Part II — Under the Law

Part Two: Under 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, in 1711.

Here begins the SECOND PART: of the time of the Law, in which the people of God was governed in the wilderness for forty years by Moses the lawgiver, and thereafter until the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This part, containing the promises and predictions of the Law itself, follows in linked chapters.

Editorial conventions: scripture references in brackets; uncertain renderings are flagged in the numbered footnotes; [...] marks a gap. Where the 1744 columns are jumbled, readings are resolved from context.

The Chapters of the Second Part

1. PREDICTION: The laws given on the mountain; and the commandments of Christ the Lord on a mountain.
2. PROMISE: The house of God, made and figured in the holy Church.
3. PROMISE: In Aaron — the priesthood figured in Christ.
4. PREDICTION: Vengeance upon the peoples who transgressed, and who did not keep the commandments of Christ.
5. PROMISE: In all the sacrifices, Christ the Lord figured.
6. PREDICTION: In the inspection for leprosy — that diverse heretics would feign.
7. PREDICTION: In clean and unclean foods — that by almsgiving all things are made clean.
8. PREDICTION: In the foods of Egypt that were craved — that Christ, the manna, was spurned.
9. PREDICTION: In Moses — that brothers disparaged Christ the Lord and the Church.
10. PREDICTION: In the budding rod of Aaron — the confirmation of the priesthood of Christ the Lord.
11. PREDICTION: In the bronze serpent — Christ the Lord freeing from the bite of the devil.
12. PROMISE: That a blessing comes to those who despise kin for Christ's sake.
13. PREDICTION: In Moses passing away — that he signed Jesus the Lord as ruler.
14. PROMISE: In Joshua son of Nun — he shows the figure of Jesus the Lord, storming the earthly city.
15. PROMISE: Through Jesus the Lord, souls are freed from the prostitution of idols.
16. PROMISE: Through Jesus the Lord, all vices are to be stormed.
17. PREDICTION: In the figure of the Church, Deborah overcame the enemy.
18. PROMISE: In the figure of Gideon, he commends the grace of Christ the Lord.
19. PREDICTION: In Abimelech, the son of a concubine, he marks the heretics.
20. PROMISE: In Jephthah — the immolation of the virgin, a figure of the flesh of Christ.
21. PROMISE: In Samson — the Lord Christ a Nazirite, strong in his head.
22. PREDICTION: In the same — that Christ the Lord, bound by the Jews, burst all bonds.
23. PREDICTION: In Ruth — the Church from the nations, mocking the Jews.
24. PROMISE: In Samuel — Christ the Lord as leader, priest, and prophet, reproving the priests.
25. PROMISE: In David — Christ the shepherd, playing the harp.
26. PROMISE: In the same — loving his enemies, restoring the fallen.
27. PREDICTION: In Abishag — souls fervent with the warmth of Christ's grace.
28. PREDICTION: In Rehoboam — the rending of the heresies, out of which Christ gathers his sheep.
29. PROMISE: In Elijah, Christ; and in the widow, the primacy of mercy.
30. PROMISE: In Elisha — the disciples of Christ receiving a double spirit.
31. PROMISE: In the same — when Christ the Lord by grace raised up the figured dead man.
32. PREDICTION: In Hezekiah — how Christ teaches his own that they must not be lifted up in good fortune.
33. PREDICTION: In the sinning kings, who lead the people with them into captivity.
34. PREDICTION: In Daniel, who declared Christ the Lord in his visions.
35. PREDICTION: In the same — when he plucked him from the lions' den, as Christ the Lord from the Jews.
36. PROMISE: In Ezekiel — the resurrection made manifest through Christ the Lord.
37. PREDICTION: In Ezra — the restoration of the house of God, that is, through Christ the Lord.
38. PREDICTION: In the same — when he unfolds a parable in the figure of the Church.
39. PREDICTION: In Tobit — that by the fish, Christ, demons are put to flight and the blind enlightened.
40. PREDICTION: In the Maccabees, who received both martyrdoms and Christ the King himself, born.

(The manuscript's list continues; further chapters follow in the body of the text.)

Chapter 1 — Prediction: The laws given on the mountain; and the commandments of Christ the Lord on a mountain

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

1. God, calling Moses on Mount Sinai, gave him the Law written on tablets of stone, that he might hand it on to the people — which, keeping duly, they should receive the land of promise.

But our Mediator, the Lord Jesus (whose figure Moses also bore), going up onto a mountain with his disciples, wrote — by what means men might become blessed — a law not on tablets of stone, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart, by the Spirit of God [2 Cor 3:3]; by which they who have kept his commandments shall possess not earth, but heaven and eternal life.

But to the rest of the people, the ten precepts having been set before them, the heavenly statutes are handed down through Moses: concerning the succession of heirs; concerning a failing heir; that a faithful friend and a member of the household ought to succeed in the heir's place; concerning theft, to be restored fourfold; concerning deposits or loans carried off by mischance or by force; concerning the punishment of adulterers; concerning a virgin violated in the field or in the city; concerning a pregnant woman struck; eye for eye, tooth for tooth; and the rest which the authority of the divine law holds in these matters.

The people under the Law received these from Moses with that attestation by which it pledged that it would do all things. And so Moses, slaying a calf in sacrifice and taking its blood in testimony, with hyssop and scarlet wool sprinkled the people and the book itself, saying: This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you [Exod 24:8; Heb 9:19–20].

To these things our Mediator, Christ the Lord — not emptying the Law, but fulfilling it — consecrated a New Testament in his own blood, not without hyssop, which mingled with vinegar he drank in the Passion [John 19:29]; and this not only for the free and the powerful, but as much for the lowborn and for slaves who do his commandments. In which Testament there is no distinction of persons. For Paul the Apostle says: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus [Gal 3:28] — who is the undivided and everlasting inheritance of the faithful.

Through the same Apostle he commands that faith be kept with a neighbor who lends or deposits. Guard the good deposit, O Timothy [1 Tim 6:20]. And again: Each looking not to his own things, but also to the things of others [Phil 2:4]. And through Solomon the prophet: To the faithful man the whole world is of riches; but to the faithless, not even an obol [Prov 17:6, LXX]. Likewise Paul: He who stole, let him steal no more [Eph 4:28].

He himself, too, fears for the chaste virgin the serpentine corruption of the devil [2 Cor 11:3] — when, conceiving with devout affection, he affirms that he is pregnant in the spirit, saying: My little children, whom I am again in travail to bring forth, until Christ be formed in you [Gal 4:19]. These he longs to bring forth unharmed on every side, when he says: For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel [1 Cor 4:15].

2. Our Mediator added also the commandments of the New Law, tempering the vengeance of the Old Testament. For whereas there he appointed that adulterers be punished, here he frees the adulteress with such devotion as does not destroy the Law, saying: Go, and sin no more [John 8:11].

• Not only must one not commit adultery, but not even consent with the eyes unto lust.
• Not only must murder not be perpetrated, but he who hates his brother is a murderer [1 John 3:15].
• An eye for an eye must in no way be demanded; nay, more — evil must not be repaid for evil.
• He who takes away the tunic — let the cloak be left to him also.
• He who strikes on the cheek — let the other be offered to him also.
• He who compels one mile — go with him twain.
• Good must be done to enemies. Prayer must be made for persecutors [Matt 5:38–44].

And the rest which are commanded in the Gospel by the very Founder of the heavenly law. That these are not contrary to the Law is shown from this: that there too it was commanded that an enemy's animal, if it fell in the road, must be lifted up and not passed by; that one must not speak deceitfully with a neighbor; that a poor man's pledge must not be kept until evening; that in the seventh year the sown grain must not be reaped, and all the fruits of that year left to sojourners, widows, and orphans; and that in the same year liberty must be given to Hebrew slaves. That the tithes and firstfruits of all produce must be brought into the house of the Lord; that a debt, the seventh year being fulfilled, must not be demanded again, the pledges also being released. And that in the fiftieth year all estates which had been bound by the bond of securities must be returned, the money not being recovered [Exod 23:4ff; Lev 25].

And all the things which — as I have said — the commandments of the New and the Old contain, when they are examined, are found in no part repugnant to one another.

Since in the New Testament also there have gone forth no small and terrible examples of vengeance: - when a proud man is handed over to an unclean spirit, that he may learn not to blaspheme [1 Tim 1:20]; - when adulterers are handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus [1 Cor 5:5]; - when the defrauding liars Ananias and Sapphira are struck with sudden death [Acts 5:5, 10]; - when the man who has not the wedding garment is cast, bound hand and foot, into the outer darkness [Matt 22:13] — which garment is charity out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and unfeigned faith [1 Tim 1:5].

And whatever other things out of the old signs are known to be filled up in the New, were consecrated — as has been said — by the sacred blood of the Mediator, together with the people itself.

Chapter 2 — Promise: The house of God, made and figured in the holy Church

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

1. To the same Moses it is said: See that you make the tabernacle according to what was shown you on the holy mountain [Exod 25:40]. And it is declared out of what offered materials that tabernacle should rise. The sons of Israel shall give in offering — says God — hyacinth wool, twisted byssus, purple, and scarlet twice-dyed [Exod 25:4].

Out of these, by varied work, the curtains of the tabernacle and likewise the priestly vesture were wrought — all mystical, to be revealed in the time of the Church to come. And for the coverings of the tabernacle the divine authority commands hyacinth-colored skins, and others reddened, and eleven veils to be made of goats' hair [Exod 26:7ff]. That all these were signs, the testimonies of the Law itself re-echo.

In the hyacinth color there is a certain pallor agreeing with a splendor — fitting to fastings and almsgivings. Whence also the holy archangel Raphael says to Tobit: Prayer is good, with fasting and almsgiving [Tob 12:8]. In fastings, pallor; in almsgivings, splendor shines out — and these show the figure of the hyacinth.

The byssus, clean, is (as the Apocalypse says) the justices of the saints [Rev 19:8]. And as to its being called twisted: through many tribulations must the just enter into the kingdom of God [Acts 14:22].

Purple is the royal garment, with which our King himself, Christ the Lord, was clothed in his Passion.

In the scarlet twice-dyed shine the martyrdoms of the saints — who are once dyed in the blood, in the baptism of Christ, and again re-dyed by the gore of their own outpouring. For so the Lord himself was dyed: once in the Jordan, again in the Passion — of which he says to his disciples: I have a baptism to be baptized with, which you do not know [Luke 12:50]. This the reddened and hyacinth skins attest.

The two sides of the tabernacle are stretched a hundred by a hundred cubits; and the other two fronts, fifty by fifty — as though mercy and truth meeting one another, justice and peace kissing each other [Ps 84:11] — so that from the four parts, with the corners joined, they might show forth a worthy tabernacle: the Church, the temple of God to come, which in the hundredth and fiftieth number of the Psalms sings mercy and judgment to her Lord [Ps 100:1].

2. Nor is it without mystery that the tabernacle is covered above with eleven haircloth veils — to show that the whole world is guilty before God, and lives under penitence. For the Psalm of that very number has this beginning: Save me, O God, for the holy one has failed [Ps 11:1]. And why he has failed, it narrates: because truths are diminished from among the sons of men — for whose saving the Truth himself came down from heaven, who deigned to dwell with men upon earth.

But the inner parts of the tabernacle are adorned with these things. Twice ten columns on each side, of incorruptible wood, mark out not so much the holy apostles as the doctors of the Churches — whom Paul also shows, saying: Peter and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave the right hands of fellowship to me and to Barnabas [Gal 2:9]. For Barnabas was received into the apostolate in due order, the Lord commanding and saying: Separate to me Barnabas and Paul for the work to which I have called them [Acts 13:2]. In which work Wisdom, building herself a house, set up seven columns [Prov 9:1] — columns which, when the earth had melted away under the onset of sins, she herself made firm [Ps 74:4].

The number of these columns, then, in the two parts of the tabernacle, is forty — demonstrating the fortieth day of the Lord's Ascension, on which he says to his disciples: Sit in the city, until you be clothed with power from on high [Luke 24:49].

The columns are joined by three bars each: since by the bond of the trinity of faith, hope, and charity the doctors of the Churches are wholesomely bound together. With bases of silver and capitals of gold — as it were in works of mercy — so that from virginal sanctity all the beauty of the columns may rise.

The Holy of Holies is in the inner parts of the tabernacle, having the ark of the Testament, crammed with mysteries. Into which the priest enters once in the year, with blood not his own [Heb 9:7]; from which, receiving the divine answer, that Word re-echoes.

Which Word, taking up flesh for our redemption, consecrated the ark not of the old, but of the New Testament: in which are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden [Col 2:3]. Into which the true Prince of priests himself, with his own blood, entered once into the holy places [Heb 9:12] — since Christ was offered once, to bear the sins of many [Heb 9:28]. To whom the Prophet says: Arise, Lord, into your rest — you, and the ark of your sanctification [Ps 131:8].

And the table set there, and the altar, which would receive the sacred flesh of the one sacrificing — what else do we understand in these but the Cross, on which our Lamb was immolated? He himself, Priest and Victim, confirming at his own table the sanctified bread, his own sacred Body.

And for him the lamp, kindled with the sevenfold Spirit, shines for the whole tabernacle — since his flashing is as the light [Hab 3:4].

But the courts of this spiritual tabernacle are the hearts of the devout, confessing and praising God. Of which David the prophet says: His courts in hymns: confess to him [Ps 99:4].

Chapter 3 — Promise: In Aaron, the priesthood figured in Christ

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

The Lord commanded Moses that he should consecrate Aaron his brother to the priesthood, anointed with sanctified oil [Exod 29] — so that, as the Anointed, the very name of the anointing might show forth our Christ the Lord, above his fellows [Ps 44:8].

The vesture of this same Aaron is also described with a mystical reckoning. You shall clothe him, it says, with an ankle-length tunic of hyacinth wool, and upon his shoulders you shall place the ephod. Two emerald² stones, engraved each with the names of the sons of Israel; from which little chains of purest gold, running across, shall carry the outermost bosses of the shoulder-piece. A square breastpiece also, of diverse colors and twelve precious stones — the rational clasp of the priest, to be set upon the breast, which binds together the two principal parts of the ephod. A girdle also to be given to his loins; and on the hem of the ankle-length tunic fifty golden bells, with as many pomegranates set between the bells [Exod 28]. And upon his head these things were commanded to be placed: a turban of clean byssus, and a mitre, from which a plate hangs, inscribed as a title, to consecrate the head and forehead of the priest.

Each of these fits our Christ the Lord, the Priest.

For the turban of byssus on his head: the byssus is, as we said, the justices of the saints [Rev 19:8] — since the head of every man is Christ [1 Cor 11:3], from whom is all justice. That it is a royal mitre indicates the priesthood and the spiritual marriage. And as for the inscribed title — that, in the Passion, Pilate placed upon our Priest [John 19:19].

The ankle-length tunic is the bowels of the mercy of our God — of which the Apostle says: Put on, as the elect of God, bowels of mercy [Col 3:12].

But the ephod shows his princedom, of which Isaiah says: A son is given to you, and the princedom is made upon his shoulders [Isa 9:6].

The two stones on the shoulders are the two precepts of the love of God and of neighbor — on which are held the engraved names of the twelve tribes, already designating in that number the twelve disciples, whom our Priest carried on his shoulders in perfect love. For, as John the evangelist says, having loved his own, he loved them unto the end [John 13:1].

From these, the little chains carrying the bosses: the fruits of the Spirit — charity, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, continence [Gal 5:22–23].

The rational upon the breast: the whole doctrine of the high priest, out of precious morals — that there may be, as the Apostle says, a rational service [Rom 12:1].

And that our Priest is girded, the ninety-second Psalm shows: The Lord has put on strength, and has girded himself [Ps 92:1].

But in the fifty bells, and as many pomegranates, are the tongues of the Churches — which by the Holy Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, in the appearance of fire, sat divided upon the disciples. As the number itself also shows. And from this, the pomegranates: the whole Church throughout the world, holding her peoples joined together like the seeds within, in the bond of peace and of grace, so that one covering of charity may clothe them [Eph 4:3].

For when the bells — the Apostles — resounded, the pomegranates were straightway moved, saying in the Acts of the Apostles: Are not these who speak Galileans? And how do we recognize in them the speech in which we were born? And it follows: For in diverse tongues they magnified God [Acts 2:7–8, 11].

But all these things are set in motion by the steps of the free Priest, when he enters into the Holy of Holies — whither our Mediator has now ascended for us, to appear before the face of God [Heb 9:11, 24].

Chapter 4 — Prediction: Vengeance upon the peoples who transgressed, and who did not keep the commandments of Christ

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

1. While the things we spoke of above were being commanded to Moses on Mount Sinai to be made, the people transgressed against God, and ran into the crime of idolatry.

It fashions, through Aaron, a calf of gold, and offered to it victims and sacrifices, to the contempt of the true God, saying: These are your gods, O Israel, who led you out of the land of Egypt [Exod 32:4]. And they forgot God, who freed them; who did great things in Egypt, wonders in the land of Ham, and terrible things at the Red Sea [Ps 105:21–22].

Through our Priest also, apostate souls of this kind are rebuked in the Gospel. For thus he says: If I had not done among them the signs which no other has done, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin [John 15:24].

And vengeance follows upon the grave fault. And the Lord said to Moses: Go down quickly; for your people whom you led out of Egypt has transgressed. They have made themselves golden gods, and have said to them: These are your gods, O Israel, who led you out of the land of Egypt. And now, let me alone, that I may blot them out, and I will make you into a great nation, greater than this one [Exod 32:7–10].

The devoted Lord gives time for intercession when he says, Let me alone. For God did not depend upon man's will, but man upon God's. And when Moses in many ways besought the Lord, offering himself for the sin of the people, he expressed under a figure our Mediator, who laid down his own soul for the impious. For Christ, as the Apostle says, died for the impious [Rom 5:6].

