CHAPTER 1   (366)

Of the Time of His Appearance among Men. How at the Time which the Hebrews fail of their Kingdom, the Expectation of the Gentiles shall approach, which also came to pass at Our Saviour's Appearing.

From Genesis.

1. "Jacob called his sons and said, Come together (b) and hear what shall befall you at the end of the days. Come together and hear, ye sons of Jacob, hear your father." 

Then, after rebuking his elder sons, one for one thing, one for another, as being unworthy because of their sins (c) of the prophecy about to be given, he prophesies thus to his fourth son, as having shewn himself a better man than his brothers:

8. " Judah, thy brethren shall praise the, | thy hands shall be on the back of thy enemies, | the sons of thy father shall bow down to thee. | 9. Judah is a  lion's ^{- 100 -} whelp, | Thou hast sprung up, my son, from a slip. | Lying down thou didst sleep as a lion and a whelp, | Who shall arouse thee? | 10. A ruler shall not fail from Judah, | nor a governor from his loins, | until the things laid up for him come, | and he is the expectation of the nations."

First, consider what is meant by "the things laid up for him," and see if they be not the prophecies about the calling of the Gentiles, that God gave to those with Abraham. For it is written, that God said to Abraham : 

"And thou shalt be blessed, and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." 

And again:

"Abraham," he says, "shall become a great and mighty nation, and in him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." 

Similar oracles were spoken to Isaac in this wise :

"And I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and in thy seed shall all nations of the world be blessed." 

And also to Jacob this is said :

"I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac, fear not." 

And then :

"And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." 

And at another time God said to him :

"I am thy God, increase and multiply: nations and assemblies of nations shall come out of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins."

Jacob, who knew the predictions of God concerning the calling of the nations, having twelve sons, called them all together to his deathbed, to discover in the line of which son God's predictions would be fulfilled. And, then, having laid rebukes on the three first for their wrongdoings, he tells them also that the fulfilment of the prophecies will not come about through them because of their wicked deeds. But coming to the fourth, who was - 101 - Judah, he at once prophesies to him that the oracle, which says, "kings shall come from thy loins," will be fulfilled in his descendants. For it was plain that the kingly family was established in the tribe of Judah: and (c) he shews at the same lime at what period the prophecies of God and the promises to the Gentiles will fall due, and he teaches that one will come forth from him who will cause all nations and tribes to be admitted to the blessings of Abraham. All these things, then, were "the things laid up for him," that is to say, the ancient prophecies concerning the nations, and the words, "kings shall come (d) out of thee," whereby his tribe has precedence of those of his brethren, as royal and pre-eminent.

Directly the whole nation was organized in the time of Moses God gave his tribe the chief rank among the tribes. For it is written:

"And the Lord spake to Moses and Aaron, saying, Let the children of Israel encamp fronting one another, every man keeping his own rank, according to their standards, according to the houses of their families before the Lord, around the tabernacle of witness; and they that encamp first towards the east, shall be the order of the camp of Judah with their host."  

And later in the part that refers to the renewing of the sanctuary:

"The Lord said to Moses, One prince each day shall offer their gifts. And he that offered the first day was Naason, son of Aminadab, prince of the tribe of Judah."

