Part I — Before the Law

Part One: Before the Law

First English translation. Made by Claude, 2026-07-12, from the Latin of the 1744 Roman edition of the Opera Omnia of Prosper of Aquitaine (public domain), where the work still stands under Prosper's name; it was reassigned to Quodvultdeus, bishop of Carthage and disciple of Augustine, in 1711. Written c. 440–450, largely in exile after the Vandal king Geiseric expelled him from Carthage. No complete English translation of this work has ever been published.

The work catalogs God's promises (promissiones) and predictions (praedictiones) across the three ages — before the Law, under the Law, under Grace — plus two half-books on the Antichrist's "half a time" and the glory of the saints. Cassiodorus, who commends the work, reports that its author gathered the divine testimonies into 153 chapters, in the likeness of the 153 fish which the nets of the Gospel drew up out of the stormy deep of this world.**

Editorial conventions: scripture references in brackets; uncertain renderings are flagged in the numbered footnotes; [...] marks a gap or illegible text. The Latin is set in 18th-century type whose long-s is frequently misread by OCR; readings have been resolved from context.

Prologue

The whole account of faith is comprised in hope and love. For in loving what he believes has been promised, each man lends his faith, until he comes to possess all that he hopes for. The Apostle Paul defined faith as the conviction of things that are not seen [Heb 11:1].

By the dispensation of that faith, God the Creator of all things deigned to form all things out of nothing — or, as holy Scripture says, out of unseen matter [Wis 11:18] — weighing the highest against the middle, and the middle against the lowest, in one balance. For setting certain invisible things before the visible, rational before irrational, things of sense before the senseless, and living things before those without life, he disposed all things in measure and number and weight [Wis 11:21]. And among these things as they severally subsist, he set man, the rational animal, before the earthly creatures; and to him alone, founded after the image and likeness of his own divinity, he granted free will [Sir 15:14]. To him also he gave a law of living forever, if he should keep the commandments — and of dying, if he should despise the precepts of his Creator [Gen 2:17].

But when, by the serpent's guile, the devil — through that same pride by which he himself had fallen along with his companions — had deceived the man; and when Adam, by disobedience, hurled himself headlong into death together with the whole stock of the human race: even so he could not inflict any prejudice upon the Creator, since the nature was well founded. Though he found death by reason of the transgression, yet he did not let go the essence of life, so far as in it lies, even in death. For the soul, created immortal, in this stadium of the world stained by corruption, overthrown by the flood-filth of the body, weighed down with the burdens of its outrages — unless it be redeemed by the blood of the Savior, and washed in the spiritual water, and be free of the contagion of the wound inflicted, and preserve with unviolated faith the beauty of the grace conferred — that soul, the faith of the Gospel announces, shall live on into eternal punishment, together with the flesh [Matt 25:46; John 5:29]. He who established eternal life for the good and eternal punishment for the wicked did so by the same authority with which he has fulfilled all the things he foretold from the beginning of the world.

But lest a human and barren wit stretch out an over-long preface to this book, let it be enough to say: the book is laid out in three parts and a half; and — with the help of him by whose gift we speak — the divine testimonies, gathered from every quarter and set side by side, will supply its substance. Out of all the divine Scriptures we have undertaken to sift, chapter by chapter, whatever are the Predictions and whatever are the Promises of God, as they present themselves; marking that the times, from the world's outset to its end, stand in three divisions among diverse peoples: before the Law, under the Law, and under Grace made manifest — a grace which was always present, though under hidden signs.

The threefold division is this. From the first founding of the first man down to Moses is "before the Law." From Moses, to whom the Law was given on Mount Sinai, down to the coming of our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ, is "under the Law." And from his being made manifest in the flesh — crucified, rising again, and ascending into heaven — until now, and to the end of the world (together with that brief space of Antichrist himself), is the time of Grace.

In these three times the most just God, the Creator, so ordered his own rights and promises, by his own governance, that he did not commit all things to faith alone to be believed, but entrusted very many to be gazed upon with the eyes — so that from the things that were seen, those that were hoped for as still to come might be believed as certain to be fulfilled. To each of the aforesaid times, therefore, we shall assign — as we promised — its own part of this book: which promises have been left to be gazed upon by those yet to come, and which have been figuratively displayed in Christ and the Church, and which have been believed — the chapters set out in order will show.

Chapter 1 — Promise: In Adam and Eve, Christ and the Church

From the book of the creation, Genesis.

In the beginning God made heaven and earth [Gen 1:1], and all things belonging to them: the shining things in heaven, the walking things on earth, the flying things in air, the swimming things in the waters. And when these were finished, God said: Let us make man to our image and likeness [Gen 1:26]. And when he had been formed from the slime of the earth, he breathed into his face the spirit of life, and man was made into a living soul [Gen 2:7]. And God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a helper like to himself [Gen 2:18], a counselor¹. And a little after: God sent a deep sleep upon Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs, and formed it into a woman, and brought her to Adam, to see what he would call her. And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman², because she was taken from her man. For this cause, he says, shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh [Gen 2:21–24].

That this was done so as to accomplish at once a fact and a figure, the Apostle Paul is witness. For expounding this very passage in the epistle to the Ephesians, he says: This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the Church [Eph 5:32].

The great sacrament, then, which Adam hoped for as promised, he saw joined to himself: she whom he believed to be his spouse, he signed for us, through the faith of the living, as the Church that was to be — and he called her the mother of all the living. And this for the very reason that Eve, formed out of the side of the sleeping Adam, foresaw the Church to be formed out of the side of Christ hanging on the cross — as indeed was done; and she it is who is truly the mother of all the living [Gen 3:20]. For this is that woman who is kept safe for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent, as is said of the Church in the Apocalypse [Rev 12:14].

Chapter 2 — Prediction: That two deaths follow upon the commandment despised

God predicted to Adam and to his wife the death that would follow, if they should touch the forbidden thing, saying: Of every tree of Paradise you shall eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it. And on the day you eat of it, you shall die the death [Gen 2:16–17]. But despising the precept at the devil's whispering, they touched the forbidden thing. And while the man excuses that sin by the woman, and the woman by the serpent, they served up the death that had been predicted — not so much to themselves as to their posterity as well [Rom 5:12]. For the whole human race together has paid this death out; and it signifies another, perpetual death, of which every man shall be free who has kept the commandments of Christ; whereas the man who has reckoned the saving warnings of our Lord Jesus Christ as fit to be despised shall, without any doubt, receive it.

For, says John the apostle, Blessed and holy is he who has part in this first resurrection: over him the second death has no power [Rev 20:6]. And the Lord: He who hears my words, and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; and shall not come into judgment, but shall pass over from death to life [John 5:24].

Chapter 3 — Prediction: That the devil's sentence awaits those who do his will

In Genesis, believed and seen.

There follows the sentence uttered and predicted against the serpent, the devil [Gen 3:14] — in which there is something to be feared...

Among the other things said to him is this: You shall eat earth all the days of your life [Gen 3:14]. For souls that gape after earthly desires are likened to earth; and the prophet David marks out such impious souls in the first Psalm, saying: They shall be as dust, which the wind casts forth from the face of the earth [Ps 1:4]. And Jeremiah the prophet: Those who depart from you shall be written in the earth [Jer 17:13]. Job too says: The earth has been handed over into the hand of the wicked [Job 9:24]. Likewise David: Remember, Lord, that we are earth [Ps 102:14]. But that he himself is stripped away from that earth which the serpent received to be eaten as the wage of sin, he says in another Psalm: Save me from the mire, that I stick not fast [Ps 68:15]. And again elsewhere: Our belly has cleaved to the earth: arise, Lord, help us, and redeem us for your name's sake [Ps 43:25–26]. And again elsewhere: Hand me not over, Lord, from my desire to the sinner [Ps 139:9].

For which cause the divine clemency has judged that we must be admonished daily by the priests to lift up the heart; and we profess that we have it unto the Lord — if only our pledge be firm, so that what we utter in words we may also fulfill in deeds by unceasing grace.

Chapter 4 — Prediction: That original sin follows in the curse of the woman

The prediction of original sin. In Genesis, believed and seen.

To the woman God said: Multiplying I will multiply your groans and your sorrows: in sadness shall you bring forth sons [Gen 3:16]. That the sons of transgressors are born thus, David the prophet confirms: In iniquities, he says, was I conceived, and in sins did my mother nourish me in the womb [Ps 50:7]. Solomon likewise testifies to the same: A heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day of their going forth from their mother's womb until the day of their burial into the mother of all [Sir 40:1]. And again he himself says: And I, being born, received the common air, and fell upon the earth that is made alike for all; my first voice I uttered like all men, weeping; I was nursed in swaddling bands and with cares. For no one among kings had any other beginning of birth. For there is one entrance for all unto life, and a like going out [Wis 7:3–6]. And a little after: For the seed was accursed from the beginning [Wis 12:11]. And Isaiah: A wicked seed, he says, sons of crime, you have forsaken the Lord [Isa 1:4]. Job too says: No one is free of filth, not even the infant whose life upon earth is of one day [Job 14:4]. Likewise he himself: No one can make clean what is conceived of unclean seed, save you alone, who alone are clean [Job 14:4, LXX].

For the expiation of this accursed seed — for the uncleanness of the woman bringing forth and of the infant — the sacrifices of the Law were instituted [Lev 12], lasting until the reign of Christ, who, by the sacrifice of his own body offered up, makes the little ones safe together with the great. For it was said of him: He himself shall save his people from their sins [Matt 1:21]. Yet these things which have been predicted are so discerned to have been fulfilled that they are taught to be still filling up until the end of the world.

Chapter 5 — Prediction: Labor, sweat, and sorrow for all his posterity

The sentence predicted and propagated. In Genesis, believed and seen.

And to Adam God said: Because you have heard the voice of your wife — more than mine³ — and have touched the tree, of which alone I had commanded you not to eat, and you have eaten: cursed is the earth in your works; thorns and thistles shall it bear for you. In sadness and groaning shall you eat the fodder of your field; in the sweat of your face shall you eat your bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken: for earth you are, and into earth you shall go [Gen 3:17–19].

This predicted penalty of sin, which Adam, the root of the human race, received as his sentence and poured over into his posterity as into its branches — of it the Apostle says that through one man sin entered into the world, and so passed over into all men, in whom all have sinned [Rom 5:12]. For the ground, which at the Creator's command was fruitful and formerly brought forth of itself wholesome herbs for man without any tilling, was afterward filled with hardships and briars — so that in sweat and toil every man must eat his bread from it, until he runs back into death. Nor have we merited only to hear these things predicted, but also to weigh them as things proved.

Whence David also says: Man shall go forth to his work, and to his labor until the evening [Ps 103:23]. And again: You shall eat the labors of your hands [Ps 127:2]. The Apostle also says: He who will not work, neither let him eat [2 Thess 3:10]. And the Lord sends laborers into the vineyard even until the eleventh hour [Matt 20:6].

Chapter 6 — Prediction: In Cain and Abel, the two peoples — Christians and Jews

A figured prediction, namely of the two peoples. In Genesis, believed and seen.

