30. From Isaiah.

(b) The Apostasy of the Jewish Race and the Revelation of the Word of God, and of the new Law, and of His House, and the Shewing forth of the Piety of all the Nations. 

[Passages quoted, Isa. i. 8, 21, 30; ii. 2-4.]

(57) 31. From the same. 

The Destruction of the Glory of the People of the Jews, and the Turning of the Nations from Idolatry to the God of the Universe, and the Prophecy of the Desolation of the Jewish Cities, and of their Unfaithfulness to their God. 

[Passage quoted, Isa. xvii. 5-11.]

32. From the same.

Shewing forth of the destruction of the Jewish cities, and of the joy of the Gentiles in God.

[Passage quoted, Isa. xxv. 1-8.]

(d) 33. From the same.

The Message of good News to the Church of the Nations desolate of old, and the Rejection of the Jewish Nation, and Accusation of their Sins, and the Call of all the Gentiles. 

[Passages quoted, Isa. xliii. 18-25 ; xlv. 22-25]

34. From the same.

Shewing forth of the Coming of Christ to Men. And Reproof of the Jewish Race, and Promise of good Things to all Nations.

[Passages quoted, Isa. 1. 1, 2, 10 ; li. 4, 5.]

(59) 35. From the same.

Reproof of the Sins of the Jewish People, and their Fall from Piety, and the Shewing forth of the Call of all the Gentiles.

[Passages quoted, Isa. lix. 1-11, 19.]

(d) But although there are a number of prophecies on this subject, I will be content with the evidence I have

produced, and I will return to them again and explain ¹¹ them at the proper time, as I consider that by the use of these numerous texts and of their evidence I have given adequate proof that the Jews hold no privilege beyond other nations. For if they say that they alone partake of the blessing of Abraham, the friend of God, by reason of their descent from him, it can be answered that God promised to the Gentiles that He would give them an equal share of the blessing not only of Abraham but of Isaac and Jacob also, since He expressly predicted that all nations would be blessed like them, and summoned the rest of the nations under one and the same (rule of) joy as the blessed and the godly, in saying: "Rejoice ye Gentiles [[Deut. xxxii. 43; Ps. xlvii. 9]] with his people," and : "The princes of the peoples were gathered together with the God of Abraham."

And if it is on the kingdom of God they plume them- (60) selves, as being His portion, it can be answered that God prophesies that He will reign over all other nations. For he says : "Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is [[Ps. xcvi. 10]] King." And again: "God reigneth over all the nations."

And if they say that they were chosen out to act as [[Ps. xlvii. 8]] priests and to offer worship to God, it can be shewn that the Word promised that He would give to the Gentiles an equal share in His service, when He said: "Render to the Lord, O ye kindreds of the nations, render to the Lord glory and honour: bring sacrifices and come into [[Ps. xcvi. 7.]] his courts." To which the oracle in Isaiah may be con- (b) joined, which says: "There shall be an altar to the Lord in the land of Egypt . . . and the Egyptians will know the Lord. And they shall do sacrifice, and say prayers to the Lord, and offer." And in this you will understand [[Isa.xix.19]] that it is prophesied that an altar will be built to the Lord away from Jerusalem in Egypt, and that the Egyptians will there offer sacrifice, say prayers and give gifts to the Lord. Yes, and not only in Egypt, but in the true Jerusalem itself, whatever it is thought to be, all the nations, and the (c) Egyptians forsooth, the most superstitious of them all, are invited to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, as a feast of the heart.¹²

And if it was true long ago: "Jacob is become the portion of the Lord, and Israel the rope of his inheritance." [[Deut. xxx ii. 9]] Yet afterwards it was also said that all the nations would be given to the Lord for His inheritance, the Father saying to him : " Desire of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance." [[Ps. ii. 8]] And it is also prophesied that He shall rule from sea to sea and to the ends of the world : "All the Gentiles shall serve him, and in him shall the tribes of the earth be blessed." [[ Ps. lxxii. ii, 17]] And the reason of this (d) was that the Supreme God should make known His salvation before all nations. And I have already noted before that the name of Jesus translated from Hebrew into Greek would give "salvation," so that "the salvation of God" is simply the appellation of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

And Simeon bears witness to this in the Gospel, when he takes the infant in his hands, I mean of course Jesus, and prays:

(61) "Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word :
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, 
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
A light to lighten the Gentiles." [[ Luke ii.29]]

And this same salvation the Psalmist meant, when he said:

"The Lord declared his salvation, in the sight of the heathen he openly shewed his righteousness." 

