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The City of God Against the Pagans
Book XV |
Book XVII
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CHAPTER 39
THE REASON WHY
JACOB WAS ALSO CALLED ISRAEL
As I said a little ago, Jacob was also called Israel, the name which was
most prevalent among the people descended from him. Now this name was
given him by the angel who wrestled with him on the way back from
Mesopotamia, and who was most evidently a type of Christ. For when
Jacob overcame him, doubtless with his own consent, that the mystery
might be represented, it signified Christ's passion, in which the Jews are
seen overcoming Him. And yet he besought a blessing from the very angel
he had overcome; and so the imposition of this name was the blessing. For
Israel means seeing God, which will at last be the reward of all the saints.
The angel also touched him on the breadth of the thigh when he was
overcoming him, and in that way made him lame. So that Jacob was at one
and the same time blessed and lame: blessed in those among that people
who believed in Christ, and lame in the unbelieving. For the breadth of the
thigh is the multitude of the family. For there are many of that race of
whom it was prophetically said beforehand, "And they have halted in their
paths."
CHAPTER 40
HOW IT IS SAID THAT JACOB WENT INTO EGYPT WITH
SEVENTY-FIVE SOULS, WHEN MOST OF THOSE WHO ARE
MENTIONED WERE BORN AT A LATER PERIOD
Seventy-five men are reported to have entered Egypt along with Jacob,
counting him with his children. In this number only two women are
mentioned, one a daughter, the other a grand-daughter. But when the thing
is carefully considered, it does not appear that Jacob's offspring was so
numerous on the day or year when he entered Egypt. There are also
included among them the great-grandchildren of Joseph, who could not
possibly be born already. For Jacob was then 130 years old, and his son
Joseph thirty-nine and as it is plain that he took a wife when he was thirty
or more, how could he in nine years have great-grandchildren by the
children whom he had by that wife? Now since, Ephraim and Manasseh,
the sons of Joseph, could not even have children, for Jacob found them
boys under nine years old when he entered Egypt, in what way are not
only their sons but their grandsons reckoned among those seventy-five
who then entered Egypt with Jacob? For there is reckoned there Machir
the son of Manasseh, grandson of Joseph, and Machir's son, that is,
Gilead grandson of Manasseh, great-grandson of Joseph; there, too, is he
whom Ephraim, Joseph's other son, begot, that is, Shuthelah grandson of
Joseph, and Shuthelah's son Ezer, grandson of Ephraim, and great-grand-son
of Joseph, who could not possibly be in existence when Jacob came
into Egypt, and there found his grandsons, the sons of Joseph, their
grandsires, still boys under nine years of age. ' But doubtless, when the
Scripture mentions Jacob's entrance into Egypt with seventy-five souls, it
does not mean one day, or one year, but that whole time as long as Joseph
lived, who was the cause of his entrance. For the same Scripture speaks
thus of Joseph: "And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he and his brethren, and all
his father's house: and Joseph lived 110 years, and saw Ephraim's children
of the third generation." That is, his great-grandson, the third from
Ephraim; for the third generation means son, grandson, great-grandson.
Then it is added," The children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were
born upon Joseph's knees." And this is that grandson of Manasseh, and
great-grandson of Joseph. But the plural number is employed according to
scriptural usage; for the one daughter of Jacob is spoken of as daughters,
just as in the usage of the Latin tongue liberi is used in the plural for
children even when there is only one. Now, when Joseph's own happiness
is proclaimed, because he could see his great-grandchildren, it is by no
means to be thought they already existed in the thirty-ninth year of their
great-grand-sire Joseph, when his father Jacob came to him in Egypt. But
those who diligently look into these things will the less easily be mistaken,
because it is written, "These are the names of the sons of Israel who
entered into Egypt along with Jacob their father." For this means that the
seventy-five are reckoned along with him, not that they were all with him
when he entered Egypt; for, as I have said, the whole period during which
Joseph, who occasioned his entrance, lived, is held to be the time of that
entrance.