And in the Book of Joshua, son of Nave, when the land of promise was divided by lot among the other tribes, the tribe of Judah took its own portion of the land without casting lots, and first of all. And, moreover, "After the death of Joshua the children of Israel inquired of the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanite, leading our fighting against him? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up. Behold, I have given the land into his hands." These words, then, make it clear that God (b) - 102 - ordained the tribe of Judah to be the head of all Israel, and the account goes on: "And Judah went up, and the Lord delivered the Canaanite and Perizzite into his hand." And also: "And the children of Judah fought against Jerusalem and took it, and the sons of Judah came down from fighting against the Canaanite." And again: "And Judah went up with Symeon, his brother." And then: "And the Lord was with Judah, and gave him the Mount as his portion." And after this: "And the sons of Joseph went up, they also who were in Bethel, and Judah with (c) them." And in the Book of Judges, when different men at different times were at the head of the people, though individually the Judges were of different tribes, yet speaking generally the tribe of Judah was head of the whole people, and much more so in the times of David and his successors, who belonged to the tribe of Judah, and continued to rule until the Babylonian Captivity, after which the leader of those who returned from Babylon to their own land was Zerubbabel, the son of Salathiel, of the tribe of Judah, who also built the Temple. Hence, too, the Book of Chronicles, when giving the genealogies of the twelve tribes of Israel, (d) begins with Judah. And you will see it follows from this that, in the days that succeeded, the same tribe had the headship, although different individuals had temporary leadership, whose tribes it is impossible to decide with accuracy, because there is no sacred book handed down to give the history of the period from then to the time of our Saviour. But it is true to say that the tribe of Judah continued so long as the free and autonomous constitution of the whole nation lasted under its own leaders and kings. And this was the case from the beginning until the time of Augustus, (369) when, after our Saviour's appearance among men, the whole nation became subject to Rome. And then instead of their ancestral and constitutional rulers they were ruled first by Herod, a foreigner, and next by the Emperor Augustus. And so long as there had not yet failed a prince from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, the dates of the prophecies are given from the reigns of the kings. Thus Isaiah prophesies in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. As did Hosea. Amos, in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and in the days of (b) Jeroboam, son of Joash, king of Israel; and Zephaniah - 103 - in the days of Josiah, son of Amos, king of Judah. And Jeremiah too. But when a prince failed from Judah, and a governor from his loins, when the expectation of the Gentiles foretold in Christ was just about to shine on human life, there were no longer any rulers styled kings in Judah or governors in Israel. And since they had failed at the appointed time in accordance with prophecy, Augustus first, and then Tiberius, was called king of the Jewish nation, in common with the other nations, and under (c) them were procurators and tetrarchs of Judaea, and Herod of course, who, as I have already said, was not a Jew by birth, and received his authority over the Jews from Rome.

After these observations, we will now attempt a consideration of the prophecy: "Judah, thy brethren shall praise thee." Jacob had twelve sons, the fourth being Judah, who as I have said already, was the one and only head of the Hebrew tribes. But it will be evident, that (d) the words addressed to him by his father did not refer to him as an individual man, if we consider the words of Holy Scripture, and especially the speech of Jacob to his sons:

"And Jacob called his sons to him, Come together and I will tell you what shall come to pass in the last days. Gather together and hear, ye sons of Jacob, hear Israel your father."

For he clearly promises here to predict what will happen to them a long time afterwards, or, in his own words, in the last days. And for other reasons what Jacob said could not apply to the first individual who bore the name of Judah. His brethren did not praise him: for what great deed of his could they have done so? It would have been more applicable, if it had been addressed to Joseph, for (370) we know that Judah himself with his other brethren bowed down to him, except of course that this happened before the prophecy; but afterwards there is no record of anything of the kind connected with Joseph, or Judah. And the words, "Thou didst fall and sleep as a lion and a lion's whelp," seem to call for a wider interpretation than one concerning Judah. The words that follow, too: "There shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a governor from his loins, until that come which is laid up for him, and he is - 104 - (b) the expectation of nations," seem to me to give in a disguised form the time of the coming of the subject of the prophecy. For the one event, he says, will not take place, until the other does. The kings and rulers of the Jewish nation, that is, will not cease before the expectation of the nations shall come, and that which is laid up for the subject of the prophecy. Theodotion agrees with this rendering of the Septuagint, but Aquila thus translates:

"The sceptre shall not be removed from Judah, and he who knoweth exactly from between his feet, until also there come to him a congregation of people."

