to Zion it shall be said: A man and a man was born in her, and the Most High himself founded her.” Behold he who is born in Zion and who was made most lowly in that very city, he himself is the Most High who founded her; and because he is the same Lord, it follows: “The Lord shall count, writing to the peoples, this one was born there.” Who is this one? A man indeed, and the Most High, and the Lord. A man, because he became man. The Most High, because heaven and angels receive him above themselves. The Lord, because all creatures of heaven and earth serve him.

5. But as often as the enemies of Christ hear all this prophecy of his nativity, being concluded, since they have nothing to propose, they argue, saying that Christ has not yet come, concerning whom all these things the foreseeing mouths of the prophets sang. Therefore let us seek the time of Christ’s nativity, whether it has already come or is still to be awaited. In Daniel therefore the time of his coming is most certainly shown, and the years are numbered, and manifest signs of him are pronounced, and after his coming and death the future destructions of the Jews are there most certainly manifested.

6. For thus the angel says to him: “Daniel, understand the word and perceive the vision. Seventy weeks are shortened upon your people and upon your holy city, that transgression may be finished, and sin may receive an end, and iniquity may be blotted out, and everlasting justice may be brought, and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled, and the Holy of Holies may be anointed.” Which seventy weeks, if they are counted from the time of Daniel, without doubt the Holy of Holies, the Lord Jesus Christ, is known to have come long ago.

7. For a week in sacred eloquence is terminated by seven years, as the Lord says to Moses: “You shall count seven weeks of years for yourself,” that is, seven times seven, which together make forty-nine years. Similarly seventy times seven make four hundred and ninety. Therefore it should be believed that there were that many years from Daniel until Christ. From the time therefore of the prophet Daniel until the present time more than one hundred and forty weeks are counted. And therefore Christ has already come, whom the prophetic word announced.

8. For after seventy weeks Christ is shown both born and having suffered, and the city of Jerusalem is shown to have been destroyed, and sacrifice and anointing to have ceased. For thus the same prophet added: “And Christ shall be slain, and the people with their leader who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and his end shall be desolation, and after the end of the war appointed desolation.” Therefore after the passion of Christ, Titus came and conquered the Jews, and destroyed the city and the temple, and libations and sacrifices ceased. Which could no longer be celebrated there. So that what had been foretold by the prophet might be fulfilled.

9. But, O hardness of the Jewish heart! Because they themselves killed Christ, they still do not believe that he has come. We have proved that our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh has already been born. But the unbelieving heart adds: In what flesh did he come? Hear therefore the reason. When God had made man, endowed with supreme blessedness and adorned with the beauty of the divine image, he placed him in paradise, that he might be subject to God and preferred above other creatures.

10. But he, having become rebellious, despising the divinity, violated the forbidden commandment; whom, cast out because of pride, God did not kill, but made an exile from paradise, waiting that through penance he might be restored to pardon; and when he was not recalled to the way of virtue, God gave the law through Moses, that at least through it he might return to the love of God and the work of justice. But when he, obstinate and unbelieving, did not keep even this, at last the Son of God came and assumed a human body, that while he was seen, he might be believed; and the world, abandoning the images of demons, might be reconciled to the grace of the Creator.

11. This is the cause of Christ’s nativity, whom the Jews, even if they suffer him to have been born, are nevertheless scandalized that he was crucified and died: not understanding that just as it befitted him to be born for the redemption of the world, so also it was necessary for him to suffer, whose passion and death we shall prove by the testimonies of Scripture in its place. But now let us follow the due order, and since the human nativity after the glory of deity has been demonstrated, let the race and country be demonstrated, beginning first to speak of his name.

CHAPTER VI: On the Name Jesus

1. For the first appellation of the name Jesus is found prefigured in the Lord our Jesus Christ. For a certain Hosea, who was called the son of Nun, is surnamed Jesus by Moses. He, after the death of Moses, made leader, obtained the principality and distributed the land of promise by inheritance. What did the change of name signify, except that with Moses dead, that is, with the law dead and the legal precept ceasing, the Lord Jesus Christ was to be our leader, who would lead us through the streams of Jordan, that is, through the grace of baptism sanctified, and with all kinds of vices expelled, or the enemies of evil angels put to flight, would bring us to the land of the heavenly promise flowing with honey and milk, that is, to the possession of eternal life, than which nothing is sweeter?

2. For therefore that man received the image of this sacrament, that he might be named Jesus, to signify that true Jesus, concerning whom it is written in the Psalms: “Come, let us exult to the Lord, let us jubilate to God our Savior,” that is, to Jesus our Father. Where it is shown that Jesus is Lord and God, concerning whom also elsewhere in the Psalms: “Because the Lord is pleased in his people, and he will exalt the meek in Jesus.” For these things are thus in Hebrew. Concerning whom Habakkuk proclaims more openly, saying: “I will rejoice in the Lord, and exult in God my Jesus.”

CHAPTER VII: That Christ According to the Flesh Came from the Seed of Abraham

1. That the Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh was to be from the seed of Abraham, Genesis shows, with Abraham saying to his servant: “Put your hand under my thigh, and swear by the God of heaven.” By which word he testified that Christ, the God of heaven, was to come in the flesh from his race. For by the thigh, race is understood; for it was signified that from the seed of Abraham the God of heaven would come in the flesh: concerning which seed a promise had been made to him by the Lord through Isaac. “In your seed,” he says, “all nations shall be blessed,” that is, in Christ, concerning whom the Psalmist says: “And in him all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed, all nations shall magnify him.”

2. Concerning this seed, and through the same Isaiah, the voice of the Lord speaks: “I will bring forth,” he says, “a seed from Jacob, and from Judah those possessing my mountains.” Concerning whom elsewhere the same prophet: “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a seed, we would have been like Sodom, and made similar to Gomorrah.”

CHAPTER VIII: That Christ Arose from the Tribe of Judah

1. And because Christ according to the flesh was to be awaited from the tribe of Judah, Jacob the patriarch signifies, saying: “The prince shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes who is to be sent. And he shall be the expectation of the nations.” For it is certain that princes of the Jewish people from the race of Judah did not fail, nor leaders from his thighs, until Herod the foreign king, who had crept into power through ambition of the kingdom.

2. For as soon as this happened and the leader from the seed of Judah failed, there came he who was to be sent, whom the nations and peoples awaited. But the Jews, with the obstinacy of a shameless forehead, say that this has not yet been fulfilled, lying about some king from the race of Judah holding a kingdom in the farthest parts of the East.

3. Nor do they notice, blind in mind, that the deception of their simulation is detected, because now, just as there is no temple, no altar, no sacrifice, so no king, no priest remains for the Jews; for the prophet Hosea cannot be a liar, who says: “The children of Israel shall sit without a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice, without an altar, without a priesthood, without manifestations.” All of which who does not see are now fulfilled in them?

CHAPTER IX: That Christ Was Born from the Stock of David

1. Behold, from which tribe Christ is to be born we are taught. But that he was to be from the stock of David according to the flesh was thus foretold through the Holy Spirit in the Psalms: “The Lord has sworn truth to David, and he will not frustrate him: Of the fruit of your womb I will place upon your throne.” And again: “Once I have sworn in my holy one, if I lie to David, his seed shall remain forever, and his throne like the sun in my sight, and like the perfect moon forever, and a faithful witness in heaven.”

2. Likewise in the book of Chronicles: “And the word of the Lord came to Nathan, saying: Go and say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord: I announce to you that the Lord will build a house for you, and when you shall have fulfilled your days to go to your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, who shall be from your sons, and I will establish his kingdom, he shall build me a house, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be to him as a father, and he shall be to me as a son, and I will not take my mercy from him, as I took it from him who was before you, and I will establish him in my house and in my kingdom forever: and his throne shall be most firm in perpetuity.”

3. All these things, whoever thinks were fulfilled in Solomon, seems to err greatly. For how is it to be understood in Solomon what was said: “After you shall sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, who shall be from your sons, and I will establish his kingdom”? Is it believed to have been prophesied concerning that Solomon? By no means. For he began to reign while his father was still living. For here it is said that when the days of your life are completed, and you shall sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your seed. From which it is understood that another was promised, who was pronounced to be raised up not before David’s death, but after his death.

4. Who would build the house of the Lord, not from manufactured walls, but from living and precious stones, that is, from holy and faithful ones. For even that which he added: “His house shall be faithful, and his kingdom forever before me,” let anyone observe and see that it was not pronounced concerning Solomon. For Solomon’s house was full of foreign women worshiping idols, and the king himself was seduced by them to idolatry and cast down, though he had been good in the beginning, he had bad endings.

5. Therefore who is this one whose house is faithful in perpetuity, and who is promised to be raised up after David’s death? He is certainly the one concerning whom David himself, burning with desire, cries out, saying in the eighty-eighth Psalm: “But you have rejected your Christ.” Therefore it is not that Solomon, nor is it this David who is the delayed Christ. Behold, the promises foretold appear not in Solomon, but in Christ our Lord, who arose from the race of David, to have been completed.

6. Concerning whom through Jeremiah the Lord himself says: “Behold, the days come, says the Lord, and I will raise up to David a just branch, and a king shall reign and be wise, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In those days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell confidently, and this is the name by which they shall call him: The Lord our Justice.”

7. This is he who is promised through Nathan from the seed of David, who also through Isaiah the prophet thus proclaims: “There shall come forth,” he says, “a rod from the root of Jesse, and a flower from his root shall ascend.” This rod from the root of Jesse is the Virgin Mary, arising from the root of David, who bore the flower, the Lord Savior, concerning whom it also follows: “And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and he shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord.”

8. But so many gifts of the Spirit are proclaimed over him because in him the Holy Spirit does not dwell by measure, as in us, but the whole fullness of divinity and graces is in him. This is he who judges not according to the vision of the eyes and the hearing of the ears, but justice is the girdle of his loins, and faith the belt of his reins. In whose Church the wolf dwells with the lamb: he who used to snatch prey from it, when he is converted to it, dwells with the innocent.

9. In whose sheepfold the leopard lies down with the kid, the subtle mixed with the simple, there also the calf from circumcision, the lion from the power of the world, the sheep from the common order, dwell together, because in faith the condition of all is common. But the little child threatening them is certainly he who humbled himself for us, as a little child. But the ox and the lion there eat straw, because princes with subject peoples have a common doctrine.

10. The infant also delights from the breast over the holes of the asp, while the nations, who once used to preach poisons, even converted children of Christ delight to hear the faith. But the den of the basilisk is the hearts of the unfaithful, in which that tortuous serpent rested, whom the weaned one seized captive from there, so that in his holy mountain, which is the Church, he might not harm.

11. Still the same Isaiah, after he digested the humility which Christ bore in the flesh, again thus prophesied the praise of the Church of the nations, for which he bore such things, and at the same time that it might be one throughout the whole world, thus revealing by prophesying, saying: “Praise, O barren one, who do not bear, break forth into praise and cry out, you who do not travail: for now many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who had a husband, says the Lord: Enlarge the place of your tent, and stretch out the skins of your tabernacles, do not spare; make your cords long, and strengthen your stakes. For you shall penetrate to the right and to the left, and your seed shall inherit the nations, and shall inhabit the deserted cities.”

12. This place in Hebrew thus reads: “And his rest shall be glorious.” Certainly because dying his flesh did not see corruption according to the sentence of the Psalm: “Because you will not leave my soul in hell, nor will you give your holy one to see corruption.” Now truly because a witness is given by the mouth of a prophet to Christ being born from Moab, the same Isaiah testifies: “For I will place upon those who flee from Moab a lion, and upon the remnants of the earth. Send forth the lamb, O Lord, the ruler of the earth from the rock of the desert to the mountain of the daughter of Zion.”

13. For from this race of the Moabites came forth the spotless Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, who rules over the whole earth. But the rock of the desert signifies Ruth, who, destitute by the death of her husband, from Boaz begot Obed, and from Obed Jesse, and from Jesse David, and from the stock of David Christ. But the mountain of the daughter of Zion either historically means that very city of Jerusalem, or according to tropology the Church placed in the watchtower, that is, in the sublimity of virtues.

CHAPTER X: That Christ Was Begotten from a Virgin Without Male Coitus

1. Thus far we have touched upon the faith of the Old Testament concerning the name, nation, and race of our Lord Jesus Christ: henceforth let us show his generation according to the flesh from a Virgin. For Isaiah, filled with the Holy Spirit, thus foretells the sacrament of the future incarnation of the Son of God; for thus he says: “And the Lord added to speak to Ahaz, saying: Ask for yourself a sign from the Lord your God in the depth of hell or in the height above.” And he added: “Hear therefore, O house of David,” that is, the race of David.

2. For well did he speak to the house of David, that is, to the royal stock, from which stock Mary descended, and he added: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel,” which is interpreted “God with us.” Because therefore he whom the Virgin conceived in her womb and bore is called “God with us,” God therefore is known to have been conceived and born in the womb of a virgin. Let therefore the unbelieving Jews blush, and submit their necks to the grace of Christ.

3. Behold, he whom the Virgin bore is called “God with us.” In which place the Jews argue that in Hebrew it does not show a virgin, but a young woman who bears. Against whom it is answered: It is not a sign if a young woman bears, which is of age. But this is a sign for the newness of the thing, if a Virgin bears, which is of integrity. For when he says: “The Lord will give you a sign,” he insinuates a certain remarkable miracle, namely that a virgin will bear, which would certainly not be a sign unless it were new. For it was fitting that Christ, because of the remarkable miracle, according to the flesh should be born from a virgin.

4. It follows concerning him: “He shall eat butter and honey.” Butter is the fruit of the Church coming from the circumcision, as an ox under the yoke, that is, placed under the law; but honey is of the Church coming from the nations, by whose sweetness and sweetness of work and faith Christ is fed. It follows, and says: “And before the child knows to call father or mother.” For what he said “before he knows,” that is, before by divinity he makes known that he has God as father and by the assumption of flesh a virgin as mother, according to that which is written in Genesis, with the Lord saying to Abraham: “Now I know that you fear God,” that is, now I have made you know. For far be it that there should be ignorance in God, that he should then know what he did not know before.

5. Of how great power the same Emmanuel is, the aforementioned prophet frequently announces, saying: “And the extension of his wings shall be, filling the breadth of the earth, O Emmanuel”; whom because we believe to have been born from a virgin, let us hear the Father speaking in the Psalms. For when the Prophet had said concerning Christ: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand,” immediately the voice of the Father followed, saying to the Son: “Before the morning star I begot you, and as dew from the womb shall come forth to you the dew of your youth. The Lord has sworn and will not repent: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. The Lord at your right hand has crushed kings in the day of his wrath.” And again: “Where glory dwells,” he says, “in our land, mercy and truth have met, justice and peace have kissed. Truth has sprung from the earth, and justice has looked down from heaven.”

6. What is the truth sprung from the earth, except Christ born from a woman, the Son of God proceeding from flesh? For flesh is earth; for when Christ was born, justice looked down from heaven. For justification would not be given from heaven unless Christ were born in the flesh, and to show that this very truth sprung from the earth was man, he consequently added: “Justice shall go before him, and shall place his steps in the way.” Likewise the same David: “The earth,” he says, “shall give its fruit.” The earth, Mary, gave its fruit Christ; but who is this fruit? “May God bless us, our God, may God bless us.”

7. This fruit of the earth the aforementioned prophet Isaiah more clearly announces elsewhere, saying: “Drop down dew, you heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just one; let the earth be opened and sprout forth a Savior, and let justice spring up together; I the Lord have created him.” The heavens themselves who are also the clouds, that is, the prophets, through whom Christ was prophesied as coming; the earth is Mary, who, opened by faith, not by corruption, bore the Savior, because the Lord alone created him, not the mixture of virile seed.

8. Therefore Isaiah says: “Who shall declare his generation?” For no man was conscious of the nativity of Christ in conception: for by the word of God alone the virgin appeared pregnant. Which Daniel the prophet had also figuratively foretold, saying: “I saw a stone cut from the mountain without the hands of cutters, and when it came to the earth, it filled the whole world”: this stone is Christ cut without hands, filling all the earth, because his kingdom is in all nations.

9. Concerning which stone through Isaiah God speaks: “Behold, I place in the foundations of Zion a precious stone, elect, a cornerstone, and he who believes in him shall not be confounded.” For Daniel saw this one cut from the mountain, that is, from the Jewish people, without hands, that is, without virile operation, born from Mary, a virgin, whom without doubt we believe to have been a virgin before childbirth, and to have remained a virgin after childbirth, as the prophet Ezekiel testifies: “He turned me to the way of the gate of the outer sanctuary, which looked toward the East, and it was shut. And the Lord said to me: This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it, because the Lord God has entered through it, and it shall be shut.”

10. By which testimony he confesses that holy Mary both conceived as a virgin and remained a virgin. For the female genitals, because they open the barriers of birth, are called gates, as Job says: “Because it did not shut the gates of the womb that bore me.” For our Lord Jesus Christ, miraculously and powerfully born, came forth from his chamber like a bridegroom, that is, from the Virgin’s womb, after whose birth we profess that no one came together with Mary, nor was anyone begotten from her womb.