2. Yet that so great a sin did not lack vengeance — since a sin cannot be unpunished. For Moses, coming down from the mountain, when he saw the people dissolving, standing in the midst of the camp, said: Whoever is on the Lord's side, let him come to me [Exod 32:26]. And when only one out of the twelve tribes crossed over to him, he gave them a command of this kind: Thus says the Lord: Let each of you take his sword in his hand, and pass from camp to camp, and let each strike his father, his brother, his son [Exod 32:27].

And when they had done this without hesitation: You have filled your hands today for the Lord, says Moses, each one in his son and in his brother — that a blessing might be given upon you [Exod 32:29].

Such men he shows to be, in these, the disciples of our Mediator — to whom the Lord Jesus says: If anyone comes to me and does not hate father, mother, brothers, sons, and moreover his own soul, he cannot be my disciple [Luke 14:26].

And again it is written: He who says to his father and to his mother, I do not know you; and to his brothers, I do not recognize them; and they have hated their own sons — these shall keep your testament [Deut 33:9].

Which the holy Martyrs did, being called by grace, and are rewarded with everlasting happiness.

Chapter 5 — Promise: In all the sacrifices, Christ the Lord figured

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

1. Again Moses is bidden to go up the mountain a second time. And it is commanded to him what the people should offer in Exodus out of the animals and the birds, under a fixed measure of fine flour sprinkled with oil — for sin, for solemn feasts, for things vowed, and at the new moons and festal days.

A calf without spot, it was said — referring to Christ the truth, of which these are the signs. It was said: It shall please God more than a young calf that puts forth horns and hoofs [Ps 68:32].

A lamb of a year old, without spot: he himself is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world [John 1:29].

A sheep out of the flock: the very same, of whom Isaiah says, as a sheep he was led to be immolated [Isa 53:7].

A ram out of the flock: the same is Christ the Lord, who says through the Prophet, my horn shall be exalted like the unicorn's [Ps 91:11]. And Habakkuk: Horns are in his hands [Hab 3:4].

A kid out of the flock: he himself is Christ the Lord, who — bearing not his own sins, but another's — brought into his own tabernacle the skins, out of which are woven the haircloths of the penitence he has assumed. He also says through David: All the horns of sinners will I break, and the horns of the just shall be exalted [Ps 74:11].

But in the turtledove and the pigeon we recognize the Church. Since the turtledove has found herself a nest, where she may lay her young [Ps 83:4]. And he says that his dove, his spouse, his chosen one, is one [Song 6:8].

Whose young he commands to be offered in sacrifice, when the Lord Jesus says: Let the little ones come to me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven [Matt 19:14]. Since the little ones, when they are consecrated in his baptism, are buried together with him in death — that in them too the body of sin may be made void [Rom 6:4, 6].

2. But that distinction of sins — of ignorance and of knowledge, for which the sacrifice of a contrite heart, like fine flour fried in oil, is offered — is separated out in our sacrifice also, when the soul says: Remember not the offenses of my youth and of my ignorance [Ps 24:7].

Into which the blessed Peter, being less wary, ran — when, at the Lord's foretelling of his own Passion, and not knowing that it had been promised through the Law and the Prophets, he said: Far be it from you, Lord; be merciful to yourself; this shall not happen [Matt 16:22]. And the Lord: Get behind me, Satan; for you do not savor the things of God, but the things of men [Matt 16:23].

Which sin of ignorance, and of the knowing denial, and likewise of youth (in whose presumption he had said to the Lord, I will lay down my life for you [John 13:37]) — being looked upon and pricked to the heart, he blotted out by weeping over all of it.

And he taught the sinner and the presumptuous man, in these things, to say: You turned away your face, and I was troubled [Ps 29:8]. Heal my soul, for I have sinned against you [Ps 40:5].

But what the people should offer for the things vowed and for the solemn feasts of Christ the Lord, Paul the Apostle shows: Let us offer always to God a sacrifice of praise — that is, the fruit of lips confessing his name. And do not forget beneficence and fellowship: for by such sacrifices God is appeased [Heb 13:15–16].

Chapter 6 — Prediction: In the inspection for leprosy, that diverse heretics would feign

A prediction made and figured. In Leviticus, believed and seen.

1. God bids Moses that the inspection and cleansing of leprosy be expiated by sacrifices of this kind: a pair of birds to be offered to the priest, of which he should offer one and let the other go [Lev 14:4–7]. And likewise concerning goats and the other cattle.

But these mysteries our Priest, the Lord Jesus, plainly shows in the Gospel, saying: Two shall be in the field: one shall be taken, the other left; and two at the mill: one shall be taken, the other left [Matt 24:40–41].

And how great is the difference between being taken and being left, the dove and the raven sent out from the ark show [Gen 8:7–9]. For Noah, receiving the dove back to himself into the ark, kept her safe for the sacrifice; but the raven, wandering and straying, he left behind. So he willed that the lambs be distinguished from the kids, and the wise virgins be set apart from the foolish [Matt 25].

Now — the distinction of the leprosy itself I do not think should be passed over, but examined in some part.

Leprosy in the head demonstrates the Manichaeans, the Priscillianists, and their associates. For since the head of man is Christ, but the head of Christ is God [1 Cor 11:3] — when in their disputing they set against God himself, the Head, some adversary or other, a prince of darkness, they, sprinkled with leprosy in the head of their own error, deserved to be driven outside the camp.

Leprosy in the beard marks out the Arians, the Photinians, and the Nestorians — who, while they preach our Pontiff Christ as lesser in divinity, or as a mere man and not God and man, and think otherwise concerning Christ than the Catholic faith holds and has handed down, assail as lepers in the beard the very one whom David the prophet brings in under the likeness of Aaron, calling Christ the Lord the true Prince of priests: Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in one — like the ointment on the head, which ran down upon the beard, upon the beard of Aaron [Ps 132:1–2].

These, then, who forsaking the Catholic unity have judged that the ointment which ran down onto our Pontiff's beard must be defiled by the doctrine of their own error, being found lepers in the beard, are themselves also driven outside the camp.

Leprosy in the body: the Donatists, the Maximianists, the Luciferians, and the rest wrapped in like errors — who, while throughout the whole world they harass with human calumnies the body of Christ, the Church of the Lord, are cast out in the leprosy of their own body; and unless they be cleansed by charity from the true Priest, Christ, the camp of the people of God does not receive them.

2. But the Pelagians are befouled with the stain of leprosy on every side, since they strive to pour the fogs of their perverse doctrine into both the head and the body.

Into the head: because [they say] God made man mortal before sin — he who did not make death, nor rejoices in the destruction of the living: for he created all things that they might be [Wis 1:13–14].

Into the body: because [they say] the grace of God is not necessary to man; that Christ died in vain [Gal 2:21]; that the one baptism is divided between lesser and greater — whereas one baptism has been consecrated unto the remission of all sins.

Thus, corrupted with the stain of leprosy in the whole, they too are driven from the Lord's camp.

But when our Priest inspects these things, and distinguishes the various plagues — whether it be black in the Manichaeans, or red in the Arians, or in the Pelagians white or mottled — since, as Paul says, there must be heresies, that those who are approved may be made manifest among you [1 Cor 11:19].

So long as souls are held fast in these various errors, as in the stains of leprosy, the Lord's camp — as has been said — does not admit them. But out of all these heresies, when, pricked by the grace of God, they return to be cleansed, they offer themselves to our Priest in a certain manner in those ten lepers.

And when, according to the precept of the Law, he sends them to the priest of the Jews, as they went in the way — that is, in this life — by the power of the Word he cleansed them [Luke 17:14].

For whose cleansing he offered himself as the sacrifice — that precious hen, who says: How often would I have gathered your children, Jerusalem, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings — and you would not? [Matt 23:37]. And indeed she gathers even the unwilling, whom she knows to belong to the members of her unity — since the Lord knows those who are his [2 Tim 2:19].

For one out of the ten cleansed returned and gave thanks to our Pontiff — because unity recognizes that one must glory not in oneself but in the Lord [1 Cor 1:31]; unity, which would not have its hope in man, and which understood that a good will is prepared by the Lord.

Chapter 7 — Prediction: In clean and unclean foods; that by almsgiving all things are made clean

A prediction made and figured. In Leviticus, believed and seen.

1. Among all the commandments which were handed down by God to Moses on Mount Sinai for the instructing of God's people, when the order of the sacrifices was completed, the animals clean and unclean which the people might take for food were marked out by this distinction: those chewing the cud and having a cloven hoof were to be held clean and taken for food [Lev 11:3].

These signify souls ruminating the word of God, and having a cloven hoof — that is, the two precepts.

Concerning birds also and fishes, it was commanded by name which the people ought to touch and which to refuse. And that this law was given on tablets of stone, according to the hardness of the Jews' heart, the Lord testified in the Gospel [Matt 19:8].

But since our earlier fathers, to whom it was revealed, have written out all the allegorical disputations on each of these in a long volume and a splendid style, what need is there to pursue them all? — since our Mediator, the Lord Jesus, in whom all these things resounded, rebuked in brief the senseless Jews, who followed the Law by the letter and not by the Spirit, saying: Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites: because you tithe mint and cumin and every herb, cleansing the outside of the dish and the cup, while within you are full of rapine and iniquity [Matt 23:23, 25].

And to them, passing beyond in his singularity, he showed a single sacrifice, saying: Nevertheless I say to you: give alms — and behold, all things are clean to you [Luke 11:41].

2. O how brief and how compendious a sacrifice, which cleanses the whole man, within and without!

Almsgiving frees from death, and it purges sins. Almsgiving does not suffer one to go into the darkness. Almsgiving is a good gift before the most high God, for all who do it [Tob 4:11; 12:9].

This is the thing that quenches everlasting fires; this is what withstands sins; this is what feeds Christ hungering in the poor man; this clothes the naked; this visits the sick; this receives the stranger into lodging; this takes away every straitness of prison; this ends all want; this confers remedies on the rich; this obtains eternal life; this lends to God; this holds the kingdom of the heavens; this is what separates the lambs from the kids; this is what sets a man at the Judge's right hand; this joins him to the angels; this grants that out of slaves men become sons of God.

Run together, sinners of every kind! Run together, all you lepers of vices and errors! Run together, all who are stained and unclean with any outrage whatever — repenting, and vowing! Run together to a sacrifice so great, so compendious, so useful — offering it with all gladness. For God loves a cheerful giver [2 Cor 9:7].

Let each man offer this gift according to what he has to offer. And this our Prince of priests so instituted, and commanded to be accepted above all things, that he carried the measure of this sacrifice down even to two mites and a cup of cold water [Mark 12:42; Matt 10:42] — promising peace, even if these be lacking, to men of good will [Luke 2:14].

These are the hinder parts of God [Exod 33:23] — which, since Moses could not see his face, were revealed to him by the prophetic Spirit, in Christ Jesus, Lord and man, who is the eternal Prince of all priests.

These things are known to be fulfilled in Leviticus.

Chapter 8 — Prediction: In the craved foods of Egypt, that Christ the manna was spurned

A prediction made and figured. In the book of Numbers, believed and seen.

In the book of Numbers the people — with leaders appointed for them by Moses — is marked out under a fixed census, how great it is. And, having become unmindful of its liberty and of the [ill] favor of Egypt, craving those same foods, it was found to have murmured against God and against Moses.

Who, they say, will feed us with flesh? For we remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the leeks, the garlic, and the onions. But now, they say, our soul is dried up, and there is nothing at all but manna before our eyes [Num 11:4–6].

Sweet things are refused; bitter things are craved. This is what a dangerous and grievous sickness of the soul brings on: that it should want to take what harms it, and should spurn and refuse the things that are useful and profit its health.

So they refused the manna — Christ — saying: We know that God spoke with Moses; but this man, we do not know where he is from [John 9:29]. And rebuking them he says: If you believed Moses, you would surely believe me also: for he wrote of me [John 5:46]. For I am the living bread, who came down from heaven [John 6:51].

Did they not refuse the holy manna, when — Pilate wishing to release Jesus — they said: Do not release him, but Barabbas [John 18:40]? And Barabbas was a notorious robber; and in demanding that he be released to them, they professed that they craved — out of a robber's crimes — as it were the leeks, the onions, the garlic: the harsh and tearful foods of Egypt.

To the murmurers, indeed, the divine majesty supplied flesh — not such as would refresh, but such as would rather torment those who ate it [Num 11:33].

Since, therefore, the animal man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God [1 Cor 2:14], and every sluggard is in his lusts [Prov 21:26], and the spiritual man rightly asked that the lusts of the belly be taken from him [Sir 23:6] — it is shown to be impious to crave, or to ask of God, things that are ruinous to the soul; and above all when it is demanded with murmuring.

Let the soul flee from offending God by such a desire, if it longs to enter the land of promise.

Chapter 9 — Prediction: In Moses, that brothers disparaged Christ the Lord and the Church

A prediction made and figured. In the book of Numbers, believed and seen.

1. Moses was meek beyond all the men who were upon the earth, says the Scripture [Num 12:3]. In this meekness our Mediator re-echoes, to whom David says: You, Lord, are gentle and meek [Ps 85:5]. And he himself in the Gospel: Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart [Matt 11:29].

Aaron and Miriam disparaged Moses their brother, because he had taken an Ethiopian woman to wife [Num 12:1]. And our Lord's own brothers disparaged him, because he ate with publicans and sinners [Luke 15:1–2]. To whom, when he had said, The healthy have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the just, but sinners to repentance [Matt 9:12–13] — he showed that he had taken to himself that Ethiopian woman out of the nations, who says: I am dark, and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem [Song 1:4].

Miriam, who had disparaged him, straightway received in vengeance the penalty of leprosy [Num 12:10] — which souls who disparage Christ and the Church ought to dread. For he says of such through the prophet: In return for loving me, they disparaged me; but I prayed [Ps 108:4].

For by the prayer of Moses Miriam, being cleansed, merited pardon — so that such a soul, when so great a Pontiff intercedes, may be healed of every fault.

By divine command, nevertheless, Moses sent twelve chosen men of the people to spy out the land of the Canaanites, giving them in charge not only to survey the cities and the men, but also to bring back with them some of the fruits of the land [Num 13:2ff].

Going forth, and doing what was commanded, a certain valley received them; from which, cutting down a cluster of grapes — so great that it was carried slung on a pole — together with pomegranates and figs, they return to the camp, show the fruits, and tell what they had seen.

In these three fruits the mysteries of Christ the Lord and of the Church resound.

The cluster is in Christ — the voice of the Church in the Song of Songs: A cluster of cypress is my kinsman [Song 1:13]. That it is carried upon wood: recognize the Crucified. That it is in the midst of two spies: Habakkuk the prophet says, in the midst of two living creatures you shall be known [Hab 3:2, LXX].

The pomegranates: likewise the Church, of herself, in the same Song: The vine has flowered; the pomegranates have flowered [Song 6:10; 7:12].

But the fig — of whose leaves the first men, being transgressors, made themselves coverings [Gen 3:7] — shows forth original sin, which is absolved through the pomegranates of the Church, and through the blood of the cluster, which was poured out unto the remission of all sins.

2. But those who had gone up with the spies terrified the people with these words: that the men of that promised land were bold, and great men, and the cities fortified. They affirm also that they had seen giants there, in whose sight they themselves had been as locusts upon the earth [Num 13:33–34].

Struck with dread of these, the people again murmured against Moses, and resolved to choose themselves a leader who would bring them back into Egypt.

This is the evil of those who, having been freed through baptism, look not forward but backward in dread of the demons — [forgetting] the benefits of God and his mercies... — despairing that God's promises would be fulfilled toward them, they choose to return to him whom they had already renounced; spurning the one in whom they had believed, and denying his power.

Rebuking these, he says: They have turned to me their back, and not their faces [Jer 2:27]. And Peter the apostle: It were better for them not to have known the way of salvation, than, having known it, to look back from the holy commandment delivered to them. There has befallen them the thing of the true proverb: The dog returned to his vomit, and the sow, once washed, to her wallowing in the mire [2 Pet 2:21–22; Prov 26:11].

But Joshua son of Nun, and Caleb son of Jephunneh — who had surveyed the land — falling prostrate together with Moses and Aaron the priests, perform the offices of devotion, and call the people back from their purpose of despairing will, saying: Do not fear the people of the land; for they are food³ for us. For their season has departed from them, but the Lord is among us: do not fear them [Num 14:9].

And all these things resound also to the Christian people in the overthrow of the idols: that men not be apostates from God, dreading the demons from whom they have already been freed by God's grace. Whose empty pomp Jeremiah describes, saying: Entering into Babylon, you shall see there gods of gold and silver carried on men's shoulders. But they are handmade and empty; and they can neither help nor harm, for the reason that they are nothing. Do not therefore fear them [Bar 6:3–5]. But sanctify the Lord in your hearts, and he shall be your fear, as Isaiah says [Isa 8:13; 1 Pet 3:15].

And writing of the worshipers of demons, Jeremiah says: There were those famous giants, knowing war. The Lord did not choose these, nor did he give them the way of knowledge. And they perished, because they had no counsel [Bar 3:26–28]. And Solomon: From the beginning, when the proud giants were perishing [Wis 14:6]. Against whose pride the humble people of Christ rises up victorious.

3. But when the indignant Hebrew people would have stoned those who entreated them, the honor of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle. For thus is the boldness of the reckless always checked by the presence of the divine power.

And when the Lord would have destroyed those who provoked him, that Moses — meek beyond all men — found words of intercession to bring forth: The Egyptians will hear, he says, when you have crushed this people, and they will say: Because he was not able to bring them into the land which he swore to them, he laid them low in the desert. And now let your hand be exalted, Lord, as you have said: I am a God patient, and of much mercy, and truthful [Num 14:13–18].