From the first human beings, now made mortal, two sons were begotten, both mortal: Cain the elder, Abel the younger; the one a shepherd of sheep, the other a tiller of the soil. While these were working the earth — an earth already liable to toil by the judgment of the divine sentence — and were striving to expiate themselves of their own and their father's offenses, they offered their sacrifices from the firstfruits of their produce. The sacrifice offered by the younger, Abel, from his sheep, is received as acceptable; Cain's is rejected — a portion of the earth not rightly divided. From this envy is born; and the divinity, foreknowing what was to come, enjoins patience upon the raging man, and it is said to Cain: You have sinned; be still. Its turning shall be unto you, and you shall have dominion over it [Gen 4:7] — that is, that he should himself have dominion over his sin, and not become the slave of sin, if he would humbly obey the one commanding. But Cain, defiant and impatient of himself, leapt upon Abel in the field, and killed him.

O the horror! Are these, Cain, the covenants of brotherhood? Are these the first fruits of a good nature? Is this the hope of a good disposition — that the father should hold a murderer sooner than a son? But by these audacities Cain knotted his crime together with many bonds besides. He was made a despiser of the divine commandment, the head of pride, the author of envy, the prince of death brought in, and the first parricide among men.

2. Here he established the beginnings of making war — that the guilty man should shed innocent blood; that, full of spite, he should assail another's glory. For from this source shone forth illustrious martyrdoms, when the just are slain by the impious. But so that divine providence might show that all that was done profits us, God requires the brother of the brother — the one he already knew to be slain; and the man who denied it he convicted, with the earth as witness: The voice of your brother's blood, he says, cries to me from the earth [Gen 4:10].

That Cain figured the Jewish people, gaping after earthly desires, and Abel figured Christ, the shepherd of the sheep, slain by that people — no Christian now doubts. And the whole earth, now receiving Christ's sacred blood, cries: Amen (which is, It is true) — so that to the Jew denying that he killed Christ it may rightly be said by God: The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the earth.

In place of Abel, whom Cain killed, Seth was born [Gen 4:25]; and from him, through the order of succession, came Enoch — who, while he pleased God, was translated, that he should not taste death [Gen 5:24; Heb 11:5], to be joined with Elijah [2 Kgs 2:11], so that two fit witnesses might be prepared for the second coming of Christ, for the confutation of Antichrist and for the glory of the judging Son of God [Rev 11:3]. Concerning these we shall bring forward testimonies in their own place.

Chapter 7 — Prediction: In the Flood, the ark, which signified the Church

In Genesis, believed and seen. The Flood predicted.

1. When the sons of God were falling away from their purpose of holiness, God admonished the just Noah thus: The end of all flesh, he says, has come before me: for the earth is filled with their iniquity, and I will destroy them together with the earth. Make yourself an ark of squared timbers; you shall make the ark in compartments, and shall pitch it within and without; and thus shall you make it. Three hundred cubits shall be the length of the ark, fifty cubits its breadth, and thirty cubits its height. You shall make a window in the ark, and in a cubit shall you finish it. And the door of the ark you shall set in its side. Behold, I will bring a flood of water upon the earth, and I will destroy all flesh in which is the spirit of life under heaven [Gen 6:13–17].

While faith, then, lends itself and prepares the mind, and believes that what it hopes for is to be fulfilled, Noah — obeying the mystical command and the mystical fabric — built the ark, in which he might shut himself in together with the clean and unclean animals, as had been commanded. And this by a geometric measure, which, as is reported, extends six times as far as ours does.

2. Now concerning these numbers here written down, gathering a few points so far as I shall be helped by the divine aid, I shall bring in the judgment of that architect of ours, Paul the apostle [1 Cor 3:10]; who, referring the figured fabric of that ark and its whole spiritual construction to the holy Church, expressed in it the likeness of the cross. For he says in the epistle to the Ephesians: I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he may grant you, according to the riches of his grace, the power to have Christ dwelling by faith in your hearts; that being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the height, the breadth, the length, and the depth; and to know also the charity of Christ, which surpasses knowledge [Eph 3:14–19]. He spoke five sentences in five members — being the man who had said: I wish to speak five words with my mind in the Church [1 Cor 14:19]. These five sentences, then, pertain to the measures of the aforesaid ark...

...are shown to pertain to the measures of the aforesaid ark by this reasoning. The number five, being constituted of an even and an odd, contains two and three: the three from the Trinity, the two from the two commandments — which joined together form the five. To this is added one, on account of the unity of the undivided Trinity, and there results the perfect number six, answering to itself on every side, in its first, third, and half parts. Of this number many of the elders have already spoken.

These two numbers, then — five and six — joined and multiplied into one another, are extended to the fivefold measures of the aforesaid ark. For which cause on the fifth day God made all things that were created, man excepted; and in the five books of Moses all the commandments of the Law are written down; and it was on the fifth day of the week that the Savior and Lord himself was handed over to the gibbet, for the cause of fulfilling the Law. But the number six contains this: that on the sixth day man was formed; and in the sixth age of the world the Word of God took up man for the redemption of the world; and on the sixth day of the week, hanging on the cross, he poured out from his side — as through the door of the ark — his precious blood, our whole ransom [Gen 6:16]; from which side there came forth the dove, the Church, endowed with so great a blood.

For which cause also the raven — the heretic — going out, shipwrecked by his lust for a human carcass, refused to return to the ark, the Church. Of him the clean animals, set within, cry out: They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us [1 John 2:19].

These two numbers, then, as I have said, five and six, when multiplied into one another, make up thirty. For five times six, and six times five, produces the number thirty. And these are the thirty cubits which were commanded to be built into the height of the ark, pertaining to the sublime part of hope — in which the head of the Crucified was fastened aloft. For all hope is in the head. For which cause our Head himself deigned to be crucified in his thirtieth year.

Again, the number five multiplied in the decalogue, on account of the ten precepts of the Law: for ten times five, and five times ten, makes fifty. And these are set as the breadth of the ark — they that are signed for the spaces of charity on the cross, in which the hands of the Crucified were fixed. For the ten precepts are said to have been written by the finger of God, and we ourselves are bidden to lift up our hands in holy things.

Likewise the numbers five and six multiplied into fifty supply the length of the ark: for fifty times six, and sixty times five, make three hundred — which are ascribed to the length of our ark, that is, to patience, in which the body of the Crucified was stretched out. To which it is said: Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow his footsteps [1 Pet 2:21]; since our old man was fastened to the cross together with him [Rom 6:6]; and we are bidden to be patient until the coming of the Lord [Jas 5:7]. But the depth of the cross signifies the greatness of the flood, by which both that ark and ours is borne up; since the judgments of God (as it is written) are like a great abyss [Ps 35:7].

3. Now as to what was said, You shall make it in three compartments [Gen 6:16] — this fabric our aforesaid architect Paul expressed: These three abide, he says: faith, hope, charity [1 Cor 13:13]. For whereas in the first and second dwelling the beasts, the cattle, the serpents and the birds remained in faith and in hope, in the third Noah, abiding with his own in charity (because the greatest of these is charity), could not dread the flood. For he who abides in charity abides in God, and God abides in him: for God is charity [1 John 4:16].

The window of the ark we better take as the regard unto the salvation of souls, which are, by the pitch, joined within and without and bound to one another in the unity of the Holy Spirit and in the bond of peace [Eph 4:3]. It was said that the ark should be finished in a cubit: for so it was fitting to signify the unity of the Church — since Christ is the end of the Law unto justice for everyone who believes [Rom 10:4].

Whence also that rich man in the Gospel, dreading the flood of this life, says to the very Lord of all things: Good master, what shall I do to obtain eternal life? [Luke 18:18]. And the Lord, showing him the measures of the aforesaid ark: You know the commandments, he says [Luke 18:20]. And when he had told him very many of that number, the man — as though desiring, being squared, to be joined to the ark — said: All these commandments I have kept: what yet remains to me? [Luke 18:21]. And the Lord, marking that the perfection of our ark consists in the one cubit, said: If you will be perfect, go, sell all that you have, give to the poor, and come, follow me [Matt 19:21]. And when that man could not do it — because he was not squared on every side — he did not merit to reach the cubit of perfection of the ark. For he went away, as it is said, saddened [Luke 18:23].

4. And as to the flood being made upon the earth for forty days and forty nights [Gen 7:17] — this number shows not so much the flood of past time as the flood of souls in the present time also: souls which are submerged upon the crags of this world, and in the whirlpool of outrages, and in the shipwrecking waves of the diverse pleasures. That these might be escaped, Moses for forty days [Exod 34:28], Elijah for forty days [1 Kgs 19:8], and the Savior himself for forty days [Matt 4:2] are shown to have consecrated their fasts, by this threefold reasoning — as being necessary for the three aforesaid times: before the Law, under the Law, under Grace.

The end of the flood, therefore, terminated in the six hundred and first year of Noah [Gen 8:13], signifies the end of the world after the six ages of the world, as has been said, and the brief space of Antichrist. For through just so many ages is the life of a long-lived man also drawn out, until from infancy he runs back into old age. But now the Church — or the ark — is known to carry both good and evil, like the clean and unclean animals, until the aforesaid end. Of which our Lord and Savior testified in the Gospel, saying that his coming would be just as it was in the days of Noah: suddenly, upon men eating and drinking, buying and selling [Matt 24:37].

Noah, therefore, believed the things predicted which he saw in the ark. He believed the things that were to be presented to us as the Church. He hopes together with us for the things which are to be declared at the last judgment.

Chapter 8 — Prediction: In the three sons of Noah, the nations which Christ the Lord found scattered and gathered together

The nations predicted: from the three sons of Noah. In Genesis, believed and seen.

From the three sons of Noah, then — Shem, Ham, and Japheth — and from as many of his sons' wives, the fruitfulness of mortals increased. But pride, the root of sin, could not itself perish when the world was perishing by the flood. A proud tower is raised up by proud men, whose top should thus far seize heaven [Gen 11:4]. Its undertakings are brought to nothing by the true Craftsman, God, through the confusion of tongues. For thus it is written: Behold, there is one lip for the whole earth, and this they have begun to do; and now they shall not fail in anything whatever they have set out to do. And God said: Come, let us go down, and let us confound their tongues there [Gen 11:6–7]. God the Trinity speaks. But for God to "go down" is to inspect human acts, or to draw near to their senses.

And these things, as they were predicted, were straightway fulfilled. For the tongues, being confounded, were not so much unable to carry out what they had planned, as the nations, scattered through the world, each marked themselves off by their own speech. And yet, when the sentence of the Creator and Judge had been fulfilled, charity, through the humble grace of Christ, gathered together under one doctrine what proud impiety had wickedly scattered. Let every tongue, therefore, now confess as one that the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the tower of strength, is in the glory of God the Father [Phil 2:11].

Whom — made drunk, as Noah from the vineyard, and stripped naked in the Passion — the son Ham mocked [Gen 9:21], and, receiving the curse upon Canaan his son, gave to the nations to drink. Which curse the Lord Jesus took away, who was made a curse for us [Gal 3:13].

Chapter 9 — Prediction: In Eber, the Hebrew nation, which handed over its primacy to the Christian people

The Hebrew nation predicted: from whom it arose, holding the primacy among all tongues. In Genesis, believed and seen.

Among the rest whom the confusion of tongues divided among the nations, one was called Eber [Gen 11:14], in whom, as is reported, the Hebrew tongue — the first tongue — remained; whence also the Hebrew nation received its name.