(c) And this saying, "There shall not fail a prince from Judah," cannot be referred to Judah as an individual man any more than, "Judah, thy brethren shall praise thee." For there were rulers and governors of the Jewish nation at many times who were not descended from him. Moses, for instance, its first ruler, was not of the tribe of Judah but of Levi. Joshua was of the tribe of Ephraim; after whom their ruler was Deborah, of the tribe of Ephraim, and Barak

(d).of the tribe of Naphthali, then Gedeon of Manasseh, then Gedeon's son, and after him Thola of the same tribe, then Esebon of Bethlehem, and then Ailon of Zabulon, Labclon of Ephraim, and Samson of Dan; then there being no regular ruler, Eli the priest, of the tribe of Levi, was their leader, All these Judges judged Israel, not in the line of succession from Judah, but one from one tribe and one from another. And they were followed by the first king, Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin. How, then, can the words, "there shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a governor (371) from his loins," be referred, as one would suppose they should be, to rulers and governors of the tribe of Judah, when from the time of Jacob's death, for nearly a thousand years, they do not appear to have been drawn from the tribe of Judah only, but some from one tribe, some from another, up to the time of David? And if it be true that David and his successors sprung from the tribe of Judah ruled the Jewish nation, after so many others, yet we must remember that they did not continue to rule the (b) whole people for the whole of those five hundred years, but only three tribes, and not the whole of them, for during their reigns other kings governed the larger part of the nation— that is to say, the whole of the other nine tribes. For after - 105 - the death of Solomon, since the whole nation was divided from Judah, the successors of David, as I said, did not rule the whole Jewish nation up to the time of the Babylonian Captivity. And in their times the heads of Samaria, which was the name of the State held by the nine tribes, were not drawn from Judah, but now from one tribe, now from (c) another, the first being Jeroboam, of the tribe of Ephraim, and those immediately after him, so that in the period between David and the Babylonian Captivity, kings of the line of Judah never ruled the whole nation.