CHAPTER XI: That Christ Was Born in Bethlehem

1. We have foretold the nativity of the Lord from the Virgin; let us also show the place of his origin. For he was born in Bethlehem, to which it is said through Micah the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephratah, are you small among the thousands of Judah? From you shall come forth to me he who is to be ruler in Israel, and his going forth is from the days of eternity. Therefore he will give them up until the time when she who travails shall bring forth.”

2. And thus after he foretold the place of his origin, then he added his future kingdom in the whole world, saying: “He shall stand and see, and shall feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, and they shall be in the honor of the name of his God, because now he shall be magnified unto the ends of the earth, and this one shall be peace.”

3. Concerning this place of Christ’s nativity, Habakkuk the prophet also thus says: “God shall come from the South.” For Bethlehem is a region where Christ was born, looking toward the southern region from Jerusalem. Rightly therefore he is written to have come from the South, because he was foreseen to be coming from Bethlehem.

CHAPTER XII: That the Nativity of Christ Was Shown by the Sign of a Star

1. Because his nativity shone forth by the sign of a star, in Numbers that divine Balaam thus sang, saying: “A star shall rise from Jacob, and a man shall arise from Israel.” For the Magi coming from the parts of the East first announced the nativity of Christ with a star as guide, namely, that they might demonstrate by observing the star him whom the prince of their art had foretold long ago.

CHAPTER XIII: That the Magi Offered Gifts

1. Because the Magi offered gifts to him, the prophets also narrate this to us; for thus Isaiah says: “In that time a gift shall be brought to the Lord of hosts from a people torn and rent, from a terrible people, after whom there was no other.” But the prophet says this concerning the most robust race of the Persians, to whose power at that time no people was compared, from whom the Magi coming brought gifts to Christ.

2. And again the same: “All,” he says, “from Sheba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense, and proclaiming praise to the Lord.” Concerning these gifts David also prophesied, saying: “And there shall be given to him of the gold of Arabia.” And again: “The kings of Tharshish and the islands shall offer gifts; the kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring presents.” For the East also had the Magi as kings.

CHAPTER XIV: That He Was Anointed by God the Father

1. And because Christ was not anointed with this human oil, like the other kings and priests of the Hebrews, but was anointed by the paternal Spirit, Isaiah thus sang from the person of the same Christ, saying: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for which reason he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind.”

2. Similarly also the Psalmographer, divinely inspired by the Spirit, thus speaks to the same Christ, saying: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the scepter of equity is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.” In which sentence first the prophet demonstrates the divinity and perpetuity of Christ.

3. Consequently through the scepter of equity he announces the scepter of his power and kingdom. Finally that the same God was anointed by God, he indicates, not indeed with common oil, like his other participants, that is, princes who had preceded in image, but with the oil of gladness, by which is mystically demonstrated the Holy Spirit, by whose heavenly infusion and power Christ was consecrated.

CHAPTER XV: That He Came Poor and Lowly in His First Advent

1. Because he came poor and lowly in his first advent, holy Isaiah thus indicates, saying: “Say to the daughter of Zion: Behold, your king comes to you, just and a savior, poor, sitting upon an unbroken ass.” Likewise in the same from the person of God the Father: “Behold, my servant shall understand, he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high; as many were astonished at you, so inglorious shall be his appearance among men, and his form among the sons of men.”

2. “He shall sprinkle many nations; concerning him kings shall shut their mouth, because to those to whom it has not been announced concerning him, they shall see, and those who have not heard shall contemplate. Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? And he shall ascend like a tender plant before him, and like a root from thirsty earth. There is no beauty to him nor comeliness, and we saw him, and there was no appearance, and we desired him, despised and the lowest of men; a man of sorrows and knowing how to bear infirmity, and as if his face were hidden, and despised, so that we did not even regard him.”

3. “Truly he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and we thought him as a leper, and struck by God and humbled. But he was humbled for our iniquities and wounded for our crimes. The discipline of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray.”

4. “Each one has turned aside to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was offered because he himself willed it, and he opened not his mouth; like a sheep to the slaughter he shall be led, and like a lamb before its shearer shall be dumb and shall not open his mouth. From distress and from judgment he was taken away; who shall declare his generation? Because he was cut off from the land of the living; for the crime of my people I struck him, and he shall give the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death, because he did no iniquity, nor was there deceit in his mouth, and the Lord willed to crush him in infirmity; if he shall offer his soul for sin, he shall see long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be directed in his hand.”

5. “For that which his soul labored, he shall see and be satisfied; in his knowledge my just servant shall justify many, and he himself shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide to him many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong, because he delivered his soul to death, and was reckoned among the wicked, and he bore the sins of many, and prayed for transgressors.”

6. In which reading not only that Christ appeared lowly is shown, but also there his heavenly generation is expressed, and also the infirmity of the assumed flesh is manifested, and also the contempt of his passion, the cross, death, burial are shown there, and that being innocent he is condemned, and being silent he there suffers.

7. For God, assuming the form of a poor man in the flesh, deigned to humble himself, and for our sake, that salvation might be restored to the lost, was made obedient even unto death, which elsewhere the same Isaiah foretold: “He shall not cry out, nor shall anyone hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed he shall not break, and smoking flax he shall not extinguish; but in truth he shall bring forth judgment, until he places judgment on the earth, and in his name the nations shall hope.”

8. And Jeremiah, that God would come in lowly and humble flesh, thus foretold: “Lord, do it for your name’s sake, because our aversions are many. We have sinned against you, O expectation of Israel, his savior in time of tribulation. Why will you be as a farmer about to be in the earth? And as a traveler turning aside to lodge? Why will you be as a vagrant man and a strong one who cannot save? But you are in us, O Lord, and your name is called upon us; do not forsake us.”

9. For when he says “we have sinned against you,” he expresses the person of the Jews, who sinned against God when they crucified him coming in the form of man; he offered himself to the appearances of men like a vagrant man and a sojourner; but they, thinking this only to be what appeared, killed a man, as one who could not save.

CHAPTER XVI: That He Performed Signs and Miracles

1. The kinds and miracles of cures were also prescribed so long beforehand through Isaiah the prophet, saying: “Behold, our God will himself come and save us. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear. Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb shall be clear.” And again: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for which reason he has anointed me; he has sent me to announce good news to the meek, to heal the contrite in heart, to proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind.”

2. All these signs of healing were done at the coming of Christ. For as soon as he was born, with a star going before, the Magi adored him and offered gifts. Then his coming manifested various miracles. For to the blind, that they might know God, the darkness of deep night is wiped away. To the dead the grace of renewed light is restored, that souls might be vivified.

3. The deaf, that they might receive the hearing of faith, began to hear. The lame, that they might run to God, are invigorated with eager gait. The mute, that they might confess God, cried out with clear voices. Lepers, for abolishing the contagions of the soul, laid aside their squalid members; for by the effect of his majesty he did many things which are to be passed over, since all things are read.

4. For by the virtue of his excellence he walked with hanging steps upon the swelling waves of the sea, and by his command mitigated the storms of the great sea. Now truly at the death of his passion even the elements trembled, while the sun fled, while the earth was shaken, and the rocks, striking themselves, were dissolved, indeed even death itself could not hold him.

5. For rising on the third day, he flew to the paternal throne, and is led back from the earth to heaven by the services of angels. Many other things similar to these were done by his omnipotence. But the unbeliever says that the prophets also performed many miracles. This is true; but none of them died and rose again and ascended into heaven.

CHAPTER XVII: That He Was to Be Seen in Body

1. That the same God was to be seen in body by men, he testifies through Isaiah, saying: “Therefore my people shall know my name in that day, because I myself who spoke, behold I am present.” And David: “They shall go from strength to strength, and the God of gods shall be seen in Zion.” And again: “Your goings have been seen, O God, the goings of my God, the king”—certainly by those to whom he came into the world, and by whom again he ascended into heaven, for then the approach of his coming was manifested and revealed, whom the Jews, if they had known, would never have crucified the Lord of glory.

2. Concerning whose bodily appearance the aforementioned Isaiah thus announced: “Inglorious,” he says, “shall be his appearance among men, and his form among the sons of men, to whom it has not been announced concerning him, they shall see, and those who have not heard shall contemplate.” And Jeremiah, in the book of Baruch: “This is our God, and no other shall be esteemed compared to him, who found all the way of prudence and showed it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved. After these things he was seen on earth and conversed with men.”

3. And Habakkuk: “Lord,” he says, “I have heard your report and was afraid; I considered your works and was terrified; in the midst of two animals you shall be known; when the years draw near, you shall be made known; when the time comes, you shall be shown.” Likewise the same: “The nations shall see you and grieve,” the peoples, that is, the Jews.

4. Indeed the aforementioned Isaiah also sang thus concerning him: “For Zion I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem I will not rest, until her just one goes forth like splendor, and her Savior like a lamp is kindled, and the nations shall see your just one, and all kings your renowned one.” And again: “The voice of your watchmen they have raised their voice, together they shall praise, because eye to eye they shall see.” And below: “The Lord has prepared his holy arm in the sight of all nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”

CHAPTER XVIII: That the Jews Were Not Going to Recognize Him

1. And because the Jews were not going to recognize him, thus Jeremiah foretold from the person of the Lord: “With prevarication the house of Israel and the house of Judah have prevaricated against me, says the Lord; they have denied me and said: He is not the one.” This even now the Jews say concerning Christ: “He is not the one,” awaiting another, who is the Antichrist.

2. And Isaiah: “There is no beauty to him nor comeliness, and we saw him, and there was no appearance, and we desired him, despised and the lowest of men, a man of sorrows, knowing how to bear infirmity, and as if his face were hidden, and despised. So that we did not even regard him.” By which words he signifies the unbelief of the Jews, to whom Christ appeared to have no beauty nor comeliness, whence he was not regarded as God.

CHAPTER XIX: That the Jews, Assembled Against Him, Did Not Recognize Him

1. But because the Jews, not recognizing him, assembled to kill him, and gave universal assent in his passion, thus it is read: “Why did the nations rage, that is, the Romans, and the peoples, that is, the Jews, meditate vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, that is, Herod and Pilate, and the princes came together in one,” namely the chief priests and elders of the Jews, “against the Lord and against his Christ.”

2. “Many dogs,” he says, “have surrounded me, the council of the malignant has besieged me.” For the name of dogs was also established on them by another prophet. For in Isaiah it is written: “All blind dogs, not knowing how to bark.” For the custom of dogs is, as our Hilary says, to fawn on the shepherd, to know the flock, to pursue the wild beasts lying in wait. But truly these blind dogs, not seeing their shepherd, not understanding their duty, turned their barking from the wild beasts to the flock, from thieves to the Lord. Whence also another prophet thus says concerning them: “They have become to me a reciprocal arrow.”

CHAPTER XX: That He Was Sold for Thirty Pieces of Silver

1. That he was appraised and sold for thirty pieces of silver, the Lord himself thus foretold through Zechariah: “If it is good in your sight, give my wage, and they weighed my wage, thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me: Cast it to the potter, the noble price at which I was valued by them.”

2. For this cause is known to all. For Judas, moved by repentance, brought back the money and threw it into the temple, and went away and hanged himself with a noose. So that what Isaiah had said might be fulfilled: “A false witness shall not go unpunished,” because he sold the Just One for silver.

3. Which money the Lord well called his wage; for he had done many works among them, giving life to the dead, light to the blind, hearing to the deaf, gait to the lame; for all of which the Jews with wicked estimation restored death as the wage of thirty pieces of silver to him.

CHAPTER XXI: That He Was Betrayed by His Own Disciple

1. For because the Lord showed his betrayer to the apostles through the extended bread, he also commemorated in the Psalms as fulfilled in himself, saying: “He who ate my bread has magnified deception against me.” And again: “But you, a man of my accord, my leader and my acquaintance, who together with me took sweet foods.”

2. But concerning Judas the traitor himself, Jeremiah, foreknowing, thus foretold: “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron on an adamantine nail”—which applies not inappropriately either to Judas or to the Jews, who so sinned against Christ that their sin is not written with ink, which can perhaps be erased, but engraved with an iron pen on an adamantine nail, that is, which cannot be erased because of the hardness of their heart, unless they believe.

CHAPTER XXII: That He Delivered Himself Willingly for Us

1. For because he himself willingly delivered himself for us, Isaiah says: “He was offered because he himself willed it.” And below: “Because he delivered his soul to death, he shall see long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be directed in his hand.” And he himself through Jeremiah the prophet thus speaks: “I have left my house, I have dismissed my inheritance, I have given my beloved soul into the hands of its enemies,” that is, into the hands of the Jews who killed him.

CHAPTER XXIII: That He Was Seized

1. That he was to be seized, Jeremiah the prophet long before thus foretold: “The Spirit of our mouth, Christ the Lord, was captured in our sins.” By which prophecy he demonstrated openly both that Christ is Lord and that he was handed over for our sins.

2. Likewise the book of Wisdom says: “The impious said among themselves: Let us seize the Just One, because he is useless to us and contrary to our works; he promises knowledge of God and calls himself the Son of God.” And below: “If he is the true Son of God, he will receive him and deliver him from the hand of adversaries.” And below: “That we may know his reverence and prove his patience, let us condemn him with a most shameful death,” that is, by the affixing of the cross.

CHAPTER XXIV: That He Was Judged

1. That he was to be judged, David cries out under the figure of the people sinning against God: “Against you alone have I sinned, and done evil before you, that you may be justified in your words and may overcome when you are judged.” For Christ coming in body, as if he constituted himself guilty, and the judge of men offered himself to be judged by men, and thus meek and patient, when he was judged, he overcame, because the persecuting people found nothing in him worthy of being judged.

2. Whence also the prophet, announcing the coming of his judgment, thus threatens against the same people, saying: “Hear what the Lord speaks: Arise and contend in judgment against the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Let the mountains hear the judgment of the Lord, and the strong foundations of the earth, because the Lord’s judgment is with his people, and with Israel he shall be judged, saying: My people, what have I done to you? Or how have I been troublesome to you? Answer me, because I led you out of the land of Egypt, and freed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before your face Moses and Aaron and Miriam.” Where he shows the benefits of the Lord provided for his people, and against these their evils against him. And what according to these is to come to the same people, then he adds: “Hear, O tribes, who shall approve it? Still there is fire in the house of the wicked, treasures of iniquity.”

CHAPTER XXV: That in His Passion He Was Deserted by His Disciples

1. That in his passion he was to be abandoned by his disciples, through David the prophet the same Lord speaks: “All my friends have forgotten me; you have made my acquaintances far from me.” And Zechariah: “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.” Then the disciples fled.

CHAPTER XXVI: That He Was Accused by False Witnesses

1. That he was to be accused by false witnesses, through Hosea the prophet the same Lord thus says: “Woe,” he says, “to them, because they have departed from me; they shall be laid waste because they have prevaricated against me. I redeemed them, and they have spoken lies against me; and I taught them and strengthened their arms, and they have devised evil against me; they returned that they might be without a yoke; they have become like a deceitful bow, their God has rejected them because they did not hear him, and they shall be wanderers among the nations.”

2. And Zechariah: “Your words have prevailed against me, says the Lord, and you said: What have we spoken against you?” And in the Psalms he says: “Unjust witnesses have risen up against me, and iniquity has lied to itself.” And Isaiah concerning Judah says: “A false witness shall not go unpunished, because he sold the Just One for silver.”

CHAPTER XXVII: That the Jews Cried Out That He Should Be Crucified

1. That they cried out to Pilate that he should be crucified, this Jesus through Jeremiah already foretold concerning the Synagogue, saying: “I have left my house; my inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest; it has given its voice against me”—blaspheming, certainly, and saying: “Crucify, crucify.”

2. And elsewhere he himself says: “Against whom have you opened your mouth? And against whom have you loosened your tongues?” And Isaiah: “Jerusalem has fallen,” he says, “and Judah has collapsed, because their tongue and their contrivances are against the Lord.” Likewise the same: “I expected that they would do judgment, but they did iniquity, and not justice but a cry.”

CHAPTER XXVIII: That the Jews Condemned Their Own Posterity

1. For because the sinning Jews also condemned their posterity in Christ, saying: “His blood be upon us and upon our children,” Isaiah long ago foretold this to them with reproach, saying: “Worst seed, prepare your sons for slaughter in the iniquity of their fathers.” For when the nations came into Judea, because of the crime of their fathers the sons also were slaughtered.

2. Under whose person Jeremiah also deplores their destruction, saying: “My sons have become lost, because the enemy has prevailed.” And again: “Those whom I raised and nourished, my enemy has consumed.”

CHAPTER XXIX: That He Was Scourged and Struck with Palms

1. That he was scourged and endured the blows of palms, Job thus says concerning him: “Reproaching and spitting, they struck my jaw, they were filled with my punishments.” And in the Psalms he himself says: “I am prepared for scourges.” And again: “Scourges gathered against me, and I knew not.”