But that Hebrew is the first tongue, that mystical title written by Pilate shows. For it was marked with three tongues — Hebrew, Greek, and Latin [John 19:20] — which tongues, holding the primacy over nearly all tongues, were consigned in the title to the Creator himself, by that divine order in which David the prophet, before they came to pass, testified to the things predicted, saying: Destroy not the inscription [Ps 56:1, title]. For that judge had written King of the Jews over the crucified one [John 19:19]. And when the Hebrews read this in their own tongue — which had been set in the first place — and demanded that it be changed, Pilate, moved by God, said: What I have written, I have written [John 19:22]. So that both the integrity of the title might remain inviolate, as was promised, and the Hebrew tongue might deservedly be marked, under this testimony, in that principal place which it afterward lost.

From this Eber, then, the line runs down to Abraham [Gen 11:27] — from whom, as some say, they are called Abrei, just as from Eber they are called Hebrews. And that this people is the firstborn, though the Lord himself attests it, saying Israel is my firstborn [Exod 4:22], is shown more fully in the book of Deuteronomy. When the Most High divided the nations (it is said), he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the angels of God. And his portion was Jacob, the lot of his inheritance Israel [Deut 32:8]. But by what path this Jacob — who was called Israel — comes, let us run back through in order, so that the promises to Abraham, whose grandson he is, may be filled out.

Chapter 10 — Promise: In the calling of Abraham, the land of the living, to be the Christian people's

A promise made and figured. In Genesis, believed and seen.

From the seed, then, of Shem the son of Noah was born Eber, whose son was Peleg, under whom the tongues were divided [Gen 10:25]. Peleg begot Reu; Reu begot Serug; Serug begot Nahor; Nahor begot Terah; Terah begot Abram, who was afterward called Abraham [Gen 11:18–26]; whose grandson was Jacob.

Scripture testifies that this Abraham was born among the Chaldeans. Called out from that nation, and being the first to believe, he merited to be called the father of faith, by the grace of him who called him [Rom 4:11]. The Chaldeans, given over to astronomy, while they shrewdly scrutinize the positions of the stars, erring greatly concerning the worship and religion of God — in no way seeking out the Creator of all things — became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened, as Paul says [Rom 1:21]. Out of whom Abraham, not shrewd...

...kindled by no shrewdness of the creature, but by the warmth of divine worship, was set apart from the foolish and the senseless by the gift of the Lord.

Go out, God says to him, from your land and from your kindred, and come into whatever land I shall show you [Gen 12:1]. At the command of him who called, having left his first seat and his kindred, he believes by faith the things he did not see — until he may merit to see all that he believes. Going out, therefore, from the land of the Chaldeans, he dwelt in Haran, in which he was filled with all riches [Acts 7:2–4]. And of that land itself he received the inheritance that was to come, in the hope of his seed. And when, from a wife both aged and barren — himself likewise sinking into old age — he awaits an heir by promise, here the father of faith shows us that the long delays of our sojourning are not to be dreaded, and that our hope is always to be set in Christ the Lord; by whose grace we shall possess the land of the living as an everlasting inheritance — of which David the prophet says: I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living [Ps 26:13].

Chapter 11 — Promise: That in Abraham's seed the Christian people should be multiplied as the stars

The promise of multiplying Abraham's seed. In Genesis, believed and seen.

The word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, saying: Fear not, Abraham; I protect you; your reward shall be exceedingly great. And Abraham said: Lord, what will you give me? For I am without children, and the son set over my house is this Damascus Eliezer. And Abraham said: Because you have given me no seed, my home-born servant shall be my heir. And straightway the word of the Lord came to him: This shall not be your heir; but he who shall come forth from your own loins, him shall you have as heir. And he led him outside and said to him: Look up to heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them. And he said: So shall your seed be. And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him unto justice [Gen 15:1–6].

This Paul the Apostle confirms, saying: Faith, therefore, is from hearing; and hearing through the word of Christ [Rom 10:17]. And Isaiah says: Unless you believe, you shall not understand [Isa 7:9, LXX].

Faith is the foundation of every future thing — the topmost point of whose building has laid hold of earth and heaven in Christ Jesus, who is of the seed of Abraham.

Chapter 12 — Promise: In the priesthood of Abraham, the royal priesthood of the Church

The promise by which Abraham, when God demanded a sacrifice, is shown to be a priest. In Genesis, believed and seen.

1. In a second oracle the Lord said to Abraham: I am he who led you out of the land of the Chaldeans, that I might give you this land, and that you might possess it. And he said: Lord, whence can I know that I shall possess it? And the Lord said: Take a heifer of three years, and a she-goat of three years, and a ram of three years, a turtledove also and a pigeon. And taking all these, he divided them down the middle, and set both parts over against one another; but the birds he did not divide. And birds of prey came down upon the divided carcasses, and Abraham drove them away. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep rushed upon Abraham, and a great and darksome horror invaded him. And it was said to him: Know beforehand that your seed shall be a stranger in a land not its own, and they shall subject them to slavery, and shall afflict them four hundred years. But the nation to which they shall be enslaved, I myself will judge, says the Lord. After these things they shall go forth with great substance. But you shall go to your fathers, nourished in a good old age. And in the fourth generation they shall return here: for the iniquities of the Amorites are not yet filled up [Gen 15:7–16].

In this promise, and in this threefold sacrifice (which was so enacted in the present that it should nevertheless signify other things to come), recognize, spiritual reader, the three times spoken of above, in these three animals:

• the three-year heifer — the people before the Law, wantoning without the yoke of the Law;
• the three-year she-goat — under the Law, which the people transgressing the Law must immolate for sin;
• the three-year ram — under Grace, the perfect sacrifice; which the same Abraham, offering it figuratively in place of his son, received upon the altar of the cross as our Ram, Christ, of three years — that is, preached in the three times — for the sin of the people.

Since, as Isaiah says, for the iniquity of the people he was led to death; and by his bruise we have all been healed [Isa 53:8, 5].

2. And as to these animals being set divided over against one another: Paul the apostle shows that divisions and schisms, which would fight against each other, were to come, saying: There must also be heresies, that those who are approved may be made manifest among you [1 Cor 11:19]. For before the Law, the sacrifice of Cain — as of the heretics — was rejected [Gen 4:5]. And in the Law, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, being authors of heresies and schisms, the earth swallowed alive [Num 16]. And under Grace, the doctrines of many heresies — the birds settling around the divided carcasses of the dead — are driven off by Paul, when he says: Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? [1 Cor 1:13].

But it was commanded to Abraham in that sacrifice that he should not divide the chaste turtledove and the simple pigeon. Since spiritual sons, chaste, and simple virgins, while they offer in charity the sacrifice of an unstained faith, cannot be divided at all.

And that the seed of those who sing to their Lord is a stranger in this life, David testifies, saying: I am a sojourner and a stranger, as all my fathers were [Ps 38:13]. And that they were harassed in Egypt four hundred years, while they groan and say, Woe is me, for my sojourning is prolonged [Ps 119:5] — this is plain enough.

But that in the fourth generation they return to liberty out of this Egyptian slavery: our own liberty, plucked out from sin, is shown — which, when the three oft-named times are completed, rises up into that fourth, which the Lord calls the regeneration [Matt 19:28], declared through the true resurrection; the sins of the Amorites being filled up... — that is, the sins of those who do not believe the Gospel of God. Since he who has not believed, as the Lord says, is judged already [John 3:18].

Chapter 13 — Promise: In the perfecting of his name, whereby Abraham is by faith the father of the nations

In Genesis, believed and seen. A figured promise.

In a third oracle the divine promise was confirmed even in his name. Called Abram before, the Lord the Creator names him Abraham — and the proper meaning of that name is marked out: I have set you a father of many nations [Gen 17:5]. So that this promise should not be believed to pertain only to the offspring of Abraham's flesh, from which the Jewish people came.

Glorying in that flesh, they said in the Gospel: We have Abraham for our father [Matt 3:9; Luke 3:8]. And the answer was given by him who had granted both such a name and such a faith: Do not glory in this; for God is able from these stones to raise up sons to Abraham. So that Abraham might be, in Christ, the father of many nations by faith [Rom 4:18] — whereas by generation he was the father of one nation only.

Chapter 14 — Prediction: In circumcision, whereby the Christian is circumcised in heart

A figured prediction.

To this Abraham, now called by faith, a certain covenant of circumcision is enjoined, as a sign of the Old Testament, which he and his posterity are commanded to keep [Gen 17:9ff]; and every soul that had not observed circumcision was to perish from the people [Gen 17:14].

It is asked, perhaps, why it pleased God that only every male should be circumcised, of those who had vowed themselves to obey God. But this thing was done under a great sacrament, which looked back upon the middle and the past times, and forward to those to come. For — since it was in that part of the body that man was struck by the serpent's venom, as the cause of the first transgression — seething with the heat of lust, he grew ashamed of those things which had not been created shameful, and resolved that those things must be covered with modesty which had been shamelessly bared.

For this reason God, the Creator and Judge, enjoined the sign of circumcision in that part of the body, tempering the disease of ill-conceived desire even in the lawful embrace: so that by the good of continence and the honor of integrity he might repair what had been corrupted.

For the circumcision of the heart, which shines out in the New Testament, was figured in that sign — since there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God [Matt 19:12]. And God rebukes and upbraids the sons of Israel as uncircumcised in heart [Jer 9:26].

Chapter 15 — Promise: In the birth of Isaac, who is called "laughter," what he shows forth in Christ

A figured promise. In Genesis, believed and seen.

Again the divine majesty appeared to the same Abraham at the oak of Mamre, in three men [Gen 18:1ff], bearing the promise of the son shortly to be received, and confirming the things said above; by whom also Sarah his wife is asked after.

For God said to Abraham: Where is Sarah your wife? And he said: She is in the tent. And the Lord said to him: I will return to you at this season, and Sarah shall have a son [Gen 18:9–10]. But Sarah, hearing these things, as she was at the door of the tent behind him, laughed within herself, saying: It has not happened to me until this time, and my lord is an old man. And the Lord said to Abraham: Why did Sarah laugh within herself, saying: Shall I then truly bear a child, who am grown old? Can the word of God do nothing? And again he confirms it: I will return to you at this season, and Sarah shall have a son [Gen 18:12–14].

Out of fear Sarah denies that she laughed — and by the truth she is convicted of having laughed. And when she conceived and brought forth, his name was called Isaac, which is interpreted laughter. For which cause Sarah herself, when she was already carrying the little one in her hands, said: God has made laughter for me. For all who hear that an old and barren woman has borne a child will rejoice with me in laughter [Gen 21:6].

Offspring of laughter is received — in whom Abraham took up the promised blessing of all the nations. For the nations which by Christ... ...now believe — the Christ coming in the flesh through that old man — confess to the Jews their own Savior unto laughter⁴; and glorifying him, they acknowledge that his shameful Passion is their own true liberty.

Chapter 16 — Prediction: In Sodom and Gomorrah, the day of the judgment to come

In Genesis, believed and seen. A prediction both enacted and figured.

The Lord showed the predicted overthrow of the impious cities of the Sodomites and Gomorrahites to that same faithful servant Abraham, saying: The cry of the Sodomites and Gomorrahites has been multiplied, and their sins are exceedingly great. Going down, I shall see whether they have brought to fulfillment the cry that comes to me; and if not, that I may know [Gen 18:20–21].