Appeased by these prayers, God so tempered his wrath that nevertheless a worthy vengeance followed the sinners. He foretold, testifying, that they themselves would not enter into the rest of the promised land — save Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh. And all having died in the wilderness, their obedient sons received the inheritance which those defiant ones had lost [Num 14:37].

So our Mediator, the Lord Jesus — when that same people rebelled against him, and took counsel with Herod concerning his death — having spurned the Jews (dead even in soul, in the wilderness of this life), gave the everlasting inheritance to their sons: the ones whom impious Herod slew for his sake [Matt 2:16].

Chapter 10 — Prediction: In the budding rod of Aaron, the confirmation of the priesthood of Christ the Lord

A prediction made and figured. In the book of Numbers, believed and seen.

1. When the present judgment of God punished Korah, Dathan, and Abiram — the despisers of his precepts, who wished to usurp the priestly office — condemning in them all heretics (as we set out above), he declares a certain sign to Moses, by which he might confirm the prince of priests chosen by himself.

The Lord said to Moses: Thus shall you say to the sons of Israel, that all their leaders give, each one by their tribes, their rods [Num 17:2].

Taking, therefore, the twelve rods — and the rod of Aaron among their rods — Moses set them before the Lord, and brought them into the tabernacle of the testimony. And it came to pass on the morrow that Moses and Aaron entered into the tabernacle. And behold, the rod of Aaron, of the house of Levi, had budded, and brought forth... ...a bud, a flower; and it budded also nuts [Num 17:8].

By which sign he assuredly bids the people be at rest, saying: Let their murmuring cease from me, and they shall not all so die [Num 17:10]. Heretics perish, murmuring against the lawful Priest of the Lord.

But that the flowering rod of Aaron brought forth nuts — this here indicates our Christ the Lord, the Priest, of whom Isaiah says: There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root [Isa 11:1].

And that in the nut the world is shown, and the Church within the world — he who devoutly seeks it, understands. For out of its two joined parts — as it were within the chamber of heaven and the spaces of earth, like the four parts of the globe — the peoples are held within; and it has a certain thin skin in the middle of itself, like the seas spread abroad through the regions.

2. In it also are these mysteries of the Church: covered with the secrets of the two Testaments, the Old and the New; the four corners of the Cross, by which the world is redeemed; and having in the midst of itself the water of baptism, by which it flowers, ever green and fruit-bearing.

The tree of this fruit, seeking the heights, with shady boughs, sprinkled over with slender and soft shoots — bringing them forth in the manner of gems, either singly in unity, or in twos for the two precepts, or in threes for the number of the Trinity, or four joined together for the four Gospels — declares the beauty of its Maker and his wondrous works.

The juice pressed from these, from the husk, dyes certain white things⁴ when they are steeped, and is applied for the sake of healing to inflamed throats. And these coverings⁵, clothed with the leafage of green groves, cherish men in the heat — for the rest, that is, of their own leaves — and by their breath they temper the burnings of the sick.

Nor without cause does the Lord bid the prophet Jeremiah make himself a staff of nut-wood [Jer 1:11] — in which the whole Church in the world, and the world in her, is upheld by the help of Christ, and borne up by his grace: she who sings in the Psalms and says, Your rod and your staff, they have comforted me [Ps 22:4].

Chapter 11 — Prediction: In the bronze serpent, Christ the Lord freeing from the bite of the devil

A prediction made and figured. In the book of Numbers, believed and seen.

...their sins being filled up, the end had already come. Wearied by the journey, murmuring against the Lord, the people was harassed in the wilderness by the bites of serpents; and, repenting, they entreat Moses by prayers to become a suppliant to the Lord for them.

But that ever-devoted and merciful God — who, judging by degrees, gives place for repentance [Wis 12:10] — gave, against the deadly bites of the serpents, the remedy of a serpent lifted up on wood.

For Moses is bidden to form a bronze serpent, and, fixing it upon a high pole, to charge the people that if anyone should feel himself wounded by the bite of any serpent, he should at once look upon the bronze serpent — and by that looking he would straightway be healed [Num 21:6–9].

Here too that serpent, the devil, is mocked — of whom it is said through David: The dragon whom you formed, to make sport of him [Ps 103:26].

For when, in the wilderness of this life, the devil has fixed his pestilent bites — out of the diverse vices — into those already consecrated in baptism, as it were in the Red Sea: let a man at once look upon the Lord Jesus, lifted up on the wood of the Cross; that is, let him not withdraw from the heavenly Physician. So that everyone who has seen and believed in him — as he himself says in the Gospel — may not perish, but have eternal life [John 3:14–15].

Chapter 12 — Prediction: In the rock at Meribah, and in the name of Jesus son of Nun — the leader who alone brings the people into the inheritance

A prediction made and figured. In the book of Numbers, believed and seen.

Once again the people, in another part of the desert, murmured against Moses and against the Lord [Num 20:2ff].

And MOSES DOUBTED that water could be brought forth from the rock — the rock which, as before, was standing right there [Exod 17:6] — he who had already worked such signs, and greater.

And incurring offence from this — because HE DID NOT GLORIFY GOD BEFORE THE SONS OF ISRAEL — the avenging divine sentence confirms that HE HIMSELF SHALL NOT BRING THE PEOPLE INTO THE LAND OF PROMISE [Num 20:12].

There Aaron, dying on Mount Hor, left behind his son Eleazar as priest [Num 20:28].

Moses is kept back a little while; and into his place passes JESUS, THE SON OF NUN — who brought the people into the land of promise.

Rightly was the earthly inheritance kept back, to be distributed by THIS NAME. For that there is NO OTHER NAME UNDER HEAVEN GIVEN TO MEN, WHEREBY WE MUST BE SAVED [Acts 4:12] is the apostolic sentence, laid down beforehand — which shows forth OUR leader, Christ Jesus the Lord, distributing to his own HIMSELF as their perpetual inheritance;

and they who receive HIM say: My inheritance is glorious unto me [Ps 16:6].¹

Chapter 13 — Prediction: In Moses passing away, that he signed Jesus the Lord as ruler

A prediction made and figured. In Deuteronomy, believed and seen.

When Moses knew himself near to burial, recapitulating the whole Law to the people, he bound the whole synagogue with blessings and curses, and with that terrible song of Deuteronomy — bringing in heaven and earth as witness that he had hidden nothing of the Lord's commandments, and had acted with every vigilant care lest anything should arise that might harm the people.

And he warns that they must not depart from the Lord's precepts, nor turn aside from him in anything; and that prosperity is to be feared, lest adversity follow.

He adds also, marking out by the prophetic Spirit the things to come for them: that after his death, the true God being forsaken, they would run after the empty and harmful images of the nations; and that, by the worship of these, weighed down with the burdens of sins, they would be sunk into the depths; and that they would be abandoned by God, if they themselves abandoned God [Deut 31:16ff].

These things said, signing all the tribes with a mystical blessing, and the people being handed over to Joshua son of Nun to be governed, he himself — now advanced in age — departed from this life to the Lord [Deut 31:7; 34:5].

Our Mediator, the Lord Jesus, likewise commended his faith and his peace to his disciples as he passed over from this world to the Father [John 14:27; 13:1]; and, as John the evangelist says, loving them unto the end, he instructed them.

That prophetic thing also, commanding it through his own apostle Paul to those learning it: that after his death grievous wolves would enter in, not sparing the flock; and that out of the disciples themselves there would arise false prophets, speaking perverse things [Acts 20:29–30; Matt 24:11]. Of whom he says in his epistle: Beware of dogs; beware of evil workers; beware of the mutilation [Phil 3:2].

And commending them all to God and to the word of his grace, Paul affirms that they would see his face no more, and handed them over to the Lord Jesus to be governed — who is with his own until the consummation of the age [Acts 20:32; Matt 28:20].

Chapter 14 — Promise: In Joshua son of Nun, he shows the figure of Jesus the Lord, storming the earthly city

A promise made and figured. In Joshua son of Nun, believed and seen.

1. Joshua, son of Nun, at God's command consecrated by the hand of Moses, was made the leader of the people [Deut 34:9]. For — as must often be said — it was not fitting that any other should bring the people of God into the land of promise, except he who bore the sacraments both of the name and of the thing, and salvation itself.

He sends two spies into Jericho, which seemed to be the first among the cities of the promised land [Josh 2:1].

And our Jesus the Lord sent two spies also, who by their preaching would shake the land of his first coming: namely Zechariah the priest, and John his son. Of whom the same father and priest says to his own son: You, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High: for you shall go before the face of the Lord, to prepare his ways [Luke 1:76]. Likewise the angel says of that same John: He shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah [Luke 1:17].

The spies of that land Rahab the harlot received, who, hiding them, freed them from their pursuers [Josh 2:1ff]. And those whom the Lord Jesus sent, a fornicating soul received — she who, awaiting the salvation of the name of Jesus, was freed from the prostitution of idolatry through the scarlet cord, the sign of his sacred blood.

2. These souls, coming out of that fornication, Tamar — the daughter-in-law of Judah — also marks in her twins: when her younger son first began to put his hand out of the womb, and, the scarlet sign being placed upon it, was born the later [Gen 38:27ff].

She shows forth in herself the people of the nations: who, wandering, had first put out his hand in the rites of idols — and afterward came, born again in baptism, to Christ through the sign of his blood.

Beneath flax⁶ Rahab hid the spies. And beneath flax the spies of our Lord Jesus... ...were hidden, Isaiah the prophet testifies, saying: A bruised reed he shall not break, and smoking flax he shall not quench [Isa 42:3] — marking the Jewish nation itself, which, like flax smoking in its sacrifices, kept every prophecy covered up until Christ, and hid the very forerunners of our Christ Jesus; a nation which, not being quenched, is preserved even now, so that the things which still lie hidden in her may in time to come be revealed.

For that woman betrayed her own terrified citizens to the spies, out of dread of Jesus the leader — so that this also might be fulfilled, which is said of our Lord Jesus: Before your face the nations shall be troubled, when you do wonders [Isa 64:2].

The spies, returning to Joshua, when they had reported all they had done, he commands by divine order that the camp of the twelve tribes of Israel be moved, and that all cross the Jordan together, with the ark going before — the ark which already, in figure (as has been said), bore the sacraments of our leader Jesus.

While the ark tarried in the midst of the river, the water below went off, divided into parts, and the water above stood still, unmoved; and the riverbed itself afforded dry ground to those crossing over [Josh 3:15–17].

And straightway, at the Lord's command, Joshua bade twelve stones be taken up from the midst of the river, one from each tribe — by which, in that sacred number, the twelve Apostles of our Jesus were marked out.

And when the people had crossed, and the service which the water had furnished at God's command was fulfilled, the river, running back into itself, restored its banks whole after those who had passed over.

Here too the likeness of baptism is expressed: so that those who, born in the wilderness, had not known the sacraments of the Red Sea, being washed in the crossing of the Jordan, should receive circumcision by knives of stone [Josh 5:2].

For everyone consecrated in baptism under our Jesus is circumcised in heart by the Rock — since all his strength is made firm in the Rock. And that this Rock is Christ has already been shown above [1 Cor 10:4].

Chapter 15 — Promise: Through Jesus the Lord, souls are freed from the prostitution of idols

A prediction made and figured. In Joshua son of Nun, believed and seen.

1. The people of God, coming with Jesus [Joshua] their leader to Jericho, and seeing that city fortified on every side, hemmed it in with a siege.

A marvelous contest is seen to have been entered there, under the divine precepts; and a spiritual battle was in a manner waged: with the blasts of seven trumpets, seven times in the day, the whole week recurring; and on the last day, the trumpets sounding and all shouting for joy, all that proud structure of walls, shaken by no human but a divine hand, fell down [Josh 6].

The city was overthrown and burned with fire together with its peoples; and out of it Rahab alone, with her own, was able to be freed through the sign of the blood [Josh 6:17].

With these trumpets, with this shouting, at the command of Jesus the Lord, our army also fights. For with the sevenfold Spirit — of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and fortitude, of knowledge and devotion, and of the fear of God [Isa 11:2] — while those sing who play on ductile trumpets, and with the voice of the brazen trumpet [Ps 97:6], and the people shouts for joy in the sight of the Lord the King; and while seven times in the day they speak praises over the judgments of his justice [Ps 118:164] — all the earthly pride of the city of Jericho is beaten down.

It is burned with fire by him of whom it is said: A fire shall go before him, and shall burn up his enemies round about [Ps 96:3].

In which city hope of salvation is given to the penitent fornicating soul — who, freed by the sign of the blood of Jesus the Lord, [is she of whom] it is said to the lofty and the swollen: Harlots and publicans shall go before you into the kingdom of God [Matt 21:31].

For such souls our Lord Jesus finds, whether among Jews or among the nations. By whose example — that she might pass over from her prostitution to a lawful husband — the prophet Hosea is bidden to take a fornicating woman, and to beget sons of her [Hos 1:2]: so that she who a little before had been a harlot should now be a wife; and that she who strove to have no sons should have sons; and should now serve, not lust, but the offspring to be received.

2. This is set forth more plainly through Jeremiah the prophet, when the whole of Judaea is reproved: If a woman has been defiled, says the Lord, shall her husband return to her? And you have fornicated with many shepherds — and yet return to me, says the Lord [Jer 3:1].

And through Hosea: I will call what is not my people, my people; and her that was not beloved, beloved [Hos 1:10; 2:23; Rom 9:25].

Paul the Apostle also wholesomely rebukes souls of this kind, saying: There is heard among you fornication, and such fornication as is not even among the nations [1 Cor 5:1].

But when our Lord Jesus by his grace receives even such unto salvation, by that divinity of his power he makes the fornicating woman a virgin. Whom Paul, as the bridal friend, joins to himself in a chaste and spiritual wedlock, saying: For I have fitted you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ [2 Cor 11:2].

Of her, receiving sons not by flesh but by spirit, he makes the Church a virgin, and a mother — giving suck⁷ in the fruitfulness of her sons. Whom John the apostle admonishes together with himself, saying: Dearly beloved, we are sons of God; and it has not yet appeared what we shall be [1 John 3:2]. And Paul joins in: But if sons, then heirs also — heirs indeed of God, and co-heirs with Christ [Rom 8:17].

Chapter 16 — Promise: Through Jesus the Lord, all vices are to be stormed

A promise made and figured. In Joshua son of Nun, believed and seen.

Joshua, son of Nun, storms the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, and the other nations, whose lands the Lord had promised to his people for an inheritance.

And our Jesus the Lord storms idolatry, pride, envy, luxury, and the rest of the vices — that he may prepare himself as an eternal inheritance for his own.

By a measuring cord Joshua son of Nun divided the land to the victorious people. And our people, triumphing in Christ Jesus, says: The lines have fallen to me in glorious places; for my inheritance is glorious to me [Ps 15:6].

The Lord bids the daughters of Zelophehad — because he left no male heir — receive their father's inheritance [Num 27:6]: so that in these might be marked out souls destitute of human help, who, when God looks upon them, say: The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup: it is you who shall restore my inheritance to me [Ps 15:5].

Each tribe guards the bounds that were set, with inviolate faith. And it is said to our people also: You shall not go beyond the eternal bounds which your fathers set [Prov 22:28].

About to depart from the world, Joshua handed to the people these last words of his attestation, as Moses had done: that they must not depart from the commandments of the Lord, if they wished to be always free, and strangers to the snares of their enemies; and he affirms that he had received nothing from them, nor harmed them in anything [Josh 23–24].

And our Lord Jesus, passing over, binds his own with this covenant: If you do the things that I command you, you are truly my disciples; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free [John 8:31–32].

And when he had given them the power of working miracles, lest they should hope for anything from anyone which they themselves had not given, he said: Freely you have received; freely give [Matt 10:8].

After Joshua's departure, that people received not a Leader, but Judges, to be governed by. And when our Jesus the Lord passed over from this world to the Father, he brought in rulers for his Church throughout the whole world.

Chapter 17 — Prediction: In the figure of the Church, Deborah overcame the enemy

A prediction made and figured. In Judges, believed and seen.

Judah was the first among the Judges who judged Israel [Judg 1:2]. Of whose tribe — as we have often said — Christ the Lord was presented to this world in the flesh, the Judge of all souls.

But God being forsaken, the people of Israel, forgetful of the commandments of Moses and Joshua, the servants of God, served the idols of the nations; and vengeance, following after them, harassed them by means of neighboring enemies [Judg 2:11ff].

This happens now also, when sons of God, reborn through baptism, are entangled in the empty superstitions and cares of this world, and each is bound fast with the cords of his own sins [Prov 5:22].

The sons of Israel cried to the Lord when they suffered oppression; and he freed them out of their necessities [Ps 106:6]. Our Lord also says through the Prophet: It shall be, when you cry to me and say, Father — I will hear you as a holy people [Isa 63:16⁸]. In whose manifestation, the devoted father in the Gospel receives with great compassion the lost son crying to his father, returning and repentant [Luke 15].

Following among the Judges, Deborah the prophetess, a mother, arose in Israel; and she judged the people forty years [Judg 4:4].

In her time, the divine power shut up Sisera — the commander of King Jabin, rebelling against the Lord's people — into the hand of a woman: him, that is, terrible with chariots and horsemen, and to be feared by peoples. Nor was he pierced through with iron, but a woman fixed the man with wood, driving a tent-peg and a mallet through his temples [Judg 4:21].

She, bearing the likeness of our mother the Church, would re-echo in the voice of the Psalms: These in chariots, and these in horses; but we shall be magnified in the name of our God. Their feet were bound, and they fell; but we rose up, and stand upright [Ps 19:8–9].

These things, and others, holy Church sings, storming the idols and the worshipers of idols — and likewise her neighboring enemies, the heretics. Against whom, when they set up their camps, she says her heart does not fear: If a war rise up against me, in that will I hope [Ps 26:3]. And in another Psalm: Often have they fought against me from my youth; and indeed they could not prevail against me [Ps 128:1–2].