And, according to Isaiah, it will be when they behold this very salvation that all men will worship the supreme God, (b) Who has bestowed His salvation on all ungrudgingly. And they will worship Him not in Jerusalem below, which is in Palestine, but each from his own place, and all who are in the isles of the Gentiles; and then, too, the oracle shall be fulfilled which said that all men should call no longer on their ancestral gods, nor on idols, nor on daemons, but on the Name of the Lord, and shall serve Him under one yoke, and shall offer to Him from the furthest rivers of Ethiopia the reasonable and bloodless sacrifices of the new Covenant of Christ, to be sacrificed not in Jerusalem below, nor on the altar there, but in the aforesaid borders of Ethiopia.

(c) And if it be admitted to be a noble privilege to be and

to be reckoned the people of God, and if this one thing is the noblest of the divine promises, that God should say of those who are worthy of Him, "I will be their God, and [[Jer. xxxi. 33.] they shall be my people," Israel was naturally proud in days of old of being the only people of God, but now the Lord has come to sojourn with us and promises graciously to extend this privilege to the Gentiles, saying: 

"Lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of you, [[Zech. ii. 10.]] and many nations shall flee unto the Lord, and they shall be to him a people."

On which I may aptly quote : "And I will say to a people (d) that were not my people, Ye are my people. And they [[Hos.ii. 23.]] shall say, Thou art the Lord our God." And if it is the Christ and no one else Who is prophesied as springing from the root of Jesse, and this at least is so strongly held by the Hebrews themselves, that not one of them questions its truth at all, consider how He is proclaimed as about to arise to reign not over Israel but over the Gentiles, and how the Gentiles arc said to be about to hope in Him, and not Israel, inasmuch as He is the expectation of the Gentiles. Wherefore He is said "to be about to bring [[Isa. xlii. 1, 6]] judgment to the Gentiles," and "to be for a light to the Gentiles." And again it is said: "In his name shall the Gentiles trust," and that He shall be given for salvation not only to the Jews but to all men, even to those at the ends of the earth. Wherefore it was said to Him by the Father that sent Him down : (62)

"I gave thee for a covenant of the race, for a light of [[Isa. xlix. 8.]] the Gentiles, to establish the earth, and to inherit the waste heritages." He says He is "a witness to the Gentiles," meaning that nations which have never before learned anything about Christ, when they knew His dispensation, and the might that was in Him, have called on Him, and that the peoples who did not before of old know Him, have taken refuge in Him.

But why need I say more, since it is possible from these prophetic sayings which I have laid before you, and from others to be found in Holy Scripture which I will record at leisure, for any one who wishes, to collect the words of the (b) prophets, and by their aid to put to silence those of the Circumcision, who say the promises of God were given to them alone, and that we who are of the Gentiles are

supernumerary ¹³ and alien to the divine promises? For I have proved, on the contrary, that it was prophesied that all the Gentiles would benefit by the coming of Christ, while the multitudes of the Jews would lose the promises given to their forefathers through their unbelief in Christ, few of (c) them believing in our Lord and Saviour, and therefore attaining the promised spiritual redemption through Him.

About which the wonderful Apostle teaches something when he says :

"27. Isaiah also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand ot the sea, the remnant ¹⁴ shall be saved : 28. For finishing the word and cutting it short in righteousness, because a word cut short ¹⁵ will the Lord do upon the earth. 29. And as Isaiah said before, If the Lord of Sabaoth had not left to us a seed, we should have [[Rom. ix. 27-29]] been as Sodom, and we should have been like to Gomorrah."