God "went down," as it is here said — because he did not hide his own just judgment from his most beloved servant. And Abraham, knowing through a certain compassion (which as a suppliant and humble intercessor he had received) that God rightly willed to destroy the aforesaid cities, sought to soften him in his anger, in this way: Destroy not the just man together with the impious. Shall the just be as the unjust? If there be fifty just men in the city, will you destroy them? Will you not spare the whole place for the sake of those fifty just men? [Gen 18:23–24].

And when God had promised that he would not destroy it, if he should find fifty just men in those places, Abraham took boldness from that speaking, and — applying the reverent words of one beseeching, confessing himself to be slime and dust — with a marvelous serenity he suspended the sentence of God from fifty down to ten [Gen 18:27ff]. And even that small number, it is said, he did not find.

And rescuing Lot with his wife and his two daughters from the peoples and the cities which he was about to consume with heavenly fire, he admonished those whom he freed not to stand in the whole region, nor to look back [Gen 19:17ff]. And Lot's wife, despising the precept and looking back, was made a pillar of salt — and by her own example she has salted the foolish: this woman demonstrated that those who are advancing in the holy purpose toward which they press must not look back with harmful curiosity, nor wish to escape the punishments in such a way. She lost what she had escaped.

Such men the Lord upbraids in the Gospel, saying: It shall be more tolerable for the land of the Sodomites in the day of judgment than for you [Matt 10:15; 11:24]. But those whom the grace of Christ frees, he admonishes through the Apostle: Go out from the midst of them, and be separate, says the Lord [2 Cor 6:17]. Likewise the same: Forgetting the things that are behind, stretched out toward those that are before [Phil 3:13]. No one looking back, and setting his hand upon the plow, is fit for the kingdom of God [Luke 9:62]. And when the Lord had said this, he added: Remember Lot's wife [Luke 17:32].

Secure, therefore, do they await the day of judgment who glory in the cross of the Lord, to whom the world is crucified, and they to the world [Gal 6:14]. For the Lord struck fear into the hearts of the faithful, saying: As it was done in the days of Lot, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be [Luke 17:28] — lest that sudden day find them weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness [Luke 21:34]. Of which the Apostle says: For the day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night [1 Thess 5:2].

Chapter 17 — Prediction: In the immolation of Isaac, the Passion of Christ

A figured prediction. In Genesis, believed and seen.

God tempted Abraham, saying: Abraham, Abraham. And he said: Here am I. And the Lord: Take your only-begotten son, whom you love, Isaac, and go into the high land; and offer him there as a holocaust upon one of the mountains, which I shall tell you [Gen 22:1–2].

He commands to be offered to himself as a holocaust the very one in whom he had already promised, by so many divine oracles, that the seed of Abraham should be multiplied as the stars of heaven, and that in him the nations should be blessed. Yet the father does not delay to fulfill in the son the things commanded — knowing, as Paul says, that the Lord was able to raise him even from the dead [Heb 11:19].

But in him who is tempted in his son, not only is the power of the faith conferred upon him demonstrated: it is also set before us for our imitation — and so that the authority of the new precept out of the Gospel might stand: He who loves father or mother above me is not worthy of me; or he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me [Matt 10:37].

For although Abraham did not yet know him fit for offspring, he nevertheless obeyed God's command with this intent: because he knew that God was neither unmindful of his own promises, nor that some mystical sacrament of the Lord's coming Passion was being enacted — looking, that is, upon that day of our redemption, of which the Lord in the Gospel says, upbraiding the Jews: Abraham your father longed to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad [John 8:56].

Abraham, then, saw the day of the Passion of the Son of God figured in his own son:

• in that he did not spare his only son;
• in that he hastened for three days, as it were to the altar of the cross, with an innocent victim;
• in that the son, suffering and without a voice, like a lamb before the one who shears him [Isa 53:7], offered his devoted neck to his father, that he might strike;
• in that Isaac did not struggle against being hung upon the wood which he himself had carried;
• in that the ram, held fast by its horns in the thorn-bush [Gen 22:13], showing forth Christ crowned with thorns, appeared to be immolated in Isaac's place;
• in that Isaac was therefore not immolated — because the resurrection was reserved for the Son of God.

All these things Abraham, believing, merited to see through the figure — which we acknowledge to have been fulfilled through grace.

Chapter 18 — Prediction: In God's oath, whereby his seed in Christ is extended beyond number

A figured promise to Abraham. In Genesis, believed and seen.

By my own self have I sworn, says the Lord: because you have not spared your most beloved son for my sake, I will bless you, and I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your seed shall possess the cities of its enemies; and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice [Gen 22:16–18].

That Abraham's seed was indeed multiplied, and came to a great number, the book of Numbers shows — yet we do not know it to be innumerable. But the promise of God holds it to be as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered. And that this blessing has been filled up in Christ, through the faith of the nations, of whom Abraham is father, the very order of events demonstrates — and along with it the oracles of the Prophets, which testify through David and the rest that the sons of Abraham are called to an infinite number not only from the seed of the flesh, but by faith.

In him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed. All nations shall call him blessed [Ps 71:17]. Likewise: All the kings of the earth shall adore him: all nations shall serve him [Ps 71:11]. And Isaiah: There shall be a root of Jesse, and he who shall rise up to rule the nations; in him shall the nations hope [Isa 11:10].

Paul the Apostle also says that the Jews were branches broken off through unbelief, and that the nations were grafted in, as a wild olive, into the faith of the root of Abraham [Rom 11:17–20]. Likewise the same: But that the nations should glorify God for his mercy [Rom 15:9] — the mercy by which, the stony heart being taken away as he promised, he would give them a heart of flesh [Ezek 36:26].

For he calls stones those who worship stone gods, when he says: I tell you, if these keep silent, the stones shall cry out [Luke 19:40]. And in a marvelous manner, those who were stones, made sons by grace, cry out: Our Father, who art in heaven — while those who were sons, made stones, say: Make us gods, who shall go before us [Exod 32:1]; because, forsaking the living God, they served Baal and the idols of the nations. The nations, on the contrary, spurning the idols, followed the living God.

And these things we see being fulfilled: those things, namely, which were promised in his seed that was to come through Christ — the things which Abraham also believed.

Chapter 19 — Prediction: That Christ would take up manhood from Abraham's thigh

That the flesh of Christ, predicted, would come from Abraham's thigh, the following mystical action shows. In Genesis, believed and seen.

Abraham calls the steward of his house and says to him: Put your hand under my thigh, and swear by the God of heaven that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of this land, among whom I dwell; but from my own tribe shall you take a wife for him [Gen 24:2–4].

That the God of heaven was in Abraham's thigh, this order of descent shows. For Abraham begot Isaac; Isaac, Jacob; Jacob, the twelve Patriarchs — among whom Judah, from whose tribe came David; and from him, through the series of generations, the Virgin Mary, who bore Christ — who is the God of heaven, because through him all things were made [John 1:3].

Chapter 20 — Promise: In the twins of Rebecca, two peoples — Christians and Jews

In Genesis, believed and seen. A promise both made and figured.

When the same Isaac had taken Rebecca, his kinswoman, to wife, and perceived that she was barren, he besought God — who had promised a manifold offspring — for the begetting of children; and as soon as he asked, he received.

But when Rebecca had conceived, the twins struggled within her womb. And she, bearing it ill, said: If it was to be thus for me, why is this happening to me? [Gen 25:22]. And Isaac went with her to inquire of the Lord, and received an answer of this kind: Two peoples, he says, are in your womb, and two nations shall come forth from your belly; and one people shall overcome the other, and the elder shall serve the younger [Gen 25:23].

Isaac received the two promised sons, acknowledging by faith alone the two peoples that were to be — whom that mystical action displayed to us, revealed.

For while Esau came forth first from the womb, hairy, the hand of the younger, Jacob, sent out after him, took hold of his heel [Gen 25:26] — a deed which offered a wondrous and great sight. This same younger Jacob, the smooth one, already in his very boyhood supplanting his elder brother by means of the red pottage of lentils, took away his rights of the firstborn. Nor could the sacrament of so great a mystery be empty.

That smooth younger Jacob signified the smooth and gentle Christian people, endowed with that gentleness by which the heathen fury had believed the harmless one would be devoured. This gentle people, therefore, by the red cooked dish — that is, the Passion of Christ, reddened with blood — offered it willingly to the devouring and raging Jewish people (whose figure Esau bore, who was also called Edom) when they demanded it. And the rights of the firstborn which the one had, he sold; and the other received them.

The Jew lost by covetousness what he had by being born. The Christian acquired by grace what he did not have by nature.

Chapter 21 — Promise: In the same twins, the things they enacted by figure

In Genesis, believed and seen. A promise both made and figured.

1. But how marvelous, how great, how full of sacraments according to the promises of God are the things enacted in those two twins — this I shall strive to set out briefly, as is fitting.

Isaac their father, blinded in his outward eyes but with the inner light shining, promises the blessing to Esau his firstborn son, if the son would prepare for his father the desired food from his own hunting. Esau goes off to fulfill what was commanded. But the mother, who had heard the blessing promised to the elder — and knowing it was divinely enacted that it should come to the younger, Jacob — prepares, with prophetic art, a mystical device⁵.

She took the garment of her firstborn, which was with her in the house, and clothed the younger in it; and upon his arms and his bare neck she laid the skins of kids. She fitted out the one who was, so that what he was not might be seen — as though she were already showing us the figured Christ, who took not the flesh of sin, but the likeness of the flesh of sin [Rom 8:3]. Receiving the Law of the Old Testament, too, as it were the garment of the firstborn, the Lord said that he had not come to loose it, but to fulfill it [Matt 5:17].

Thus arrayed, that younger son Jacob — who had already taken away his brother's rights of the firstborn — usurps the blessing besides. Offering to his father the food prepared by his mother, he says: "Father." And he: Who are you, my son? "I am," he says, your firstborn Esau. I have done as you spoke to me. And when the father recognized the voice of the younger son, he judged that he must feel him — and found the limbs of the elder by their covering. And being troubled in his sons, there came to pass (as a certain poet says) a welcome error to the parents⁶.

Taking, then, the feast which the mother had prepared and the son offered — which the father gladly received — he gave to the younger son a blessing of this kind: Behold, the smell of my son is as the smell of a full field which the Lord has blessed. May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth, an abundance of grain, wine, and oil; and may nations serve you, and princes adore you; and may you be lord of your brother, and may the sons of your father adore you. And he who blesses you shall be blessed, and he who curses you shall be cursed [Gen 27:27–29].

All these things fit Christ the Lord. After his fragrance all the blessed nations run together.

2. When these things were done, there came also the firstborn son Esau — now reprobate by the grace shown to the younger. He too offers food to his father, and says: Let my father rise and eat of the hunting of his son, that your soul may bless me. At this the father, struck with dread, said: And who is he that hunted for me, and brought it in before you came in? And I blessed him — and he is blessed [Gen 27:31–33].

The blessed later people, the Christian, now says to the Father: You have given gladness in my heart: from the fruit of their grain, wine, and oil they have been multiplied [Ps 4:8]. But to the elder people, the Jewish, the Father says: I will not take calves from your house, nor goats from your flocks; for the sacrifice of praise shall glorify me [Ps 49:9, 23]. For your brother came with guile, and received your blessing [Gen 27:35].