For the just Lord, by the wood of the Cross, has broken the necks of sinners.

Chapter 18 — Promise: In the figure of Gideon, he commends the grace of Christ the Lord

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

1. Again the people is afflicted for the sin of idolatry, Midian pressing them down.

An angel of the Lord being sent for their redemption, sending Gideon the son of Joash — one of the Hebrews — to judge and to fight for them, instructs him with this word: The Lord is with you, mighty in strength [Judg 6:12].

And Gideon: If the Lord is with us, he says, why have these evils found us? And the angel: Go; for in your hand Israel shall be freed from the hand of Midian [Judg 6:13–14].

And when Gideon confessed before the Lord that he was of the least tribe in Israel — being strengthened by him who exalts the humble, and makes him sit with the princes of his people [Ps 112:8] — he straightway overthrew the altar of Baal which the sons of Israel had built [Judg 6:25ff].

The people, provoked at him for this deed, besieged him as he fled into his father's house. And when he had escaped the people's onset, his father Joash softened the raging crowd with these words: Do you judge for Baal, or save him? He who has done him injury shall die before morning. If he is a god, let him avenge himself [Judg 6:31].

But when the people, appeased, had departed, the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon [Judg 6:34], and, raising him up with power, sends him to battle — assigning a sign of victory to his will.

Yet he himself asked two things, which were to be known as veiled, until their time, in a great mystery. I wish, Lord, he says, that the fleece which is on the threshing-floor be filled with water, and the floor be dry [Judg 6:36ff]. It was done. Likewise... Likewise, the floor being dry, all the dew came down upon the fleece; which, when wrung out, filled a basin with water.

In the fleece filled, upon the dry floor, we recognize the synagogue — the Church being then dry, in the faith of the nations: which, while it was watered by no rain of heavenly doctrine, the synagogue, like the fleece, was filled with divine oracles and sacred mysteries.

And the true Power, the Lord Jesus, wrung it out into a basin — so far that, as the Passion drew near, washing his disciples' feet in it [John 13:5], emptying out all the glory of the synagogue, he left it empty like a wrung-out fleece; ministering to the nations the grace of the New Testament, which he plainly showed in the second sign.

I wish, Lord, says Gideon, that the fleece be dry, and that the whole floor be rained upon [Judg 6:39].

2. That both were done, and were to be in Christ and through Christ, David the prophet confirms, saying in the seventy-first Psalm: He shall come down like rain upon a fleece (which pertains to the synagogue) and like drops falling upon the earth (which pertains to the Church) [Ps 71:6].

And in Deuteronomy: Let my utterance be received like rain, and let my words come down like dew [Deut 32:2]. In the dew on the fleece, he shows the synagogue then filled; and in the rain on the floor, the Church now filled with grace.

Isaiah the prophet says also: As the dew or the rain, coming down, does not depart until it makes the earth drunk, and it springs up, and gives bread to eat to those who till it — so also every word which goes forth out of my mouth shall not return, until it accomplishes what I willed [Isa 55:10–11].

All the sacraments, therefore, being fulfilled — which for others lay hidden, stored up in the fleece — the whole world now acknowledges that the synagogue of the Jews has remained empty, but that the floor, the Church, is filled with grace throughout all the nations, in the fruitfulness of believing peoples.

But it was commanded to this same Gideon that he go out with his gathered troop to fight against the enemies of God's people. Yet because all things were covered with sacraments, that same army which was being led came down to the water, to be tested.

For the Lord said to Gideon: Lead the people down to the water; for there are still too many with you. And those who lap with the tongue, as a dog drinks, you shall set apart; the rest you shall dismiss from the camp [Judg 7:4–5]. And there were found three hundred men. These, says the Lord, you shall lead with you: lest Israel say, My own hands have saved me [Judg 7:2, 7].

For thus divine providence acts, commending grace: that no man should glory in himself, but in the Lord [1 Cor 1:31]. Since the power of war is not in the multitude of the army, but strength is from heaven [1 Macc 3:19].

3. But the soldiers of the Lord fight in this manner: girt about the loins, carrying water-jars in their hands, and kindled torches — being on fire in mind and body — with this sign of victory: The sword of the Lord and of Gideon [Judg 7:16, 20].

Gideon, therefore, spying out the camp of the adverse party by night, and perceiving by what dreams the Lord had terrified their adversaries, returns at dawn to his own soldiers, and addresses them as men already possessed of a sure victory. And he bids the soldiers of God hurl the jars from their hands to the ground, and straightway leap upon the adversaries with all confidence.

So also under our Judge, the Lord Jesus, our army has conquered and does conquer. To whom it is commanded: Let your loins be girt, and carry burning lamps [Luke 12:35] — and the twice-sharpened sword, the word of God [Rev 1:16].

Whose brave bodies — the bodies of the martyrs, dashed upon the earth like jars — when they crash, that is, the bodies of those who strive for the truth even unto death, put all the enemies to flight by their great sound. Whose triumph re-echoes in a sweet song, saying: We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the eminence of the power may be God's, and not of ourselves [2 Cor 4:7] — giving thanks to God, who gave them the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ [1 Cor 15:57].

For our own have also passed through fire and water [Ps 65:12], lapping with the tongue like the dogs of the Lord — whom David recalls, saying: the tongue of your dogs, from the enemies, by him [Ps 67:24]. For these now bark for him whom once they hated; and by their barking every adversary of Christ is put to flight.

Chapter 19 — Prediction: In Abimelech, the son of a concubine, he marks the heretics

A prediction made and figured. In Judges, believed and seen.

Abimelech, the son of a concubine, after the death of his father Gideon, having killed seventy of his lawful sons and stirred up the people, was made judge in Israel [Judg 9:1ff].

But one of the seventy, having escaped by hiding, rebukes all Israel as it passed by, under a certain parable: that when the fruitless trees of the forest asked the vine and the fig to be their king, the fruitful answered the fruitless that they could not leave the fruits of their own richness and go to reign over trees [Judg 9:7ff].

This figure shows the presumed audacity of the heretics: who, being not sons of the free woman but of the bondmaid [Gal 4:30–31] — like forest trees over forest trees, that is, over fruitless souls, overwhelmed with the thorns of their offenses — set themselves up as rulers with this intent: to kill the sons of the true King and Judge in the soul, by rebaptizing.

Yet this bold prince Abimelech a woman killed, hurling a fragment of a millstone from the wall, and crushing his head [Judg 9:53].

So too it is fitting that the heretics perish, who strive to storm our Head, Christ the Lord, with contumelious disputation — since the sons of the bondmaid cannot be heirs, but the sons of the free woman. And the Church, as a woman out of the nations, binding their millstone about their neck, drowns them in the deep [Matt 18:6].

Chapter 20 — Promise: In Jephthah, the immolation of the virgin — a figure of the immolation of the flesh of Christ

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

1. Jephthah also, in the following order, judged the people of God for six years. And while he waged war against the sons of Ammon, and saw that his adversaries prevailed against him, by a rash presumption he vowed a vow: that if it should befall him to conquer his enemies, he would offer in sacrifice whatever first met him out of his own house [Judg 11:29ff].

His audacity was rebuked in this way: that it was not any beast of the herd, as he had supposed, but his only daughter, a virgin, coming to meet him in the manner of one triumphing, who grievously afflicted the victor concerning his promise.

Looking upon her, he said: Alas, my daughter! You have become an offense in my eyes. For I have vowed a vow to God over you, and it cannot be turned back. And his daughter said to him: If you have opened your mouth to the Lord over me, father, do as you have promised — because the Lord has wrought vengeance upon his enemies [Judg 11:35–36].

And she asks a respite of her father, in which she might weep her virginity upon the mountain with her companions. And when the time was completed she returned, and Jephthah fulfilled the vows of his sacrifice concerning her. And she, as it is said, had not known a man [Judg 11:39].

It is asked, perhaps: why did God not command him that he ought to spare his only daughter, as he bade Abraham spare his only son [Gen 22:12]? And there arises that famous question, hard to resolve — which, by the Lord's revealing, I shall resolve in this way.

First: because God had not demanded it of Jephthah, tempting him, as he did of Abraham; but this man vowed of his own accord — not, as I said, tempted by God, but himself in a manner tempting God.

Second: it was fitting⁹ that, the victim not being specified, he should have immolated a dog, or a beast of burden, or any other unworthy beast whatever, that first met him — as he had promised.

Because, therefore, being not tempted he wished to tempt God, that met him which would prove the virtue, the vow, and the mind of the one promising.

2. Yet Paul the Apostle, in the epistle to the Hebrews, says that this Jephthah — among the rest full of faith — wrought justice by this very thing; recalling Barak, Samson, Samuel, and the rest of our heroes [Heb 11:32–33]. Lest the earthly city alone should exalt her citizens with the applause of vanity: if Torquatus killed his son for her; if Mucius stretched out his right hand into the flames; if Curtius, by hurling himself into the chasm, deprived himself of life for her savagery¹⁰ — whereas our own citizens of Jerusalem, the great heavenly city, have done things far loftier, and many, and manifold.

The justice-working of this Jephthah, nevertheless, admonishes us to search out the mysteries of the Lord's action, insofar as it is given to explain the secret of so great a thing.

These figured mysteries, therefore, refer to our Judge and Leader, the Lord Jesus, in such a way that we may know him — willing to take vengeance upon our enemies for our redemption — offering his only virgin, his own flesh... — as it were his daughter — to be immolated. For he is said, through David the prophet, to have been formed in the womb by himself: Mother Zion shall say: A man, and a man, has been made in her; and the Most High himself founded her [Ps 86:5].

This flesh met him in the hour of the Passion, when its Creator stripped the principalities and powers of this air, confidently triumphing over them in himself [Col 2:15]. It met him, I say, in that hour of which he says in the Gospel: Father, what shall I say? Let this hour pass. But for this cause I came unto this hour [John 12:27] — that he who had created her might immolate her.

3. And as to her asking a respite, that she might weep her virginity on the mountain with her companions: Jesus went up onto the mountain with his companions as the Passion drew near, praying there — and, as the Evangelist testifies, sweating; so that instead of tears, drops of blood seemed to fall to the ground [Luke 22:44].

And he admonished his companions to watch and pray, lest they enter into temptation, adding that his soul was sorrowful even unto death [Matt 26:38, 41].

But coming down from the mountain, he offered as a sacrifice to God the Father this flesh which he had taken up for us — a virgin without corruption, which had not known a man.

Since here too he opened his mouth over his own flesh, saying through the Prophet: What proceeds from my lips I will not reject [Ps 88:35]. And he himself in the Gospel: For this my Father loves me, because I lay down my life for my sheep [John 10:17]. And again: Greater love than this no one has, than that a man lay down his life for his friends [John 15:13].

Nor indeed was that flesh corrupted, even in death — of which he says in the Psalm: My flesh shall rest in hope; for you will not abandon my soul in hell, nor will you give your Holy One to see corruption [Ps 15:9–10].

He therefore lives to God, who ends this life for God's sake. For to me, says the Apostle, to live is Christ, and to die is gain [Phil 1:21].

Chapter 21 — Promise: In Samson, the Lord Christ a Nazirite, strong in his head

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

1. [Manoah] was so named, in that time in which the Judges governed the people of God; and his wife was barren. To her an angel of the Lord stood by, promising that such a son would be born: Iron shall not go up upon his head, and he shall not drink wine or strong drink: for the boy shall be a Nazirite from the day of his birth until the end of his death [Judg 13:3–5].

Already the word Nazirite sounds of strength in the head — since the head of a man is Christ [1 Cor 11:3].

There was born, therefore, that most mighty Samson, full (as it is said) of strength from the hair of his head, who judged Israel twenty years. Whose every action re-echoes Christ the Lord in figure. Whose order of deeds, helped by the grace of God, I shall thus run through.

Samson went down to Timnah, says the Scripture, and there he loved a foreign woman, and asked his parents that he might obtain her to wife [Judg 14:1].

And our Mighty One came down from heaven — of whom the angel says to Mary, that he shall be called a Nazirite — that he might join to himself the souls beloved by him out of the nations, and unite them by faith.

While Samson goes to see his betrothed, a lion's whelp met him, which, filled with the spirit, he tore apart and cast in pieces. Returning again, and turning aside from the way, while he inspects the carcass of the beast, looking up he took a honeycomb in the lion's mouth; and eating it, he gave of it to his parents, nor did he tell them the deed of his work [Judg 14:5–9].

This our Nazirite, the Lord Jesus, also did. He tore apart the Jewish people, like a lion's whelp, and scattered them in pieces — of whom Balaam, the gentile prophet, says: Israel, a lion's whelp, mightiest in the way [Num 24:9]. That its fragments are scattered through the world, David the prophet attests, saying to our own Mighty One: Scatter them in your power [Ps 58:12]. Which done thing we do not believe — we see it.

2. But the honeycomb which he found in the mouth of this lion — understand, hearer, the spiritual law of that people: that the bees, the Patriarchs and Prophets, constructing it, poured into it the honey of the divine eloquence.

This he took from the mouth of the dead lion — he who, the Jews being repulsed, ministered that same law also to the nations. And eating it — the body of our most mighty Judge, Christ the Lord — he says: How sweet are your words to my throat, above honey and the honeycomb to my mouth [Ps 118:103]. And Solomon says: Honeycombs are good words... [Prov 16:24]. He gave of it, as has been said, to his parents — either to the disciples, when he opened their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures [Luke 24:45]; or to those who passed over from among the Jews to the faith of Christ, that they too, tasting, might see how sweet the Lord is [Ps 33:9].

The riddle of this action Samson put forth at the wedding feast, under a certain wager of thirty linen cloths and as many robes, to the men who were present, if they should declare what was proposed: Out of the devourer came forth food; and out of the strong, sweetness [Judg 14:14].

And when, as the day of solving drew near, they could not understand it, they force his wife — compelled by threats and terrors — to search out the mind of her husband; and, the solution of the proposition being discovered through her, they unfold the parable, saying: What is sweeter than honey, and what stronger than a lion? To whom he said: If you had not ploughed with my heifer, you would never have understood my parable [Judg 14:18].

Great, therefore, is that sacrament of the Lord's devotion, which in the Law was veiled, and was hidden from the ages in God [Col 1:26]; revealed through Christ, it has been made manifest among the nations [1 Tim 3:16].

And stripping the spoils from those he had laid low, Samson paid his promises with all speed — so that what had been said of ours might also be marked: He shall divide the spoils of the strong [Isa 53:12]. For wholesomely does our Mighty One slay his enemies, when by sin he slew sin in the flesh — rendering the promised spoils; not merits for merits, but conferring good things upon the wretched in place of evils.

3. But when Samson went to the feast day of the Hebrew people, that he might keep it with his own, his wife's parents handed her over to another man [Judg 15:1–2].

This is what light and worthless souls do, who, in no way keeping with a chaste and faithful heart the fellowship of the one Bridegroom, Christ, hand themselves over and join themselves to whatever heretical teaching. And the Apostle admonishes souls of the one Bridegroom, Christ, who keep their bed with modest love: See that no one seduce you in any way [2 Thess 2:3].

Samson, therefore, returning, when he learned that his wife had been joined to another man, wore out that nation with stratagems for his grief. Taking three hundred foxes, and binding their tails to one another, he set burning torches on them, and let them go through the crops of the foreigners, and burned up all their harvest with wondrous swiftness [Judg 15:4–5].

And our Mighty Lord also says, marking the heretics: Catch us the little foxes that lay waste the vineyards [Song 2:15] — who have torches of the burning of error rather than of divine love. Nor are they in the head, but in the tail. For they burn with zeal and perverse doctrines, by which, breathing upon the unskilled — or rather the skilled — with the sprinkling of their own vapor, they consume them all like fire consuming wild hay.

Since in the sight of our Judge, Christ the Lord, a fire shall burn; and all the aliens shall be, as the prophet says, stubble; and the coming day shall burn them up, says the Lord [Mal 4:1].

But that woman, who — such a man being forsaken — believed she should be joined to another, is known to have been consumed by fire together with her parents by her own citizens [Judg 15:6]: so that every heretical soul, together with her parents (that is, her teachers), may be burned in inextinguishable fire, her sins dragging her forth. Since their own iniquities shall drag them forth to face them [Wis 4:20], when the Lord shall say to them: Depart from me into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels [Matt 25:41].

Chapter 22 — Prediction: In the same Samson — that Christ the Lord, bound by the Jews, burst all bonds

A prediction made and figured. In Judges, believed and seen.

The same Samson loved another woman among that people... [Judg 16]. He allows himself, the strong one, to be bound with these cords; and, the adversaries lying in wait, and his wife saying to him, The Philistines are upon you, Samson — he so broke the bonds by his strength, as tow when it has touched fire; and he turned all his adversaries to flight.

Our Lord also, the Lord of strength, permitted himself as it were to be bound with these bonds at Jerusalem. For the Pharisees bring to him a woman taken in adultery, and say, tempting him: Master, just now we caught this woman. Moses commanded that such should be... [John 8:4–5]. ...stoned. But you — what do you decree concerning her? [John 8:4–5]. They had believed they had bound Jesus with cords out of the Law, as it were with sinews — and above all with fresh ones, when they said just now.

Which cords our Mighty One burst with this answer: He of you who is without sin, let him first cast a stone at her [John 8:7]. And hearing this, they departed one after another — so that the bond by which they had bound him was loosed, just as the prophet said: As wax flows from the face of fire, so let sinners perish from the face of God [Ps 67:3].

Now while Samson was going to take that woman, the ambush of enemies rushed upon him as he passed alone on the way. And the divine strength was straightway present to him: for taking up the jawbone of an ass, he laid low a thousand men from it, and turned the rest to flight. And when he was failing with thirst from the fighting, having called upon God, water flowing out from a crack in that jawbone restored him, satisfied, to his former strength, and made him a victor over his conquered adversaries [Judg 15:15–19].