There is no need to add that after the return from Babylon for more than five hundred years again until the birth of Christ the Jewish constitution was aristocratic, the high priests, for the time being, acting as heads of the State, none of whom came from the tribe of Judah. So from all these reasons it is proved that there is no reference here to Judah the original individual, to his descendants, nor in the oracle that said: "A prince shall not fail from Judah, (d) nor a governor from his loins," but that the only consistent interpretation of the passage is the one I have already given, that we must understand it of the tribe as a whole. The tribe most certainly was leader of the whole nation from the very beginning, from Moses' own time. And in accordance with such headship, as being designed by God from the outset, the country is even now called Judaea after the tribe, and the whole race are known as Jews. We must, therefore, understand it to mean what would be expressed more clearly, if it were said that the tribe of Judah would never lose its headship of the whole nation. So Symmachus says: "The power shall not be taken away (372) from Judah," shewing of course the authority and the royal position of what was afterwards to be the tribe of Judah. From it neither "the sceptre," as Aquila says, this being the symbol of royal rule, nor "the power," according to Symmachus, shall be taken away, the prophecy affirms, "until he come," it says, "for whom it is laid up, and he shall be the expectation of the nations." What expectation was this, but that of which Abraham and those after him had received the prophecies? First, is it not very striking that (b) though there were twelve Hebrew tribes, the race even now - 106 - has its name from none but Judah? It can only be explained by the prophetic oracle, which attached the royal position to the tribe, of Judah. And it is for this same reason that their fatherland is called Judaea. For why was not the nation called after the eldest of the twelve, I mean (c) Reuben, according to the divine law of primogeniture? Why not from Levi, who was greater than Judah in order of birth, and also in receiving the priesthood? Why not, even more, was the race and the country not called after Joseph, from his acquiring rule not only over the whole of Egypt, but over his own relations, and because his descendants, long years after, were to rule as many as nine tribes of the nation, on whose account it was far more probable that the whole race and the country would have been named after their ancestor? And who would not agree (d) that they might reasonably have been called from Benjamin, since their famous mother-city and the all-holy Temple of of God was in the portion of his tribe? But yet, in spite of all, the name of the Lord and of the whole nation was . drawn from none of them but Judah, as the prophecy foretold. I have, therefore, referred the words, "A prince shall not fail from Judah," to the tribe, and only in that sense is the prediction true. For from the time of Moses there has not failed a continued line of rulers of part of the nation, drawn as I said from different tribes, but the tribe of Judah has all along stood forth as the head of the whole (373) nation. An illustration will make what I have said clear. Just as the procurators and governors appointed in the Roman Empire over nations, their praefects and military chiefs, and their highest kings, are not all drawn from - 107 - Rome nor from the seed of Remus and Romulus, but from many different races, and yet all their kings and the rulers and governors below them are all called Romans, and their power is named Roman, and the rule of them all generally has this appellation, in the same way we (b) should think of the Hebrew state, where you have the name of the tribe of Judah applied generally to the whole nation, though there be kings and governors of divisions from different tribes, but all honoured with the name of Judah. We understand then that the prophet's words: "Judah, thy brethren shall praise thee," were to be applied to the whole tribe. For he knew that being marked out for precedence it would be honoured more than the other tribes, and since it was best in warfare, and the sole leader of the whole nation in operations against the enemy, he rightly continues: "Thy hands shall be on the back of thy (c) enemies." Then for its ruling and royal position he calls it, "a lion's" whelp." And as ancestor and prophet, glorying in the reputation of the tribe, he adds: "From a seed, my son, thou hast ascended"; while the words: "Falling down thou hast slept as a lion, and as a lion's whelp," shew its character of terror and bravery, its utter fearlessness of external attack, and contempt of its foes. He being such, (d) or rather, his tribe being such, who, he says, shall arouse it? He suggests that the Person who is to remove the tribe in question from its throne, and move it from its royal position, will be some one great, wonderful, unusual, and hard to imagine. Then he tells us who it is to be, telling us that it is He Who is the Expectation of nations, of Whom it is predicted that He will only appear among men, when the ruler fails, and the governor is changed, and the tribe of Judah is removed from its position of power. Who is this, but our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?—at Whose birth, as the prophecy before us (374) predicted, the rulers and governors set over their nation from the Jews themselves would fail, the tribe of Judah lose the dominant and royal position that it had held over the nation for so long, and be subject to the Romans, their rulers from that day to this, who overcame the Jewish - 108 -  (b) nation together with the rest of the world, and under whom Herod, a man of alien birth apart from their race, was appointed king by Augustus and the Roman Senate. For Herod was son of Antipater, and Antipater belonged to Ascalon, and was son of some temple-server at the Temple of Apollo, who married a woman named Kuprine, of Arab race, and begat Herod. He, you will remember, being sprung from this family, got rid of and slew Hyrcanus, the last of the line of ruling high-priests, with (c) whom the government of the Jews by native rulers came to an end, Herod being, as I say, the first foreigner to be called the King of the Jews. In his time Jesus Christ was born, and at one and the same time the position of the tribe of Judah was taken away, the authority of the kingdom of the Jews destroyed, and the prophecy preceding this fulfilled: "There shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a governor from his loins, until there come the things laid up for him," who, he says, will not only be the expectation of the Jews, but of the Gentiles. As, therefore, the expectation of the call of the Gentiles, prophesied long (d) before to Abraham, was "laid up," until the rulers and governors of the Jewish race should have ceased, and their independent government should have been changed to submission to Rome, and to the Gentile Herod, the Evangelist Luke, noting the date of the cessation of Jewish rulers, tells us that the teaching of Christ began in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea; and Matthew says the same - 109 - in a disguised form. For having described the birth of our Lord and Saviour, he adds: "And when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judrea, in the days of Herod the king, behold wise men came from the East to Jerusalem, saying, Where is that which is born king of the Jews?" wherein he shews clearly enough both that they were under (375) foreign rule, and also the calling of the foreign nations from the East by God. For foreigners ruled over the Jews, and foreigners coming from the East recognized and worshipped the Christ of God, Who had been prophesied of old. The prophecy of Jacob is thus seen clearly to have been fulfilled, being brought to pass at the end of the national existence of the Jews, even as he predicted to his sons, saying: "Come together, that I may announce to you, what shall happen to you at the end of the days." (b) For we must understand by the end of the days the end of the national existence of the Jews. What, then, did he say they must look for? The cessation of the rule of Judah, the destruction of their whole race, the failing and ceasing of their governors, and the abolition of the dominant kingly position of the tribe of Judah, and the rule and kingdom of Christ, not over Israel but over all nations, according to the words, "This is the expectation of the nations."