Since, then, God loved Jacob, but Esau he hated [Mal 1:2–3] — therefore, the time being filled up and the sacrifices of the Jews driven out, the whole Christian people now acknowledges that a clean sacrifice, as was predicted, is offered to his name [Mal 1:11]; a people which by grace has taken from the Jew both the birthright and the blessing. For of this one it was said: You shall be lord of your brother [Gen 27:29].

Yet in those twins themselves it did not come about so. For the younger offered gifts to the elder, and professing himself a servant, humbly adored him [Gen 33:3] — so that the thing which was then signed in the letter might now be made manifest to us in grace.

Chapter 22 — Promise: In Esau, from whose seed came Job — and Christ among the nations by faith

In Genesis, believed and seen. Rewards promised to virtue and to patience.

From the seed of Esau came the Idumaean nation [Gen 36:1], among whose leaders was Job, that most mighty athlete... of God shone out [Job 1:1], brought forward as an example of all patience — so that, upheld by God's help, he might overcome in agonistic contest the devil, the prince of the whole army.

For when he was a man just and blameless before God, and God deigned to show, to the devil's confounding, what sort of man he was: Have you considered, God says to the devil, my servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth. And the devil: Does Job worship God for nothing? Have you not blessed his house, and multiplied his cattle? But send forth your hand and touch all that he has, and you shall know whether he will bless you to your face. Behold, God says, all that he has I give into your hands; but see that you do not touch him [Job 1:8–12].

A great contest begins. The treacherous and apostate angel harasses God's faithful servant; and — as his malice is full, self-begotten — he lays waste, drives off, and destroys all the innocent man's goods; and together with the whole inheritance he consumed the whole heir. Yet with so many darts loosed, Job remains unwounded — and by him, as by a soldier of God, the devil is struck down at a single blow: Naked I came forth from my mother's womb; naked shall I return into the earth. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it is done. Blessed be the name of the Lord [Job 1:21].

Beaten in this contest, the enemy proclaims another and greater one. Send forth your hand, he says to God, and touch his flesh and his bones, and you shall know whether he will bless you to your face [Job 2:5]. Now "send forth your hand" is nothing else than "Give me power." For the devil had no such power even over swine, unless he had granted it who, under this same authority, handed Job over to him — so that he should not exceed the measure of the command [Matt 8:31–32]. Behold, God says, I hand him over to you; only preserve his soul [Job 2:6].

And when he had been struck with a grievous wound — the whole frame of his body rotting, all his joints loosened, the discharge running, the worms boiling up — while in a corrupted body an uncorrupted mind still stood firm, and the devil felt him to be strong within whom he had reckoned feeble without: then the devil arms the woman against her husband — the one he had left him in that moment as necessary to him — and through the wife strikes at the strongest of men from his own side.

2. And when the woman poured out the poisoned darts she had taken up from the enemy, she said among other things: Speak some word against the Lord, and die [Job 2:9]. And straightway Job, calling to mind the ruin of the first man, and vanquishing a new Eve — and in her that enemy who was doing battle — said: You have spoken as one of the foolish women. If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why should we not bear evil things? [Job 2:10].

Laid low by these divine darts, and overcome by grace, the perverse angel yielded to the devout man; and the humble devotion of the patient man conquered every trouble of pride. For already, through this just and mighty man, the footsteps of Christ, which were to pass over into the nations, were being marked out — of whom David says in his person: Into Idumaea will I stretch out my shoe [Ps 107:10].

James the Apostle also, confirming the hearts of believers by this example of patience, says: You have heard of the patience of Job, and you have seen the end of the Lord — that the Lord is merciful and compassionate [Jas 5:11]. For Job the victor received double rewards. And to his own who fight, and who conquer by his grace, the Lord promises that he will give here a hundredfold, and will bestow eternal life in the age to come [Matt 19:29].

Chapter 23 — Promise: In Jacob, to whom Christ, the cornerstone, was shown in a vision

A figured promise. In Genesis, believed and seen.

Jacob also, the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, received the promise through certain things marvelously enacted with him. For fleeing his brother's snares, the setting of the westering sun afforded him a place of lodging. There, with a stone placed under his head, he tells of such things revealed to him in a dream: he saw a ladder of wondrous greatness, whose top thus far seized heaven, by which the angels of God were ascending and descending; and the Lord also leaning upon it [Gen 28:10ff].

And the stone which he had set beneath his head, and which he afterward anointed and set up as a pillar, showed forth Christ, the cornerstone — the stone which the builders rejected, which was made the head of the corner. For the Lord himself refers this vision to himself in the Gospel, saying to Nathanael: You shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man [John 1:51].⁷

Chapter 24 — Prediction: In Jacob's wrestling, the limping of the Hebrew people

...he met him on the way; and wrestling a sacred bout with him, the angel suffered himself to be overcome by a man — and the victor exacted a blessing from the vanquished. I will not let you go, he says, unless you bless me. And the angel said to him: What is your name? And he said: Jacob. From now on, he says, you shall not be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name; because you have prevailed with God, and with men you shall be mighty. And the angel touched the breadth of his thigh, and Jacob was made lame all his days [Gen 32:26–31].

That limping, which came from his thigh, signifies that Hebrew people, limping — to whom Elijah the prophet says: Why do you limp on both hams? If he is God, go after him [1 Kgs 18:21]. And David says: The sons of the stranger have grown old, and have limped away from their paths [Ps 17:46] — because that people would not follow Christ, the Way, by the straight road, but limping, wandered astray by errors through diverse byways.

And him — Jacob seeing God (which is what Israel is interpreted to mean) [Gen 32:30] — the Christian people has laid hold of, by grace.

Chapter 25 — Promise: In the sons of Jacob, and in Joseph, who bore the figure of Christ

In Genesis, believed and seen.

...from his father Jacob and his mother Rachel — whose every action sounds of Christ and the Church.

For it is said: Jacob loved Joseph [Gen 37:3]. And God says of his Son: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased [Matt 3:17].

Jacob made Joseph a many-colored tunic [Gen 37:3]. And it is said to this our Joseph, Christ: The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing, wrapped about with variety [Ps 44:10].

Joseph dreamed a dream, and told it to his brothers: I thought, he says, that we were binding sheaves in the field. My sheaf arose and stood upright; and your sheaves, turning about, adored my sheaf [Gen 37:5–7].

2. That this was to be in Christ, the same Jacob shows in the blessing which Judah received from his father, when he said: The sons of your father shall adore you [Gen 49:8]. For these are they who say: Come, let us adore and fall down before him [Ps 94:6] — they who now say: Our Father, who art in heaven [Matt 6:9]. And he himself says in the Gospel: When I have been lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself [John 12:32].

Again he sees other tokens in a dream, and disclosed these to his brothers: As it were the sun, he says, and the moon and eleven stars adored me [Gen 37:9]. And it is said of our Joseph, Christ the Lord, through the prophet: Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you stars and light [Ps 148:3]; and: The heavens declare the glory of God [Ps 18:2]. And Habakkuk: The sun was lifted up, he says, and the moon stood in its order [Hab 3:11, LXX].

The moon — the Church, made up of mortals who pass away — after the Sun, Christ, was exalted, rising again in unbroken order, stood firm in the faith, with the stars shining for him who numbers them. For to his disciples, whose number is fixed, he says: Let your works shine like lights in the world [Matt 5:16; Phil 2:15].

Chapter 26 — Promise: In the same Joseph, who like Christ the Lord was sent to visit the sheep

In Genesis, believed and seen. A prefigured promise.

Joseph is sent by his father to visit his brothers and the sheep [Gen 37:13–14]. And our Joseph, Christ the Lord, says: I am not sent except to the sheep that have perished, of the house of Israel [Matt 15:24].

It is said: Joseph's brothers hated him because of his dreams [Gen 37:8]. And this our Joseph, Christ, cries out concerning his brothers the Jews: They have hated me without cause [Ps 34:19; John 15:25].

Seeing Joseph, his brothers said: Behold, that dreamer comes. Come, let us kill him, and let us see what his dreams will be [Gen 37:19–20]. And in Solomon the impious are reported to have said of our Joseph: Come, let us kill the just man, since he is unpleasing to us. And it follows: He promises that he has the knowledge of God, and names himself Son of God. Let us see whether his words are true, and let us test whether the things to come will befall him [Wis 2:12–17].

These things he confirms in the Gospel also, concerning the son who was sent to the vinedressers — how they said: This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours [Matt 21:38].

Joseph's brothers, taking him, stripped him of that many-colored tunic, and cast him into the pit [Gen 37:23–24]. This too our Joseph says of his Passion through the prophet: They cast me into the lower pit, into the darkness and the shadow of death [Ps 87:7].

But the tunic that was stripped from him — the Gospel authority relates that it was woven from the top [John 19:23]; and that the soldiers would not divide it, confirming the unity of the Church, from whose lot the heretics are shut out — since it fell by lot that one man, that is, unity, should possess it [Ps 21:19].

Taking a kid of the goats, Joseph's brothers stained his tunic with blood, which they brought to their father under a false attestation: that an evil beast had devoured him [Gen 37:31].

Those three kinds of sacrifices which Abraham offered — in a changed order — observe all their own times: - for Isaac, a ram; - for Joseph, a kid of the goats; - for the lost son returning to the father, a fatted calf of the herd is killed [Luke 15:23].

Come, said one of the brothers, let us sell Joseph, and let us not kill him [Gen 37:27]. And this too the Jews said of Christ, whom they sold and handed over to Pilate for death: It is not lawful for us to kill anyone [John 18:31].

And his brothers sold Joseph to Ishmaelite merchants going into Egypt [Gen 37:28]. But that our Joseph, Christ, was sold, the prophets Zechariah and Jeremiah testify: They gave the price of him who was appraised — thirty pieces [Zech 11:12–13]. Which the Gospels also relate that Judas received from the Jews — by that reckoning, whereby Christ, being sold off by the Jews, should pass over to the nations.

For Judas lost, together with the price, his life also. The Jews lost both the price and the Christ whom they had bargained away. But the nations, by possessing, came to be possessed by the gain of grace.

Chapter 27 — Prediction: In the same Joseph, in whom chastity is rewarded by suffering

In Genesis, believed and seen. A promise made and figured, wherein Joseph, afflicted, is not forsaken.

1. The Ishmaelites sold Joseph in Egypt to a certain chief of Pharaoh's cooks [Gen 37:36, LXX]. Nor indeed is it empty, that it was said "chief of the cooks." For by the scarlet⁸ is signified that red garment of the Passion of Christ, by which the later Christian people (as has often been said) takes away the birthright from the people that knows only how to sell Christ, and never to acquire him by grace.

It was said: The Lord was with Joseph [Gen 39:2]. And our Joseph says: I am not alone, for the Father who sent me is with me [John 8:16].

His master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph and said to him: Lie with me. And when he resisted — telling of the favor he had found with his master, and fearing, out of the holy fear of God with which he was full, to offend — the woman, listening for another opportune time, drew him by his garments, saying: Come, lie with me. But he, leaving his garments in her hands, fled and went outside [Gen 39:7–12].

And when her master, her own husband, arrived — (it is known what a raging woman can do)⁹ — iniquity lied to itself, affirmed false things for true, and said that she had suffered the violence which she herself had committed.

O shameless woman! She burns with love, and feeds the wound in her veins, and is seized by a blind fire. She loves, and persecutes; she lusts, and rages. And because he will not consent to her defilement, she resolves that he must be butchered — and she seeks the death of the very man she loves.