If you look upon our Mighty Lord, carried on this same animal¹¹, you will find a like and even greater number of enemies laid low by him — since David the prophet says to him: A thousand shall fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but they shall not come near you [Ps 90:7].

Since from his thirsting body, out of his side, as from a crack, blood and water flowed [John 19:34] — satisfied with which, every Christian soul says: He has led me out upon the waters of refreshment; he has converted my soul [Ps 22:2–3].

After that marvelous battle, Samson joined to himself another woman whom he loved, named Delilah.

These two women (as the mystical action itself, examined in many ways, reveals) I judge to be those two cities which Ezekiel the prophet signed with these names, Oholah and Oholibah — that is, Samaria and Jerusalem [Ezek 23:4]:

Samaria, which received the rending of the kingdom into eleven portions — like that first woman who, forsaking her lawful husband, handed herself over to heretics;

but Jerusalem, like this Delilah, who — the whole action being ordered — closed up the mysteries of the Passion of Christ the Lord.

2. And the deeds follow thus. The Philistines said to Delilah: Seduce your husband, and let him tell you wherein his strength lies; and we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver [Judg 16:5].

Behold that threefold selling. Christ is sold in Joseph, before the Law. He is sold in Samson, under the Law. He is sold by Judas to the Jews, under Grace [Matt 26:15].

Delilah seduces her husband at their urging, and says: Tell me wherein your strength can be weakened.

Samson in a manner opened his mouth in parables, and said: If I be bound with moist — that is, fresh — sinews, I shall be weakened, and shall be as all other men [Judg 16:7].

...

He said: If I be bound with new ropes, I shall be weakened, and shall be as all men [Judg 16:11]. And when this was done, she said: The adversaries are upon you, Samson! But he, filled with the Spirit, burst the ropes from his arms like thread, and scattered them, and put all the adversaries to flight.

Our Lord also, the Mighty One, allows himself to be bound — when the Pharisees come to him a second time and say: Master, we know that you teach in truth, and accept no man's person. Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? [Matt 22:16–17]. With this two-headed temptation they bound our Mighty One, as with a snare.

But by the Spirit of power our Mighty One burst all the knots with this word: Why do you tempt me, hypocrites? Bring me the coin of the tribute. And they brought him a denarius. And the Lord: Whose is this image and superscription? They said: Caesar's. Render, says the Lord, to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's [Matt 22:18–21].

With these words, with wondrous swiftness, he burst those bonds — that assumed man, who sings to his God in the Psalms: You have burst my bonds; to you will I sacrifice a sacrifice of praise [Ps 115:16–17].

4. A third time the woman importunes the man. How long, she says, do you mock me? Tell me now wherein your strength is weakened [Judg 16:15].

Almost the same words the Jews also said to our Judge, Christ: How long do you hold our souls in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly [John 10:24].

But Samson permitted himself to be bound a third time in this way: If the hairs of my head be bound to a weaver's pin, I shall be weakened, and shall be as all men [Judg 16:13]. And when the woman did this, she said: The same men lie in wait for you, Samson. But he, rising up and bursting all, laid low his enemies, routed and stricken.

A binding of this kind — as it were the weaving of hairs on a weaver's pin — is made for our Mighty One, the Lord Jesus, also. The Scribes and Pharisees say to Jesus: Moses wrote to us, that if a man die having no sons, his brother shall take his wife and raise up seed to his brother. Now there were seven brothers... and the woman also died without children. In the resurrection, they say, whose wife shall she be? [Matt 22:24–28].

The more vehemently they believed they had bound our Mighty One, the more swiftly he untied the question they had brought. And truly as one having authority [Matt 7:29] — since he could not be bound by these temptations unless he himself permitted it. The sons of this age, he says, beget and are begotten; but those who shall be worthy to attain that age shall neither marry nor be given in marriage. For they can no longer die, since they are equal to the angels and sons of God [Luke 20:34–36]. At which words, laid low in all confusion, his enemies were routed.

And the hour of Samson's death came. Ours also says: The hour has come that the Son of Man be glorified. For unless the grain of wheat, falling into the earth, shall die, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit [John 12:23–24].

5. With the woman pressing him and weeping falsely before him, Samson's soul was made faint even unto death, says the Scripture [Judg 16:16] — so that the figured action of ours might be fulfilled, who says: My soul is sorrowful even unto death [Matt 26:38].

If the hairs of my head be shaven, said Samson, I shall be weakened, and shall be as all men [Judg 16:17]. And before these things were done, the woman sends to the men, saying: Bring the silver; for now he has told me all things truly [Judg 16:18].

A sure betrayal is made — which Judas fulfilled, taking the silver. And there is fulfilled in Samson, by figure, what was done manifestly in our Christ the Lord.

For that the woman, receiving him, made him sleep in her lap — this is what our Mighty Lord says: It is not fitting that a prophet perish outside Jerusalem [Luke 13:33].

That she made him drunk with a deadly cup — this is what our Lord also said: They gave gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink [Ps 68:22].

And that, a razor being applied, she shaved his head — this is that they crucified him in the place of Calvary.

Samson's head being shaven, his strength departed. And ours, hanging on the wood, cried out: God, my God, look upon me; why have you forsaken me? [Ps 21:2]. And again: They that hate me without cause are multiplied above the hairs of my head [Ps 68:5].

Samson's enemies dug out his two eyes. The two lights¹² of the disciples were poured out for a time — some by denying, others by fleeing. For whom our Mighty One cries out: My eyes have failed, hoping in my God [Ps 68:4]; and again: Enlighten my eyes, lest I ever sleep in death [Ps 12:4]. Which we know was done in the disciples, when, at his rising again, their eyes were opened, and they knew him in the breaking of the bread [Luke 24:31].

Samson's enemies, taking him, bound him with iron. This the nails of the Crucified indicate.

6. And what they did in mocking him — giving him blows on the face, smearing him with spittle, beating him with scourges — all these things Isaiah the prophet foretold [Isa 50:6], and the holy Gospels testify were fulfilled in Christ the Lord; where the Jews mock him as though blinded, when, striking his head with a reed, they say: Prophesy to us, Christ: who struck you? [Matt 26:68].

But Samson wrought one last miracle in his death, which our Lord and Mighty One also fulfilled. The hair of his head growing again, and his strength having grown with it, he was led by his enemies to the temple, where all that people had gathered to give praises and victims to their gods, because they had handed over to them their fiercest foe. Set there, he commanded the boy who was leading him to place his hands upon the pillars on which that whole building was borne... Grasping them, one with each hand, and calling upon God, he asks that he be strengthened once more; and, tearing out the pillars by an onrush of the spirit, that whole building fell with its peoples — and Samson killed more in his death than he had killed in his life [Judg 16:29–30].

Our Lord also displayed more manifestly what that man had done mystically: moving in his death the two corners of the world — that is, the circumcision and the uncircumcision, as it were two pillars — he overthrew the whole worship of idolatry; loosing the enmities in his own flesh, that he might found the two in himself into one new man; making peace, and reconciling both in one body to God, through the Cross, slaying the enmities in himself [Eph 2:14–16].

Thus far the things which were figuratively enacted in Judges.

Chapter 23 — Prediction: In Ruth, the Church from the nations, mocking the Jews

A prediction made and figured. In Ruth, believed and seen.

Ruth was so named among that people — who, being a foreigner (that is, coming from among the Moabites), and set under the law of God and among his people, did those things which would bear the figure of the Church coming out of the nations.

For she offered herself in the covenant of matrimony to a certain man of the Hebrew people. But he, keeping the commandments of the Law — not drawn by the beauty of the young woman, nor caught by the ardor of his own youth — sends her, as she pressed toward him, to the man to whom she was owed by the Law as the nearer kinsman [Ruth 3].

The one who was appealed to by divine right refuses her. The Law judged that he who would not take his kinswoman should have his shoe removed [Deut 25:9; Ruth 4:8]. Marked with this disgrace, she was joined to him who had preserved the place of the nearer kinsman.

So the Church of the nations offered herself also to the people of Israel, in the faith of Christ the Lord, as to the nearer kinsman. And he, unwilling to receive her, was unshod of the glory of the Law that had been conferred on him, and branded with the mark of infamy — since he would not the blessing, and it shall be far from him [Ps 108:18].

As the Apostle says to that same people: To you first it behooved that the word of God be announced; but since you have thrust it out, and have judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life — behold, we turn ourselves to the nations [Acts 13:46]. For among that people, the house of the unshod was branded with this reproach.

But the one who received her afterward is the people that has its feet shod in the preparation of the Gospel of peace [Eph 6:15].

Which Gospel announces that Boaz and Ruth begot Obed — through the succession of whose seed it is come, down to Joseph and Mary, and to the nativity of Christ the Lord himself [Matt 1:5ff].

Chapter 24 — Promise: In Samuel, Christ the Lord — Leader, Priest, and Prophet — reproving the priests

A promise made and figured. In Kings [Samuel], believed and seen.

1. Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, who was barren, vowed a vow to God: that if he would give her a son, he should be in the house of the Lord from infancy until old age.

He was given, and Samuel was born of her; and when he was weaned she rendered him to the Lord, as she had promised. And such was his grace, while he dwelt as a little one in the temple, that he both received divine answers, and the Lord announced to him things to come.

But he not so much changed the order of the priesthood in figure, as that there are found in him three certain things which are to be consigned to Christ the Lord. For he was made Leader, Priest, and Prophet of the people.

If you seek Christ the Leader — Daniel the prophet says of him: the Leader of the heavenly host¹³.

If you seek Christ the Priest — David says: You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek [Ps 109:4].

If you seek Christ the Prophet — he himself says of himself in the Gospel: A prophet is not without honor... [Luke 4:24]. ...except in his own country [Luke 4:24].

When, therefore, the sons of Eli the priest were acting wickedly — presuming beyond their due to eat other portions of the flesh to be immolated, which God had not commanded them; and [demanding] that it be offered first to themselves, and afterward to God; and harassing also the women who came to the temple, perpetrating outrages with them [1 Sam 2:12ff] —

God, angered at these crimes, brought upon them the battle of a hostile nation. In which not only was the people cut down, but those very priests were killed; and the ark of God itself was taken by the enemy [1 Sam 4].

For so does the God of Israel grow angry at sinning priests, that he does not spare even his own consecrated places and vessels. For David says: God has repelled his own tabernacle, in which he dwelt among men; and he handed them into the hands of the nations, and those who hated them ruled over them [Ps 77:60, 61]. And again: God has repelled them, and his sanctuary [Ps 88:40].

Likewise elsewhere: If the people has sinned, the priest shall intercede for it; but if the priest has sinned, who shall intercede for him? [1 Sam 2:25].

2. Woe is me! With a great groaning and inconsolable weeping I shall say it — I shall say that, our sins running ahead of us, and we acting impiously, these evils come upon our own times also.

But the ark of God, which the enemies had taken, they believed must be venerated with such reverence that they judged it should be placed in the temple of their own god Dagon. Under whose power, the next day, they saw their own idol dashed down and prostrate. But giving this to chance, they fasten him up again with stronger hooks and more solid ones. And when on the following day they beheld him broken and crushed to pieces before the ark, they could by no means discover what this thing was — and that same nation was struck with a graver and more atrocious plague, which David the prophet attests under a certain modesty, saying: He struck his enemies in the hinder parts; he gave them an everlasting reproach [Ps 77:66].

Nor were they able to escape the final penalty of this disgrace, until they had restored the ark of God which they had taken, with gifts set beside it [1 Sam 6].

Let kings and nations see, and fear — those who to this day hold captive among themselves the consecrated vessels of Almighty God, and refuse to give them back. For what evils do we believe are to come upon those who have refused to honor, in his consecrated vessels, that name which is above every name [Phil 2:9] — when divine history testifies that men were so punished for [dishonoring] the ark of God; on account of which, when it was seen, God began even here to take vengeance upon his enemies?

3. But that same defiant Hebrew people, spurning the leadership of Samuel, asked that a king be made for them. And the Lord, angered, says to Samuel: They have not spurned you, but me [1 Sam 8:5–7] — so that there might then be marked out what they afterward said to Pilate, spurning the Lord Jesus as King: We have no king but Caesar [John 19:15].

Yet the Lord gave them a king, Saul, the son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, who afflicted them by royal power for forty years.

Thus every soul that repudiates the law and the yoke of Christ the Lord deserves so to be afflicted; and while evil leaders, princes, and priests rule over them, they hear: I have given you a king according to your own heart [1 Sam 12:13¹⁴].

And let those also beware who receive these powers — if they take them up out of a lust for domineering, and not with the affection of one who counsels; if they choose to be ministered to, and not rather to minister.

Which the Lord rebukes through himself, and through the prophet Hosea, saying: Canaan — in his hand a balance of injustice; for he has chosen domination [Hos 12:7]. And he himself in the Gospel: Whoever wishes to be greater among you shall be your servant — just as the Son of Man came not to be ministered to, but to minister [Matt 20:26–28].

Chapter 25 — Promise: In David, Christ the shepherd, playing the harp

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

1. When that same king Saul, seized by pride, despised the precepts of God and was spurned by God, that David (whose name is said to mean "strong of hand") — though little among his brothers — received the sacraments of the royal anointing [1 Sam 16:13]. A shepherd of sheep indeed, that he might mark out our anointed Shepherd, Christ the Lord, who says: I am the good shepherd [John 10:11].

David confesses that he snatched the prey out of the lion's mouth [1 Sam 17:35]. And our Strong-of-Hand snatched, out of the mouth of the lion the devil, both Peter denying and the thief confessing [Luke 22:61; 23:43].

David, harping with a sweet sound, not only soothed the hearing of the animals, but tempered even in Saul himself the vexation of the evil spirit [1 Sam 18:10].

If you would look upon the harp of our Strong-of-Hand, Christ the Lord, sounding out: it is the wood of the Cross, strung with the chords of his own flesh and members; and when the Holy Spirit strikes it with the plectrum, filling every living thing with blessing, it put even the devil himself to flight from the hearts of his enemies — for whom, praying on the Cross, he brought forth that sweet sound, saying: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do [Luke 23:34].

2. Yet the same David, being pleasing to king Saul by his harp, and learning that he was troubled by the messages of Goliath — who under the condition of servitude challenged them to single combat — David, the little one, sets himself against that mighty man. Let not my lord's heart fall, he says. I will go, and I will fight this Philistine [1 Sam 17:32].

To whom Saul: You cannot; for you are a boy, and he is a man of war from his youth. And David said: Your servant killed both a lion and a bear. So shall this man be as one of them [1 Sam 17:33–36] — marking, from his own seed, as had been promised, that One who was to come, who trampled the lion and the dragon [Ps 90:13].

3. Taking up the battle, therefore, David refused Saul's armor in which he had been clothed. For choosing himself five smooth stones from the torrent, and taking a sling in his hand, the little shepherd storms — not a king in the guise of a king, but a great enemy.

So our Shepherd, Christ the Lord, casting off the wisdom of this world like that armor, in five stones chose the foolish things of the world, that he might confound the strong [1 Cor 1:27].

For all that terrible bulk of the proud one was laid low at a single blow of a stone, struck on the forehead; and he is found to have been beheaded with his own sword [1 Sam 17:49–51].

For out of the five books of the Law, that foretold one stone — spoken by the sling of the flesh, sped by a strong hand — crushed the whole pride of the devil, and slew him with his own sword, when he killed death by death.

For by the envy of the devil, death entered into the world [Wis 2:24]. This the innocent One took up — that good Shepherd, who laid down his life for his own [John 10:15] — that by his own death he might vanquish the devil.

4. The enemy being destroyed and laid low, Saul wickedly conceived envy against David out of the victory; and repaying evil for good, he routs, hates, and persecutes the innocent man. And our Lord says of such men: They repaid me evil for good, and hatred for my love [Ps 108:5].

And that David ran to and fro through the hiding-places of the mountains, through caves and through deserts, with Saul pursuing him — in this figure our Lord expressed the persecutions of his own body, that is, of his holy members, the Martyrs; of whom the apostle Paul says: Of whom the world was not worthy — they wandered through deserts, and through caves, and through the caverns of the earth [Heb 11:38].

5. And that David did not kill his persecutor Saul, when he was handed into his hands, but cutting off the hem of his cloak, spared the man who hated him — this our Shepherd and King, Christ the Lord, does daily toward those who hate and persecute him: from whom, while he cuts away the great vice of pride, he spares even raging kings — because he does not will the death of the impious, but that they turn back and live [Ezek 18:23].

Which he did, and does, toward all his enemies — he who justifies the impious, not out of merits, but freely [Rom 4:5].

David, again turning aside from Saul's snares, the nations receive. So our Christ the Lord, withdrawing himself from the raging Jews, gave himself to the nations.

The Philistines betrayed to king Saul that David was hidden among them in Gath. Our King too was betrayed, as the same prophet says: All my enemies whispered against me; against me they devised evils for me [Ps 40:8]. And again: The kings of the earth stood by, and the princes came together into one, against the Lord and against his Christ [Ps 2:2].

But David, knowing himself betrayed, does certain things — or rather, mysteries to come are done through him: feigning madness; his spittle ran down into his beard; and he is carried, as the Scripture says, in his own hands. Seeing him such, the king of that nation casts him from himself and dismisses him, saying: Why have you brought in this madman to me? [1 Sam 21:13–15].

For nothing in the Law was said or done which can be empty, or in any way foreign to a figured action.

For the Jews, his enemies, say to our Lord also: You are a Samaritan, and have a demon [John 8:48]. And spitting upon him, they cast him out of certain cities.

And the Lord Jesus was indeed carried in his own hands, when, bearing his own body in the sanctified bread in his own hands, he said: This is my body, which shall be delivered for you [Luke 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24].