2. Similarly also through Isaiah: “I am not,” he says, “stubborn, nor do I contradict: I gave my body to those striking, and my cheeks to those plucking; I did not turn my face from those reproving and spitting at me.” And through Jeremiah he says: “I have placed my shoulders to scourges and my cheeks to palms.” Likewise concerning him the same Jeremiah: “He shall give,” he says, “to him striking him his cheek; he shall be filled with reproaches.”

CHAPTER XXX: That Christ’s Head Was Struck with a Reed

1. That his head was struck with a reed and he endured it patiently, Isaiah had foretold, saying: “A bruised reed he shall not break, and smoking flax he shall not extinguish, a bruised reed or broken,” he will be placable to all and will give pardon to sinners, saying: “Be confident, daughter, your sins are forgiven you.” “And smoking flax,” or as others have translated, “obscure and dark, he shall not extinguish.”

2. Those who were near extinction will be saved by the Lord’s clemency. Which over the Jews and nations we have discussed in the aforementioned little works; but he shall judge all things with truth, in no way fearing the Scribes and Pharisees, whom he confidently called hypocrites.

CHAPTER XXXI: That He Was Crowned with Thorns

1. And because a crown of thorns was placed on his head, this is written in the Song of Songs from the person of the Father, concerning the insults of the Son, marveling at the iniquity of Jerusalem and saying: “Go forth and see, O daughters of Jerusalem, the king in the crown with which his mother crowned him,” that is, with the crown of thorns which the Synagogue placed on his head.

2. But also through Jeremiah the same Son thus says: “This people has surrounded me with the thorns of their sins.” And in Isaiah: “I planted,” he says, “a choice vineyard, and I expected that it would make grapes, but it made thorns”—certainly because degenerating from the fruit of the patriarchs, it brought not fruits of justice but thorns of death and the cross to its Creator.

CHAPTER XXXII: That He Was Clothed in a Scarlet Robe

1. For even that the soldiers, mocking, clothed him in a scarlet robe, Isaiah the prophet foretold this, saying: “Who is this that comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? Why is your garment red, and your clothing like those treading in the winepress?” And he answering: “The winepress,” he says, “I have trodden alone.” For he said he alone trod the winepress, because he alone endured the passion for the sin of the world, and he alone washed away the sins of all with his blood.

CHAPTER XXXIII: That While He Suffered, He Was Silent

1. For because he is written to have been silent while he suffered, the voices of the prophets testify to this. For Isaiah thus says concerning him: “Like a sheep to the slaughter he was led, and like a lamb before its shearer, so he opened not his mouth.” For in the passion he spoke nothing to Pilate asking; but in humility his judgment was taken away; concerning whom he also elsewhere: “He shall not cry out, nor shall anyone hear his voice in the streets.”

2. Likewise the same Christ through the same prophet: “The Lord God opened my ear, but I do not contradict. I gave my body to those striking.” And he himself elsewhere: “I was silent, I was quiet; shall I always be silent?” For first he was silent, that he might be judged, when like a lamb before its shearer he was without voice and opened not his mouth, and restrained his own power.

3. But in the last thus it is written concerning him: “God shall come manifestly. Our God, and he shall not be silent.” For he was silent that he might be judged, when he came hidden; but he shall in no way be silent when he comes manifest to judge.

CHAPTER XXXIV: That He Carried the Cross

1. That he himself carried his own cross, Isaiah foretold: “A child is born to us, and a son is given to us, and government was made upon his shoulders.” For which of the kings carries the insignia of power on his shoulder? Does he not have either on his head a diadem, or in his hand a scepter, or some ornament of his own clothing?

2. But only Christ, the King of ages, bore the glory of his power and sublimity on his shoulders, which Isaac also prefigured, who when he was being led as a victim by his father, himself carried the wood, then prefiguring the remarkable passion of Christ, bearing the wood of his passion.

CHAPTER XXXV: That He Was Affixed to the Cross

1. That he was suspended and affixed to the wood of the cross, Jeremiah the prophet had foretold from the person of Christ, saying: “I, like a meek lamb that is carried to the victim, and I knew not that they had devised counsels against me, saying: Let us cast wood into his bread, and let us root him out from the land of the living.” For these things which the Lord was to suffer from the Jews, the prophet commends as if they had already been done.

2. For what is wood cast into bread, except the affixing of Christ’s flesh to the wood? For we recognize his body as bread; we recognize the faith in the wood as the cross in the body. Because the bread is the life of his body. For it is written: “And your life shall be hanging before your eyes, and you shall fear day and night, and you shall not believe in your life.” But also in the Psalms again, because he stretched out his hands on the cross, thus he says: “The lifting up of my hands is an evening sacrifice”—either because at the evening of the world as it were, or because when the sun was already declining toward evening, the Lord laid down his soul on the cross, raising his hands on the same wood of the cross, and offering himself to God as a sacrifice for us, that through that sacrifice our sins might be blotted out.

3. In Isaiah also concerning the proclamation of his cross thus it is written: “And his government shall be upon his shoulder,” that is, the standard of his cross, which he carried on his own shoulders, according to the prophecy of David the prophet, who says: “The Lord reigned from the wood.” Habakkuk also foretold the passion of Christ’s cross, saying: “Horns are in his hands.” What else is this, except the trophy of the cross? Likewise he himself concerning the ascent of the cross, on which being exalted he drew all things to himself, thus says: “The Lord my strength has established my feet unto consummation. Upon high places he shall place me, that I may conquer in his brightness.”

CHAPTER XXXVI: That His Hands and Feet Were Affixed with Nails

1. That he was crucified and his hands and feet were affixed with nails, through David he himself speaks, saying: “They have pierced my hands and my feet; they have numbered all my bones; but they have considered and looked upon me.” By which words certainly he signifies the body stretched on the cross, with hands and feet affixed and pierced by the transfixion of nails. Which David did not suffer, who is read to have rested in peace without any bodily passion.

2. But this was foretold concerning the passion of Christ, who was affixed in wood with nails by the Jewish people; for hands and feet are not pierced except of him who is suspended on wood. Likewise in the Song of Songs: “My hands have dripped with myrrh, and my fingers full of choicest myrrh.” Which he said specially because of the fixing of the nails.

CHAPTER XXXVII: That He Was Crucified Between Two Thieves

1. For that he was to be crucified between two thieves was foretold long before through Isaiah: “And he was reckoned among the wicked.” And Habakkuk the prophet: “In the midst,” he says, “of two animals you shall be known,” that is, in the midst of two thieves.

2. And through Malachi, that he was to be crucified, thus the Lord himself foretold concerning himself, saying: “If,” he says, “a man pierces God, because you pierce me, and you said: In what do we pierce you?” Which pertains to the mystery of the Lord’s passion, in which the Jews crucified Christ when they laid their wicked hands on him.

3. Which also through Zechariah again God thus commemorates, saying: “And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him with mourning as over an only son, and they shall grieve over him as one is wont to grieve over the death of a firstborn.” For they shall mourn him whom they crucified, when they see him judging on the day of judgment, when they see him reigning in the majesty of his Father and his own.

CHAPTER XXXVIII: That His Garments Were Divided

1. After the sentence of the cross follows the division of goods and the lot over the garment; which through David the same Lord had foretold, saying: “They divided my garments among them, and over my vesture they cast lots.” Which prophecy, how it was fulfilled, the evangelical history narrates. For when the other garments had been divided by the soldiers, but concerning the tunic they say: “Let us not tear it, but let us cast lots whose it shall be.” For it was a seamless tunic, that is, woven throughout.

CHAPTER XXXIX: That He Was Given Gall and Vinegar to Drink

1. But that hanging on the cross they gave him vinegar mixed with gall, this had already been foretold in the Psalms by the Lord: “They gave,” he says, “gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink,” which indeed was even completed. Concerning which also the same proclaims to Jerusalem, saying: “I planted you as a choice vineyard; how have you become to bitterness a strange vine?”

2. For God had planted a good vineyard, that is, the Jewish race; but that one, depraved by its vice, gave the Creator to drink with bitterness. For which also Moses: “Their grape,” he says, “is a grape of gall, and their cluster is of bitterness to them.” Whence also above, rebuking them, he says: “So do you, foolish people and without heart, repay the Lord thus?”

CHAPTER XL: That They Surrounded the Sponge Full of Vinegar with Hyssop

1. For that they surrounded the sponge full of vinegar with hyssop, it had been said in the Psalms: “You shall sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed.” Whence also in the law, through a bundle of hyssop they were sprinkled with the blood of the lamb, those who wished to be cleansed, by which was signified that sins of the world are washed away through the passion of the Lord.

CHAPTER XLI: That the Title of His Cross Was Not Corrupted

1. Concerning the title of the cross the Jews said: “Do not write King of the Jews, but that he himself said: I am King of the Jews.” And Pilate answered: “What I have written, I have written.” For it had already been prophesied in Psalm 56: “Do not corrupt the inscription of the title,” in whose psalm series not only the passion or death, but also the resurrection and ascension of the Lord is proclaimed.

CHAPTER XLII: That Hanging on the Cross, He Prayed to the Father for His Enemies

1. That hanging on the cross he prayed to the Father for his enemies, Isaiah says: “He bore the sins of many and prayed for transgressors.” And in the Psalms thus: “For that,” he says, “I loved them, they were my adversaries; but I prayed for them.”

2. Likewise Habakkuk, when he had said concerning him: “In the midst of two animals you shall be known,” added: “When your soul is disturbed, in wrath you will be mindful of your mercy.” For the prophet prefigured under this sentence in himself the person of the Jews, who, moved with wrath, crucified Christ. Where nevertheless he, mindful of his mercy, said: “Father, forgive them, because they know not what they do.”

CHAPTER XLIII: That He Was Crucified for Our Sins

1. And because not for his own but for our sins he was crucified, Isaiah says: “For the iniquities of his people he was led to death; I will give the wicked for his burial.” And again: “He was wounded for our iniquities, and bruised for our crimes; by his stripes we are healed.” And again: “All we like sheep have gone astray; each one has turned aside to his own way, and the Lord laid on him the iniquities of us all.” According to the Apostle, who says: “Because though he knew not sin, he was made sin for us,” that is, a sacrifice for our sins. But why he suffered for us, this is the cause.

CHAPTER XLIV: That He Died

1. After the scourges and cross, and the drinking of gall and vinegar, then follows his death. Which the law itself did not keep silent, saying: “Lying down, he slept like a lion and like a lion’s cub; who shall rouse him?” The sixty-seventh Psalm also proclaims the same death of his: “Our God is the God who will save us, and the Lord’s death, and the Lord’s exit from death.”

2. What could be said more openly? For the Lord Jesus, who is interpreted Savior, he is our God, saving us, whom because it was necessary to be born and to exit from life through death, therefore it is added: “The Lord’s death, and the Lord’s exit.” Likewise through Isaiah: “Like a sheep to the slaughter he was led, and like a lamb before its shearer without voice, so he opened not his mouth. For the sins of his people he was led to death.”

3. But the Jews hope that the Christ whom they expect to come will not die. Therefore let them respond: Who is this one whom the prophet announces? Likewise in Jeremiah thus he says: “I have made drunk the weary soul, and I have satisfied every hungry soul; therefore as if awakened from sleep I was raised, and I saw, and my sleep was sweet to me.”

4. In Daniel also the angel thus speaks to him concerning the slaying and death of Christ, saying: “Know and perceive, from the going forth of the word that Jerusalem should be built again, until Christ the leader there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks, and after sixty-two weeks Christ shall be slain”—that is, after four hundred ninety years—”and his people who shall deny him shall not be. Whence also there follows the ruin of the Jews, which was afterward completed: And the people with the leader who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary,” that is, the Roman army with Vespasian.

5. Likewise in Wisdom thus it is read concerning his death: “Let us question him with insults and torments, that we may know his reverence, and prove his patience; let us condemn him with a most shameful death.”

CHAPTER XLV: That in His Passion Darkness Was Made

1. But that at midday in his passion darkness was made and the sun itself fled, the divine books also speak of this, with Amos the prophet testifying: “And it shall be in that day, says the Lord, the sun shall set for you at noon, and I shall cause the earth to become dark in the day of light.”

2. And Jeremiah: “She who gave birth has been terrified,” he says, that is, Jerusalem, “and her soul has been afflicted: the sun has set for her, while it was still midday; she has been confounded and cursed; I will give their remnants to the sword.” Which was done through Vespasian.

CHAPTER XLVI: That They Did Not Break His Bones

1. Moreover, because they did not break his bones, except only those of the thieves, it had already been foretold: “You shall not break a bone of him”—for it had been commanded to them to celebrate the Passover in the likeness of a sheep; in which the shadow of the Lord’s passion had preceded, who like a sheep was led to the slaughter. For that figure of the lamb signified the passion of Christ.

CHAPTER XLVII: That He Was Pierced with a Lance

1. And because his side was pierced with a lance, thus was it foretold by him through Job: “He broke me and placed me as a sign; he surrounded me with his lances; he wounded my loins, he cut me down with wound upon wound,” that is, with the wound of the lance upon the wound of the nails. Whence also through David: “To the sorrow of my wounds they added”—thus it was foretold by him.

2. And through Jeremiah: “He bent his bow and placed me as a sign for the arrow; he sent into my reins the daughters of his quiver.” And again concerning the same people thus says the same Lord through the prophet: “They have become to me a reciprocal arrow.” And Zechariah: “They shall see him whom they have pierced.” Certainly the man whom they crucified. By which testimony also Christ is promised to come in that flesh in which he was crucified.

CHAPTER XLVIII: That Blood and Water Flowed from His Side

1. For because blood and water flowed from his side, Zechariah says: “You also in the blood of your Testament have sent forth your captives from the pit in which there is no water.” And again: “When a man goes forth from the East, behold, waters overflowing from the right side,” namely, of Christ.

2. Likewise concerning the same water which flows from his side, another prophet thus says: “Rivers of living water shall go forth from his belly,” namely the waters of baptism, which give life to believers and are bestowed on those thirsting, when what is written is fulfilled: “Wash yourselves, be clean”; and: “You shall wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.”

CHAPTER XLIX: That He Was Buried

1. That he was handed over to burial and interred, in the Psalms it is said: “They placed me in darkness like the dead of the world.” As if he were saying: Like men, certainly because he himself was God. Likewise Isaiah: “And the Lord shall be named as an eternal sign, which shall not be taken away. And his sepulcher shall be glorious.” And elsewhere: “I will give the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death.”

CHAPTER L: That a Stone Was Placed at the Entrance of the Tomb

1. That after he was buried, a stone was placed at the entrance of the tomb, through Jeremiah the same one says: “My life has fallen into the pit, and they placed a stone over me.” And again: “He has blocked my ways with square stones; he has built against me, that I should not go out.”

CHAPTER LI: That He Descended to Hell

1. That he descended into hell, thus the same Lord in Ecclesiasticus says: “I will penetrate all the lower parts of the earth, and I will look upon all who sleep, and I will illuminate those hoping in God.” Likewise in the Psalms: “My life has drawn near to hell; I have been counted among those descending into the pit; I have become like a man without help, free among the dead.” For he descended like a man into hell, but alone among the dead he was free, because death could not hold him.

CHAPTER LII: That Descending He Freed Whom He Willed from Death

1. That descending into hell he freed those who were captives from the devil, and thus again returned to the heavens, the same one through Hosea thus foretold, saying: “I,” he says, “I shall take and go; I shall take away, and there is none who can rescue; going I shall return to my place,” that is, to the heavenly throne. And below: “From the hand,” he says, “of death I will free them; from death I will redeem them. I will be your death, O death; I will be your sting, O hell.”

CHAPTER LIII: That the Body of Christ in the Sepulcher Did Not See Corruption

1. That the body of Christ in the sepulcher did not see corruption, but immediately, having conquered death, rising, returned from hell, this also he himself foretold through the prophet in the Psalms: “My flesh shall rest in hope. Because you will not leave my soul in hell, nor will you give your holy one to see corruption.” Concerning which resurrection also in the third psalm thus it is sung: “I slept and rested and rose, because the Lord has raised me up.”

2. Where what else does the prophet indicate that he slept and rose, except that this sleep was death and the awakening was resurrection? Which is more clearly shown in the fortieth psalm, where he says: “But you, O Lord, have mercy on me and raise me up, and I will repay them.” And again: “Shall he who sleeps not add to rise again?” Likewise in the fourth psalm: “In peace I shall sleep and rest, because you, O Lord, have singularly established me in hope.” Singularly, because he alone thus rested, that immediately after death he rose.

3. Likewise through Isaiah concerning the same his resurrection thus he cries out: “Now I will arise, says the Lord; now I will be exalted, now I will be lifted up.” Where openly the testimony of the resurrection and ascension is shown.