This shameless Egyptian woman I would rightly liken to impious idolatry. For she too has cast her eyes upon our Joseph; she has seen him beautiful in form beyond the sons of men [Ps 44:3], and she has dragged him by his garments toward an unlawful consent.

2. And what are the garments of our Joseph, Christ, but the holy martyrs? Of whom the Church, his body, says through Isaiah the prophet: As I live, says the Lord, you shall clothe yourself with them all [Isa 49:18]. And in the Song of Songs: How red are your garments! And Jacob in his prophetic blessing: He shall wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape [Gen 49:11].

When, therefore, Christians are dragged off to fornicate in soul by sacrificing to idols — what else is it, but that Christ is dragged by his garments? Let the Christians be seized, says the impious and shameless doctrine; let them either consent, or let prisons, exiles, swords, fires, wild beasts, and the rest of the tortures be prepared for them. In these things our Joseph, Christ, is dragged by his garments.

But when he says to his own, Do not fear those who kill the body [Matt 10:28], and they answer him, For your sake we are put to death all the day long [Ps 43:22; Rom 8:36] — then he has left his garments in her hands. And as to what was said, he fled and went outside, leaving his garments — this shows the soul set free, which cries out through David: Our soul, like a sparrow, has been snatched from the snare of the hunters [Ps 123:7].

Chapter 28 — Promise: In the same Joseph, in whom the Passion of Christ is figured

In Genesis, believed and seen. The Passion of Christ promised through figures.

Joseph is handed over into prison. Our Joseph, Christ — as Isaiah says — was reckoned among the wicked [Isa 53:12]. Among the guilty, the guiltless one; while the Wisdom of God governs him — the Wisdom which, as it is written, went down with him into the pit, and did not forsake him in his bonds [Wis 10:13–14]. Here our Joseph, Christ, cries out: I have become as one without help, free among the dead [Ps 87:5].

And as to what follows — that being full of grace he found favor with the keeper of the prison, and that all the keys and the whole custody were handed over into Joseph's hands — this was to be understood thus: that to him to whom heaven was made subject in the sun, the stars, and the moon, and earth in the sheaves, the underworld of the prison should also be made subject — so that to our Joseph, Christ, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth [Phil 2:10].

Nor do I judge it foreign to the sacrament of the Lord's Passion that two of Pharaoh's eunuchs were thrust down with him into that suffering [Gen 40:3] — so that in a certain manner the number of the three crucified might be filled up. Of whom our Joseph, Christ, by revealing the mysteries, would punish the one by a deserved penalty, and free the other by an undeserved grace.

These sacred actions were then enacted in figured things, so that all might be kept for us, to be revealed.

Chapter 29 — Promise: In the same Joseph, the Resurrection of Christ is figured

In Genesis, believed and seen. The Resurrection promised, in figure.

After two years of days, at the beginning of the third, Joseph is led out of the prison [Gen 41:1]. And our Joseph, Christ the Lord, on the third day rose again from the dead. He is presented to Pharaoh: to the world the Resurrection is declared.

Joseph expounds Pharaoh's dreams, and — for the sake of warding off the famine to come — instructs him by a wholesome counsel that out of the abundance of the seven years the grain must be stored up by a wise man, and the barns filled. And our Joseph, Christ the Lord, gave such a counsel to a world running by the sevenfold number toward its end: Unless the grain of wheat falling into the earth shall die, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit [John 12:24]. Since they who sow in tears shall reap in joy [Ps 125:5].

Power over all Egypt was given to Joseph by Pharaoh. And our Joseph, Christ the Lord, after the Resurrection says: All power is given to me in heaven and on earth [Matt 28:18].

Joseph sent his men through all Egypt, and gathered much grain, as it were the sand of the sea [Gen 41:47–49]. And our Joseph, Christ the Lord, sent his own through the world, saying: Go, baptize the nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit [Matt 28:19]. And there was gathered a number of believers without number, as the sand of the sea.

Joseph established barns throughout all Egypt. And throughout the whole world Christ the Lord has consecrated churches — of which John says: He gathers the wheat into the barn [Luke 3:17].

Joseph opened the barns in the time of famine, and ministered to the peoples. This too is said of our Joseph: The eyes of the Lord are upon the just; and it follows, that he may rescue their souls from death, and feed them in famine [Ps 33:16, 19].

But the famine of the soul the prophet Amos shows: I will give them, says the Lord, a famine — not of bread and water, but a famine of hearing the word of God [Amos 8:11]. And in the Gospel the Lord himself: Because iniquity has abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold [Matt 24:12].

To us, set in this famine, our Joseph, Christ the Lord, ministers out of his barns the divine provision¹⁰ of his own Body — tasting which, we see how sweet is the Lord [Ps 33:9].

It is said that Joseph acquired all Egypt for Pharaoh [Gen 47:20]. And of ours it is said: God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself [2 Cor 5:19].

Chapter 30 — Promise: In the same Joseph, who like Christ the Lord loved his enemies

In Genesis, believed and seen. Exaltation promised to those who do good to their enemies.

Joseph's brothers, driven by famine, came into Egypt — to buy grain, for a price, from the very man they had sold [Gen 42:3]. So too they came to our Joseph, Christ the Lord — they who crucified him — that, refreshed by his food, they might take away the famine by which their souls were harassed. Those adore him; these adore him.

Seeing his brothers, Joseph knew them; but they did not know him [Gen 42:8]. This too was fulfilled in ours, that his own brothers did not know him: for if they had known him, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory [1 Cor 2:8].

Joseph was estranged from his brothers, and said to them through an interpreter: You are spies; you have come to consider the tracks of this land [Gen 42:9]. And this too our Joseph, Christ the Lord, says to his persecutors through the interpreter Peter: You denied the Holy and Just One, and killed the Prince of eternal life [Acts 3:14–15].

Joseph's brothers repent of what they had done. To these it is said: Repent [Acts 3:19]. And they say: We are in sin concerning our brother. And Reuben to them: Did I not tell you, do not harm the boy? And you did not hear me. Behold, his blood is required [Gen 42:21–22].

So the Jews, who had said to Pilate, His blood be upon us and upon our sons [Matt 27:25], say to the Apostles: What shall we do, men and brothers? Show us [Acts 2:37].

That they might not be believed to be spies, Joseph's brothers testify that they are twelve sons of one father; that one is not — though he himself was the very man to whom they were telling it; and they affirm that another, the younger, is with their father.

Joseph, hearing mention made of his own full brother, and burning with longing for him, said: In this I shall prove that you are not spies: if your younger brother comes with you. And taking Simeon from them, he bound him before them and handed him over into custody [Gen 42:15–24].

If you would mark our younger brother Benjamin, whom our Joseph, Christ, requires: he is that Paul — once Saul — of the tribe (as he himself says) of Benjamin [Phil 3:5], who declares himself the least of the Apostles [1 Cor 15:9].

By Simeon bound, we might understand Peter — whom fear bound with the three bonds of denial, and love loosed. But better do we recognize that sins are bound and loosed through him, to whom it was said: Whatever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed in heaven [Matt 16:19].

Chapter 31 — Promise: In the same Joseph, grace figured

In Genesis, believed and seen. A promise made and figured.

Joseph commanded the sacks of his brothers to be filled with grain, and the price they had brought to be returned to each [Gen 42:25] — so that the grace of our Christ should not be of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace [Rom 11:6].

A second time Joseph's brothers come, with Benjamin, as they had promised. A second time, from among the Jews, three thousand come to Christ [Acts 2:41] — with Paul, the least of the Apostles, following after.

Joseph saw Benjamin, his brother by the same mother, and wept [Gen 43:29–30]. Jesus saw Paul raging against the Church, his mother — and had mercy. For Paul himself says that Jesus appeared to him as to one born out of due time [1 Cor 15:8].

And Benjamin was born by such a destruction that he cast his mother headlong into death; whence he was called son of sorrow [Gen 35:18]. And our Benjamin, Paul, says: I am not worthy to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God [1 Cor 15:9].

Joseph said to the steward of his house concerning his brothers: Bring these men into the house; for they shall eat bread with me [Gen 43:16]. And ours says through the prophet to his brothers: Come, eat of my bread, and drink the wine which I have mingled for you [Prov 9:5].

Joseph gave gifts to his brothers. And our Joseph, Christ, gave gifts to men when he gave the Holy Spirit to his disciples. But to Benjamin, the younger brother, Joseph gave greater gifts than to the rest [Gen 45:22]. And this our Benjamin, Paul, proclaims: I labored more than all of them — he says — yet not I, but the grace of God with me [1 Cor 15:10].

Again Joseph orders his brothers' sacks to be filled with grain, and the prices returned [Gen 44:1]. And this too the brothers of our Joseph cry out: that they have received grace for grace [John 1:16].

Joseph ordered his own cup to be put secretly into Benjamin's sack [Gen 44:2]; and when it was sought for — while it troubled his brothers — the cup was found in Benjamin's sack.

The cup of Christ's Passion, given secretly by grace, is recognized in the body of Paul — who, preaching him, and troubling the whole synagogue by his words, himself confesses that it too was found in his own sack, when he says: For I bear the marks of our Lord Jesus Christ in my body [Gal 6:17].

But when Joseph at last wished to be known by his brothers, he sent forth his voice, saying: I am Joseph your brother. Does my father still live? [Gen 45:3–4]. And our Joseph, Christ, in order to show himself to his brothers, said in the Psalms: I will declare your name to my brothers [Ps 21:23] — whom he taught to say, Our Father, who art in heaven [Matt 6:9].

Joseph said to his brothers: Do not fear; you did not send me here, but God [Gen 45:5]. And of ours, John the Apostle says: For to this end God sent his Son into the world, that we might live through him [1 John 4:9]. And he himself in the Gospel: So it is written, he says, and so it behooved Christ to suffer, and to enter into his glory [Luke 24:26, 46].

Chapter 32 — Promise: Of Jacob's going down into Egypt, and of Christ the Lord into the world

In Genesis, believed and seen. A promise made and figured.

Jacob, visited at Luza, is bidden to go down into Egypt. For God appeared to him, saying: Fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will make you there into a great nation, and your son Joseph shall lay his fingers upon your eyes. And Jacob went down into Egypt with seventy-five souls; and Joseph his son met him. And when he had seen him: I see you, my son; from now on I shall die gladly [Gen 46:2–4, 29–30].

Something rather like this is found in our Joseph. For when that venerable old man Simeon — a father by age, not by generation — had seen Christ, on whose account he was kept in the dark, decrepit, in this light as though in Egypt, he said: Now do you dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word, in peace; because my eyes have seen your salvation [Luke 2:29–30].

He went down in the number of seventy-five souls. The Davidic Psalm also cries out: God is known in Judaea; in Israel his name is great [Ps 75:2]. Since, then, Israel is interpreted seeing God, every man enlightened by grace — Jew and Greek — must needs be freed from this Egyptian servitude, even though he is pressed down by the hard yoke of the devil, that Pharaoh.

The people grew, and were multiplied in Egypt, says the book of Exodus [Exod 1:7]. This comes about through the faith of Abraham's seed, that it might be multiplied in Christ, as was promised, like the sand of the sea — although Pharaoh, the raging devil, seeks out punishments by which to kill the innocent, drowning them in the river; judging that what he sees multiplying must be diminished, lest the people increase [Exod 1:12, 22].