Concerning these mysteries, whoever desires also to know how it is that David, dancing before the ark, was uncovered before his servants and handmaids — that he might display Christ crucified before the men and women present — let him consult the sayings of Augustine, the bishop of venerable memory, who, ranging more widely over these matters, has comprehended nearly all of them.

Chapter 26 — Promise: In the same David, loving his enemies, restoring the fallen

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

As the order of the promise required, David — being anointed — received all Israel to be governed, not a part, as before; Saul having been destroyed in battle. Whose grievous slaying he mourned, and whom he moreover avenged; and all Israel was gathered to him [2 Sam 1].

This too is done now, while our King, Christ the Lord, greatly loves his enemies, and avenges them: and the whole world is gathered to him, as was promised — to whom it was said: I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession [Ps 2:8].

And although he has now taken possession of nearly all the nations, it yet remains that, when the fullness of the nations shall have entered in, all predestined Israel shall be saved [Rom 11:25–26]; so that through him the whole world may be reconciled to God.

But the things which David, being exalted, did in his kingdom, look upon those who — fallen by a certain presumption of pride — are joined by penitence, amended, to the body of Christ, the Church.

For, as a certain man says, prosperity wearies the minds of the wise. Lifted up by these things, this David committed the two principal things which the Law forbids: adultery and homicide [2 Sam 11].

And being admonished through Nathan the prophet, when with great compunction of heart he did penance — since sins cannot go unpunished — although he escaped a sudden death, yet in the things he had done it is plain that he was gravely punished. For already he had heard from the prophet's mouth: You did it in secret; you shall suffer it in the sun [2 Sam 12:12].

By which sentence the whole state of his house was disturbed in this order. One of his own sons, seized by base concupiscence, secretly violated his own sister (though of another mother), and defiled the virgin. The girl's own brother Absalom killed the ravisher, his brother. Struck by this deed, Absalom, fleeing from his father's face, stirs up all Israel; and, made a rebel, he routs and pursues his father — and wickedly defiles his bed also in his concubines [2 Sam 13–16].

Bearing these things patiently, David recognized that those things were being punished in him, with justice avenging, which he had committed — as it seemed to him — in secret.

And while the divine law re-echoes these deeds, it shows itself to be a mirror: not concealing the deeds even of its own great men; but with the serenity of its own splendor demonstrating both the beauties and the foulnesses of whomsoever — being strong with that truth which both convicts and punishes the guilt even of its own; yet not without mercy, which covers all and displays all: both the fall of so great a man, and the sentence of the just Judge, and the indulgence of a most merciful Father.

And he is set here as an example to sober souls: that they may learn to fear prosperity more than to dread adversity. For in tribulation, as the prophet says, we are mindful of God [Hos 6:1].

But it is perilous for a soul to be let go in its own pleasures — since the Lord himself says: Those whom I love, I rebuke and chastise [Rev 3:19].

Chapter 27 — Prediction: In Abishag, souls fervent with the warmth of Christ's grace

A prediction made and figured. In Kings, believed and seen.

1. To this same David, now spent with the age of an old man, Abishag the Shunammite, a virgin, is brought, that she might warm the king — for no cause of intercourse; and she was found a virgin even after his death [1 Kgs 1:1–4].

This likeness marks the soul kindled by the grace of God with the warmth of chastity — which sets alight with its own affection the souls cold in faith, as members of the great King.

For she sings of herself in the Psalms: You have tried me by fire, and no iniquity was found in me [Ps 16:3]. And warming others by her own breath, she says: Come and hear, and I will tell you all, who fear the Lord, what great things he has done for my soul [Ps 65:16].

The king failing, therefore, Solomon succeeded his father David in the kingdom. In whose name, while many divine promises re-echo — lest anyone should assign to his person the things which had been figured — since he turned aside from the precepts of the Lord, and lost at once both his life in old age and his wisdom: so that for the peaceful Christ the Lord (which is what Solomon is interpreted to mean) all those things which had been figured might be kept.

Yet, as the prophet enacted them from the person of Christ the Lord, so far as it has been granted, I shall run through them briefly.

2. At the beginning of his reign the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying: Ask of me some petition. And he sought nothing else than wisdom [1 Kgs 3:5ff].

He asks, therefore, for Christ — since Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God [1 Cor 1:24]. You shall give, he says, Lord, to your servant a wise heart, to judge and to govern your people [1 Kgs 3:9].

And when this petition was pleasing — so that the gift of the wisdom conferred might be spread abroad to all the people — two women stood before the king, who, dwelling together in one chamber, had borne sons at one time.

Of whom one, sleeping, having smothered her own little one, laid him under her sleeping companion, and usurped the living one for herself [1 Kgs 3:16ff].

The offices of the night's sleep being fulfilled, and the bright rising of the sun restoring the day to sight, every torpor being shaken off — the woman who had lost the living one, while she thought he should be put to her breasts, looking upon the dead one, did not recognize her own.

Therefore, while she demands the living one back from the thief, and the other stoutly contends for what she has seized — striving in this controversy, they offered themselves together to the king.

And when it could not be shown whose the living little one was: that wisdom, Christ, which had been granted to the king, bade a sword be brought — not by which he might strike the little one, but by which he might show forth anew the bowels of the mother in travail.

Divide, says the king to his men, the living little one into two parts; and give half to this one, and half to this one.

The true mother, that he may only live, yields the whole to her adversary. The false one, that the true may not possess him, asks for the half.

So are the souls of heretics judged under our King, Christ. To whom, while the true mother, the Catholic [Church], offers her whole living name to the wranglers, they — wishing to depart — ask for the half.

But our King, who came to send a sword upon the earth [Matt 10:34], removing the frauds of the heretics, restored the living state to the true mother who sought life. Since he asked life, and you gave it him, says the prophet [Ps 20:5].

And that same little one, not divided — a true son of the Catholic mother — praises the judgment of the peaceful, most high King, Christ the Lord, and says: My soul shall live, and shall praise you; and your judgments shall help me [Ps 118:175].

3. The same Solomon built a temple to his Lord — that spacious one, constructed with a marvelous compass, dedicated with all royal power. Which his father, though he vowed it, was not permitted to fulfill. For he had laid low many nations in warfare, and it was said to him that, because he had shed very much blood upon the earth, not he but his peaceful son ought to build a house to God [1 Chr 22:8].

But since that building signifies this spiritual one, it is written that the Most High does not dwell in buildings made by the hand of men [Acts 7:48].

For which cause our King, the true peace, Christ the Lord, building a spiritual house out of living stones — the hearts of his faithful — made not only individual temples in individuals, but one temple out of them all.

To whom the Apostle says: Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Holy Spirit dwells in you? [1 Cor 3:16]. In which spiritual victims are offered to God, through the Prince of priests himself. For he himself is our peace, who made both one [Eph 2:14].

The peaceful Solomon had all his time quiet with the nations, the Lord bestowing peace. And when he had given himself wholly to wisdom — ascribing to himself certain sayings, that is, immortal portions¹⁵, and composing mystical riddles — the fame of his kingdom was spread abroad by report through the world.

To see such a man, therefore, the Queen of the South came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon [1 Kgs 10:1]. And when she had marveled at his teaching, gifts being offered, and preferring his presence to all praises, she departed from his sight.

4. From this deed our King, Christ the Lord, rebukes the Jews: that the Queen of the South, breaking off all delays and royal necessities, and not hindered by the greatness of the journey, came with all haste to see and hear a wise man — whereas they despised Wisdom herself, coming to them of her own accord [Matt 12:42].

Rightly does he say that she shall rise up in the judgment with that generation, and shall condemn it.

But this queen shows forth our holy Church, of whom it is said to our King: The queen stood at your right hand [Ps 44:10] — who now runs together from the rising of the sun even to its setting, to hear Christ the Lord, the Wisdom; praising the name of the Lord, and offering gifts, since he has done all things loftily.

Thus the things said of Solomon, or prophetically enacted by him, are rightly consigned to Christ the Lord.

But he himself, as was said above, being lifted up, fornicating in mind and body in his old age, the Lord forsaking him, came to a wretched end — leaving to those who came after a fearful example: that they should not, disturbed by the felicity of this life, forsake Christ, who is the eternal felicity of his own.

Chapter 28 — Prediction: In Rehoboam, the rending of the heresies, out of which Christ gathers his sheep

A prediction made and figured. In Kings, believed and seen.

1. While Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned — bound both by his own sin and by his father's — when he had perverted nearly all Israel into the worship of idols, the kingdom was torn out of his hands [1 Kgs 12:16ff].

For Jeroboam, Solomon's servant, by divine judgment received the greater part of the kingdom, in eleven tribes. By which division, Samaria and Jerusalem preserved the succession of their own princes, the kings of Judah and of Israel.

But this displays the figure of the heretics and schismatics (as has often been said) — until he who makes and loves unity shall bring in, by the illumining of his grace, the other sheep which he has outside his own fold; so that, as he deigned to promise, there may be one flock and one shepherd [John 10:16].

We do not now go through all the kings in order, but only those in whose times some things were done or said which announced the coming of our Redeemer — with a view to brevity, and so as not to bring weariness upon the reader.

2. While Ahab, therefore, a most wicked king, was reigning, Elijah the prophet is sent to reprove the king and the people, because, forsaking God, they had followed Baal.

And when Jezebel, the wife of king Ahab, had killed the prophets of the Lord — by that incomprehensible judgment of God whereby power is given to the wicked — Elijah, praying for a drought, hid himself from the face of the king.

And when three years and six months were completed, and a savage famine afflicted all Judaea, Elijah is bidden to present himself to the king.

And when he had said to the Lord that, all the prophets being slain, he alone was left, the divine answer said to him: I have left myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed their knees before Baal [1 Kgs 19:18; Rom 11:3–4].

Hence the self-exaltation even of the saints is checked: that no one should think himself necessary to God in any good work whatever — since God fulfills all his work through whom he wills, because all things serve him [Ps 118:91].

For man is shown to have need of God — not God of man. Whence that holy prophet says: I said to the Lord: You are my God, for you have no need of my goods [Ps 15:2].

But Elijah accomplished the things that had been divinely commanded, before the king and the people, through that mystical evening sacrifice, obtaining fire from heaven [1 Kgs 18:38].

By which our own Calf¹⁶, immolated in figure, extinguished — as Elijah did — all the priests of idolatry together with the very error of Baal; filling the earth with the rain of grace, that the famine of the faithful soul might be driven away.

3. And as to the ravens who, by divine command, ministered bread in the morning and flesh in the evening to the same Elijah while he was set in the wilderness [1 Kgs 17:6] — the figure of the whole body of the Lord is shown: since first, in the precepts, the Jews ministered bread; and afterward, the flesh of the Lord's Passion, to the nations — like ravens: foul in color, hoarse-sounding in voice, fetid in smell, horrid to look upon.

Like which birds the Jews, preparing for the nations the flesh of the Cross, cooked from the wood, cried out to Pilate with one hoarse voice, like ravens: Crucify, crucify [John 19:6].

This flesh they eat who hear him saying: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you [John 6:54].

Yet here too three times and a half a time — in the three years and six months (as we have also recalled above) — the heavenly rain is denied, by God's deep judgment, to those who, not eating his flesh, nor being redeemed by drinking his blood, are found strangers to his body.

Chapter 29 — Promise: In Elijah, Christ; and in the widow, the primacy of mercy

A prediction made and figured. In Kings, believed and seen.

The Lord said to Elijah: Go to Zarephath of Sidon; for behold, I have commanded a widow woman to feed you there [1 Kgs 17:9].

And here too the spiritual reader recognizes mystical actions. For the Almighty had not failed of power to feed his prophet by those same birds for as long a time as he willed. Yet the leader knew him necessary to the widow — for whom, out of famine, he willed abundance to be prepared by the power of the word, through his own minister.

This widow, gathering in the field two little sticks — as it were the two precepts — Elijah, looking upon her by the divine prompting, and driven also by the ardor of a spiritual thirst, asked water of the woman.

And while she goes to bring it, the prophet asks of her also a little bread. But she, testifying, says that she has a little meal in a jar and a little oil in a cruse — food, that is, for a single day for herself and her children; which being consumed, she would die with her children.

Out of this very thing the prophet bids that it first be offered to him, and then prepared for herself and her sons — so that mercy may occupy the first place, which the Scripture testifies goes before the face of God. For out of him is all abundance.

Since thus says the Lord (says Elijah): The jar of meal shall not fail, and the cruse of oil shall not be diminished, until the day when the Lord shall give rain upon the earth [1 Kgs 17:14].

So the merciful soul lends to God; so, while she gives in her own need, she takes counsel for her own salvation. So is that soul filled which — the body departing — loving the Lord who chastises her, keeps with modest love the faith of a single bed; fortified with the sacrament of the meal and the anointing of the oil; secure, awaiting the welcome rain, when the Lord shall say to her: Well done, good and faithful servant; because you were faithful in a little, I will set you over many things: enter into the joy of your Lord [Matt 25:21].

In whose likeness that other widow also is praised by the Lord — who, casting two mites into the treasury, was said by him who saw it to have cast in more than all, because she left nothing for herself [Luke 21:2–4].

Chapter 30 — Promise: In Elisha, the disciples of Christ receiving a double spirit

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

1. Elijah left Elisha as his disciple. For knowing, by the Lord's revealing, the time of his own assumption, he says to the disciple: Ask of me some petition, before I be taken from you.

And he said: I wish that the spirit which is in you may be doubled in me.

And Elijah said to him: You have asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if you shall see me as I go, it shall be done for you [2 Kgs 2:9–10].

Made more certain by this promise, Elisha — that he might obtain in every part the thing he had chosen in his petition — so clung to his master that no necessity could separate him from him.

And when the prophet wished to exercise the zeal of his disciple, he commands him of necessity to follow him along the byways, enduring it. But he said: The Lord lives, and your soul lives: I will not leave you, wherever you go.

This was done, until they came to that place where, taken up in a chariot of fire, he was borne, as it were, up to heaven. And so the disciple's attention kept watch, that... ...he followed his master, as he was caught up, with weeping and a great voice, saying: My father, Elijah! My father, the chariot of Israel! [2 Kgs 2:12].

Struck by these words, Elijah let fall his mantle — a spiritual provision for the journey, and the gift of a pledge. Which being taken up, and the river Jordan being struck with it, Elisha crossed by the help of the mantle a river he had not been able to cross by himself. Whence the sons of the prophets say: The spirit of Elijah has rested upon Elisha [2 Kgs 2:15].

2. And in this mystical action is the likeness of our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.

For when he had said to his disciples, He who believes in me shall himself do the works that I do — that Christ might show he had given double gifts, he added: and greater than these shall he do [John 14:12].

But this only to those who cling to him, and turn aside from him in no part — whom he taught, saying: If anyone serves me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall my minister be also [John 12:26].

And into these he poured the double spirit in this way:

Once, after the Resurrection, when he breathed into their face, saying: Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, they shall be forgiven; if you retain anyone's, they shall be retained [John 20:22–23].

And a second time, when — taken up in a cloud, borne by angels, and the disciples themselves following him with their eyes — he said: Sit in the city, until you be clothed with power from on high [Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4]. And on the day of Pentecost, in fiery tongues, he sent the gift, the Holy Spirit.

We must not here understand two Spirits, since the Holy Spirit is one; but it is the same Spirit, dispensing the gifts of the charisms — so manifoldly bestowed by that same undivided Trinity that in it there are not two, but one Spirit. Since, as Paul the Apostle says: One God, one faith, one baptism, one Spirit [Eph 4:4–5].

Whence Elisha himself did not say to his master, let the spirit which is in you be two, but let it be in me doubled.

This "double" the Lord expounded when he said, until you be clothed with power from on high — so that he might do greater things through them than he had done through himself:

• By the touch of his own fringe he healed a woman of a flow of blood [Matt 9:20]; but the shadow of the disciples healed all infirmities [Acts 5:15].
• When he himself rose again, the disciples, touching and seeing, scarcely believed; but when he ascended into heaven, and they preached him, the whole world believed in him whom it had not seen.
• And lastly — it is a greater thing to justify the impious than to raise up the dead.

All which things the same One did through his own disciples — he who granted them this power, saying: Without me you can do nothing [John 15:5].

Chapter 31 — Prediction: In the same Elisha, when Christ the Lord by grace raised up the figured dead man

A prediction made and figured. In Kings, believed and seen.

1. While this same Elisha ran to and fro through diverse places, announcing the word of the Lord, a certain Shunammite woman received him into her lodging [2 Kgs 4:8]... To whom, as a gift, her barrenness being taken away, he obtained a son from the Lord. And receiving the little one, she reared him.

But when he was grown, and went out to his father in the field, being struck by the heat of the sun, running back home, he breathed out his spirit, burning, in his mother's lap [2 Kgs 4:16ff].

At once the woman runs back to the man of God; and falling at his feet on Carmel, she announces that the son whom she had received by his favor is dead.

The prophet marvels that this was hidden from him by the Lord — that the prophet may fill out the whole figure of our Lord Jesus, who, though he knows all things, feigns not to know some.

As in that of Lazarus: Where have you laid him? [John 11:34]. And: Of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels, nor the Son [Mark 13:32] — although on that day and at that hour the Son himself is to come. And that, when two disciples were telling him of his own Passion and saying, Do you not know what things have been done in Jerusalem these three days? — he, in whom they were done, like one not knowing, says: What things? [Luke 24:18–19].

But these things which are hidden are either enacted in a great mystery, or else the heart's intention is stretched out toward God — so that what it does not grasp, it may seek the more avidly to know; and when it has not understood what it sought, it may fear the more, knowing that whatever has been denied to mortals to know is divine and deep.

2. But Elisha performs the sacraments of the Lord's action. He sends his staff by his servant, that being laid upon the lifeless body it might restore the dead one to life.