CHAPTER LIV: That He Rose from Hell

1. That on the third day he rose from hell, Hosea the prophet had foretold, saying: “Come, and let us return to the Lord, because he has taken us and he will heal us; he will give us life after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.” All these things were thus completed in Christ. For on the fifth day he was handed over; on Friday he suffered; on Sunday around daybreak, rising, he returned from hell.

2. Whence also the prophet added: “Prepared like the dawn is his going forth.” But what he said “we shall rise and shall live in his sight,” the prophet speaks from his own person or that of the saints who were in hell and who rose with him on the third day.

CHAPTER LV: That the Apostles Were Sent to Preach

1. That after his resurrection Christ appeared to the fishermen and sent them to preach to the nations, through Jeremiah he thus before commemorates, saying: “I will send many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall fish them.” Finally according to Matthew’s Gospel it is read that Jesus, coming near the Sea of Galilee, saw Peter and Andrew his brother casting nets into the sea, to whom he said: “Come after me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”

2. Similarly also the other two brothers, James of Zebedee and John his brother, when he saw them in the boat with Zebedee their father mending nets, calling them, from fishers of fish he made them fishers of men, namely, that with the net of preaching they might draw out all believers from the deep of this world. After these fishermen it follows: “And I will send hunters, and they shall hunt them from the mountains and from the hills and from the caves of the rocks”—which specially pertains to the conversion of the nations, whom the apostles captured from everywhere, who were established over the assumption of souls.

3. Whom, because after the glory of his resurrection the Lord would send to preach among the nations, also through Isaiah he thus spoke beforehand, saying: “I come,” he says, “that I may gather with all nations and tongues, and they shall come and shall see my glory, and I shall place in them a sign,” certainly of the cross, “and I shall send from them those who have been saved to the nations in the sea, to Africa and Libya, holding the arrow,” that is, the swift word of preaching, “to Italy and Greece, and to the islands afar, and they shall announce my glory.”

4. And that they preached the Gospel throughout the whole world, the prophets also did not keep silent; concerning whom also in the Psalms it was foretold: “There are no speeches nor words whose voices are not heard. Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.”

CHAPTER LVI: That He Ascended into Heaven

1. Now truly that after his resurrection Christ in the form of man ascended into heaven up to the Father, Daniel says: “I was watching in a vision of the night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming, and he came even to the Ancient of Days”—that is, to the Father. After these he added: “And in his sight they presented him, and he gave him power and a kingdom, and all peoples, tribes and tongues shall serve him; his power is an eternal power which shall not be taken away, and his kingdom which shall not be corrupted.”

2. Similarly the Psalmist also thus indicates his ascent into the heavens: “He himself like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber has exulted like a giant to run the way; from the highest heaven is his going forth, and his meeting even unto the summit of it.” For having come from heaven, he descended even to hell; and returning, he sought his dwelling, ascending and sitting at the right hand of the Father, from whom alone he went forth.

3. Whose ascent into heaven or entrance, with what joys it is declared, the Psalmographer indicates. For the ethereal powers, seeing the flesh of Christ ascending in the clouds and entering the gates of heaven, said: “Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the King of glory shall enter. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and powerful, the Lord powerful in battle.”

4. David, commemorating this his ascent elsewhere, says: “He ascended upon the cherubim and flew; he flew upon the wings of the winds.” And again: “He ascended on high, he led captivity captive, he gave gifts to men.” Who certainly, unless he had been on earth, would not be said to ascend. But what is “he led captivity captive,” except that, having conquered death, that very flesh which he assumed from the earth, as if captive, he was leading into heaven?

5. Whence also after these things the prophet exhorts all nations, provoking them to the praise of God, announcing the same ascent of Christ to them again thus, saying: “O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God; sing psalms to the Lord, sing psalms to God, who ascends above the heaven of heavens to the East.” And well he added “to the East,” because that very place is in the parts of the East where Christ rose and from where he ascended into heaven. And after these he added: “Your goings have been seen, O God, the goings of my God, the king.” For with all the apostles and five hundred men watching, thus he ascended into heaven.

6. Solomon also proclaims this ascension in the Song of Songs: “Behold, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, passing over the hills.” And Amos says: “The Lord has built his ascent in heaven, and his promise he has established on the earth.”

7. But because through Isaiah the Lord says: “Now I will arise, now I will be exalted, now I will be lifted up,” the testimony of the resurrection and ascension of Christ declares, as if he were saying openly: Now I will arise from the dead, now I will be exalted into heaven, now I will be lifted up in the kingdom. Whence also elsewhere the same Isaiah: “Behold, my servant shall understand; he shall be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high.” Which certainly pertains to the ascension of heaven and to the glory of the kingdom.

CHAPTER LVII: That He Sits at the Right Hand of the Father

1. That he sits at the right hand of the Father, in the Psalms it is written: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Therefore let the Jews inquire to whom it was said by the Lord “Sit at my right hand.” To an archangel, I think not; neither to an angel nor to a prophet. For none of them is in that glory, but he whom the invisible God has worthy of sitting with him, he sits at the right hand of the Father.

2. Who, just as he is worthy of sitting with God, so also he is worthy in nature and in name. Concerning whom the psalm also says: “The Lord shall reign over all nations; God has sat upon his holy throne.” And again: “The Lord has prepared his throne in heaven, and his kingdom shall rule over all.”

CHAPTER LVIII: That the Kingdom of Christ Shall Be Perpetual

1. That his kingdom in heaven and on earth shall remain eternal and perpetual, Daniel says: “I was watching in a vision of the night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming, and he came even to the Ancient of Days, and in his sight he was presented, and to him was given dominion and honor and a kingdom, and all peoples, tribes and tongues shall serve him; his power is an eternal power which shall not be taken away, and his kingdom which shall not be corrupted.”

2. By which testimony it is shown that Christ thus received dominion and kingdom from almighty God, that his power should be eternal and his kingdom remain without any end of corruption. And again the same Daniel: “In those days the Lord of heaven shall raise up a king who shall not be moved forever, and his kingdom shall not be delivered to another people. He shall strike and crush all kingdoms, and it itself shall stand forever.”

3. And Isaiah the prophet concerning the same: “His empire shall be multiplied,” he says, “and of his peace there shall be no end.” And in the psalms thus it is read: “In his days justice shall arise and abundance of peace, until the moon is taken away”—that is, until the consummation of the age.

CHAPTER LIX: That Christ After His Ascension Sent the Holy Spirit Upon the Apostles

1. That after his ascension he sent the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, David thus says: “He ascended on high, he captured captivity, he gave gifts to men.” For after his ascension he sent the Holy Spirit, in whom is the fullness of all gifts.

2. Concerning whom also through Joel the prophet he announced, saying: “It shall be,” he says, “after these things I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions; and moreover upon my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out of my spirit.” And Zechariah: “I will pour out,” he says, “upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of prayers.”

CHAPTER LX: That the Apostles Spoke in Various Tongues

1. That the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, spoke in the tongues of all nations the great deeds of God, this also was foretold, with the Psalmist saying: “There are no speeches nor words whose voices are not heard. Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.”

CHAPTER LXI: That He Will Come to Judge

1. But that we hope Christ will come from the heavens as judge, and that the Father gave him all judgment, through Ezekiel thus it is announced: “Thus says the Lord God: Remove the turban, take off the crown; is this not the one who raises up the humble and humbles the lofty? Iniquity, iniquity, iniquity I will make it; and this has not been done until he comes whose is the judgment, and I will hand it over to him.”

2. Concerning whom Isaiah: “The Lord shall go forth like a strong one, and like a warrior he shall stir up zeal; he shall cry out and shout, and against his enemies he shall prevail. I have always been silent, I have been quiet, I have been patient; like a wall I shall speak, I shall destroy and swallow up at once.” This pertains to the second advent, in which not humble, that he may be judged, but as a strong judge he shall go forth; nor shall he be silent, which he did in the first advent, or patient, as he was in the passion of the flesh, but judging he shall cry out, he shall speak like a wall, because suddenly, like a wall falling, he shall crush his enemies.

3. This also is taught by the testimony of the Psalmist, where he says: “God shall come manifestly; our God, and he shall not be silent”—certainly because even if in the first advent of his humility he was silent when judged, in the second, when he comes manifest to judge, he shall not be silent, but shall cry out, that he may render to each according to their works.

4. It follows: “Fire shall burn before him,” because, like wood, hay, stubble, he shall consume the works of sinners, and like gold, silver and precious stones, he shall test the deeds of the just. Who shall say: “We have passed through fire and water, and you have brought us out into refreshment. He shall call the heavens from above and the earth to discern his people. Gather to him his saints, who order his testament over sacrifices, and the heavens shall announce his justice, because God is judge.”

5. And Isaiah: “The Lord,” he says, “shall make his voice heard in glory, and the terror of his arm he shall show in the threat of fury and in the flame of devouring fire. He shall strike in a whirlwind and in a stone of hail.” For the arm of God is Christ, who shall come to judge in flame and in the terror of the tempest. Concerning whose judgment again the same prophet thus says: “Arise as in the ancient days, in the generations of ages. Did you not strike the proud one, wound the dragon?”

6. This second advent of Christ is proclaimed, that with that power he may arise for judgment, for the separation of good and evil, with which power he arose in the generations of ages. This is in the beginning, when he struck the proud one, that is, the devil, separating him from the fellowship of good angels. Concerning which judgment of Christ, Micah the prophet also thus speaks, saying: “Hear, O hills, the judgment of the Lord, and the strong foundations of the earth, because the Lord’s judgment is with his people and with Israel he shall contend, saying: My people, what have I done to you? Or how have I been troublesome to you? Answer me.”

7. For then, according to Zechariah: “They shall see him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him with mourning as over an only son, and they shall grieve over him as one is wont to grieve over the death of a firstborn.” For they shall grieve over him whom they crucified, when they see him judging and reigning in the majesty of his Father and his own. Job also, before the law illustrious with evangelical virtues, with prophetic authority proclaims that he himself is to be redeemed and resurrected and presented to God the judge, who is to come to judge the living and the dead, saying: “For I believe that my redeemer lives, and on the last day I shall rise from the earth, and again I shall be surrounded with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God my Savior.” Which God, except he who shall be seen in judgment? As we read: “They shall see him whom they have pierced.”

8. Whom some say will judge the impious in that place where he himself was judged, with Joel the prophet testifying: “Let them arise,” he says, “and let all nations ascend into the valley of Jehoshaphat; there I will sit to judge all nations round about.” For many assert that the judgment will be there where the Lord suffered, as Isaiah proves: “The Lord God of hosts will make a consummation and an abbreviation in the midst of the earth.”

9. Which consummation and abbreviation preceding what can it be, except of the future judgment? But where that middle of the earth is, faithful testimony concerning the Lord’s passion David shows, who says: “But God our king before the ages has worked salvation in the midst of the earth.” For there is no other salvation of ours except the redemption of our Lord Savior and Judge, which arose in the midst of the earth.

CHAPTER LXII: Epilogue of the Work

1. Behold, we have shown the judge and king of the New Testament from the prophets; behold, we have shown Christ from the law to be Lord of all. The books of the Hebrews hold all these things; the Jews read all things, but they do not understand. Because all things are sealed to them, as the prophet testifies: “And the words of this book shall be like the words of a sealed book, which if anyone gives to a man not knowing letters and says ‘Read,’ he will answer ‘I do not know letters,’ and again gives it to another knowing letters and says ‘Read,’ but he will answer ‘I cannot, for the book is sealed.'”

2. These are the seals of the Old Testament, which the Son and heir unsealed, illuminating the eyes of our heart, as it is written: “Bind the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.” For we have, for understanding Christ, the law as a guide, the prophets as witnesses, from whom we have declared his divinity and name, and also his nation, race, country, nativity, virtues and cures, apprehensions, palms, scourges, spittings, the drinking of gall and vinegar, death, the arrow, the sepulcher, hell, and the incorruption of his body, the resurrection of his flesh, his ascension into heaven, his kingdom and judgment.

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BOOK TWO

PROLOGUE

1. Because the Summary of the preceding book to some extent explained the nativity, passion, resurrection, and ascension of heaven of the Lord and our Savior, the following little work shall demonstrate the prophecy of both peoples, that is, of the Jews and of the nations. In which work, holy sister, you will be able to observe from a few things how much the voices of the prophets sang in the rejection of the Jewish people and of ceremonies, and how much they resounded in the praise of the people of the New Testament.

CHAPTER I: On the Calling of the Nations

1. In the beginning of this little work we must speak of the faith of the nations, so that the rest may be more easily examined, since the very faith of the Church is declared beforehand. Finally, when Moses prayed the Lord for the adoring calf, that he would spare the sinning people, the Lord responded: “I will be propitious to them; but truly as I live, and my name lives, because all the earth shall be filled with my glory.”

2. Therefore that all nations were to be called to the worship of the one true God, David the prophet testifies, saying: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight, because the kingdom is the Lord’s, and he shall rule over the nations.” And again: “Sing to the Lord a new song, because he has done wonders. The Lord has made known his salvation; he has revealed his justice before the sight of the nations.”

3. Which plurality of nations he proclaims to be united to the worship of one God: “When,” he says, “peoples are gathered together in one, and kingdoms, that they may serve the Lord.” In one, certainly, that is, into one king, that they who by the rite of diverse idols were called many kingdoms and many peoples, gathering together into one faith, may be called one people of God and one kingdom.

4. The gathering of this people from the nations is itself the Church, to whom in the Psalms it is said in a prophetic voice: “Hear, O daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and the house of your father, because the king has desired your beauty.” For the prophet provokes the people of the nations to forget their people, that is, the assembly of the unfaithful, and the house of their father, namely Babylon, which is the house and spouse of the devil, and to be united to Christ by the marriage of faith.

5. To whose peoples Isaiah cries out, saying: “Assemble yourselves and come, and draw near together, because you are saved from the nations; for they did not know, who raise the sign of their sculpture and pray to a god not saving.” Who are these saved from the nations, except those who believed from the nations? But what he says: “Assemble yourselves and hear together,” he shows that the nations should be gathered into one faith and communion.

6. Likewise he himself: “Turn to me and you shall be saved, all the ends of the earth, because I am God and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, the word shall go out from my mouth and shall not return, because to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear in the Lord.” This we now observe to have been completed, when the Church of God is extended in all the ends of the earth. By which prophecy let the Jews indeed blush, defending God peculiarly to themselves, while they hear: “Every tongue shall swear in the Lord,” that is, not only the people of the Hebrews now, but also all the multitude of nations.

7. Still the same Isaiah, after he digested the humility which Christ bore in the flesh, again thus proclaimed the praise of the Church of the nations, for which he bore such things, and at the same time that it might be one throughout the whole world, thus revealing by prophesying, saying: “Praise, O barren one who does not bear, break forth in praise and cry out, you who do not travail: because now many are the children of the desolate one, more than of her who had a husband, says the Lord: Enlarge the place of your tent, and stretch out the skins of your tabernacles, do not spare; make your cords long and strengthen your stakes. For to the right and to the left you shall penetrate, and your seed shall inherit the nations and shall inhabit the deserted cities.”

8. And again: “I have created the fruit of lips, peace: peace to him who is far, and to him who is near.” This also the Apostle expounds, where he says concerning the Church coming from circumcision and from uncircumcision: “He preached peace to those who are far, and peace to those who are near.” And again: “Those who did not ask for me sought me; those who did not seek me found me. I said: Behold I, behold I, to a nation that did not call upon my name; I stretched out my hands all day to an unbelieving people.”

9. Likewise he himself: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples, says the Lord.” But at the last thus he says: “I come that I may gather with all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory, and I shall place in them a sign, and I shall send from them those who have been saved to the nations, to the sea, to Africa, to Libya holding the arrow.” These things Isaiah.

10. But Jeremiah shows the gathering of the nations thus: “And all nations shall be gathered in the name of the Lord in Jerusalem, and they shall not walk after the perversity of their heart.” And after a little: “The Lord has sworn in truth and in judgment, and nations shall bless him and praise him.” Likewise the same concerning the calling of the nations: “Lord,” he says, “my strength, to you nations shall come from the ends of the earth, and they shall say: Truly our fathers possessed lies.” Likewise the same Jeremiah to the people of Israel: “Hear the voice of the trumpet, and they said: We will not hear. Therefore hear, O nations.”

11. Likewise in Hosea: “And I will have mercy on her who was without mercy, and I shall say to not my people: You are my people, and he shall say: You are my God; and it shall be in the place where it was said to him: You are not my people, there they shall be called sons of the living God.” Likewise in Zephaniah: “Because then I will restore to the peoples a chosen lip, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one shoulder.” And after these things: “And every man from his place shall worship him, all the islands of the nations.” In which place also the calling of the nations is prophesied; nor now is one place of prayer, in which the carnal people seemed somehow to enclose God, but instead of one he shows every place to be for prayer, while he says: “Every man from his place shall worship him.”