By God's command the people is increased by dying, the power of the raging one brought to nothing — which has also come about for our martyrs, and above all for the little ones: who, slain by Herod for Christ, being sown as precious grains, raised up for the Church a great harvest of faith.

Chapter 33 — Promise: In Moses, who bore the person of the Mediator, Christ the Lord

In Exodus, believed and seen. A promise of the Mediator, made and figured.

In that time Moses was born, and he was acceptable to God; and he was nursed three months in his father's house [Acts 7:20]. And these three months answer to the three oft-named times.

And when they could hide him no longer, his mother took a basket, and smeared it without with pitch, and put the infant in it, and cast it into the river [Exod 2:3].

Figures succeed figures, while yet all the actions signify Christ and the Church. Three things enacted in this Moses we find comparable to our Mediator: namely, a priest to come in the flesh; the water of the river, in baptism; and the wood, on which he hung upon the cross.

Pharaoh's daughter, coming down to wash in the river — whose waters our Moses had consecrated by the wood — recognized that he was of the infants of the Hebrews, and taking him up, reared him as a son. So, while the learning of this world came down to Christ, washed by the spiritual water, it laid aside its pride; and taking up, as a great one, the little one through humble grace, it was joined to the person of the Church — and she who is the daughter of Christ is made a mother. Wherefore it is written: In place of your fathers, sons are born to you [Ps 44:17].

Thus, while she took him up to be taught, she is herself taught. For God has chosen the foolish things of the world, that he might bring to nothing the wisdom of the world [1 Cor 1:27]. For all philosophy has yielded to Christian teaching — which, usefully storming it, destroyed the enemies with the enemies' own darts. Just as Moses, taught by the Egyptians, straightway stormed the Egyptians — so that in the Red Sea, as in baptism, all pride might be drowned.

Through Moses the sons of Israel are freed from the Egyptians; and through Christ, souls are freed from unclean spirits.

Moses, grown up, saw a certain Egyptian doing injury to one of his own nation; and he avenged him and gave him defense, slaying the Egyptian and burying him in the sand [Exod 2:11–12]. This our Moses, the Mediator Christ, also does — plucking souls out of the power of darkness, in that multitude of the spiritual seed of Abraham which grew as the sand of the sea. He buries the Egyptian, while the demons, cast out, cry out: What have we to do with you, Jesus, Son of David? Have you come before the time to destroy us? [Matt 8:29].

Chapter 34 — Prediction: In the same Moses, who like Christ brought peace to men quarreling

A prediction made and figured, whereby we are commanded to be peacemakers with those who hate peace. In Genesis¹¹, believed and seen.

1. On another day Moses saw two Hebrews quarreling, and he began to compose them to peace, saying: Men, brothers, why do you harm one another? And he who was doing the injury to the other said: Who set you as judge or prince over us? Do you wish to kill me too, as you killed the Egyptian yesterday? [Exod 2:13–14; Acts 7:26–28].

And our Moses, the Mediator Christ, cries out through David: With those who hated peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them, they fought against me without cause [Ps 119:7]. And elsewhere: They repaid me evil for good [Ps 34:12].

Moses fled at that word, and became a fugitive in the land of Midian. And ours says: Behold, I went far off in flight, and dwelt in the wilderness [Ps 54:8].

Moses took to wife the daughter of Jethro, priest of Midian [Exod 2:21] — that it might mark our Mediator as taking his spouse, the Church, from among the foreigners.

Moses was pasturing the sheep of Jethro his father-in-law in the wilderness [Exod 3:1]. And our Mediator Christ, pasturing the sheep, says: The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep [John 10:11].

Moved by the terrible vision, Moses goes to see why the fire that had come down upon the mountain did not at all consume the bush. Our Moses testifies that he came to send fire upon the earth, which he usefully wishes to be yet more inflamed [Luke 12:49]. For he himself says: I am a fire, consuming vices, not men.¹²

And when Moses, being called, was going up onto the mountain, it is said to him: Loose the sandals from your feet [Exod 3:5] — that the feet of the Mediator might be free and beautiful, announcing good things [Isa 52:7; Rom 10:15].

Moses is bidden to go to the sons of Israel, and to Pharaoh king of Egypt, that he might let the people of God go out of his land — the people whose cry under harsh servitude had gone up — and take up the mediation to come. Through Matthew our Mediator says: I am not sent except to the sheep that have perished, of the house of Israel [Matt 15:24].

Moses excuses himself, that he is hindered in tongue and thin of voice [Exod 4:10]. And ours says to the Jews: My word does not take hold in you [John 8:37].

Again, when God pressed him to go, he excuses himself in every way, saying: Lord, provide another whom you may send [Exod 4:13] — so that the voice of our Mediator might be marked, in the weakness of the humanity he had taken up, saying: Father, if it can be done, let this cup pass from me [Matt 26:39].

It is said to Moses that he should join to himself Aaron his brother, and that he himself should take up the things to be done toward God, and Aaron those toward the people; and signs and prodigies are handed over into his hand and into his rod [Exod 4:14ff]. And to our Mediator it is said: I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession; you shall rule them with a rod of iron [Ps 2:8–9].

By Aaron we may understand Paul signified — chosen to speak to the people; of whom our Mediator toward God himself declares to Ananias, saying: This man is a vessel of election to me, to bear my name before the nations, and kings, and the sons of Israel [Acts 9:15].

For so Moses and Aaron, preaching to the Hebrew people, confirmed that they were sent by God to pluck them out of Egypt; and the people, hearing them, knelt and adored; and believed them as they worked signs [Exod 4:30–31]. And when Paul preached to the nations, and confidently promised to the Jews the salvation of souls through Christ — while he worked signs — he turned the people to the knowledge of God with wondrous speed, and terrified¹³ kings with the judgment of God to come.

Chapter 35 — Promise: In the same Moses, who like Christ the Lord slew the devil

In Exodus, believed and seen. A prediction made and figured, whereby the devil is stormed by the ministers of God.

Moses and Aaron, therefore, having come in to Pharaoh, not so much narrated by divine command the words they had heard, as they displayed the signs that had been given them.

The rod which Moses carried in his hand, cast down before Pharaoh, was made into a serpent. And Pharaoh's magicians — that they might be overcome by the divine power — being permitted to work such signs, casting down their own rods, themselves also displayed the appearances of serpents. And the serpent of Moses devoured the serpents of the magicians [Exod 7:10–12].

So the rod of the teaching of our leader Christ consumed, by divine power, the doctrines of all the pagans and the heretics. Nor was it only that they should mark this out by a figured action, but that they should re-echo the heralding of David the prophet, who says: The Lord shall send forth the rod of your power out of Zion: rule in the midst of your enemies [Ps 109:2].

Another sign Moses displays before the people: putting his hand into his bosom, and drawing it out, it was made leprous as snow; and putting it back and drawing it out again, it was restored to its own color [Exod 4:6–7].

By the bosom is signified prayer for sin, as David says: My prayer was turned back into my own bosom [Ps 34:13]. And that the hand drawn out of the bosom showed forth snow, signified that by the prayer poured out for us by the Mediator, Christ the Lord, our sins also are cleansed. So he himself shows through Isaiah: If your sins be as scarlet, I will whiten them as snow [Isa 1:18]. And to him the Church sings: You shall wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow [Ps 50:9].

We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Lord; and he himself is the propitiation for our offenses [1 John 2:1–2].

Chapter 36 — Prediction: In the same Moses, in whom the devil is beaten with scourges, like Pharaoh

The plagues already predicted, presented to the hardened Pharaoh and his people, by which he was judged. In Exodus, believed and seen.

1. As was promised to Abraham, they at last let the sons of Israel go — unwillingly — whom they had long held captive; and soon Pharaoh himself, who was to perish with his own by a worthy destruction and punishment, let them go.

The ten plagues brought upon Egypt we have undertaken to show — with the Lord's help — to be compared with the ten precepts which the people received in the desert, by this reasoning: that they may be proved to answer to one another.

THE FIRST PLAGUE OF THE EGYPTIANS: that through Moses the waters were turned into blood. And the first precept contains: Hear, O Israel. I am the Lord your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no gods besides me. You shall not make for yourself any likeness [Deut 6:4; Exod 20:2–4]. They, therefore, who leaving the one true God serve false gods, are rolled about in flesh and blood — and flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God [1 Cor 15:50]. For corrupted morals deserved to have the element of water corrupted. Therefore the waters are changed into blood, because, sacrificing their sons and daughters to demons, they poured out innocent blood [Ps 105:37–38], repudiating the true God, Christ, the fountain of pure liquid — by whose grace the woman was healed of the flow of blood [Matt 9:20–22], showing forth a soul plucked out of the flow of idolatry.

THE SECOND PLAGUE OF THE EGYPTIANS is the teeming multitude of frogs, defiling all Egypt with their foul squalor [Exod 8:3]. And the second commandment in the Law is: You shall not take the name of your Lord in vain; for the Lord will not hold such a one guiltless [Exod 20:7].

2. Every heretic, therefore, and every perjurer and sacrilegious man — while his tongue sounds something other than the name of the Lord — croaks against God, in the likeness of frogs, with the stench of his disputation. Deceitful lips: in heart and heart they have spoken evil things [Ps 11:3]. Nor are they unworthily compared to these creatures, who do not wash away the filth gathered in the pool of the rebaptized, but rather heap up their offenses.

THE THIRD PLAGUE OF THE EGYPTIANS is the gnats, quivering through all the air, and with a pestilent bite harassing the Egyptians in the midst of their heat [Exod 8:16]. In which plague all the teaching of the magicians failed, and they professed that the finger of God was in it [Exod 8:19]; and, being themselves harassed, their craft remained empty and void. And the third precept in the Law is: the rest of the sabbath — which, unless it were observed, the soul should perish from its people [Exod 31:14]. Which rest David the prophet announces from the person of the Lord, saying: Be still, and see that I am God [Ps 45:11].

They, therefore, who by vowing a vow offer themselves to God, and are still¹⁴ for his word, observe the spiritual sabbath — like Mary, who chose the better part [Luke 10:42]. But those who turn aside from it, being knotted up in strangling worldly cares, are wounded by the pestilent bite of the aforesaid plague — in a soul that must be redeemed by our leader Jesus, who is Lord of the sabbath [Luke 6:5].

3. THE FOURTH PLAGUE OF THE EGYPTIANS is the dog-fly — that is, the canine flies — inflicting punishments with their bites even upon the secret members [Exod 8:24]. And the fourth commandment in the Law is that parents are to be honored [Exod 20:12] — which is the first commandment referring to men, since the three above appear ascribed to the divinity. But those who do not venerate their parents with the honor that is commanded, are like dogs, exercising the rabid rage of their own foulness. [And that Canaanite woman, by her humble and devout barking, obtained both grace for herself and health for her daughter, with no preceding merits.]

THE FIFTH PLAGUE OF THE EGYPTIANS is the sudden destruction of all the cattle and beasts of burden [Exod 9:6]. And the fifth commandment of the Law is: You shall not kill [Exod 20:13]. Not only those, therefore, who rage with the sword, but also those who rage with hatred, are murderers. For John the Apostle says: He who hates his brother is a murderer [1 John 3:15]. Such men collapse in a sudden onset, like the Egyptian animals — since every murderer has not eternal life abiding in him.