And who would not agree that all this has been definitely (c) fulfilled in the coming of our Saviour, when they who of old before Christ's birth, with their native rulers and governors and wise hearers of the holy oracles, prided themselves in their own kings, high priests and prophets, and when the tribe of Judah, being the royal tribe, the conqueror of their enemies, the leader and ruler of the whole nation, with its men of old renown has from that day to this lain under the heel of Rome? For the Christ of God was definitely manifested, and from that day the said expectation of the Gentiles is preached to all nations, (d) Or who can deny, that concurrently with the appearance of our Saviour Jesus the solemnities of the Jews, their city with its Temple and the worship performed therein, have come to an end, together with their native rulers and governors, and that from that time the hope and expectation of the nations through all the world has been made known, since the things laid up in the Lord - 110 - have come. What are these things, but those set forth by Judah?—

"Thy brethren shall praise thee, thy hands shall be on the back of thine enemies, lion of the tribe of Judah. O my son, thou hast ascended from a seed, falling thou hast slept as a lion and as a lion's whelp: who shall awake thee?"

(376) But the words, "The things laid up for him," have another sense; let us now consider them, only premising that the Holy Scriptures are accustomed to give the Christ different names. Sometimes they call Him Jacob:

"Jacob, my son, I will help thee; Israel, my chosen, my soul hath received him, he shall bring judgment unto the nations,"

and that which follows. To which is added, "Till he place judgment on the earth, and in his name shall the Gentiles (b) hope." Sometimes they name Him Solomon or David: Solomon as in the 71st Psalm, inscribed to Solomon, whose contents evidently refer to Christ. For the words, "He shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river to the world's end, and all the nations shall serve him," and the contents of the Psalm that follow, can only apply to the Christ. Christ, again, is called David in the 88th Psalm, for expressions therein are only applicable to Him, and not to David, for instance:

"He shall call me, Thou art my father, and I will make him my firstborn, high above the kings of the earth. I will keep my mercy for him for ever."

(c) And again:

"His seed shall remain for ever, and his throne is as the sun before me, and as the moon fixed in the heaven."

So, then, besides the many other names given to Christ by the Holy Scriptures, it is possible that He may be called Judah also in the passage before us, especially as He sprang from the tribe of Judah. For the apostle certifies the fact (d) that our Lord and Saviour sprang from the tribe of Judah. For Him, then, were "the things laid up for Judah" figuratively intended in the prophecy. And what were they? First, the praise of His brethren; second, to lay his hands on the back of His enemies; third, to be worshipped by the sons of His Father. And they came to pass, - 111 - for His performance of miracles and wondrous prodigies aroused wonder, and He was praised and worshipped by His own disciples and apostles, whom He shrank not from calling brethren, saying by the Psalm, "I will declare thy name to my brethren, in the midst of the Church I will praise thee," and also when He bids the women with Mary announce the news to them as His brethren, for He says, "Make known to my brethren that I ascend to my Father, (377) and your Father, and to my God, and your God." Thus then, His brethren at first praised Him only as a remarkable man because of His miracles, believing Him most likely to be one of the prophets; but when meanwhile they saw His wonderful miracles, and how He destroyed the enemy and the avenger, and death the prince of this world, together with the other unseen hostile powers, thenceforth they (b) believed Him to be God and worshipped Him. And the hands of our Saviour were upon the back of His enemies, when He directed all His deeds and powers and miracles to the destruction of the daemons and evil spirits. Yea, when too He spread out His hands on the Cross, even then His hands were on the back of His enemies, since they fled and turned their backs on Him, and even more, when yielding up His spirit to the Father, disembodied and (c) stripped of that flesh, which He had assumed, He went to the place of His enemies, having life in Himself, to loose death, and the powers arrayed against Him, which perhaps at first conceived that He was an ordinary man and like all men, and so encircled Him and attacked Him as they would any one else, but when they knew that He was superhuman and divine, they turned their backs and fled from Him, so that He laid His hands on them, and drave them on with His divine and sharpened arrows, as is here said, "Thy hands shall be on the backs of thy enemies." - 112 - 

And if to-day many enemies of our Saviour attempt from (d) time to time to war against His Church, these too He routs with invisible hand and divine power, even as it is said of them, "His hands shall be on the back of his enemies." And since also He has received the trophies of victory over His enemies, the words, "The sons of thy father shall worship thee," are also fulfilled: that is to say, all the angels of heaven, and the ministering spirits, and the divine powers, and on earth the apostles and evangelists, and after them those of all nations who through Him are enrolled under the one and only true God and Father, have learned that Christ is God the Word, and have consented to worship (378) Him as God.