12. Micah also proclaims that all nations will be gathered, that they may receive the discipline of faith, thus: “And it shall be,” he says, “in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall hasten, and they shall say: Come, let us ascend to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths, because from Zion the law shall go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he shall judge many peoples and reprove strong nations even to afar.”

13. The last days are these in which the faith of the Savior has shone forth. But the mountain prepared upon the top of the mountains is Christ, because he himself is the head of the apostles and prophets. But the house of the Lord is the church of Christ, established upon the same, to which the diversity of nations is gathered. But the law went out from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, either that it might come to the nations, with the Jews abandoned because of unbelief, or because Jesus, placed in the same people, said to his disciples: “Go, teach all nations.”

14. Likewise Zechariah thus says concerning the Church of the nations: “Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Zion, because behold I come, and I will dwell in the midst of you, says the Lord, and many nations shall apply themselves to the Lord in that day, and they shall be to me for a people, and I will dwell in the midst of you: and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you.” Likewise there: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Until peoples come, that they may dwell in many cities, and the inhabitants of one shall go to another, saying: Let us go and entreat the face of the Lord, and seek the Lord of hosts; I will go also, and many peoples shall come, and strong nations to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem.”

15. Therefore by so many and such great testimonies let the Jews blush, emulators of the nations converted; and finally, conquered, let them acknowledge and hear in Deuteronomy the Lord proclaiming: “You shall be nations to the head, but the unbelieving people to the tail.”

CHAPTER II: That It Was Commanded to All Nations to Believe in Christ

1. That it was commanded to all nations to believe in Christ the Son of God, Jacob said in the blessings of the patriarchs: “The prince shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes who is to be sent, and he shall be the expectation of the nations.” And David from the person of the same Christ in the Psalms: “The Lord said to me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you; ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession.” And again: “You shall establish me as head of the nations; a people whom I have not known has served me; at the hearing of the ear it has obeyed me.”

2. Similarly also elsewhere concerning the same, the Psalmographer says thus: “Before the sun his name remains, and before the moon his throne, and in him all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed; all nations shall serve him.” Concerning whose dominion also above he had thus spoken beforehand: “And he shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

3. Which testimony applies neither to Solomon nor to David. For it is known within what boundaries the kingdom of Solomon was enclosed. But this we see to have been completed in Christ. Whose name is great in the nations from the rising of the sun even to its setting. He also from the river began the beginning of ruling, where he was baptized by John, and he arrived through faith in the nations even unto the ends of the earth.

4. Likewise in the same Psalms concerning his eternal nativity and power in the nations, the Lord speaks: “Before the morning star,” he says, “I begot you; you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek; he shall judge among the nations, he shall fill ruins, he shall crush heads in the land of many.” And Isaiah: “In that day there shall be the root of Jesse, who stands as a sign to the peoples; the nations themselves shall entreat him.” And after other things: “He shall raise a sign to the nations from afar, and he shall whistle to him from the ends of the earth.”

5. Likewise the same Isaiah, concerning Christ our Lord reigning in the nations: “Thus says the Lord God creating the heavens and stretching them out, establishing the earth and what germinates from it, giving breath to the people who are upon it and spirit to those treading upon it: I the Lord have called you in justice, and I have taken hold of your hand, and I have kept you, and I have given you as a covenant of the people, as a light of the nations, that you might open the eyes of the blind and lead out from confinement the bound one, from the house of prison those sitting in darkness. I am the Lord, this is my name.” This we now observe to have been completed through Christ, who became light in the flesh of the nations placed in ignorance.

6. Concerning whom also elsewhere he himself said: “And I shall lead the blind in a way they have not known, and in paths they have not known I shall make them walk; I shall place darkness before them into light,” that what had been said through the same prophet might be fulfilled: “The people of the nations who sat in darkness has seen a great light; to those dwelling in the region of the shadow of death light has arisen.” Likewise concerning the calling of the nations to Christ thus he says: “Attend to me, O my people, and my tribe, hear me, because a law shall go out from me, and my judgment shall rest as a light of the peoples; my just one is near, my Savior has gone forth.”

7. And after these things: “Rejoice and praise together, O deserts of Jerusalem, because the Lord has consoled his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem; the Lord has prepared his holy arm in the eyes of all nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” To these things through the aforementioned Isaiah the divine voice thus announces Christ in the flesh as judge of the nations: “Behold,” he says, “my servant, I will uphold him; my elect, my soul is well pleased in him; I have put my spirit upon him, he shall bring forth judgment to the nations; he shall not cry out, nor accept persons, nor shall his voice be heard outside; a bruised reed he shall not break, and smoking flax he shall not extinguish. In truth he shall bring forth judgment; he is not sad nor turbulent, until he places judgment on the earth, and the islands shall await his law.”

8. A servant indeed, but from the assumption of man, Christ, who because he first came to the Jews and was not received, brought forth judgment among the nations: what judgment, except that they should be justified by faith? His voice shall not be heard outside, that is, in heresies and Jews placed outside the Church of God. Likewise concerning him in Isaiah: “Behold, my servant shall understand; he shall be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high; as many were astonished at you, so inglorious shall his appearance be among men, and his form among the sons of men; he shall sprinkle many nations; concerning him kings shall shut their mouth, because to those to whom it has not been told concerning him, they have seen, and those who have not heard have contemplated.”

9. Likewise who above concerning him: “Behold, I have given him as a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander to the nations; behold, a nation you did not know you shall call, and nations that did not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God and the Holy One of Israel, because he has glorified you.” Which prophecy all concerning the calling of the nations is manifest, because they were to believe in Christ.

10. And Habakkuk thus says: “The Lord speaks: Write the vision plainly, and explain it upon tablets, that he who reads it may run through it, because the vision shall yet appear for a long time in the end, and it shall not lie; if it makes delay, await it, because coming it shall come and shall not delay.” But concerning the unbelieving Jews thus it follows: “Behold, he who is unbelieving, his soul shall not be upright in himself.”

11. Indeed also through Haggai concerning Christ reigning in the nations thus the same Lord sang, saying: “My Spirit shall be in the midst of you; fear not, because thus says the Lord: Yet a little while, and I will move heaven and earth, and the sea and the dry land, and I will move all nations, and the desired of all nations shall come.” But if the unbeliever understands this prophecy concerning the Antichrist, it is without doubt a lie. For the nations do not desire him, but only the Jews await him.

CHAPTER III: That Both Jews and Gentiles Are Called to Christ

1. That both people, of the Jews and of the nations, are called under the rule of Christ by the prophecies of the prophets, Isaiah says: “And it shall be in that day, a man shall nourish a cow of oxen and two sheep, and because of the abundance of milk he shall eat butter.” The cow of oxen is the people of Judea coming from the seed of the patriarchs. The two sheep are the Church coming from the nations, and therefore two sheep and one cow, because the number of the Church from the nations is greater than from the Jews.

2. But the man who nourishes them is Christ himself, whom through Jeremiah the Lord God thus says: “Turn, O returning sons, says the Lord God, because I am your husband, and I will take you, one from a city and two from a kindred, and I will give you pastors according to my heart, and they shall feed you with knowledge and doctrine.” For he had said to the proud through Isaiah: “A man shall nourish one cow and two sheep”; whom God now shows himself to be, who will take two from kindred and one from a city, because the number of believers from circumcision is less than from uncircumcision.

3. But this city he calls Judea or Jerusalem; but kindred the nations; but pastors the apostles or doctors of the Church, preaching the grace of Christ. Thus also in another place the same Jeremiah proclaims the Jews to serve Christ: “And it shall be in that day, says the Lord of hosts, I will break his yoke from your neck and I will burst his bonds, and strangers shall not dominate them any more, but they shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.” Concerning whom Jeremiah: “Behold, the days come, says the Lord, and I will raise up to David a just branch, and a king shall reign and be wise, and he shall do judgment and justice upon the earth. In those days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell confidently, and this is the name by which they shall call him: The Lord our Justice.”

4. Whose origin the voice of the Father through the Psalmist thus announces for both races: “I will be mindful of pride and Babylon among those knowing me. Behold Palestine and Tyre with Ethiopia; this one was born there. But to Zion it shall be said: A man and a man was born in her, and the Most High himself founded her. The Lord shall count, writing to the peoples: This one was born there.” In Babylon, Palestine, Tyre, Ethiopia the nations are signified. But in Zion the people of the Hebrews, because for the salvation of both races Christ was born.

5. Likewise Ezekiel proclaims Christ under the person of David thus to reign over both races: “There shall be,” he says, “one king commanding all, and they shall no longer be two nations, nor shall they be divided any more into two kingdoms, nor shall they be polluted any more with their gods and abominations and with all their iniquities; and I will save them from all their dwellings in which they have sinned, and I will cleanse them, and they shall be to me for a people, and I will be to them as God, and my servant David shall be king over them, and there shall be one shepherd over all of them.”

6. That Christ is king of the Jews, Isaiah indicates, saying: “Say to the daughter of Zion: Behold, your king comes to you, just and saving, poor, sitting upon an unbroken ass.” But Daniel the prophet, writing thus, thus says that the power of Christ, not only over the nations but also over the Jews, was given by the Father: “I was watching in a vision of the night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming, and he came even to the Ancient of Days, and in his sight they presented him.”

7. For after he said he was taken up into heaven and led even to the Father, he added: “And there was given to him power and honor and a kingdom, and all peoples, tribes and tongues shall serve him.” Which tribes, except the people of the Hebrews? Which tongues, except the nations of the nations? Amos also the prophet thus provokes the Jews by God to the kingdom of Christ, saying: “Prepare yourself to meet the Lord your God, O Israel, because behold I am he who strengthens the thunder and creates the spirit, and announces to men his Christ.”

8. Thus also Isaiah: “O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord.” Concerning whom David says: “In your light we shall see light.” Among these things also Micah the prophet, while he declared the place of Christ’s origin, thus added that he is to rule over Israel: “And you,” he says, “Bethlehem house of Ephratah, you are not the least among the thousands of Judah; from you shall come forth to me the Ruler in Israel.”

9. By which place he shows Christ to be the lord of the Jews, and by his rule the same people to be subjugated, where he also thus foretold his power throughout the whole world: “He shall stand,” he says, “and he shall see, and he shall feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, and they shall be in the honor of the name of his God, because now he shall be magnified unto the ends of the earth, and this one shall be peace.”

10. Whose coming to be proclaimed to the Jews, Isaiah speaks thus: “Upon a high mountain ascend, you who preach good news to Zion; raise your voice in strength, you who preach good news to Jerusalem; say to the cities of Judah: Fear not. Behold, your God. Behold, the Lord God shall come in strength, and his arm shall rule. Behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him; like a shepherd he shall feed his flock, in his arm he shall gather the lambs.”

11. But Zechariah the prophet thus proclaims concerning the kingdom of Christ in the Jews and nations: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, your king comes to you, just and saving, himself poor and ascending upon an ass and upon a colt of an ass, and his power shall be from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” Which prophecy how it was fulfilled in Christ, the Gospels themselves testify.

CHAPTER IV: On the Calling of the Nations to the Faith Before the Hebrews

1. Now also because the nations could first believe in Christ, and afterward the Jews, David the prophet shows; for seeing that the Lord had come to redeem Judea, but before the gentility believed, and afterward Judea would follow, he says: “Ethiopia shall prevent her hands to God,” that is, before Judea believes, the gentility black with sins shall offer itself to be saved to almighty God. As also Isaiah says: “Until the fullness of the nations enters, and thus all Israel shall be saved”; and in Deuteronomy: “You shall be nations to the head, but the unbelieving people to the tail,” as if to be converted in the last.

CHAPTER V: That at the End of the World the Jews Will Believe in Christ

1. With these carnal Jews passing away, afterward in the last times their sons shall believe in Christ, with Hosea the prophet testifying: “Because for many days the children of Israel shall sit without a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice, without an altar, without priesthood, without manifestations”—certainly as they now appear to be; then consequently he added: “And afterward the children of Israel shall return and shall seek the Lord their God and David their king, and they shall wonder at the Lord and at his goodness in the last days.”

2. Which whole prophecy is without doubt concerning Christ, who is signified in the name of David. Concerning whose seed according to the flesh he is begotten, concerning whom Jeremiah says: “Behold, the days come, says the Lord, and I will raise up to David a just branch, and a king shall reign and be wise, and he shall do judgment and justice in the earth. In those days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell confidently, and this is the name by which they shall call him: The Lord our Justice.”

3. Malachi also the prophet thus says Elijah is to be sent before the end of the world for the conversion of the Jews: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the sons, and the heart of the sons to their fathers.” For before the coming of judgment the Lord will send Elijah to convert the heart of the sons to the heart of the patriarchs and prophets, that the posterity of them may believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, whom they prophesying awaited.

4. For if thus far the Jews believe rightly, what is that in which the prophet testifies that they are to be converted through Elijah in the last? For now they are blinded in mind, nor can they understand the Savior, whom they hear, unless at the end of the world, when there shall be the consummation of the age; for the Lord proclaims this through Isaiah the prophet, saying: “Hearing hear and do not understand; and seeing see a vision and do not know; blind the heart of this people, and make their ears heavy, and close their eyes, lest perhaps they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them.”

5. And the prophet said: “How long, O Lord?” And the Lord said: “Until the cities are desolate without an inhabitant, and the houses without a man, and the earth shall be left deserted, and the Lord shall make men far away; then it shall be converted, and it shall be in manifestation, like a terebinth and like an oak, which spreads out its branches; a holy seed shall be what stands in it.” Behold, they now appear to be strangers from the light of faith and truth; they hear Christ and do not understand; they see and do not recognize.

6. But how long will they thus be? Until the cities are overthrown and the earth almost returns to a desert; then indeed, having been converted, they shall see, about to believe in Christ, and understanding they shall be healed and shall know all things. According to which also Jeremiah says to them: “In the last days you shall know these things.” Concerning this last faith of the Jews, Zephaniah also thus says: “In that time I will save the lame one, and I will gather her who has been cast out, and I will place them in praise and in name in every land of their confusion; in that time when I shall bring you, and in the time when I shall gather you. For I will give you for a name and for praise in all the peoples of the earth, when I shall convert your captivity before your eyes, says the Lord.”

7. The lame people he called the Jewish people, which now limps from the paths of faith, as the psalm testifies, saying: “They have limped from their paths”; and this he proclaims he will save in the last, when he says: “I will save the lame one.” And through Ezekiel: “After many days,” he says, “you shall be visited, and in the last of years you shall come”; and a little above, because they are to be baptized: “I will take,” he says, “you from the nations, and I will gather you from all lands, and I will bring you into your land, and I will pour upon you clean water, and you shall be cleansed from all your filthiness and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in the midst of you, and I will take away the stony heart from your flesh, and I will give you a fleshy heart, and I will put my spirit in the midst of you, and I will make you walk in my precepts and keep my judgments and work them, and you shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers, and you shall be to me for a people, and I will be to you as God, and I will save you from all your defilements.”

8. For this is the people to be converted in the last, whom Jacob the patriarch under the figure of Benjamin prophesies as a wolf eating prey in the morning and dividing spoils in the evening. Certainly because at the beginning of the world the same people as if in the morning received the law, but in the evening of the world, when it shall be about to believe, it shall divide between the New Testament and the Old. For concerning those things which are promised to Israel in the future, it is said to that same part which shall believe in Christ when they shall have been converted in the last times, such as that in the same Hosea: “And it shall be in the place where it was said to him: You are not my people, it shall be said to him: Sons of the living God; and the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall place over themselves one head.”

9. This shall be in the last times, when, with Elijah preaching, Judah shall be converted to Christ, that he may be one with Israel spiritually, that is, with the people of the nations already seeing God from faith, placing over themselves one head, which is Christ, ascending from the earth, that is, from carnal and earthly hope to the heavenly promises.

CHAPTER VI: That Very Many from the Jewish People Were Not Going to Believe

1. But because very many from the Jewish people would not believe in Christ, Moses the lawgiver foretold their unbelief: “And your life shall be hanging before your eyes, and you shall fear day and night, and you shall not believe in your life.” Whence also Isaiah: “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? And we saw him, and there was no appearance.” By which words he designates the unbelief of the Jews, who, seeing Christ, did not receive him, whom because they could neither believe nor know, they were immediately about to have destruction.

2. Thus Jeremiah foretold: “Ascend upon her walls and destroy them, take away her branches, because they are not the Lord’s. For with prevarication the house of Judah has prevaricated against me, says the Lord; they have denied me and said: He is not the one.” This now even the Jews say concerning Christ: “He is not the one,” awaiting another, who is the Antichrist. Whence also the Lord: “I,” he says, “have come in the name of my Father, and you have not received me; another shall come in his own name, and you shall receive him.”