And the Lord too sent, through his servant Moses, the Law — which could not give life to a dead world, as that staff could not: because if a law had been given which could give life, justice would altogether be from the Law, as the Apostle says [Gal 3:21]; because the letter kills, but the spirit gives life [2 Cor 3:6].

Afterward Elisha himself came down — the great to the little, the savior to the one to be saved, the living to the dead. And our Lord came down: He who descended is the same who also ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things [Eph 4:10].

Fill what things? The things which Elisha mystically enacted. For that he might raise the dead little one, he fitted his own grown limbs to him. And the Lord Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a servant [Phil 2:7]: he made himself little for that little one — that he might refashion the body of our lowliness, conformed to the body of his glory [Phil 3:21].

Lying beneath him, cold, he kindled him with his own warmth. Likewise our Savior the Lord [warmed] the world — from whose heat there is now none that hides himself [Ps 18:7]. And he breathed upon him three times¹⁷ as he lay, that a threefold confession might be poured into the believer.

Thus the dead man was raised, when the impious man was justified from perpetual death.

3. Many and various signs the Spirit of the Lord wrought through Elisha, as the same history of Kings narrates. To pursue them all would be long; yet I shall go through a few — since all the signs of things to come are to be fitted to Christ the Lord, who says through Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; wherefore he anointed me, and sent me to preach good tidings to the poor, to release the bruised into rest, to give liberty to captives, and sight to the blind [Isa 61:1; Luke 4:18].

Elisha crossed the Jordan by the working of that Spirit by which our Lord Jesus consecrated the same river in his own baptism.

The prophet handed over to beasts the boys who mocked him. And our Lord Jesus says of "little ones," in Paul: Do not become boys in your minds [1 Cor 14:20]. Of whom he handed some over to beasts — that is, to unclean spirits — that they might learn not to blaspheme [1 Tim 1:20].

The king of Israel sent, three times, fifty men with their captains to destroy Elijah, whom the prophet consumed with heavenly fire. It is said of our Prophet and Lord also, that a fire shall burn before him, and shall inflame his enemies round about [Ps 96:3].

Afterward, when that same king with his whole army was hemming him in with a siege, he struck the enemies with a certain blindness and led them captive into Samaria. And when their sight was restored, he obtained pardon for them as well [2 Kgs 6].

These things, though signified in many, the Lord showed more plainly in Paul, and in those who with him were persecuting the Church. For being blinded and laid low on the road, while he was made God's captive, and his light restored — he who had been a persecutor was made a preacher; and in him God showed all long-suffering, for the instruction of those who should believe in him unto eternal life [1 Tim 1:16].

4. Likewise Naaman the Syrian, the friend of the king, was sent to the king of Israel, that he might be cleansed by Elisha of the stain of leprosy. Looking upon whom, the man of God bade him dip seven times in the Jordan, if he wished the stains of his body to be taken away. And when he did it, he was cleansed.

He believed that gifts must be offered to the man of God; which, refusing them by divine right, he prefigured the grace freely given of our Christ the Lord — which in the Gospel he commended to his disciples, saying: Freely you have received; freely give [Matt 10:8].

That the soul is cleansed of the vices — by which the inner and the outer man are polluted — by the sevenfold Spirit, the water itself also demonstrates, in which those consecrated in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit are dipped [Matt 28:19].

But Gehazi, the prophet's servant, who followed Naaman the Syrian and, framing a lie, wished to sell what the prophet had given freely — being struck with that same stain of leprosy of which the other had been cleansed [2 Kgs 5:20ff] — shows the figure of the heretics: who, driven by the blindness of their own rapacity, while they peddle to their own, as it were, expiations of sins, are themselves also branded with the very stains with which those others had been sprinkled.

So that they deservedly hear from the Lord: I do not know you. Depart from me, all you who have worked iniquity [Matt 7:23].

Chapter 32 — Prediction: In Hezekiah, how Christ teaches his own that they must not be lifted up in good fortune

A prediction made and figured. In Kings, believed and seen.

While the kings of Israel alternated — some turning aside from the ways of the Lord and being entangled in errors, others faithfully walking the way of the Lord — the order is brought down to king Hezekiah.

He, exterminating all the images and overthrowing all the worship of idols, converted nearly all erring Israel to the Lord.

To him a divine answer was given, that he ought to set his house in order, for he himself was now going to death. And when, weeping, he had prayed, saying: Remember, Lord, how I have walked in your way — under this sign, fifteen years are added to his life. For the sun went down twelve degrees by the course by which it had gone up [2 Kgs 20:1–11].

And when the neighboring kings observed that this had marvelously come to pass, they sent messengers to Hezekiah, asking what this portent might be.

And being lifted up in his good fortune, he not so much told them that it was done for his sake, as — for the sake of boasting — showed them all the royal furnishings of his house and its vessels.

And the Lord, indignant, rebukes the king through the prophet Isaiah, testifying that days were coming in which all those things which he had shown them would be carried captive into Babylon, together with the people [2 Kgs 20:16–18].

Nor without cause does our King admonish us, through the apostle John in the Apocalypse, saying: Hold what you have, lest another take your crown [Rev 3:11]. Likewise elsewhere: Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked [Rev 16:15]. And in the Gospel: Let not your left hand know what your right hand does [Matt 6:3] —

admonishing that in good works, which are the gifts of God, one must glory not in man, but in the Lord [1 Cor 1:31]: lest what the humble man receives, the proud man lose.

Chapter 33 — Prediction: In the sinning kings, who lead the people with them into captivity

A prediction made and figured. In Kings, believed and seen.

While Josiah reigned, and Zedekiah his son, the whole people of Israel, bursting the useful bonds of the Law by which they were governed, provoked God — the author of all devotion — to great wrath by many grave faults.

The Lord sent Jeremiah the prophet to upbraid and to correct the king and the people, foretelling: that if, being converted, they kept the commandments of the Law, they would remain always unharmed in their own place; but if they despised him as he warned them, they would go captive into Babylon.

The commandments, therefore, and the words of the preacher being spurned — while by wicked audacities the king and the people were pressed down under the urging of their own sins — Jeremiah expressed the divine sentence to the people, now taken captive, and to the kings, by a letter, saying: Because of the sins which you have sinned before God, you shall be led into Babylon [Bar 1:2; 6:2].

So, until the measure was filled up, that people was captive in Babylon for seventy years.

But our Lord [warns] his own by this man's example, and says: Walk while you have the light, lest the darkness overtake you [John 12:35].

And the same Lord says in the Gospel that the despisers of his commandments — even kings — are blind: They are blind leaders of the blind. And when the blind leads the blind, both fall into the pit [Matt 15:14] — which is the hard captivity of the impenitent soul; of which it is said: I gave her time to repent, and she will not repent [Rev 2:21].

2. All the vessels of the temple of God the same king Nebuchadnezzar carried off by his men [2 Kgs 24–25].

Woe to the sins of men — when on their account the very sacrifices are trampled by foreigners, which were always for remedies unto salvation!

With what groaning, with what most bitter weeping, with what anguish of soul Jeremiah described these things, his Lamentations show: that the tabernacle of the Lord was polluted; the feast day led into forgetfulness; the sabbaths and all solemnities exterminated; the priests and princes, the little ones, the old men, the young men, and their virgins — part devoured by the sword, part remaining captive.

Behold the ulcers of our own sorrows! Behold the mourning of our reproach! Behold our great sins — for the causes of which we too have deserved to see these things; and, wounded as we are with an ampler stroke of punishments, we refuse to be healed.

Cast down, we believe ourselves to be standing. Driven out and exiled, we do not grieve as we ought. There is no satisfaction, no mourning — the wrath remains, and we do not ask pardon. Our inheritance is turned to strangers; our houses to foreigners [Lam 5:2].

Thus chastised, we do not lament; thus corrected, we refuse to take up discipline.

Let us withdraw from the evils by which we have offended the Lord. Let us repent of the contumelies we have heaped upon his consecrated things. Let our pride be cured by humility. Let us not spurn the time granted for remedies — lest he, whose calm and gentle mercy we have felt, should appoint for the unrepentant an eternal and penal sentence.

For that Lord is ready to pardon, who says: Turn to me, and I will turn to you [Zech 1:3] — if only the devoted Father may recognize the voice of a son returning with repentance [Luke 15:18].

3. In that same captivity, history relates that Daniel and Ezekiel prophesied.

Daniel, a man of desires (who by law was named Belteshazzar), had as friends three men of his own nation: Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael.

And though his whole prophecy is full of mysteries, yet a certain part of it so shines with the brightness of its own splendor that it even marked the time in which the Savior and Lord himself was to come.

Now while his prophetic visions are twelve, in the Hebrew they are found to be ten. These twelve, by the Lord's gift, I shall run through with a definite comparison.

In the first, he defends the chastity of Susanna against the shameless elders. This the Lord Jesus does, while against wicked heretics he guards the integrity of his Church, which they strive to corrupt by their perverse disputations. Whom he marks also through the apostle Paul, saying: Of these are they who penetrate houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led by various desires [2 Tim 3:6].

In the second, Daniel himself and his friends resolved, keeping the commandments of their law, not to be defiled by the foods of the king's table, on which the rest of their companions fed.

Not only was our Master and Lord not defiled by the desires of this world, but he also forbade his friends, saying: Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the ambition of the age [1 John 2:15–16]. All which things — like those royal foods — he shows must be refused.

And commanding it more plainly through the apostle Paul: Food for the belly, and the belly for food; but God shall destroy both this and these [1 Cor 6:13] — so that the soul's one food may be the Savior himself, who displays to it various and diverse savors.

2. In the third, the sacrament of the divine disposition which had been shown to the king, and which he had forgotten — not by the human learning in which Daniel had been instructed, but by the Lord's revealing — Daniel narrated to the king both the dream and its interpretation.

Four kingdoms, in four metals, of which the statue was formed that stood before his face, rising up in the world:

• The golden head — the Babylonian, of the East.
• Its breast and arms of silver — the Macedonian, of the North.
• Its belly and thighs of bronze — the Punic, of the South.
• Its legs of iron, and toes partly of iron and partly of clay — the last, the Roman, that is, of the West: as also that most learned man, Orosius the historian, set down.

Which kingdom, like iron, crushed all things and subdued them.

And Daniel subjoins also the kingdom of Christ, in the stone cut from the mountain without the hands of those cutting it — as it were without the hands of those embracing: God-man, born of a Virgin.

Which stone, when it had struck that statue, reduced all its parts to dust; and the breath of the wind, carrying them away, its place was found no more. But that stone which struck the statue became a great mountain, and filled the whole face of the earth [Dan 2:31–35].

For, all the kingdoms being emptied out, the kingdom of Christ the Lord shall rise up — which shall be left to no other people, since it shall remain forever.

This all his Church now asks in prayer, when she says: Your kingdom come [Luke 11:2].

In the fourth: the statue and image which Nebuchadnezzar had set up to be adored — when the three aforesaid friends of Daniel refused to adore it, and were thrust into the furnace — the divine power afforded this marvel: that the burning being put to flight, the devouring flame consumed rather the very ministers of the royal command.

But the three men, unharmed, while they sang a hymn to the true King in the midst of the furnace, merited to have with them the Son of God. Whom the king himself recognized, by the revealing of grace — he who leads his own true worshipers, despising the most empty figments, from the flames of the present age to heavenly glory, triumphing.

Chapter 34 — Prediction: In Daniel, who declared Christ the Lord in his visions

A prediction made and figured. In Daniel, believed and seen.

1. The fifth vision contains the dream of the same king, which Daniel thus interpreted: that the magnificent tree which he had seen — under whose branches all the beasts, the cattle, and the birds dwelt — was the king himself. But since the Lord had commanded it to be cut down, only the root being preserved: his kingdom was to be taken away from him, and he himself was to remain with the beasts; his hairs to grow like a woman's and his nails like an eagle's; to eat hay like an ox, until seven seasons, divinely appointed, should be completed.

And Daniel gives counsel to the king: that he ought to redeem his sins by almsgiving.

Which, when he neglected to do, all the things foretold came upon the king; and the measure of the times being filled up, he recovered the kingdom he had lost [Dan 4].

So the presumptuous are cut down; so are the proud chastised by him who gives to drink in tears, by measure [Ps 79:6] — since his judgments are sweet [Ps 118:39].

So Peter the apostle, denying — when he saw himself looked upon, weeping [Luke 22:61] — was restored to that place which he had lost by presumption.

So, in his own slayers, who poured out his sacred blood — for whom he prayed — he gave that same blood to them to drink, that they might receive the royal dignity.

So daily our King restores the fallen, for whom he keeps, in time to come, the gift of the heavenly kingdom of the grace conferred.

In the sixth, out of four beasts appearing to him, he confirms the aforesaid kingdoms of the four parts of the world. Of which the same prophet testifies that the fourth beast was greater and terrible, having ten horns — and out of the midst of them another little horn rising up, before whose face three of those horns were struck out; until the Ancient of Days sat in judgment [Dan 7].

But these things are set forth in that manner in which those four kingdoms succeed one another. The fourth beast, which, surpassing all kingdoms, subdued all the earth and made it subject. After it, at one time, ten kings shall rise up; and after them, he who is to bear the name of his own perdition — that is, Antichrist.

Concerning whom, in his own place (as has already been promised), the divine testimonies shall be brought forward.

In the seventh, out of the ram and the he-goat, he describes the battles of the Persians and the Greeks revealed to him. And under the person of Antichrist also — who, while he is magnified in his own heart, shall corrupt many by guile [Dan 8:25] — until he come who is to come, the Lord Jesus, and shall not delay [Hab 2:3].

3. In the eighth, the same man of desires, Daniel, sets forth the provident justice of God judging proud kings, by this account: that king Belshazzar, making a banquet for his princes, and the vessels of the temple of God which Nebuchadnezzar his father had carried off being brought out, drank in them with his concubines and his princes, praising his gods of gold and silver, of wood and stone.

And straightway there came forth, in his sight, the joints of a man's hand, and they wrote upon the wall of the king's house. And the king, troubled by this vision — when all the diviners he had were unable to read the writing — Daniel, being summoned, steadfastly rebuking the king, [declared] that this was done on account of the vessels of the house of God; and he read out the writing also: Mane, Thecel, Phares. And he interpreted it:

• Mane: God has numbered your kingdom, and has finished it.
• Thecel: You have been weighed, and are found wanting.
• Phares: Your kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians [Dan 5:25–28].

And so, the promised gifts which Daniel had refused being conferred on the prophet by the king, the course of his life being completed — as had been foretold — he left the kingdom to the Medes and Persians.

Let them see, let them see, the proud kings — who, by the daring of their own minds, plundering the vessels of the house of God (which he justly handed over when his ministers sinned), and handling them without any reverence, are seen to have heaped contumelies upon God, in whose name they were consecrated. Whose end is assuredly a death that has no end.

Chapter 35 — Prediction: In the same Daniel, when he plucked him from the lions' den, as Christ the Lord from the Jews

A prediction made and figured. In Daniel, believed and seen.

1. In the ninth: Darius the Mede succeeded to the kingdom; who, appointing a hundred and twenty satraps in his realm, set three overseers over them. Daniel was one of the three, having favor in the king's eyes.

The envious seek out a plot against God's servant, and persuade the king that for thirty days a petition should be asked of no god or man, but of the king alone — with a penalty attached: that if anyone despised the king's command, he should be thrown into the pit and given to the lions for food.

Finding this command set forth, the prophet prayed to his Lord three times a day, with his accustomed prayer. They lay hold of him and present him to the king as defiant; and when the king could not deliver him from the envious, he dismissed the prophet with this confession: that his God alone could pluck him from the peril of death.

Which also came to pass. Yet out of this sorrow the king went without supper, and took neither food nor sleep; and at first light he himself went out to see Daniel. And beholding him alive and unharmed, giving glory to the true God, he commanded him to be led out of the pit — and those who had accused Daniel he cast into the pit, and they were devoured at once in his sight [Dan 6].

In these things also the prophecy was fulfilled which says: He who digs a pit for his neighbor shall fall into it; and he who sets a snare for his neighbor shall perish in it [Sir 27:26–27].

And our Lord Jesus himself — in whom all these figured things shone forth — says through the prophet: They dug a pit before my face, and they fell into it [Ps 56:7]. And again: The Lord sent his mercy and his truth, and delivered my soul from the midst of the lions' whelps [Ps 56:4–5].

2. In the tenth: As the end of the time of the seventy years of Jerusalem's desolation drew near — which the Lord had foretold through Jeremiah the prophet [Jer 25:11] — Daniel poured out prayer with all weeping and fasting, for himself and for the offenses of his people, imploring the mercy of the Lord.

As he prayed, the archangel Gabriel stood by him, and revealed to him the mysteries to come: that seventy weeks were shortened upon his people and upon the holy city, that sins might be consummated, and offenses sealed, and that injustice might be finished, and everlasting justice brought in; that the visions of the prophets should be fulfilled, and the Holy of Holies anointed [Dan 9:24].

And again: Jerusalem shall be built, unto Christ the leader, seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks. And again the street and the walls shall be built, in the straitness of the times. And after sixty-two weeks the anointing shall perish, and judgment shall not be in him — or, as the Hebrew interpreter has it: Christ shall be slain, and the people who shall deny him shall not be his. And the people, with the leader who comes, laid waste the city and the sanctuary; and its end is devastation; and after the end of the war, an appointed desolation. And he confirmed a covenant with many in one week; and in the midst of the week the victim and the sacrifice shall fail; and in the temple shall be the abomination of desolation; and unto the consummation and the end the desolation persevered [Dan 9:25–27].

To confute the error of the Jews, Daniel wrote down these things revealed to him. They therefore who still await a Christ to come shall believe in Antichrist. For thus the Lord Jesus rebukes them in the Gospel, saying: I came in my Father's name, and you did not believe me; another shall come in his own name, and him you will believe [John 5:43].