(d) To which he adds after other things:

"1. Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2. God hath not cast away his people, which he foreknew. Know ye not what the Scripture saith of Elias? how he intercedes with God, speaking of Israel,¹⁶ 3. Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I only am left, and they seek my life to take it awny.¹⁷ 4. But what saith the answer of God to him? I have reserved to myself 7000 men, who have not bowed the knee to Baal. 5. Even so then at this present time [[Rom. xi. 1-5.]] also there is a remnant according to the election of grace."

(63) In these words the Apostle clearly separates, in the falling away of the whole Jewish people, himself and the Apostles and the Evangelists of our Saviour like Himself and all the

Jews now who believe in Christ, as the seed named by the prophet in the words: "Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left unto us a seed." And he implies that they also are that which is styled in the other prophecies "the remnant," which he says was preserved by the election of grace. And with reference to this remnant I will now return to the prophets and explain what they say, so that the argument may be based on more evidence, that God did not promise to the whole Jewish nation absolutely that (b) the coming of Christ would be their salvation, but only to a small and quite scanty number who should believe in our Lord and Saviour, as has actually taken place in agreement with the predictions.

36. From Isaiah.

That the Divine Promises did not extend to the whole (c) Jewish Nation, but only to a few of them.

[Passage quoted Isa. i. 7-9.]

This great and wonderful prophet at the opening of his own book here tells us that the whole scheme of his prophecy includes a vision and a revelation against Judaea and Jerusalem, then he attacks the whole race of the Jews, (d) first saying:

" 3. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's manger, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not understand." [[Isa. i. 3]] 

And then he laments the whole race, and adds :

"4. Woe, race of sinners, a people full of iniquity, an evil seed, unrighteous children."

Having brought these charges against them in the beginning of his book, and shewn beforehand the reasons for the later predictions that he is to bring against them, he goes on to say, "Your land is desolate," though it was not desolate at the time when he prophesied : "Your cities are burnt with fire." Nor had this yet taken place, and strangers had not devoured their land. And yet he says, "Your land, (64) strangers devour it before your eyes," and that which follows. But if you came down to the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of those He sent, and to the present time, you would find all the sayings fulfilled. For the daughter of

Zion (by whom was meant the worship celebrated on Mount Zion) from the time of the coming of our Saviour has (b) been left as a tent in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, or as anything that is more desolate than these. And strangers devour the land before their eyes, now exacting tax and tribute,¹⁸ and now appropriating for themselves the land which belonged of old to Jews. Yea, and the beauteous Temple of their mother-city was laid low, being cast down by alien peoples, and their cities were burnt with fire, and Jerusalem became truly a besieged city. But (c) since, when all this happened, the choir of the Apostles, and those of the Hebrews who believed in Christ, were preserved from among them as a fruitful seed, and going through every race of men in the whole world, filled every city and place and country with the seed of Christianity and Israel, so that like corn springing from it, the churches which are founded in our Saviour's name have come into being, the divine prophet naturally adds to his previous threats against them: "We should have been as Sodom, (d) and we should have been like unto Gomorrah." Which the holy Apostle in the Epistle to the Romans more clearly defines and interprets.

[The passages Rom. ix. 17-29 and xi. 1-5, already quoted 62 c, d, are repeated.]

And to shew that the prophecy can only refer to the (b) time of our Saviour's coming, the words that follow the text—"unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah," naming the whole people of the Jews as the people of Gomorrah, and their rulers as the princes of Sodom—imply a rejection of the Mosaic worship, and introduce in the prediction about them the characteristics of the covenant announced to all men by our Saviour, I mean regeneration by water,¹⁹ and the word and law completely new. For it says :

(^c) "Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom, give heed to the law of God, ye people of Gomorrah, [[Isa. i. 10.]] What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me?" .

and that which follows. Thus it takes away what belongs

to the Mosaic law, and introduces in its place another mode of the forgiveness of sins, through the washing of salvation and the life preached in accordance with it, saying : 

"Wash you, be ye clean ; take away the evils from [[Isa. i. 16.]] your souls."