3. Likewise in the same Jeremiah: “Behold, the word of the Lord has become an opprobrium to them, and they do not receive it.” Still indeed because, with the nations obeying Christ, the Jews were not going to receive him, it is shown in the Psalms. For when through the prophet the same Christ said: “You shall establish me as head of the nations,” and “a people whom I have not known has served me,” he immediately added the unbelief of Judah, saying: “The alien sons have lied to me; the alien sons have grown old and have limped from their paths.” Who are aliens, except the Jews? Who are rightly called aliens, because remaining in perfidy, they have been cut off from the rewards of eternal life, which are promised to us according to faith by the Son of God.

4. This also perverse unbelief of the Jews in Christ was also noted through Isaiah, with the Lord saying to them: “Hearing hear and do not understand; and seeing see a vision and do not know; blind the heart of this people, and make their ears heavy and close their eyes, lest perhaps they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them.” And in another place: “All day I have stretched out my hands to an unbelieving people and contradicting, who walk in ways not good.”

5. To whom Jeremiah: “Hear these things, O foolish people and without heart; they have eyes and do not see, they have ears and do not hear; will you not fear me, says the Lord, or will you not be afraid from my face? Who have established the sand as the boundary of the sea, an eternal command, and it shall not cross it, and it shall be disturbed and shall not be able, and its waves shall swell and shall not cross it; but to this people there has been made a disobedient and unbelieving heart.”

6. And elsewhere the same: “How do you say: We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us?” Truly the mendacious pen of the scribes has worked a lie; the wise are confounded and terrified and captured. For they have cast away the word of the Lord, and there is no wisdom in them. Concerning whom Isaiah: “Those who,” he says, “sinned, made men in word, and they have turned aside from the just in vain.” For which the same prophet thus rebukes them, saying: “Hear me, you hard of heart, who are far from justice; I have brought near my justice, it shall not be prolonged, and my salvation shall not delay. I will give salvation in Zion and in Jerusalem my glory.”

7. But the same prophet also announces the faith of the nations and the unbelief of the Jews in Christ thus: “Those who did not ask for me sought me; those who did not seek me found me; I said: Behold I, behold I, to a nation that did not call upon my name; I stretched out my hands all day to an unbelieving people.” For now the nations sought who did not ask before, because the prophets did not come to them, and they found when they announced Christ to them.

8. But what did the Jewish people do, except what follows: “I stretched out my hands all day to an unbelieving people.” And again concerning the same promise of the nations: “And the plains shall be for folds of flocks, and the valley of Achor for a resting place of herds for my people who sought me, and you who have forsaken the Lord, I will number you to the sword, and all shall fall in slaughter.” Whose people therefore are these promises, except of the nations who sought the Lord? Concerning whom above he says: “Those who did not ask for me sought.” And who are those who have forsaken God and shall fall in slaughter, except the Jewish people? Concerning whom he already says: “I stretched out my hands to an unbelieving people.” Against this are also what follow: “Behold, my servants shall eat, and you shall hunger,” because, with the people called from the nations feeding on the bread of the word of God, Judea withers with hunger.

CHAPTER VII: That Because of the Unbelief of the Jews Christ Was to Pass Over to the Nations

1. And because because of the unbelief of the Jews Christ would desert Judea and pass over to the nations, Jeremiah the prophet had foretold, saying: “We have sinned against you, O expectation of Israel, his Savior. Why will you be as a farmer about to be in the earth, and as a traveler turning aside to lodge? Why will you be as a vagrant man and a strong one who cannot save?” For what is understood in this sentence, except that the prophet saw in spirit that Christ coming would leave Judea and would go through faith in the nations? Therefore he said: “Why will you be as a farmer about to be in the earth, and as a traveler turning aside to lodge?” This is: you came into the earth, soon to depart from the Jews.

2. Likewise elsewhere from the person of the Lord the same prophet says: “Who will give me in the solitude a lodging of travelers? And I will leave my people and depart from them, because they are all adulterers, an assembly of transgressors, and they extend their tongue like a bow of lie and not of truth.” For this voice is of Christ, who in the solitude of the nations established a lodging, that is, the Church, in which the erring might be converted, forsaking the people of the Jews. To whom through Malachi he says: “I have no longer will in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not receive a gift from your hand; for from the rising of the sun even to its setting my name is great in the nations.”

3. Such things also elsewhere the same prophet under thanksgiving says to the Lord: “Lord, you are my God, and I will exalt you; I will confess to your name, because you have done wonderful things and ancient thoughts faithful. Amen. Because you have made the city into a tumult, a strong city into ruin, the house of strangers, that it should not be a city, and in eternity it shall not be built. Upon this a strong people shall praise you; the city of robust nations shall fear you.” With them indeed God was before, but after they were rejected for their sin, the Redeemer of the world passed over to the people of the nations. Whose universality now throughout the whole world exulting says: “The Lord has magnified to do with them; the Lord has magnified to do with us; we have been made joyful.” For to the people of Israel Christ first came, but that they were not going to believe, the prophet did not keep silent, saying: “First to Zion it shall say: Behold, I am present, and to Jerusalem I will give an evangelist; and I saw, and there was not anyone of these who might enter into counsel and, asked, might respond a word.” But because he passed over to the nations, it follows: “Behold, my servant, I will uphold him; my elect, my soul is well pleased in him; I have put my spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the nations.”

CHAPTER VIII: That, With the Jews Cast Out, the Nations Entered

1. Behold, it has been shown that the Jews for the crime by which they sinned against Christ were cast out and dispersed. But because, with them cast out, the nations were going to succeed into their places through faith, the prophets also did not keep silent about these things. For Isaiah thus says: “Bring forth the blind people, and they have eyes; the deaf, and ears are to them. All nations have been gathered together and tribes have been collected. Who among you shall announce this? And shall make us hear the first things?”

Behold, Israel is brought forth outside, having eyes and ears, toward earthly promises; and the diversity of nations is collected into one, that where those were called, these may enter, and to these may pertain the inheritance which had been promised to them.

2. Still, because the same nations were to succeed in the places of the Jews, the same prophet in another place approves, saying: “In that day this song shall be sung in the land of Judah. The city of our strength is Zion; the Savior shall be placed in it, a wall and a rampart; open the gates, and let the just nation enter, keeping truth; the old error has departed. You shall keep peace, because we have hoped in you; he shall humble those dwelling on high; he shall humble the lofty city: he shall humble it even to the earth, he shall drag it down even to the dust, and the foot of the poor shall trample it, the steps of the needy.” By which prophecy it is shown that the just and humble people of the nations succeeded into the place which the proud people of the Jews had lost.

3. Again in the same under thanksgiving he thus speaks to the same, saying: “Lord, you are my God, and I will exalt you; I will confess to your name, because you have done wonderful things and ancient thoughts faithful. Amen. Because you have made the city into a tumult, a strong city into ruin, the house of strangers, that it should not be a city and in eternity it shall not be built. Upon this a strong people shall praise you; the city of robust nations shall fear you.”

4. Also in another place he addresses the same Jews under reproach, saying: “And your name shall be left as a curse to my elect; and the Lord God shall slay you, and he shall call his servants by another name, in which he who is blessed upon the earth shall be blessed in God. Amen, and he who swears on earth shall swear in God. Amen.” He who swears on earth, that is, in the flesh accepted by Christ, in which whoever swears, truly swears in God.

CHAPTER IX: That the Jews Because of Their Sin Against Christ Were Conquered and Dispersed

1. That because of the sin by which the Jews prevaricated against Christ they were conquered and dispersed, Isaiah foretold, saying: “He himself redeemed them and carried them and lifted them up all the days of the age; but they provoked to anger and afflicted his Holy Spirit, and he was turned to them as an enemy, and he himself fought against them.” Likewise through Hosea the prophet: “Woe,” he says, “to them, because they have departed from me; they shall be laid waste because they have prevaricated against me. I redeemed them, and they spoke lies against me, and they departed from me, and I taught them and strengthened their arms. And they devised evil against me; they returned that they might be without a yoke. They have become like a deceitful bow; their God has rejected them because they did not hear him, and they shall be wanderers among the nations.”

2. And Isaiah, after he had foretold concerning Christ, saying: “Like a sheep to the slaughter he was led,” immediately added: “For the crime of my people I struck him; and I will give the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death,” and the rest. And through Jeremiah the same Son proclaims the perdition of the Jews was thus inflicted for his passion; for he says: “My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest; it gave its voice against me; therefore I hated it. Is my inheritance to me a discolored bird? Is it a bird dyed throughout? Come, gather yourselves, all beasts of the field; hasten to devour.” He said “gather yourselves”; for the beasts of the field came, that is, the fierce princes of the nations, and the peoples of the Jews were handed over to them to be devoured.

3. For this was afterward fulfilled which had been foretold; for it was done in this very city of Jerusalem; for after they gave Christ bitterness to drink, and after they cried out against the Son of God that he should be killed, vengeance from the Lord subsequently followed; the city was conquered, the Jews overthrown, and many thousands were slain; and now no one of the Jews is permitted to approach there, where they clamored that Christ should be crucified. Because they gave their voice against the Lord, whence he also adds: “Therefore with extermination all the earth has been exterminated.” For this is the voice of Christ. For many sins they had done before, the sons of Israel, but never were they handed over to such long perdition and captivity; but when they completed the measure of their fathers and after the killing of the prophets they killed Christ, then, heaping sins upon sins, they were handed over into long extermination. Therefore now it is said: “Because of me the earth is exterminated with extermination.”

4. Which, because they do not understand, therefore they were handed over to plunder, Isaiah the prophet thus foretold, saying: “The Lord poured out upon his people the indignation of his fury and strong war; and it burned him round about, and he knew not, and it kindled him, and he understood not.” Whose destruction Jeremiah the prophet thus deplores in mourning: “My sons,” he says, “have become lost, because the enemy has prevailed.” And again: “Those whom I raised up and nourished, my enemy has consumed them.”

CHAPTER X: On the Ruin of Jerusalem

1. That because they denied Christ the Jews, Jerusalem was overthrown, through Jeremiah thus the same Lord proclaims, saying: “Ascend upon her walls and destroy them; take away her branches, because they are not the Lord’s; for with prevarication the house of Judah has prevaricated against me, says the Lord; they have denied me and said: He is not the one.” Likewise Isaiah: “Jerusalem has fallen and Judah has collapsed, because their tongue and their contrivances are against the Lord.”

2. By which testimony it is demonstrated that the city of Jerusalem and the province of Judea collapsed together, and he shows the cause of their crime, because they blasphemed against the Lord, saying: “Away, away, crucify him. We have no king but Caesar.” Indeed also David the prophet, because of the future passion of Christ, thus foretold the calamity of the city and of the Jews from the person of the same Christ: when those, as the Gospel speaks, gave gall and vinegar: “They gave,” he says, “gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Let their table become before them a snare, and for a retribution and for a stumbling block. Pour out your wrath upon them, and let the indignation of your anger seize them. Let their habitation become deserted, and in their tabernacles let there not be one who dwells.”

3. And in the Psalms he himself says: “Scourges have gathered against me, and I knew not.” Similarly also through Isaiah: “I am not,” he says, “stubborn, nor do I contradict: I gave my body to those striking, and my cheeks to those plucking; I did not turn my face from those reproving and spitting at me.” And through Jeremiah he says: “I have placed my shoulders to scourges and my cheeks to palms.” Likewise concerning him the same Jeremiah: “He shall give,” he says, “to him striking him his cheek; he shall be filled with reproaches.”

4. Likewise in Daniel the angel, after he foretold the slaying of Christ, immediately pronounced the overthrow of Jerusalem following, saying: “And the people with the leader who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and his end shall be desolation, and after the end of the war appointed desolation.” That is, the Roman army with Vespasian. Whose devastation Isaiah the prophet composed a lamentable song, in which the same Jerusalem is mourned, and her perpetual ruin is sung in prophetic speech under the similitude of a vineyard, in which God had planted a tower and a winepress, namely the temple and altar.

5. Therefore this vineyard, as long as it brought forth most abundant fruits, had God as its guardian, concerning whom it is written: “He who guards Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep”; but after it brought forth thorns to its Creator, God left it, and immediately the boar from the forest laid it waste, and all who pass by the way have plundered it, with the Lord thus saying: “And now I will show you what I am about to do to my vineyard; I will take away its hedge,” that is, I will take away the help of angels (concerning whom it is written in the Psalms: “The angel of the Lord shall send forth round about those who fear him, and he shall deliver them”), “and it shall be plundered by adversaries; I shall destroy its walls,” that it may lie open to enemy nations, “and I shall command the clouds from above that they rain no rain upon it.”

6. Which was not prophesied concerning the former captivity; for at that time, after the city was captured, both Jeremiah prophesied, and Daniel, and Haggai, and Zechariah foretold the future. But this was foretold concerning the last captivity, because after the passion of the Lord they had neither prophets nor apostles, who might provide the rains of virtues; but on the contrary that happened to them which the Lord promised to them sinning in Leviticus: “I will make your heaven like iron, and your earth like brass.”

7. And in Deuteronomy: “The heaven above you shall be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron.” And again: “The Lord shall give the rain of your land dust; ashes shall descend from heaven upon you, until he hands you over.” But why did these things happen to them? Because God expected that they would do justice and receive the giver of such great gifts. But they made thorns, with which they crowned Christ, and they made a cry, by which they cried out against the Lord, that is, against Christ, that he should be crucified.

CHAPTER XI: On the Rejection and Reprobation of the Jews and the Synagogue

1. Concerning which city through Isaiah thus the Lord speaks, saying: “What is this bill of divorce of your mother, by which I have dismissed her? Or who is my creditor to whom I have sold you? Behold, in your iniquities you have been sold, and in your crimes I have dismissed your mother.” Similarly also through Hosea: “Judge your mother, judge, because she is not my wife, nor am I her husband.” Concerning whose people’s reprobation, also through Jeremiah thus the Lord speaks, saying: “I have left my house; I have dismissed my inheritance. My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest; it gave its voice against me; therefore I hated it.”

2. But Isaiah expresses the eternal captivity of the Jews thus, saying: “Your land is deserted; your cities are burned with fire; strangers devour your region in your sight, and it shall be desolated as in the devastation of enemies.” Which captivity, although it was partly completed under the time of Babylon, nevertheless was more fully fulfilled under the Roman captivity, when the Roman army laid waste all Judea, and the city of Jerusalem was overthrown and burned.

CHAPTER XII: On the Perpetual Ruin of Jerusalem

1. Isaiah says: “It shall be desolated as in the devastation of enemies, and the daughter of Zion shall be left like a shelter in a vineyard.” For thus Jerusalem was overthrown and abandoned, with the sacraments of Christian truth manifested, just as they abandon the tabernacles of vineyards when the vintage is completed. For just as a tabernacle is made not for its own sake but for the vintage, so also the old people existed not for the sake of their own salvation but for Christian truth.

2. Likewise he himself: “Upon the ground,” he says, “of my people thorns and briars have ascended. How much more upon all the houses of joy, the exulting city? For the house,” he says, “has been abandoned; the multitude of the city has been left; darkness and groping have been made upon caves forever.”

3. Likewise the same Isaiah proclaims the perpetual ruin of earthly Jerusalem and the calling of the nations, saying: “Lord, you are my God, and I will exalt you; I will confess to your name, because you have done wonderful things and ancient thoughts faithful. Amen. Because you have made the city into a tumult, a strong city into ruin, the house of strangers, that it should not be a city and in eternity it shall not be built. Upon this a strong people shall praise you; the city of robust nations shall fear you, because you have been made strength to the poor, strength to the needy in his tribulation. Hope from the whirlwind, shade from the heat. The spirit of the robust is like a whirlwind beating against a wall; like heat in thirst, you shall humble the tumult of strangers; and like heat under a burning cloud, you shall make the branches of the strong wither. And the Lord of hosts shall make for all peoples on this mountain a feast of fat things, of marrow, of vintage strained.”

4. And Ezekiel: “Moreover when I shall give,” says the Lord, “glory in the land of the living.” By this word demonstrating the future brightness of the Church from the nations, he turns the meaning of the oracle to earthly Jerusalem, saying: “I will reduce you to nothing, and you shall not be, and being sought you shall not be found forever in eternity.” Concerning the perpetual ruin of this city thus also the Lord says to Jeremiah: “And you shall break the flask in the eyes of those who went with you, and you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord of hosts: Thus I will break this people and this city, just as a potter’s vessel is broken, which can no longer be restored.”

5. But Zephaniah thus proclaims the eternal desolation of that city: “This is,” he says, “the glorious city dwelling in confidence, who said in her heart: I am, and there is no other besides me; how has she become a desert, a resting place of beasts? Everyone who passes through her shall hiss and move his hand. Woe to the provoking and redeemed city; the dove has not heard the voice and has not received discipline.”

6. Finally also Daniel thus signifies the destruction of Jerusalem to persevere until the consummation of the world: “After seventy-two weeks,” he says, “Christ shall be slain, and his people who shall deny him shall not be, and the people with the leader who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and his end shall be desolation, and after the end of the war appointed desolation, and the victim shall fail, and the sanctuary, and in the temple there shall be the abomination of desolation, and even unto the consummation and the end the desolation shall persevere.”