3. With great labor and great genius, Jerome of blessed memory — by the reckonings of the years of the kings of Babylon — carried the seventy weeks down to the nativity of our Redeemer, Christ the Lord: four hundred and ninety years; separating out the seven weeks in the restoration of the temple; the sixty-two down to the nativity of the Lord and to his Passion; and one of the devastation, which was wrought by Vespasian the general, or by Titus his son.

The Jews, therefore, enemies of the Lord, deceiving themselves — while they strive to refer to the persons of their own several kings the manifold things prophesied concerning Christ — willing or unwilling, bow their necks to this prophet Daniel: who not only wrote down all the signs written above, but even marked out the very times of the Lord's coming. All which things, fulfilled clearer than daylight, the whole world now acknowledges.

The glory of Christ the Lord, therefore, poured out among the nations — and that all the earth adores him, as it is written — the Jews still refuse to believe, though they behold along with us that all the things foretold by the oracles of the prophets are being fulfilled.

4. In the eleventh, there were revealed to the same prophet, under the person of warring kings, the deeds of Antichrist himself, and the straits of the last time; and also the resurrection of the dead — in what manner the impious, and in what manner the saints, shall rise [Dan 11–12]. These things were shown to Isaiah and to Ezekiel also, in that manner in which the authority of the Gospel confirms their sayings.

5. In the twelfth, Daniel displayed a certain most joyful spectacle, not so much to the king as to spiritual minds.

For the idol Bel, which all the Babylonians together with the king held in worship, was consuming great royal provisions as it were daily — which the priests, with their households, were devouring by entering through a hidden door.

Daniel, demonstrating their fraud by a subtle art, ordered his men to strew ashes on the pavement of the temple. The doors being sealed with the king's ring, to those who came on the following day the impressed footprints of men and women demonstrated that those provisions were not consumed by that figment. And by the priests' own confession the hidden door was betrayed, through which they entered and devoured everything.

The image being broken by the king's command, Daniel likewise slew the dragon — which they revered as divine along with it — without sword or club, in such a way as he knew that what is corruptible can be corrupted: teaching and showing that one and only true God is to be worshiped, the empty superstitions being forsaken, by which the prophet perceived not only the Babylonians but the whole world to be held captive under the power of demons.

From whose domination he marked out, by his own heralding, that [the world] was to be freed by the grace of Christ the Lord in the time to come.

But since — as a certain man says — truth begets hatred (whence our Paul also says: I am become your enemy by preaching the truth [Gal 4:16]) — as a reward for the true religion he had shown, the Babylonians cast the prophet into the lions' den to be devoured [Dan 14:30ff].

Nor was the divine power lacking, which both [took away] the accustomed guard... [took away] the accustomed guard, and ministered a meal to the shut-in man through his fellow¹⁸. For the merit of whose grace, it changed the deadly onsets of the lions into the gentleness of sheep.

Daniel being led out, therefore, while the king marveled that he was unharmed, his enemies were given as food to the lions, that they might perish.

Not without a sign of that Lord were these things done, who prays for his own, saying: Do not hand over to the beasts the soul that confesses you [Ps 73:19].

For that roaring lion, the devil, who goes about seeking whom he may devour [1 Pet 5:8], consumes — power being given him — whatever enemies of our Prophet and Lord, Christ, he finds.

Chapter 36 — Promise: In Ezekiel, the resurrection made manifest through Christ the Lord

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

1. Ezekiel the prophet also — among the other things which he wrote, stored away in secrets — made known in this manner the resurrection shown to him, which is to be of the dead.

That he was brought into a certain field, full of the bones of the dead; and that there, by the power of the word of God, each several bone was joined to its own parts; and flesh, sinews, and skin came up over them; and vital breath was poured into them — this he saw by that same Spirit by which we hope for and believe the resurrection to come [Ezek 37].

Narrating also many things of Antichrist under the figure of the king of Tyre, he describes also the city which is gathered out of the nations, out of living stones — the heavenly Jerusalem.

Whose Eastern gate he shows to be always shut, saying: This gate shall be shut; the prince of priests alone shall pass through it; and it shall be shut to the prince [Ezek 44:2] —

marking the virginal womb of Mary, who, ever a virgin and unbroken, brought forth the Savior.

For Christ the Lord alone — as Augustine the bishop of blessed memory says — brought forth the limbs of an infant through the inviolate, virginal womb of his mother, he who after the Resurrection brought in the limbs of a young man through closed doors: he alone having no sin at the rising of his infant age, who had no sin at the coming on of his greater age; he himself saying: Behold, the prince of this world comes, and in me he shall find nothing [John 14:30].

2. In this Babylonian captivity Ezra also was a priest and prophet — who, being pleasing in the king's sight, when the king beheld him weeping and asked of him for what cause he was sad, affirms that the solemnities of his religion and of his people were wont to be kept at that season, from which he showed himself to be an exile.

The king grants leave to go, and orders the temple of God to be restored.

And Ezra, coming to Jerusalem, kindled with zeal for the Law, resolved that the people must first be purged of their vices. Since a wise king is the establishment of his people, as the prophet says [Wis 6:26].

The book of Moses being found, he showed, among other things, that the wrath of God had been kindled from this also: that against God's commandment the people had taken to themselves wives from among foreigners. And he persuaded them, by such censure as he could, that each should cast out his own women together with their children.

Detained therefore by no carnal sweetness, since they wished God to be favorable to them, they did without hesitation the things that had been commanded — so that he might show forth the figure of the Christian people, whom the Prince of all priests also admonishes, saying: If anyone shall leave house, or field, or wife, or sons, for the sake of my name, he shall receive manifold in this life also, and shall obtain eternal life [Matt 19:29].

Chapter 37 — Prediction: In Ezra, the restoration of the house of God — that is, through Christ the Lord

A prediction made and figured. In Ezra, believed and seen.

1. While Ezra was restoring the temple of God, by the envy of certain wicked men — who wished to be partners in the building, yet not partners in the religion — since Ezra would not receive them, being uncircumcised, they maliciously worked upon the kingdom, and the work of the temple was halted until Cyrus came to reign.

Who, moved by divine command, when the seventy years which Jeremiah had foretold from the mouth of the Lord were completed, released the whole people, together with the vessels of the house of God, out of the Babylonian captivity to Jerusalem — the king adding gifts besides, out of which he ordered that the fabric of the temple should rise.

Which, begun under Darius, took forty-six years to reach its completion, which Cyrus both commanded and helped forward.

Concerning which the Jews — when the Lord promised the restoration of his own body, and said, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up — not understanding the sacrament of that saying, said: Forty-six years was this built; and how does this man say, In three days I will raise it up? [John 2:19–20].

For by Solomon it was constructed with that swiftness which everything found ready, his father David having prepared it beforehand. The Jews, therefore, did not speak of the measured times of Solomon's building, but of Ezra's — who had been forbidden to finish it.

2. The temple, therefore, and the wall of Jerusalem being repaired, according to the times appointed by Daniel (by whose entreaty, together with Zechariah, the people remained in Jerusalem), the times of the seventy weeks ran on, unto the nativity of Christ the Lord, as we said above.

By whose indulgence, even now, souls are freed out of the captivity of the age — the measure being filled up in compunction of heart — by grace and mercy.

For they rejoice for the days in which they were humbled, for the years in which they saw evils — until the Lord look upon his servants, and upon his works.

Let us therefore serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in him with trembling [Ps 2:11], until we be led back to that city which our King and Priest is restoring — the heavenly Jerusalem — that in the temple of his body, which he raised in three days, we may offer him continually a sacrifice of praise.

Chapter 38 — Prediction: In the same Ezra, when he unfolds a parable in the figure of the Church

A prediction made and figured. In Ezra, believed and seen.

1. When Artaxerxes, king of Babylon, wished to exercise his captives, he chose three prudent Jews, whose opinions Ezra the priest wrote down.

One preferred wine to everything; another, the king; the third, Zerubbabel, preferred women — and above all things, truth.

And when they had brought forth their opinions, Zerubbabel was judged wiser than all, who had maintained women, and above everything, truth [1 Esd 3–4].

And in very truth — what is stronger than a woman, who so enticed the first man, Adam, that he despised the precepts of God? What is stronger than a woman, whose beauty raises itself against every desire? What is stronger than a woman, who softens both a king's fortitude and a man's?

And what also, in the good, is stronger than a woman — who, believing, brought forth Christ the Truth, whole and entire? What is stronger than a woman, who, when the disciples fled, beheld the mysteries of the Cross itself, fearless and full of confidence [John 19:25]? What is stronger than a woman, who, running out before all the men, merited to see the Lord rising again [Mark 16:9]?

And when Ezra had written these things in a type of the Church, a figured action followed also.

2. For Esther, who had been reared as a daughter by Mordecai — while Mordecai attended the royal court — was brought by God, who exalts the humble, to the royal dignity.

And when she understood that her people had been given over to death — Haman, the king's friend, procuring it on account of Mordecai — and that the sword hung over their necks: Esther, laying down her own life for her people, having called upon divine help, entered the king's inner chambers, whither it was not lawful for an uncalled woman to approach.

And when the king looked upon her in indignation, she also wasted away with shame¹⁹. God, as it is said, turned his heart to gentleness; and the king, promising her many good things, while he strove to restore her health, did not deny that he would come to the banquet with Haman, as the queen had asked. There, telling what had been done to her and to her people —

Haman the king appointed to be crucified on that same gibbet on which Haman had appointed to hang the innocent Mordecai — so that, as the prophet says, his most wicked devisings should be rolled back upon himself [Ps 7:17].

3. So holy Church slays her enemies by the wood of the Cross. So she sets herself against the perils of this world for her own. So, giving her own to death, she ministers life by conferring her own labors — being, as it were, a queen, who is admonished by her King, her Bridegroom and Lord; and to whom it is said: Deliver those who are led away to death, and redeem those who are being slain [Prov 24:11]. To the refuges of whose benefits even her own enemies resort.

Nor is holy Judith placed in an unequal place, in the following order — who likewise takes up the figure and the person of the holy Church.

For when Holofernes, the commander of the army of the king of Babylon, had ringed Bethulia with a siege, and, the waters being cut off, was afflicting the whole city with thirst, its chief men resolved to hand it over to Holofernes.

4. Judith withstood these plans, asking a truce of a few days. In which, a suppliant with fastings and prayers, she entreated the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Putting off, therefore, her widow's garment, and composing herself in every part — in mind, in body, and in bearing — she showed herself marvelous to all; using that counsel by which, with God as her guard, she believed that the enemy, captured by her beauty, could be slain — her own chastity being kept by him who is the giver and keeper of chastity.

And when, unharmed, she brought back the head of the enemy — a woman gave back to her country the liberty which the men had not availed to win [Jdt 13:10].

If you recognize our Church, whose figure she bore, you see how — after her husband, Christ the Lord, having suffered and risen again, ascended into heaven — all mourning being driven away (as befits a widow's), she was clothed with beauty by him of whom she says in Isaiah the prophet: He has clothed me with the garment of salvation, and has wrapped me in the robe of gladness, as a bride adorned with her jewels [Isa 61:10].

For she too was sent against the wound in the head of the enemies — since her body is his who crushed the head of the great dragon.

Nor did she spare her own soul, as that woman did not — since it is she who says through John the apostle: As Christ laid down his life for us, so we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren [1 John 3:16]. Which she is known to have done in the holy martyrs — she who is blessed before Almighty God.

Chapter 39 — Prediction: In Tobit, that by the fish — Christ — demons are put to flight and the blind enlightened

A prediction made and figured.

1. Tobit also was a captive at Nineveh, endowed with the blessed patience of his religion — because he knew that the wrath of the Lord must be borne with an even mind. Making satisfaction to God by worthy works and confessions, he instructed his son also in holy morals.

To whom he gave in commandment that neither the want of poverty nor the labors of a long exile were to be dreaded — if only, persevering in the Lord's commandments, he would depart from all iniquity and do well.

And while — blind in body, yet with the justice of an inner light shining — he showed his son the right ways, the archangel Raphael, sent by God, ministered not so much consolations to the captives as heavenly benefits to those who prayed: furnishing guidance to the son for recovering the money, and giving him the daughter of Raguel to wife; from whom he drove out the most wicked demon Asmodeus, who had already killed seven husbands of hers.

The son being brought back rich, together with his wife, from the entrails of the fish — by which he had also put the demon to flight — taking away the films from Tobit's eyes, he restored his former sight. And he warned them always to glorify God, and to remain in good works.

This Tobit, among the other heraldings of his praise, prophesied Christ the Lord, saying: Many nations shall come from afar, dwellers from the farthest parts of the earth, to the name of the Lord God; and having their gifts in their hands, they shall offer them with gladness to the King of the heavens [Tob 13:11] — which we now see being fulfilled.

But the mystical thing of this action is this: that out of the inward parts of the fish, both the demon was put to flight and Tobit was enlightened.

2. This the great Fish did out of his Passion: Christ, cleansing Mary, from whom he cast out seven demons [Luke 8:2] — taking away the despair of a soul so captured; which, when seven worse spirits have vexed it, must needs be purged and healed even so, by the inward parts of our Fish — if, repenting and returning, it understands that by these the malignant spirits are put to flight, and takes heed of them as enemies.

For:

• An evil spirit is the spirit of pride; worse than it, the feigning of humility.
• An evil spirit is the spirit of envy; worse than it, the feigning of charity.
• An evil spirit is the spirit of lying; worse than it, the feigning of truth.
• An evil spirit is the spirit of luxury; worse than it, the feigning of chastity.
• An evil spirit is the spirit of avarice; worse than it, the feigning of mercy.
• An evil spirit is the spirit of intemperance; worse than it, the feigning of frugality.
• An evil spirit is the spirit of error; worse than it, the feigning of religion.

Possessed by these, therefore — since her last state is worse than her first [Matt 12:45] — she is freed by the medicine of our Fish: because where offense abounded, grace has more abounded [Rom 5:20].

He it is who [paid] the tribute for himself and for Peter [Matt 17:26]; who gave back the light to the blinded Paul; who fed his disciples on the shore out of himself; and who offers himself to the whole world as a Fish.

For what in Latin is fish — in the sacred letters our elders interpreted thus, gathering it from the Sibylline verses: ΙΧΘΥΣ — Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. A Fish cooked in his own Passion, out of whose inward parts, as remedies, we are daily enlightened and fed.

Chapter 40 — Prediction: In the Maccabees, who received both martyrdoms and Christ the King himself, born

A prediction made and figured. In the Maccabees, believed and seen.

1. After liberty was restored from the Babylonian captivity, the Maccabees furnished leadership to the Hebrew people. Whose valor so shone out that not only the Macedonians and Ptolemy king of Egypt, but the Romans themselves called them into covenants of friendship.

There among the Jews — in a certain part which the Romans had already taken, while Antiochus reigned — that illustrious woman, the mother of the Maccabees, for the hope of eternal life and for her own lawful observances, lest her sons should touch the forbidden swine's flesh, in one day brought forth seven martyrs to God: whom, the earth being despised, she bore not to this world, but to heaven itself [2 Macc 7].

By her own example she admonishes us to despise things that perish, to seek things everlasting, and to make an end the more swiftly of things that must end anyway — that, striving and conquering, they might lay hold of that which has no end.

So she, about to follow at once, sent her sons ahead into life — which, knowing it to be true and free of all fear, she acquired for herself and for her sons by a faithful testimony.

For which cause also Judas Maccabeus, for the others who had died in the war, sent twelve thousand talents to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice for the dead — thinking well and rightly concerning the resurrection [2 Macc 12:43ff].

By this entreaty holy Church deals with her own sons: driving into them the contempt of death, she compels them to pass over to the true life, Christ — that she herself may be perfected in the kingdom of God with the sons who say to her: Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? Tribulation? or distress? or persecution? or famine? or nakedness? or peril? or the sword? [Rom 8:35].

2. Now among the Maccabees the last leader and Pontiff was Hyrcanus. For his brother Aristobulus, Pompey the magistrate of the Roman people, when he stormed Jerusalem, sent bound to Rome with his children — as the history of Josephus relates.

Yet the prophecy of the patriarch Jacob was fulfilled, which says: There shall not fail a prince out of Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until he come to whom all things are laid up — and he shall be the expectation of the nations [Gen 49:10].

We behold the order of the kings of Judah and of Israel at rest, and the Levitical priesthood likewise, when Herod, a king of foreign birth, ruled the Hebrew people — the anointing also ceasing, which Daniel the prophet had foretold would cease: lest that people should follow anointed kings or priests, the eternal King and Priest, Christ, being now present, who is the expectation of the nations.

Herod, therefore (whose father, the same Josephus says, was of the Idumaeans, and his mother of Arabia), received at that time the rule of that nation, assigned to him by Caesar Augustus — at which time Caesar ordered a census to be made, by edict, of the whole pacified world.

And so, in that year of the enrollment which was made under Quirinius, governor of Syria, Christ the Lord was born; in which enrollment Paul also was included.

For thus must it be understood, what he said to the tribune Lysias: But I was born a Roman [Acts 22:28]. For all others used to purchase the dignity of that name with a price; but this man, being a Jew, when he said that he was born a Roman, shows more plainly that he was entered in that census — John the forerunner and herald of the true King and Judge having now been born; from which time the age of grace took its beginning.

3. Thus far, with the Lord's help, I have been able to gather — as it was granted — the promises and predictions figured under the Law.

And here too the second time [is concluded], like a second day rising out of the four parts of the world: with the fathers of the prophets — the eastern region passing over²⁰ — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel being set in the [remaining] three parts; and here also with the twelve minor Prophets, as it were the number of the hours, closing the second day, as at evening.

So that the third time, of grace made manifest — together with that eternal Day itself — may take the beginning of the third part of this book, with its chapters appended. Amen.

END OF PART TWO — UNDER THE LAW. 40 chapters.