CHAPTER 41
OF THE BLESSING WHICH JACOB
PROMISED IN JUDAH HIS SON
If, on account of the Christian people in whom the city of God sojourns in
the earth, we look for the flesh of Christ in the seed of Abraham, setting
aside the sons of the concubines, we have Isaac; if in the seed of Isaac,
setting aside Esau, who is also Edom, we have Jacob, who also is Israel; if
in the seed of Israel himself, setting aside the rest, we have Judah, because
Christ sprang of the tribe of Judah. Let us hear, then, how Israel, when
dying in Egypt, in blessing his sons, prophetically blessed Judah. He says:
"Judah, thy brethren shall praise thee: thy hands shall be on the back of
thine enemies; thy father's children shall adore thee. Judah is a lion's
whelp: from the sprouting, my son, thou art gone up: lying down, thou
hast slept as a lion, and as a lion's whelp; who shall awake him? A prince
shall not be lacking out of Judah, and a leader from his thighs, until the
things come that are laid up for him; and He shall be the expectation of the
nations. Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's foal to the choice vine;
he shall wash his robe in wine, and his clothes in the blood of the grape: his
eyes are red with wine, and his teeth are whiter than milk." I have
expounded these words in disputing against Faustus the Manichaean; and I
think it is enough to make the truth of this prophecy shine, to remark that
the death of Christ is predicted by the word about his lying down, and not
the necessity, but the voluntary character of His death, in the title of lion.
That power He Himself proclaims in the gospel, saying, "I have the power
of laying down my life, and I have the power of taking it again. No man
taketh it from me; but I lay it down of myself, and take it again." So the
lion roared, so He fulfilled what He said. For to this power what is added
about the resurrection refers, "Who shall awake him?" This means that no
man but Himself has raised Him, who also said of His own body,
"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." And the very
nature of His death, that is, the height of the cross, is understood by the
single words "Thou are gone up." The evangelist explains what is added,
"Lying down, thou hast slept," when he says, "He bowed His head, and
gave up the ghost." Or at least His burial is to be understood, in which He
lay down sleeping, and whence no man raised Him, as the prophets did
some, and as He Himself did others; but He Himself rose up as if from
sleep. As for His robe which He washes in wine, that is, cleanses from sin
in His own blood, of which blood those who are baptized know the
mystery, so that he adds, "And his clothes in the blood of the grape,"
what is it but the Church? "And his eyes are red with wine," these are
His spiritual people drunken with His cup, of which the psalm sings,
"And thy cup that makes drunken, how excellent it is!" "And his teeth are
whiter than milk," — that is, the nutritive words which, according to the
apostle, the babes drink, being as yet unfit for solid food. And it is He in
whom the promises of Judah were laid up, so that until they come,
princes, that is, the kings of Israel, shall never be lacking out of Judah.
"And He is the expectation of the nations." This is too plain to need
exposition.
CHAPTER 42
OF THE SONS OF JOSEPH, WHOM JACOB BLESSED,
PROPHETICALLY CHANGING HIS HANDS
Now, as Isaac's two sons, Esau and Jacob, furnished a type of the two
people, the Jews and the Christians (although as pertains to carnal descent
it was not the Jews but the Idumeans who came of the seed of Esau, nor
the Christian nations but rather the Jews who came of Jacob's; for the
type holds only as regards the saying, "The elder shall serve the younger"
), so the same thing happened in Joseph's two sons; for the elder was a
type of the Jews, and the younger of the Christians. For when Jacob was
blessing them, and laid his fight hand on the younger, who was at his left,
and his left hand on the elder, who was at his right, this seemed wrong to
their father, and he admonished his father by trying to correct his mistake
and show him which was the elder. But he would not change his hands, but
said, "I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also
shall be exalted; but his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his
seed shall become a multitude of nations." And these two promises show
the same thing. For that one is to become "a people;" this one "a multitude
of nations." And what can be more evident than that these two promises
comprehend the people of Israel, and the whole world of Abraham's seed,
the one according to the flesh, the other according to faith?