THE SIXTH PLAGUE OF THE EGYPTIANS is the boils breaking out, and the running sores [Exod 9:9]. And the sixth commandment of the Law is: You shall not commit adultery [Exod 20:14]. For what adulterers suffer in the soul, the fitted plague demonstrates. For unless the ulcers of a most shameful love, and the boiling lust, disturbed the reason of the mind, a man would surely not be an adulterer; nor, as it is written, would he acquire the destruction of his own soul through want of sense [Prov 6:32]. And although such men are punished even here by human laws, fornicators also and adulterers, as our Paul says, God will judge [Heb 13:4].

THE SEVENTH PLAGUE OF THE EGYPTIANS is the hail mingled with fire, overturning not only every animal, but the very trees and shrubs [Exod 9:23–25]. And the seventh commandment is: You shall not steal [Exod 20:15]. The comparison is this: the thief brings into others' walls and houses what the raging hail does in the fields; and he is liable to that general law by which it is said: What you do not wish to be done to you, do not do to another [Tob 4:16].

THE EIGHTH PLAGUE OF THE EGYPTIANS is the multitude of locusts, harassing all things and exterminating them to the root [Exod 10:4ff]. And the eighth commandment in the Law is: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor [Exod 20:16]. For the forger, devising many and various things, gnaws like a locust at another's reputation, life, and deeds — until he exterminates to the root the whole man against whom he devises falsehoods. But the false witness shall not be unpunished [Prov 19:5, 9].

THE NINTH PLAGUE OF THE EGYPTIANS is the thickest darkness, full of images and deathly terrors [Exod 10:21]. And the ninth commandment of the Law is: You shall not covet your neighbor's wife [Exod 20:17]. For what is worse than evil concupiscence, which so blinds the whole mind that — giving over to forgetfulness not only the fear of God, but even the very penalties of the laws, and infamy, and death — no light at all remains in the adulterer, whom deathly darkness wholly occupies? But those whom grace frees from these things, it admonishes through the Apostle, saying: For you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord: walk as children of the light [Eph 5:8].

THE TENTH PLAGUE OF THE EGYPTIANS is the death of all the firstborn [Exod 12:29]. And the tenth commandment in the Law is: You shall not covet anything of your neighbor's [Exod 20:17].

And that evil concupiscence is the firstborn — the devil, Pharaoh, shows it: for through him [death] entered into the world [Wis 2:24], so that the firstborn of the Egyptians in this world (as it were in Egypt) our Leader slew — while he teaches us to renounce the devil, his pomps, and his angels: so that where sin abounded, grace might more abound [Rom 5:20].

Chapter 37 — Promise: The Passover figured, and Christ's passing over to the Father

In Exodus, believed and seen. A promise made and figured.

1. Pascha, which is a passing over — in which the whole action of our faith and the sacrament of the Lord's Passion is transacted — God bids Moses to be done thus: that the Hebrews should ask of the Egyptians vessels of gold and silver, and clothing; and taking these, should despoil the Egyptians, who lent them under the pressing necessity of their first-lost offspring [Exod 12:35]. For while they feared, they drove the Hebrews out the more swiftly, with all that they had given — so that, as the prophet says, the wage of their labors might be rendered to the just. For they had built two cities for the Egyptians; in return for which those spoils were not carried off by theft, but a wage was repaid.

But the mystical passing-over was this: a lamb without spot, of a year old, to be killed by divine command throughout the tents; and the posts of the house to be smeared with its blood; no bone of it to be broken; to be eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, with loins girt, in all haste; and nothing of it to be left until morning [Exod 12:3–10].

And though all these things were figured, the Gospel authority relates how they were fulfilled — which bids us eat the flesh of the Lamb until that morning which shall have no evening, that is, until the resurrection; not in the old leaven, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity [1 Cor 5:8]; the posts being signed indeed with the blood — on whose foreheads his Cross shines out.

It was said, with bitter herbs: for those who pass a bitter life in mourning. But blessed are they, for they shall be comforted [Matt 5:5].

2. That the Egyptians were despoiled by our people, we gather on this reasoning: that all worldly knowledge — over which, puffed up, they used to be proud — and all moral wisdom passed over to Christ, so that the humble might possess it in right faith, and the people proud by right might lose it.

The Hebrews, driven out, are led through the wilderness — because for every Christian who renounces the world, that narrow and strait way which leads to life [Matt 7:14] is necessary. To this people a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night showed the road: since the steps of the Christian man are directed by the Lord, and he shall will his way [Ps 36:23].

But when the wilderness and the shore of the Red Sea had received the people, the hardened Pharaoh — that he might perish wholly with his own — followed the fugitives with chariots and horsemen joined together. This the raging devil does, with his vices and his angels, when he pursues our people fleeing from him. For everyone who renounces these things, hastening to baptism as to the Red Sea, flees the enemy — that the Savior may find him.

Chapter 38 — Promise: In baptism, as in the Red Sea

In Exodus, believed and seen. A promise made and figured, in baptism.

The Lord said to Moses: Why do you cry to me? Speak to the sons of Israel, and let them join themselves; and do you lift up your rod over the sea, and divide it, and let the sons of Israel enter through the midst of the sea, on dry ground. For I will harden the heart of Pharaoh and of all the Egyptians, that they may follow after them; and I will be magnified in Pharaoh and in all his army [Exod 14:15–17].

And when this was done, the sea, executing the judgment of its Creator and King, fulfilled the commands of the divine sentence. Then, punishing the rebels, it furnished a way to the innocent — the waves cut back and the flood suspended — for men walking on dry dust; and the wave, drawn back into itself, drowned the enemies in the depths.

And the avenging water, consecrated by the word, reddened with blood, struck by the wood of the Cross in the mystery of the rod, ministered salvation to him who comes to the Savior; but the sins, together with their author the devil — like the Egyptians with their king — it thrust down into the deep.

This is our God, of whom Micah the prophet says: He himself shall turn back and have mercy on us, and shall sink all our sins into the depth of the sea [Mic 7:19].

After the hard exiles, after the labors of the wilderness and the passing of the Red Sea, the victor's palm received the people of God — though the bitter water of Marah wearied them in their thirst; which, when the wood was cast into it, being made sweet, showed that the thirsting Christian, as soon as he has drunk the bitter cup of the Passion, is to be freed of all bitterness by the sweetness of the wood of the Cross [Exod 15:23–25]. Whence Paul also says: Far be it from me to glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world [Gal 6:14].

For the same place which afforded rest to that people, in twelve fountains of waters and seventy palm trees [Exod 15:27], was consecrated in our mysteries. For after baptism, the streams of the twelve fountains — the Apostles — pour out pure doctrine in abundance for the satisfying of hearts; to whom the sacred psalm sounds: In the churches bless the Lord God, from the fountains of Israel [Ps 67:27].

And in the seventy palm trees is signed the whole number of the holy Martyrs, in their thousands, who striving for the truth even unto death receive the palm of the heavenly calling [Phil 3:14]. These John the apostle also designates in the Apocalypse, saying: I saw a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every tribe and people and tongue. And they were clothed in white robes, and palms were in their hands [Rev 7:9] — the palms which that Wisdom which is exalted in Cades [Sir 24:14] gave to the conquerors.

Chapter 39 — Promise: The heavenly bread in the manna, which is Christ

The manna from heaven promised.

When the loaves they had brought with them out of Egypt were used up, the people demanded bread of Moses, murmuring — desiring also the flesh-pots of Egypt. But that mediator Moses swiftly obtained from the Lord both bread and flesh for them. The people are bidden to receive bread in the morning, flesh at evening [Exod 16:8, 12].

But these were figures of our own. For the first people received to eat that holy bread which came down from heaven; afterward, the flesh of Christ, completed in the Passion — of which the Lord himself says: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, you shall not have life in you [John 6:53].

The holy people fed on the manna under a fixed daily measure [Exod 16:16–20]; and if anyone exceeded it, he would throw it away corrupted and rotted with worms, cheated by the greed of his own avarice and intemperance. Such men Paul, the teacher of the nations, reproves, saying: Having food and covering, with these let us be content. For those who wish to become rich fall into many foolish and harmful desires, which sink a man into ruin and perdition. For the root of all evils is covetousness [1 Tim 6:8–10].

This is the rottenness, and these are the worms, of those who — while the world is perishing — desire their own riches to be increased, and are not content with the daily bread.

But the same people, in the desert, murmured again against Moses for want of water to drink. And when Moses asked, it was said to him by the Lord: I will go before you in Horeb; and I will stand upon the rock; and you, coming, shall strike the rock, and water shall come forth, and my people shall drink [Exod 17:6, LXX]. And this was done. And David testifies: He broke the rock in the desert, and gave them drink, as in a great abyss [Ps 77:15].

But what this rock is, Paul the apostle expounds — assigning to Christ the Lord everything that was then done in mystery: Our fathers, he says, were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and all were baptized into Moses, in the cloud and in the sea. And all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ [1 Cor 10:1–4].

This rock, satisfying us also, says: He who drinks of the water that I shall give shall never thirst; but it shall become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life [John 4:13–14].

This rock, struck upon the Cross, brought forth blood and water [John 19:34] — by which we are soberly made drunk.

Chapter 40 — Promise: To storm our enemies by the sign of the Cross

In Exodus, believed and seen. A figured promise, whereby we are commanded to storm all our adversaries by the sign of the Cross.

1. Against this people — in whom all our figured action lies — there came out Amalek, and with its own leader the whole hostile nation, declaring war upon the untrained crowd, which it believed it would easily overcome [Exod 17:8].

The battle joined, and the adversaries prevailing greatly, Moses stretched out his hands to God, and expressed the likeness of the Crucified. By which sign the enemies fell; but while the hands of Moses were let down, the adversary grew stronger and conquered. And so that the hands of Moses might be made steady — Aaron and Hur upholding his hands, and firming them with a certain stability — all Amalek, falling and fleeing, was destroyed [Exod 17:11–13].

If we look here upon the sign of our Mediator, since we call to mind David singing, The lifting up of my hands is an evening sacrifice [Ps 140:2] — at whose Passion the sun and the moon changed their fashion and their course [Luke 23:44–45] — what adversary spirit, what enemy power, shall be able to withstand this sign, and not rather utterly flee away? If only the hope of the fighter hang upon the hands of the Crucified, by which we are daily plucked out of the power of darkness [Col 1:13].

2. And now, running back over all the figured actions of the time before the Law: whereas all the things that were done were so received by that people as promises, that the people itself, foreseeing by faith far more than it could grasp, left to those who came after the sight of what it had only believed —

Since, therefore, the people was led by sure predictions and promises to Mount Sinai, where Moses, receiving the Law from the Lord, would unfold the heavenly statutes for the ruling of the tribes (whence I judge that they are named Jews, as it were bearing or following the right of God¹⁵) —

Up to this point, reader, acknowledge the time before the Law to be concluded: as it were one day rising out of the four cardinal points of the world — that is, the chiefs among the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with Melchizedek, king and priest, shining as the ray of the East, in the twelvefold number of hours. They who were begotten of these are called our Patriarchs also: so that, this time being shut up at evening, another time, under the Law, may rise up like another day, begun through the remaining numbers.

END OF PART ONE — BEFORE THE LAW. 40 chapters.