CHAPTER XIII: On the Irreparable Desolation of the Jews

1. That the Jews according to their hope will never be restored, Jeremiah says: “The cities of the South are closed; all Judah has been carried away with a complete transmigration,” that is, with irrevocable captivity. Likewise he himself: “Because my people has forgotten me, offering libations in vain and stumbling in their ways and in the paths of Israel, that they might walk in them in an untrodden journey, that their land might be made a desolation and a perpetual hissing. Everyone who passes through it shall be astonished and shall move his head; like a burning wind I shall scatter them.”

2. This also perpetual desolation of carnal Israel the same prophet elsewhere proclaims, saying: “I will place a plumb line in the midst of the people of Israel; I will not add any more to pass over them.” A third time also he says: “The end has come upon my people of Israel; I will not add any more to pass through them.” All these things pertain to the carnal kingdom of that people, or observance, because they shall be irreparable beyond. For those promises of restoration which the speech of their prophets embraces are promised to that part which shall believe in God from the Jews; for neither shall all the Jews be redeemed, nor shall all be saved. But with the wicked and sinners crushed and consumed, those who shall have been chosen by faith shall be saved. We have spoken concerning the people and concerning the city: let us say what the prophets held concerning the New Testament.

CHAPTER XIV: That, With the Old Testament Abolished, the New Was to Come

1. But because, with the same carnal Old Testament abolished, God was to give a New Testament, most clearly through Isaiah the prophet the Lord announces, saying: “Do not remember,” he says, “the former things, and do not look upon ancient things. Behold, I am doing new things, and now they shall spring up. Certainly you shall know them: I will make a way in the desert and rivers in the pathless place. The beasts of the field shall glorify me, the dragons and the ostriches, because I have given a way in the desert, rivers in the pathless place.”

2. For by such prophecies he commends forgetting the law of the Old Testament and makes mention of the new, so that saying: “Do not remember the former things; behold, I am doing new things”; and to demonstrate what the new things were, then he added: “I will make a way in the desert and rivers in the pathless place.” By which he signifies having given his doctrine among the nations, where he glorifies the beasts of the field, while believing they praise him, and the kingdoms of the world, which people he says he has acquired for himself. But on the contrary against Israel what follows he joins: “You have not called upon me, O Jacob, nor have you labored for me, O Israel.”

3. Concerning the promise of this same New Testament consequently the same Lord through the same prophet thus announces: “The former things, behold, have come; and I announce new things; before they spring up I make them heard to you.” By which words he both declares the Old Testament to have come and announces the new, which was completed in the Christian age. For the former things are old things of the new, but in order, not in dignity; whence also the pacts which are later in time, with the former abolished, are held greater than the former.

4. Also through Jeremiah the prophet, he promises that he will give a New Testament, with the former abolished, thus the Lord promises: “Behold, the days come, says the Lord, and I will make with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah a new covenant, not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day when I took hold of their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant which they made void, and I ruled over them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel, says the Lord: I will give my law in their bowels, and in their heart I will write it.”

5. In which place by the prophecies of the prophets commemoration of the New Testament has been made, which because it could differ from the Old Testament, thence he adds: “Not according to the Testament which I gave to their fathers.” For there is wonderful difference of precepts in both. In that one, except for the sacraments which were shadows of things to come, the other promises are temporal: the Sabbath, namely, and circumcision, and the manifold rite of sacrifices, and the observance of foods and of days and ceremonies: all of which agree with carnal antiquity. But on the contrary in the New Testament the good of the heart is promised; the happiness of eternal life is promised. And not indeed outside on stone tablets, but interiorly on the tablets of the heart.

6. Whence also thus he adds: “Because this is the Testament which I will arrange for the house of Israel. After those days, says the Lord, I will give my law in their hearts, and in their mind I will write it.” By which he might signify it should work spiritually in our hearts according to the interior man, with the antiquity of carnal working changed. For within is circumcision, not by the cutting of flesh but by the purgation of the heart. Within is the Sabbath, not through abstinence from servile works but through abstinence from sins.

7. Which law also he testifies shall be most clearly revealed to the nations, through Isaiah thus the Lord protests, saying: “The law shall go out from me, and my judgment shall rest as a light of the nations”; by which it is shown that the covenant of the New Testament is common to Jews and nations, with Hosea also the prophet testifying: “In that day, says the Lord, you shall call me ‘my husband,’ and you shall no longer call me ‘my Baal,’ and I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall no longer remember their name. And I will make a covenant for them in that day with the beasts of the field and with the birds of heaven and with the creeping thing of the earth, and I will break the bow and the sword and war from the earth, and I will make them sleep confidently, and I will betroth you to me forever, and I will betroth you to me in justice and judgment and mercy and compassion, and I will betroth you to me in faith, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

CHAPTER XV: On the Cessation of the Sabbath

1. Rightly would the Jews keep the Sabbath carnally if they knew what the Sabbath is. They use the name of the Sabbath, but they do not know what it means. They delight in keeping the law carnally, when all should be understood spiritually, with the Lord saying through the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables; I will speak propositions from the beginning of the world.” Therefore, if the law and the prophets consist in parables and enigmas, the observance of the Sabbath must be understood not carnally but spiritually.

2. For God dissolved its carnal rest. For if it is a crime not to observe the rest of the Sabbath, why does God work on the Sabbath? For thus it is written in Genesis: “And God completed on the seventh day his work which he had made”; therefore in the beginning the Sabbath was dissolved, while God works on it, completing all things in it and blessing that very day, because he completed all things in it. Likewise, if it is a crime not to observe the rest of the Sabbath, why did Joshua son of Nun, the disciple and successor of Moses, at the Lord’s command, for seven continuous days, among which certainly the Sabbath also was, lead out the army and arms, and with the ark going around and trumpets sounding, overthrow the walls of Jericho?

3. What likewise shall I say concerning the Maccabees? Concerning whom it is written: “And the Jews would not avenge themselves on the foreigners on the Sabbath day.” Afterward, by counsel received, they fought on the Sabbath day and triumphed over their enemies. By which testimonies we are taught that it does not pertain to faith to keep that elementary day of the Sabbath, but another spiritual one; for this carnal Sabbath was not given for purification but for testing, with the Lord saying in the law: “That I may test them, whether they walk in my law or not. Six days you shall gather manna; on the seventh you shall not gather.”

4. Therefore when he says: “That I may test them,” it appears that the Sabbath was not given for justification but for testing. Hence also is that saying that God speaks through Ezekiel the prophet, saying: “I gave them precepts not good”—certainly because certain things were permitted to the carnal people to be done carnally which nevertheless, with the Gospel coming, ceased, just as also through the prophet he says: “I will make all her joy cease, and her Sabbaths.” Which indeed elsewhere the same Lord says he hates: “Your new moons,” he says, “and your Sabbaths my soul hates.”

5. Therefore if the Sabbaths are eternal, why did God command them to cease? If they are good, why did he hate them? For the Sabbath which the Israelites received as a gift signified the rest of the mind, that it may be wearied by no desire for earthly things in this life. For Sabbath is interpreted as rest. But this idle festival of the Jews is consumed in luxuries and drunkenness and feasting, with all given over to lust and to the fruit of temporal life, serving the belly and lust.

6. But it is asked: If, they say, the Sabbath is not to be kept, why was it said in the commandments of God: “Remember to sanctify the Sabbath day, and six days you shall work and do all your works, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God; you shall not do any work in it”? For in the work of six days the works of six thousand years are demonstrated. For a thousand years with God are compared to one day, as the prophet testifies: “Because a thousand years before your eyes are as one day.” The Sabbath of these days is the time and rest of the seventh thousandth year of the future kingdom and age, where now there shall be no working of things, but only the rest of the saints.

7. For God hates these temporal Sabbaths, while he says: “Your new moons and your Sabbaths my soul has hated.” And well he said “your,” because they are not those which God commanded, but which the carnal people chose for themselves. For concerning those he said: “You have profaned my Sabbaths.” Whence is discerned that the temporal Sabbath is human, but that divine Sabbath is that eternal one, concerning which through Isaiah it is said: “And it shall be,” he says, “month from month, and day from day, and Sabbath from Sabbath, and all flesh shall come to worship in Jerusalem, says the Lord.”

8. Secondly also it is asked why Jeremiah said: “Guard your souls, and do not carry burdens on the Sabbath day, nor bring them through the gates of Jerusalem, and do not cast burdens from your houses on the Sabbath day.” Therefore hear the mystery of his prophecy: he carries burdens on the Sabbath whom the day of judgment finds with his sin; he carries burdens on the Sabbath who, believing in Christ, does not cease from sin. For he himself is the rest of souls, as he also says: “Learn from me, because I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls.”

9. Still thirdly it is asked why that man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath day was so severely slaughtered at the command of God by the people? Which is readily proposed by the unfaithful. Therefore let them understand that all these things happened to them in type; for they were written for our correction. For that former and carnal one who dared to violate the Sabbath day while he gathered sticks (for which he was also punished) insinuated the form of him who on the day of judgment shall be found with carnal work, that is, to have collected wood, hay, or stubble suitable for the food of eternal fire. For collecting these things for his own destruction, when he shall be judged on the last day, he is to be cast out by all the angels and immediately punished with the final death. Thus therefore all things, whatsoever happened to those Jews through the law, are to be understood formidably.

CHAPTER XVI: On the Consummation of Circumcision

1. Now to you, after the perpetual captivity of the people, after the eternal ruin of the city, I will declare the carnal observances and celebrations of the Jews abolished. Accept therefore first the cause of circumcision. Because from the seed of Abraham according to the flesh Christ was to be, in whom the blessing of all nations had been promised, and from Abraham until Christ many ages were to pass afterward, God foreseeing lest the race of Abraham be mixed with other nations and gradually his lineage become uncertain, marked the Jewish people with the sign of circumcision, that living among the Egyptians and Assyrians, among the Babylonians or Chaldeans, they might be distinguished from them or from other nations and races by this mark.

2. Finally, for forty years in the desert no one was circumcised; they lived alone without mixture of any other nation. But when the people of Israel crossed the bed of Jordan and arrived in the land of promise, the sign of circumcision provided for error that would come from mixing with the nations, which we believe was reasonably kept until Christ should be born, who had been promised from the seed of Abraham, who now not through circumcision of flesh but through cutting away of vices would cleanse the hearts of all nations.

3. That there would be not circumcision of flesh but of heart, Moses foretold thus to the sons of Israel, saying: “In the last days the Lord will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed.” Whence also Jeremiah, foreseeing that time now near, thus provokes the Jews to the New Testament and to circumcision of the heart, not of the body, saying: “Thus says the Lord to the man of Judah and Jerusalem: Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns; be circumcised to the Lord your God, and take away the foreskins of your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest perhaps my indignation go forth like fire and burn, and there be none to extinguish it.”

4. By which words Jerusalem is admonished from the antiquity of circumcision and the law, which is compared to thorns and briars, to pass over to the grace of the New Testament, and through the faith of the Gospel to hold circumcision of the heart, not of flesh, according to what we read, with Peter the Apostle saying: “Purifying their hearts by faith.” Which similarly faith, now to be obtained not through the ancient signs of flesh and injury of the body, but through new grace of the spiritual bath, the Lord announces through Isaiah, saying: “Do not remember the former things, and do not look upon ancient things. Behold, I am doing new things, which now shall spring up, and you shall know them.” And to show what these very new things were, he added: “I will make a way in the desert and rivers in a waterless place, to give drink to my elect race and my people whom I have acquired.”

5. What therefore did this indicate, except the future purification of baptism? In which now not by the ancient circumcision of flesh is anyone marked, but by the grace alone of the sacred wave through faith he is washed. But truly because the Hebrews do not receive this circumcision of the heart, Jeremiah foretold, saying: “All nations have foreskin, but all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.”

6. For that also the people is read to have been circumcised a second time by Joshua the leader, to signify that in the desert the circumcision which was exercised in Egypt ceased, and believers after the glory of deity are to be cleansed by circumcision of the heart according to the Lord Savior. And well with stone knives the second circumcision is made, because the rock is Christ, through whom by spiritual circumcision believers are purged from all the enticements of vices.

CHAPTER XVII: On Sacrifices

1. Now truly concerning the rejection of the old sacrifice, that their victims have been cast away and turned into abomination, through Isaiah thus the Lord says: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord. I am full of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts, and the blood of calves and lambs and goats I do not want. When you come to appear before me, who has required this from your hands, that you should walk in my holy courts? Do not bring a vain oblation any more; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and your other festivals I cannot bear; your assemblies are wicked. Your new moons and your solemnities my soul hates; they have become burdensome to me; I have labored bearing them, and when you stretch out your hands, I will turn my eyes from you, and when you multiply prayer, I will not hear. For your hands are full of blood.”

2. Likewise he himself concerning the sacrifices of the Jews: “Their slain offerings have become like dung in the midst of the streets.” What are these slain offerings, except the sacrifices of the old law, which, since they have now been removed, are regarded like cast-off dung? Whence also the same prophet elsewhere thus says concerning their very sacrifices: “He who immolates an ox, as if he kills a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, as if he beheads a dog; he who offers an oblation, as if he offers swine’s blood; he who remembers incense, as if he blesses an idol.”

3. Likewise Jeremiah concerning the victims and burnt offerings of the Jews rejected by the Lord: “Why do you offer me incense from Sheba and sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not accepted, and your victims have not pleased me. Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I will give ruins to this people, and fathers and sons together shall fall in them; neighbor and relative shall perish.” See that their sacrifices are not commended carnally for their own sake, but for the obedience of heart and faith alone, which the unbelieving lost.

4. Still the same who above: “The Lord says: Add your burnt offerings to your victims and eat the flesh, because I did not speak to your fathers and did not command them in the day when I led them out of the land of Egypt concerning the word of burnt offerings and of victims. But this word I commanded them, saying: Hear my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people, and walk in all that I have commanded you, and it shall be well with you. And they did not hear nor incline their ear, but they walked in the desires and perversity of their evil heart.” In which sentence it should be understood: “I did not command them concerning the word of burnt offerings, as if I loved those through themselves, but that I might approve the obedience of their faith.”

5. Likewise he who above: “I will write,” he says, “my manifold laws, which have been considered as foreign. They shall offer victims; they shall immolate flesh and eat, and the Lord will not receive them.” And after these things, detesting their sacrifices: “They shall not,” he says, “offer wine to the Lord, nor shall their sacrifices please him; as the bread of mourners; all who eat it shall be contaminated; they shall not enter into the house of the Lord.”

6. And Joel: “Sacrifice and libation have perished from the house of your God.” Likewise Malachi: “I have no will in you, says the Lord, and I will not receive a gift from your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place it is sacrificed, and a clean oblation is offered to my name, because my name is great among the nations, says the Lord.” By which testimony it is clear that the sacrifices of the Jews are unclean and rejected, and only the oblation of the nations is accepted by the Lord.

CHAPTER XVIII: On Foods

1. In the book of Kings thus it is said: “The word of the Lord came to Elijah, saying: Arise and go to Zarephath of the Sidonians, and dwell there. For I have commanded a widow woman there to feed you. And he arose and went to Zarephath of the Sidonians; and when he came to the gate of the city, a widow woman appeared to him, and he received food from her and ate.” Then Elijah, at God’s command, filled her vessels and lodged with that foreigner and lived on gentile foods, which would not have been permitted unless the law had been given spiritually.

2. For when certain things in the law are condemned as not clean for food, they undoubtedly signify the morals of men, because God does not admit among his saints, who are predestined to eternal life, whatever is compared in the morals of men through those unclean animals. For all things whatsoever were created by God in the very beginnings of the world are proved not only good but very good by the authority of his own word. And therefore whatever is signified in the types of unclean animals is more correctly applied to the morals of men.

CHAPTER XIX: On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith

1. Thus far we have refuted the Jewish rites and celebrations with divine testimonies; henceforth let us touch upon the sacraments of our faith, showing first that the Testament of the law was given not only for the Jews but also for all nations. For the prophet David testifies to this, saying: “A generation to come shall be announced to the Lord, and the heavens shall announce his righteousness to the people who shall be born, whom the Lord has made.” And again he himself: “Until I announce your arm to every generation that is to come, your power and your righteousness, O God.”

2. And Isaiah: “From Zion the law shall go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; and he shall judge the nations and reprove many peoples even to afar.” David also in the Psalms: “Then they shall say among the nations: The Lord has done great things for them; the Lord has done great things for us; we have become joyful.” By which testimonies it is shown that the Testament of the law was granted first to the Jews, but afterward to the nations; which was conferred on them because in it they could know Christ, whom the Jews with blind minds in no way understand.

CHAPTER XX: That Scripture Must Be Understood Not Only Historically But Also Mystically

1. That the writing of the law should be understood not only historically but also in a mystical sense, that is, spiritually, the Lord teaches in the Psalms: “Give ear, O my people, to my law; incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables; I will speak propositions from the beginning.” Which also the prophet confirms in another psalm, saying: “I will incline my ear to a similitude; I will open my enigmas on the harp.”