And the prophet himself at once supplies the reason, why he called them rulers of Sodom, and people of Gomorrah: "For your hands are full of blood." And again a little further on :

"They have proclaimed their sin as Sodom and (d) made it manifest. Woe to their soul, because they have taken evil counsel with themselves, saying,²⁰ We will bind the just, for he is burdensome to us." [[Isa. iii. 9.]] 

Since he so very clearly mentions some one's blood, and a plot against some one just man, what could this be but the plot against our Saviour Jesus Christ, through which²¹ and after which all the things aforesaid overtook them ?

37. From the same Isaiah. 

[Passage quoted Isa. iv. 2.]

And the meaning of "the remnant of Israel" the prophet (66) himself clearly explains by the words, "All who are registered in Jerusalem, and called holy." It will be clear to you, if you run through the whole course of this section, what that day is, in which it is said God will glorify and exalt the remnant of Israel and those who are called holy and to be written in (the book of) life. For in the begin- (b) ning of his complete book the prophet having seen the vision against Judah and Jerusalem, and numbered in many words the sins of the whole people of the Jews, and uttered threats and spoken about their ruin and the complete desolation of Jerusalem, brings his vision about them to an end with the words :

" 30. For they shall be as a terebinth that has cast her leaves, and as a garden without water. 31. And their strength shall be as a thread of tow, and their works as sparks of fire, and the transgressors and the [[Isa. i. 30]] sinners shall be burnt together, and there shall be none (c) to quench them."

And having inscribed here the prediction against them, he "lowers his tone"²²: and making another start he enters on a second subject, and as a preface, so to say, employs such words as these, "The word which came to Isaiah the (d) son of Amos concerning Judah and Jerusalem"; or, as Symmachus ²³ interpreted it, "on behalf of Judah and Jerusalem." From which one would perhaps expect that he was about to change to more favourable prophecies about the same peoples on whom his former predictions had showered sadness. But the succeeding passages would certainly not confirm the expectation, since they contain nothing at all that is good with regard to the race of the Jews, or that which is called Israel, neither for Judah nor Jerusalem. On the contrary, they bring many charges and accusations against Israel, and gloomy threats against Jerusalem, and prophesy for all the Gentiles salvation in their call and in the knowledge of the Supreme God. While in addition to this they tell of the coining of a new Mount, and the manifesting of another House of God, besides the one in Jerusalem. For he says after speaking about Judaea and Jerusalem:

(67) "2. In the last days the Mount of the Lord shall be manifest, and the house of the Lord upon the tops of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, 3. and all nations shall come to it, and shall say, Come and let us go up to the Mount of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob."  [[Isa. ii. 2.]]

Such are his prophecies about all the Gentiles. Hear what he proceeds to add about the Jews:

" 6. For he has rejected his people, the house of the God of Jacob,²⁴ for the land is filled as at the beginning with auguries, as the land of strangers, and many

children of strangers are born to them. 7. For the land was filled with silver and gold, and there was (b) no end of their treasures." 

And that which follows after this, to which he adds:

"9. And they worshipped that which their own fingers had made, and a man bowed down, and was humbled, and I will not reject them. 10. And now enter ye into the rocks, and hide yourselves in the earth from the face of the fear of the Lord, and from the face of his glory, when he arises to shake the earth."

And in this he teaches that there will be a Resurrection of the Lord, at which all the land of the Jewish people (c) will be shattered. For the whole portion refers to them, in the following sections as well, saying : "For the day of the Lord of Sabaoth shall be upon every one that is proud and insolent, and upon every one that is lofty and exalted." And that which follows. Wherefore it is on the day of the Lord's Resurrection, that the prophet having first addressed those who lift themselves up against the knowledge of God, says: "On this very day"; "the Lord shall be exalted in that very day, and they shall hide all the work of their hands, bearing them into the caves," (d) clearly showing the destruction of the idols, which the Jews themselves and all other men cast away after the appearance of the Saviour, despising all superstitions :

" 20. On that day, he says, a man shall cast away his abominations of gold and silver which they made to worship vanities."

