An Answer to the Jews

Concerning the last step, plainly, of His passion you raise a doubt; affirming that the passion of the cross was not predicted with reference to Christ, and urging, besides, that it is not credible that God should have exposed His own Son to that kind of death; because Himself said, “Cursed is every one who shall have hung on a tree.” But the reason of the case antecedently explains the sense of this malediction; for He says in Deuteronomy: “If, moreover, (a man) shall have been (involved) in some sin incurring the judgment of death, and shall die, and you shall suspend him on a tree, his body shall not remain on the tree, but with burial you shall bury him on the very day; because cursed by God is every one who shall have been suspended on a tree; and you shall not defile the land which the Lord your God shall give you for (your) lot.” Therefore He did not maledictively adjudge Christ to this passion, but drew a distinction, that whoever, in any sin, had incurred the judgment of death, and died suspended on a tree, he should be “cursed by God,” because his own sins were the cause of his suspension on the tree. On the other hand, Christ, who spoke not guile from His mouth, and who exhibited all righteousness and humility, not only (as we have above recorded it predicted of Him) was not exposed to that kind of death for his own deserts, but (was so exposed) in order that what was predicted by the prophets as destined to come upon Him through your means might be fulfilled; just as, in the Psalms, the Spirit Himself of Christ was already singing, saying, “They were repaying me evil for good;” and, “What I had not seized I was then paying in full;” “They exterminated my hands and feet;” and, “They put into my drink gall, and in my thirst they slaked me with vinegar;” “Upon my vesture they did cast (the) lot;” just as the other (outrages) which you were to commit on Him were foretold—all which He, actually and thoroughly suffering, suffered not for any evil action of His own, but “that the Scriptures from the mouth of the prophets might be fulfilled.”

And, of course, it had been meet that the mystery of the passion itself should be figuratively set forth in predictions; and the more incredible (that mystery), the more likely to be “a stumbling-stone,” if it had been nakedly predicted; and the more magnificent, the more to be adumbrated, that the difficulty of its intelligence might seek (help from) the grace of God.

Accordingly, to begin with, Isaac, when led by his father as a victim, and himself bearing his own “wood,” was even at that early period pointing to Christ's death; conceded, as He was, as a victim by the Father; carrying, as He did, the “wood” of His own passion.

Joseph, again, himself was made a figure of Christ in this point alone (to name no more, not to delay my own course), that he suffered persecution at the hands of his brethren, and was sold into Egypt, on account of the favour of God; just as Christ was sold by Israel— (and therefore,) “according to the flesh,” by His “brethren” — when He is betrayed by Judas. For Joseph is withal blest by his father after this form: “His glory (is that) of a bull; his horns, the horns of an unicorn; on them shall he toss nations alike unto the very extremity of the earth.” Of course no one-horned rhinoceros was there pointed to, nor any two-horned minotaur. But Christ was therein signified: “bull,” by reason of each of His two characters—to some fierce, as Judge; to others gentle, as Saviour; whose “horns” were to be the extremities of the cross. For even in a ship's yard— which is part of a cross— this is the name by which the extremities are called; while the central pole of the mast is a “unicorn.” By this power, in fact, of the cross, and in this manner horned, He does now, on the one hand, “toss” universal nations through faith, wafting them away from earth to heaven; and will one day, on the other, “toss” them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth.

He, again, will be the “bull” elsewhere too in the same scripture. When Jacob pronounced a blessing on Simeon and Levi, he prophesies of the scribes and Pharisees; for from them is derived their origin. For (his blessing) interprets spiritually thus: “Simeon and Levi perfected iniquity out of their sect,” — whereby, to wit, they persecuted Christ: “into their counsel come not my soul! And upon their station rest not my heart! Because in their indignation they slew men”— that is, prophets— “and in their concupiscence they hamstrung a bull!” — that is, Christ, whom— after the slaughter of prophets— they slew, and exhausted their savagery by transfixing His sinews with nails. Else it is idle if, after the murder already committed by them, he upbraids others, and not them, with butchery.

But, to come now to Moses, why, I wonder, did he merely at the time when Joshua was battling against Amalek, pray sitting with hands expanded, when, in circumstances so critical, he ought rather, surely, to have commended his prayer by knees bended, and hands beating his breast, and a face prostrate on the ground; except it was that there, where the name of the Lord Jesus was the theme of speech— destined as He was to enter the lists one day singly against the devil— the figure of the cross was also necessary, (that figure) through which Jesus was to win the victory? Why, again, did the same Moses, after the prohibition of any “likeness of anything,” set forth a brazen serpent, placed on a “tree,” in a hanging posture, for a spectacle of healing to Israel, at the time when, after their idolatry, they were suffering extermination by serpents, except that in this case he was exhibiting the Lord's cross on which the “serpent” the devil was “made a show of,” and, for every one hurt by such snakes— that is, his angels — on turning intently from the peccancy of sins to the sacraments of Christ's cross, salvation was outwrought? For he who then gazed upon that (cross) was freed from the bite of the serpents.

Come, now, if you have read in the utterance of the prophet in the Psalms, “God has reigned from the tree,” I wait to hear what you understand thereby; for fear you may perhaps think some carpenter-king is signified, and not Christ, who has reigned from that time onward when he overcame the death which ensued from His passion of “the tree.”

Similarly, again, Isaiah says: “For a child is born to us, and to us is given a son.” What novelty is that, unless he is speaking of the “Son” of God?— and one is born to us the beginning of whose government has been made “on His shoulder.” What king in the world wears the ensign of his power on his shoulder, and does not bear either diadem on his head, or else sceptre in his hand, or else some mark of distinctive vesture? But the novel “King of ages,” Christ Jesus, alone reared “on His shoulder” His own novel glory, and power, and sublimity—the cross, to wit; that, according to the former prophecy, the Lord thenceforth “might reign from the tree.” For of this tree likewise it is that God hints, through Jeremiah, that you would say, “Come, let us put wood into his bread, and let us wear him away out of the land of the living; and his name shall no more be remembered.” Of course on His body that “wood” was put; for so Christ has revealed, calling His body “bread,” whose body the prophet in bygone days announced under the term “bread.” If you shall still seek for predictions of the Lord's cross, the twenty-first Psalm will at length be able to satisfy you, containing as it does the whole passion of Christ; singing, as He does, even at so early a date, His own glory. “They dug,” He says, “my hands and feet” — which is the peculiar atrocity of the cross; and again when He implores the aid of the Father, “Save me,” He says, “out of the mouth of the lion”— of course, of death— “and from the horn of the unicorns my humility,” — from the ends, to wit, of the cross, as we have above shown; which cross neither David himself suffered, nor any of the kings of the Jews: that you may not think the passion of some other particular man is here prophesied than His who alone was so signally crucified by the People.