2. For all things of the law are understood in similitude and enigma; for an enigma is an obscure similitude, by which a man is admonished to sharpen his heart and flee to the understanding of interior things. Thus also Wisdom says through Solomon: “Write the law doubly and triply in your heart.” For the law is understood doubly, so that it may be understood first according to history, then according to the understanding of sacraments. But it is written triply, when not only historically or mystically, but also morally, what should be done in each case is taught.

3. Therefore also the ark which was built by Noah is ordered to be made with two and three chambers, because within the Church all the matter of the law has a place, both in history, and receives mystical sense, and contains the formation of morals. For it is written in parables and enigmas, and these very parables and propositions. Hence it is that all things are covered and closed to the Jews; unless they believe, they cannot come to their understanding.

CHAPTER XXI: That the Jews Do Not Understand the Testament of the Law

1. For they have all these sacraments of the Scriptures sealed, and they do not know what they read: they read all things and do not understand, just as the Lord sang of them to the prophet: “Say,” he says, “to this people: Hearing you shall hear and not understand; and seeing you shall see and not perceive; for the heart of this people has grown dull.” And again: “The Lord will take away from Judah and from Jerusalem the strong and the mighty, the judge and the prophet, and the wise among the architects, and the prudent in mystical speech.”

2. For God has taken all these things from them and sealed all the sacraments for them according to the hardness of their hearts, lest perhaps they understand, as the same Isaiah testifies concerning them: “And the vision of all shall be to you like the words of a sealed book, which when they give to one knowing letters, they will say: Read this, and he will answer: I cannot, for it is sealed.” But what did he add concerning the nations? “In that day,” he says, “the deaf shall hear the words of this book, and out of darkness and obscurity the eyes of the blind shall see.” For the mysteries of the law have been laid open.

3. But they are closed to the Jews, as Daniel also says: “The words are shut up and sealed until the time of the consummation, until many learn and the vision is fulfilled, and they know all these things.” For even that Moses’ face was covered with a veil when he descended from the mountain with the tablets signified that, because of the darkness of blindness, the Jewish people could not recognize the law itself, for when Moses is read, a veil is placed over their heart.

CHAPTER XXII: That Unless the Jews Believe in Christ, They Cannot Understand the Scriptures

1. For they cannot understand the law and the prophets unless they first believe in Christ, as Isaiah says: “If you will not believe, you will not understand; for the just shall live by my faith, says the Lord through the prophet.” Therefore Abraham became the father of nations because he believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. But these people, although they hold the law and the prophets, nevertheless should not be indulged, as Jeremiah testifies: “And the Lord said to me: If Moses and Samuel stood before me, my soul is not toward this people; cast them from my face, and let them go out.”

2. For through Moses the law, through Samuel the prophets are understood. Though the Jews have these, nevertheless they are cast out because of the impiety of their error. For their works and righteousness without faith in Christ profit them nothing, as the Lord testifies through Jeremiah: “Because you have forgotten me, behold, I will announce your righteousness, and your works will not profit you.”

CHAPTER XXIII: That Two Testaments Were Delivered by God

1. But since two Testaments, namely the New and the Old, were delivered by almighty God, Solomon declares in the Song of Songs: “At our gates are all fruits, new and old, my brother; I have kept them for you.” Concerning which the Lord also said in the Gospel: “The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old.” And in another place of Scripture God thus promises: “I will give you the early and the late rain,” namely the Old Testament and the New, “and irrigate you with both rains.” For rain is understood as the doctrine of the Testaments, whence comes that saying: “My speech shall be awaited as rain, and shall pour out rain upon the earth.”

CHAPTER XXIV: That Remission of Sins Was to Come Through Baptism

1. That the cleansing of sins was to come through baptism, not through circumcision, which was a figure of baptism, the voices of the Scriptures clearly declare. For Isaiah sang beforehand the future mystery of baptism thus to future believers, saying: “You shall draw water with joy from the fountains of the Savior.” By which words the prophet also shows the Savior himself, from whose fountains he proclaims the waters of purification are to be drawn, that is, from the fountains of Jesus. For by this name the Savior is expressed in the Hebrew language.

2. Therefore he himself cried out: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” To this sacrament of baptism the same Isaiah provokes both Jews and nations, saying: “All you who thirst, come to the waters.” The Holy Spirit also foretold these waters and this fountain through Joel, saying: “The mountains shall drip with sweetness, and the hills shall flow with milk, and through all the brooks of Judah waters shall go, and a fountain shall come forth from the house of the Lord and shall water the whole world,” that is, the universality of all nations.

3. Concerning this fountain Zechariah also: “In that day,” he says, “there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for the washing away of sins and of the menstruous woman.” Tell me, I ask, who is this fountain opened, except that in which all are reborn, through which the sins of the guilty are purified, and the filth of the menstruous woman, that is, of the unclean soul, is washed away by the saving bath? Concerning whose waters also elsewhere the same prophet testifies: “And it shall be,” he says, “in that day, living waters shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the last sea. In that day the Lord shall be one, and his name one, and all the earth shall return even to the desert.”

4. What therefore are these living waters, except baptism, which vivifies man by the infusion of the Holy Spirit? But why are they announced to go out from Jerusalem, except because the Lord, standing in the same people, said to his disciples: “Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”? But half of them goes to the eastern sea, that is, to the people of the circumcision; and half to the last sea, which is to the people of the nations, last in faith, that it may bestow upon all thirsting, both Jews and nations, who believe in the Lord.

5. Concerning these waters still also through the same prophet it is said that they go out from the house of the Lord and grow into a river and proceed to the solitude or to the Dead Sea, and all things to which they come are vivified and healed. For thus the same prophet says: “He turned me to the gate of the house of the Lord, and behold, waters were going out from under the threshold of the house toward the East. For the face of the house looked toward the East, but the waters descended on the right side of the temple to the south of the altar. And he turned me to the way outside by the outer gate which looked toward the East, and behold, waters overflowing from the right side,” that is, from the side of Christ.

6. Then he says: “And he led me through the waters, and he said to me: These waters which go out to the eastern ones and descend to the plains of the desert,” certainly to the nations, “shall enter the sea, and they shall go out, and the waters shall be healed; and every living soul which looks, wheresoever the torrent shall come, shall live; and there shall be very many fish,” that is, the regenerated. And he added: “After those waters shall have come and shall be healed, and all things shall live to which the torrent shall come. And fishermen shall stand upon it,” that is, apostles and doctors, “there shall be very many species of their fish.”

7. He said this to signify the variety of nations coming to the wave of the bath; whence also he added: “Like the fish of the great sea, of very great multitude on the banks of it on both sides, every fruit-bearing tree; a leaf shall not fall from it, nor shall its fruit fail; through individual months it shall bring forth first fruits, because those waters go out from the sanctuary, and their fruits shall be for food and their leaves for medicine.”

8. Micah also the prophet thus reveals the sacraments of the same baptism under the figure of the crossing of the sea, saying: “According to the day of your going out from the land of Egypt I will show them wonders; the nations shall see and be confounded in their strength; they shall place their hands upon their mouth; their ears shall be deaf. They shall desire the Lord our God and fear you. Who is a God like you? Who takes away iniquity and transfers the sin of the remnants of Israel? Because he is merciful, he will turn and have mercy on us; he will put down our iniquities and cast all our sins into the depth of the sea.”

9. In which sentence the reader will notice most clearly is revealed the most holy mystery of baptism. “According to,” he says, “the day of your going out from Egypt I will show them wonders.” Then the following enemies, that is, our past sins, just as the Egyptians cast into the sea, thus blotted out and extinguished in baptism, thus he proclaims, saying: “Because he is merciful, he will turn and have mercy on us. He will sink our sins and cast all our sins into the depth of the sea.”

10. What therefore could be clearer than this testimony? What more open? For every true Israel through faith goes out from Egypt, while he renounces the world, and enters the Red Sea, namely the baptism of Christ marked with blood. Then the pursuing enemies perish, because immediately sins die where the souls of the regenerated rise. We also read Aaron washed in the waters in the prefiguration of baptism, whose sons, participants of the paternal priesthood, are also purified by sanctification of the liquid. Already then indeed that purgation bore the form of baptism, by whose sacrament of the bath now all the people of the Church is washed, which is the body of the true and great priest, unto remission of sins, and, with filth washed away, they are consecrated in sanctification for divine worship.

11. For Isaiah the prophet among other things shows that the sins of the Jews can in no way be remitted unless they have been washed by baptism. For through the same prophet the Holy Spirit says: “I have labored bearing; if you multiply prayers, I will not hear; for your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, be clean.” For instead of all the victims which the same prophet had mentioned, instead of all the new moons and Sabbaths and solemnities, he commanded the purification of baptism alone; instead also of all the defilements of sins, only the bath of regeneration, by which alone sins are washed away.

12. Which because the Jews reject, let them hear the Lord threatening them through Ezekiel the prophet: “And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations, and you shall say: Thus says the Lord: Jerusalem, your root and your generation is from the land of Canaan; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite, and when you were born on the day of your birth, your navel was not cut, and you were not washed with water unto salvation.” Where it is shown that Jerusalem is in grave sins and is to perish from that, because it was not washed with water unto salvation, which is the full signification of baptism. But to those who turn to Christ and are baptized, thus the word of the Lord follows there: “And I entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord, and I washed you with water, and I cleansed your blood from you, and I anointed you with oil,” signifying through the covenant the New Testament, through water and oil baptism and chrism.

13. Whose purification of baptism thus the Holy Spirit promises to them as future through the same prophet, saying: “For I will take you from the nations, and I will gather you from all lands, and I will bring you into your land, and I will pour upon you clean water, and you shall be cleansed from all your filthiness and from all your idols I will cleanse you.” And that they may receive the New Testament, thus it follows: “And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in the midst of you, and I will take away the stony heart from your flesh, and I will give you a fleshy heart, and I will put my spirit in the midst of you, and I will make you walk in my precepts and keep my judgments and work them.”

CHAPTER XXV: That Through the Sign of the Cross Believers Would Be Saved

1. But the figure of the cross, which marks the foreheads of the faithful for the protection of salvation, is read demonstrated through Ezekiel the prophet: “And he called,” he says, “a man who was clothed with linen and had the writer’s inkhorn at his loins, and he said to him: Pass through the midst of the city, in the midst of Jerusalem, and mark Tau on the foreheads of the men groaning and grieving over all the abominations which are done in the midst of it.” And after these he added: “Pass through the city and strike; let not your eye spare, nor show mercy; old man, young man, and virgin, little one and women, kill even to destruction. But everyone upon whom you see Tau, do not kill.”

2. Therefore we must understand this sentence. For the letter Tau demonstrates the form of the cross, by whose sign are marked beforehand whoever are freed from the exit of this age; the type of the same one prefigured in Egypt that blood of the white and spotless lamb, by which imagistically are signed the posts of our body, that we may rightly say: “The light of your face is signed upon us, O Lord.”

3. Concerning this sign Isaiah says from the person of the Lord: “Behold, I come that I may gather with all nations and tongues, and they shall come and shall see my glory, and I shall place in them a sign,” certainly of the cross. And elsewhere: “And the Lord shall be named,” he says, “as an eternal sign which shall not be taken away.” Which also elsewhere the same prophet wished to signify concerning Christ, saying: “And he shall raise a sign to the nations.” Where he shows that, with the sign of the cross raised up, the nations would come to him and believe.

4. Whose glory of the holy cross is thus also proclaimed in the Psalms: “Say among the nations: The Lord has reigned from the wood.” Concerning which cross of the Lord Jesus Christ through Ezekiel thus the Lord speaks: “The sword is sharpened and polished, that it may slay victims. You are sharpened, who move the scepter of my Son; you have cut down the wood, and I have given it to be polished, that it may be held in the hand.” By which testimony both the Son of God is shown crucified, and the sign of his cross is foretold by divine voice to be received by all.

5. Whose figure of the cross composed of two woods the same Ezekiel thus figuratively marks, saying: “The word of the Lord came to me, saying: And you, son of man, take for yourself one wood, and write upon it: Judah and the sons of Israel his associates, and take another wood, and write upon it: Joseph the wood of Ephraim and all the house of Israel and his associates, and join them one to another for yourself into one wood, and they shall be in union in your hand.”

6. Where it is shown that Judah and Jerusalem should be converted into one and receive the sign of the cross, which has been signified through two woods. These are the two woods which that foreign widow, to whom Elijah is sent to be fed, wished to collect before she would die. Where not only by the name of wood but also by the number of woods the sign of the cross is expressed.

CHAPTER XXVII: How the Sacrament of the Eucharist Was Prefigured

1. And because the sacrament of bread and cup was pleasing to God in sacrifice, it is not kept silent by the testimonies of the Scriptures. For the prefiguration of this sacrifice was expressed beforehand in the priesthood of Melchizedek. For this priest of the Most High God, when he blessed Abraham, on account of the mystery of the future sacrifice offered bread and wine in sacrifice to the Lord. For that one first expressed in type of the Son of God: to whom the Psalmist thus says from the person of the Father: “Before the morning star I begot you. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” This is according to the rite of this kind of sacrifice, which also Christ completing in his passion fulfilled, which he also commanded the apostles to do in his memory.

2. Therefore now believers do not offer Jewish victims, such as Aaron the priest offered, but such as Melchizedek the king of Salem immolated, that is, bread and wine, which is the most true sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord. Concerning which the same Lord says: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” Whose sacrifice’s sacrament is also shown in Solomon through the immolation of bread and wine thus: “Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn out her seven columns; she has slain her victims, she has mixed her wine, she has set her table, she has sent her servants, saying: If anyone is a little one, let him come to me; and to the senseless she speaks: Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine which I have mixed for you; leave senselessness and you shall live, and walk in the ways of prudence.”

3. Therefore the wisdom of God, Christ, has established for himself the most holy house, the Church, in which he slaughtered the victims of his body, in which he mixed the wine of his blood in the cup of the divine sacrament, and prepared the table, that is, the altar of the Lord, sending his servants the apostles and doctors to the senseless, that is, to all nations not knowing the true God, saying to them: “Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine which I have mixed for you”; that is, receive the food of the holy body, and drink the wine which I have mixed for you, that is, receive the cup of the sacred blood.

4. Whose grace because the nations receive and the Jews did not deserve, this the prophet Isaiah declares, saying: “Thus says the Lord God: Behold, my servants shall eat, and you shall hunger; behold, my servants shall drink, and you shall thirst; behold, my servants shall rejoice, and you shall be confounded. Behold, my servants shall rejoice for exultation of heart, and you shall cry out for sorrow of heart, and for contrition of spirit you shall howl, and you shall leave your name as a curse to my elect, and the Lord God shall slay you, and he shall call his servants,” that is, Christians, “by another name, in which he who is blessed upon the earth shall be blessed in God. Amen.”

5. For Israel is slain; the people from the nations succeeds. The Old Testament is taken from them; the New is given to us; the grace of saving food is granted to us, and the cup of Christ’s blood, while they waste away with hunger and thirst. And the name is changed, and another name given to the new people, namely Christian; and all things which have been done resound with the newness of grace.

CHAPTER XXVIII: Recapitulation of the Work

1. O the lamentable madness of the unfortunate Jews to be deplored! Behold, they neither understand the coming of the Savior by the authority of the Old Testament, nor do they accept that he has come. They read of the conversion of the nations and are not at all confounded by their own rejection. They accept the observance of the Sabbath, though they know it is rejected by the testimony of Scripture. They venerate the circumcision of the flesh, who have lost the purity of heart.

2. But we, placed under grace, now know that all these deeds and celebrations, which were signs of things to come, have already been completed. For whatever sacrament of this kind was prophesied, Christ has now fulfilled, because he did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. Therefore, with truth having come, the shadow has ceased, and so we are no longer circumcised carnally, because in the type of circumcision we are cleansed by the sacrament of the promised baptism. We consider the rest of the Sabbath superfluous, because we hold the revealed hope of eternal rest.

3. We do not immolate the sacrifices of the old law, because through these same sacrifices we know that either Christ’s passion or the mortification of carnal vices was signified. We do not observe unleavened bread, because, with the malice of the old life purged, we walk in the new grace of faith. We do not keep the differences of foods, because all these things signified the diversity of unclean animals in the morals of men.

4. We do not celebrate the Passover from eating the lamb, because our Passover, Christ, has already been sacrificed, who was prefigured by that lamb, who like a sheep was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer, so he opened not his mouth. We do not keep the new moons of the new moon, because now in Christ we are a new creation; the old things have passed away, and behold, new things have been made. We do not observe the Feast of Tabernacles, that is, the solemnities of tents, because the tabernacle of God is his saints, in whom he dwells forever.

Source. Patrologia Latina – Translated by Claude.AI. Isidore of Seville, De fide catholica contra Iudaeos, Migne, PL 83.449-538. 1850.