Thus speaking, it would seem, generally about all men, because of the coming call of the Gentiles. But he alludes particularly again to the Jewish race under one head as follows:

"Behold now, the Lord, the Lord of Sabaoth, will take away from Judaea and from Jerusalem the strong man and strong woman, the strength of bread, and the strength of water, 2. The giant and the strong man, and the man of war, and the judge, and the prophet, and (68) the counsellor, and elder, and captain of fifty, 3. And the wonderful counsellor, and the clever artificer, and the wise hearer." [[Isa.iii.1-3.]] 

And that which follows. Stop at this point, and set

beside the above the introduction to the prophecy, in which it was said: "The word that came from the Lord to Isaiah the son of Amoz on behalf of Judah and Jerusalem," and see how much more in accordance with what follows "against" is than "for," unless indeed some hidden meaning is contained in the words. For how could one about to take away from Judah and Jerusalem strong (b) man and strong woman, the strength of bread and the strength of water, and all things that of old were beautiful among them, introduce his prophecy by saying it was "for" Judah and Jerusalem ? And how could that which follows again be "for" them :

"Jerusalem is forsaken, and Judaea hath fallen, and their tongues [have spoken] with iniquity, disbelieving [[Isa. iii. 8.]] the things of the Lord " ?

Nay, rather, at a time when it should be necessary for the Mountain of the Lord to be proclaimed to all the Gentiles, and the House of God on the Mount, when all (c) the Gentiles meet and say: "Come and let us go up to the Mount of the Lord, and to the House of the God of Jacob": the Scripture using such accusations of the Jewish race, and threatening them so sorely, adds thereto all the sayings I have quoted, and teaches that of the whole Jewish race which will fall away from the holiness of God, there will be left over some of them not immersed in their common evils; and further, that being saved as it were from the sinful and lawless, and embracing piety in sincerity and truth, they will be reckoned worthy of (d) God's Scripture, and will be called holy servants of God. And it means by these, the apostles, disciples, and evangelists of our Saviour, and all the others of the Circumcision, who believed on Him, at the time of the falling away of their whole race. Scripture darkly implies this, when it says: "In that day"—i.e. the day in which plainly all the aforesaid things shall take place connected with the calling of the Gentiles, and the falling away of the Jews—"God shall shine gloriously in counsel on the earth, to uplift and to glorify the remnant of Israel, and there shall be a remnant in Sion, and a remnant in [[Isa. iv. 2.]] Jerusalem, and all who are written for life in Jerusalem (69) shall be called holy."

And it was these, who came forth from Judaea and

Jerusalem that the preface meant the prophecy to allude to, when it said: "For Judaea and Jerusalem," yea, both the actual Jerusalem, and the figurative Jerusalem thought of as analagous to it. And which of the apostles of our Saviour or of His evangelists, beholding the inspired power (b) by which "their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words to the ends of the earth," and by which all the Churches of Christ from that day to this have their words and teaching on their lips, and the laws of Christ of the new covenant preached by them, would not bear witness to the truth of the prophecy, which says that God openly will exalt and glorify in counsel and with glory the remnant of Israel through all the world, and that the remnant in Sion and the remnant in Jerusalem shall be (c) called holy, all they who are written in the book of life? Instead of the reading of the LXX, "in counsel with glory," Aquila and Theodotion agree in interpreting "for power and glory" indicating the power given to the apostles by God, and their consequent glory with God— according to the words: "The Lord will give a word to [[Ps. lxviii.11] the preachers with much power." 

And this which has really come to pass :

" 9. Ye shall hear indeed, and shall not understand : and seeing ye shall see and not perceive. 10. For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and they hear (d) with heavy ears, and they have closed their eyes, lest they should ever see with their eyes, and hear with their ears,²⁵ and turn, and I should heal them.²⁶ 11. And I said, Until when, O Lord? And he said, Until the cities be desolated that none dwell in them, and houses that no men be in them, and the earth be left desolate. 12. And afterwards God will increase men, and they that are left on the earth shall be increased." [[Isa. vi. 9.]]