CHAPTER 43
OF THE TIMES OF MOSES AND JOSHUA THE SON OF
NUN, OF THE JUDGES, AND THEREAFTER OF THE KINGS,
OF WHOM SAUL WAS THE FIRST,
BUT DAVID IS TO BE REGARDED AS THE CHIEF,
BOTH BY THE OATH AND BY MERIT
Jacob being dead, and Joseph also, during the remaining 144 years until
they went out of the land of Egypt, that nation increased to an incredible
degree, even although wasted by so great persecutions, that at one time the
male children were murdered at their birth, because the wondering
Egyptians were terrified at the too great increase of that people. Then
Moses, being stealthily kept from the murderers of the infants, was
brought to the royal house, God preparing to do great things by him, and
was nursed and adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh (that was the name of
all the kings of Egypt), and became so great a man that he — yea, rather
God, who had promised this to Abraham, by him — drew that nation, so
wonderfully multiplied, out of the yoke of hardest and most grievous
servitude it had born there. At first, indeed, he fled thence (we are told he
fled into the land of Midian), because, in defending an Israelite, he had slain
an Egyptian, and was afraid. Afterward, being divinely commissioned in
the power of the Spirit of God, he overcame the magi of Pharaoh who
resisted him. Then, when the Egyptians would not let God's people go,
ten memorable plagues were brought by Him upon them, — the water
turned into blood, the frogs and lice, the flies, the death of the cattle, the
boils, the hail, the locusts. the darkness, the death of the first-born. At last
the Egyptians were destroyed in the Red Sea while pursuing the Israelites,
whom they had let go when at length they were broken by so many great
plagues. The divided sea made a way for the Israelites who were departing,
but, returning on itself, it overwhelmed their pursuers with its waves.
Then for forty years the people of God went through the desert, under the
leadership of Moses, when the tabernacle of testimony was dedicated, in
which God was worshipped by sacrifices prophetic of things to come, and
that was after the law had been very terribly given in the mount, for its
divinity was most plainly attested by wonderful signs and voices. This
took place soon after the exodus from Egypt, when the people had entered
the desert, on the fiftieth day after the passover was celebrated by the
offering up of a lamb, which is so completely a type of Christ, foretelling
that through His sacrificial passion He should go from this world to the
Father (for pascha in, the Hebrew tongue means transit), that when the
new covenant was revealed, after Christ our passover was offered up, the
Holy Spirit came from heaven on the fiftieth day; and He is called in the
gospel the Finger of God, because He recalls to our remembrance the things
done before by way of types, and because the tables of that law are said to
have been written by the finger of God.
On the death of Moses, Joshua the son of Nun ruled the people, and led
them into the land of promise, and divided it among them. By these two
wonderful leaders wars were also carried on most prosperously and
wonderfully, God calling to witness that they had got these victories not
so much on account of the merit of the Hebrew people as on account of
the sins of the nations they subdued. After these leaders there were judges,
when the people were settled in the land of promise, so that, in the
meantime, the first promise made to Abraham began to be fulfilled about
the one nation, that is, the Hebrew, and about the land of Canaan; but not
as yet the promise about all nations, and the whole wide world, for that
was to be fulfilled, not by the observances of the old law, but by the
advent of Christ in the flesh, and by the faith of the gospel. And it was to
prefigure this that it was not Moses, who received the law for the people
on Mount Sinai, that led the people into the land of promise, but Joshua,
whose name also was changed at God's command, so that he was called
Jesus. But in the times of the judges prosperity alternated with adversity
in war, according as the sins of the people and the mercy of God were
displayed.
We come next to the times of the kings. The first who reigned was Saul;
and when he was rejected and laid low in battle, and his offspring rejected
so that no kings should arise out of it, David succeeded to the kingdom,
whose son Christ is chiefly called. He was made a kind of starting-point
and beginning of the advanced youth of God's people, who had passed a
kind of age of puberty from Abraham to this David. And it is not in vain
that the evangelist Matthew records the generations in such a way as to
sum up this first period from Abraham to David in fourteen generations.
For from the age of puberty man begins to be capable of generation;
therefore he starts the list of generations from Abraham, who also was
made the father of many nations when he got his name changed. So that
previously this family of God's people was in its childhood, from Noah to
Abraham; and for that reason the first language was then learned, that is,
the Hebrew. For man begins to speak in childhood, the age succeeding
infancy, which is so termed because then he cannot speak. And that first
age is quite drowned in oblivion, just as the first age of the human race was
blotted out by the flood; for who is there that can remember his infancy?
Wherefore in this progress of the city of God, as the previous book
contained that first age, so this one ought to contain the. second and third
ages, in which third age, as was shown by the heifer of three years old, the
she-goat of three years old, and the ram of three years old, the yoke of the
law was imposed, and there appeared abundance of sins, and the beginning
of the earthly kingdom arose, in which there were not lacking spiritual
men, of whom the turtledove and pigeon represented the mystery.