And notice here how they that are left again on the earth, all the rest of the earth being desolate, alone are said to multiply. These must surely be our Saviour's Hebrew disciples, going forth to all men, who being left behind (70) like a seed have brought forth much fruit, namely, the Churches of the Gentiles throughout the whole world. And see, too, how at the same time he says that only those will multiply who are left behind from the falling away of

the Jews, while the Jews themselves are utterly desolate: "Their land," he says, "shall be left unto them desolate." And this was also said to them before by the same prophet : "Your land is desolate, your cities are burnt with fire, your country strangers devour it before your eyes."

(b) And when was this fulfilled, except from the times of our Saviour? For up to the time they had not yet dared to do impiety to Him, their land was not desolate, their cities were not burned with fire, nor did strangers devour their land. But from that inspired word, by which our Lord and Saviour Himself predicted what was about to fall on them, saying : "Your house is left unto you desolate," from that moment and not long after the prediction they were besieged by the Romans and brought to desolation. (c) And the word of prophecy gives the cause of the desolation, making the interpretation almost certain, and showing the cause of their falling away. For when they heard our Saviour teaching among them, and would not listen with their mind's ear, nor understood Who He was, seeing Him with their eyes, but not beholding Him with the eyes of their spirit, " they hardened their heart, and all but closed [[Isa. vi. 10.]] the eyes of their mind, and made their ears heavy."

As the prophecy says, because of this He says that their cities would be made desolate so that none should dwell in them, and their land should become desolate, and only (d) a few of them be left behind, kept like fruitful and spark-like seed, who it is said, should go forth to all men, and multiply on the earth.

But also even after the departure of those who are clearly the apostles of our Saviour, he says that "a tenth" will still remain on Jewish soil:

"And again it shall be for a spoil, as a terebinth, and [[Isa. vi. 13.]] as an acorn, when it falls out of its husk."

The Scripture, as I suppose, means by this, that after the first siege, which they are recorded to have undergone (71) in the time of the apostles, and of Vespasian, Emperor of the Romans, being a second time besieged again under Hadrian they were completely debarred from entering the place, so that they were not even allowed to tread the soil of Jerusalem.²⁷ And this he darkly suggests in the

words : "And again it shall be for a spoil, as a terebinth, and as an acorn when it falls out of its husk " : [[Isa. vii 21.]]

21. "And it shall come to pass in that day, a man will nourish a heifer and two sheep. 22. And it shall come to pass from their drinking much milk, every one left on the land shall eat butter and honey." 

Here if you inquire to what day the prophet looks forward, (b) you will find it to be the very time of the appearance of our Saviour. For when the prophet says: " Behold a virgin shall ,be with child, and shall bring forth a son," ²⁸ though he interposes many things, yet he prophesies of the things that will come to pass on that very day, that is to say about the time of our Saviour's appearance.

For he says that unseen powers, and foes and enemies, (c) allegorically designated flies and bees, will attack the land of the Jews, and that the Lord with the razor of its foes will shave the head of the Jewish race, as if it were one great body, and the hairs from its feet, and its beard—in a word its whole glory. And this being done in the day prophesied when He shall be born of a virgin, he foretells that a man who is left from the destruction of the whole race, that is to say all of them who believe in the Christ of God, shall nourish a heifer of the bulls and two sheep, and from their producing very much milk shall eat butter and honey : and you will understand that this is mystically fulfilled in our Saviour's apostles. For each one of them (d) in the churches which he established by Christ's help, nourished two sheep, that is to say two orders of disciples coming like sheep into the sheepfold of Christ, the one as yet probationary, the other already enlightened by baptism,²⁹ and in addition to these one heifer, the ecclesiastical rule of those who preside with their inspired food of the word, and produced from them a fruitful increase of milk and honey from the food they have laboured to provide.

(72) That holy Scripture often likens the multitudes of less perfect disciples to sheep I need not say; every scripture teaches it. And its comparison of the perfect man, who being the leader works the body of the Church as a farmer, to the work of bulls on the soil, the holy apostle uses, when he says:

"Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for our sakes ? ³⁰ That he that ploweth should plow in hope, and that he that thresheth, should thresh in hope of partaking." [[I Cor ix 9.]]

And if any one is disgusted with such metaphorical interpretation, let him beware lest refusing to regard figuratively what are called flies, or bees, or a razor, or a beard, (b) or hairs on the feet, he falls into <