But as it was necessary for the mysteries of both His Birth and Death to be included in the prophecy concerning Him, Jacob rightly proceeds to add to what has gone before:

"Judah is a lion's whelp. From a seed, my son, thou hast ascended, falling down thou hast slept as a lion and a lion's whelp: who shall arouse thee?"

He calls Him then a lion's whelp because of His being born of the royal tribe. For He was of the seed of (b) David according to the flesh. "From a shoot thou hast grown, my son," he says, because He was born of the seed and root of Jacob who foretold it, being primarily God the Word, and becoming secondarily the Son of man, through the dispensation He undertook for us. And the words, "Falling down thou didst sleep as a lion and a whelp," are significant of His Death, because Scripture is accustomed, - 113 - as is shewn in many other places, from the conviction of their kinship to call death a sleep. And "Who shall awake him?" is a wonderful reference to His Resurrection from the dead. For he who said, "Who will awake him?" (c) knew quite well that He would be awaked. And it is remarkable that he should add, "Who then shall do this and raise him up? "so as to impel us to ask who it was that raised up our Lord Who died on our behalf. For Who else was it, but the God of the Universe, His Father, to Whom the Saviour's Resurrection is solely to be attributed, according to the Scripture which says, "Whom the Father raised from the dead "?

Instead of, "Judah is a lion's whelp, from a shoot, my (d) son, thou hast ascended, falling down thou hast slept," Aquila says more plainly, "Judah is a lion's cub, from destruction, my son, hast thou ascended, bending thou hast laid down." And Symmachus says, "Judah is a lion's whelp, from capture, my son, hast thou ascended, having knelt thou hast been established.'' By which the Resurrection of the dead is clearly meant, and the escape of our Saviour from Hades, as from a trap for wild beasts. The kneeling and the being established instead of falling, signify death by the kneeling, and not being dragged away like the souls of other men by "being established." All this then was laid up before for Christ. But while this remained unfulfilled, the Jewish nation lasted, and their rulers and governors and they who were wise interpreters of the sacred oracles about the Christ stood out among them; but when (379) that which had been laid up for Judah had come, and He appeared on earth of Whom it was foretold that He should spring from the seed and shoot of the prophet himself, after falling down and sleeping, or "kneeling," according to Symmachus, He was established and raised up, laying His hands on the back of His unseen spiritual enemies; and His brothers and disciples first praising Him and wondering, afterwards were convinced that He was God, and worshipped Him as God; then were fulfilled the things laid up for Him, for because of this the answer was given, "Until there come the things laid up for him." For (b) from that day to this, the things laid up for Him being come, the rulers and governors of the Jewish nation have ceased, the rulers of the Gentiles have been placed at their - 114 - head, and the nations on the other hand knowing the Christ of God have made Him their Saviour and Hope. After all this there follows:

"Binding his foal to the vine, and the foal of the ass to the branch, he shall wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape. His eyes shall be cheering from wine, and his teeth white as milk." 

Here I should understand by the foal, the choir of apostles and disciples of our Saviour, and by the vine to which the foal is bound, His divine and invisible power, as He Himself taught when He said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman." And the branch of the said vine is the teaching of the Word of God, by which He bound the foal of the ass—that is to say, the new people of the Gentiles, (d) the offspring of His Apostles. And you may say that this was literally fulfilled, when, according to Matthew, the Lord said to His disciples:

"Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her; loose them and bring them to me."

And there is real food for wonder if one studies the account in the prediction of the prophet, that he should have foreseen by the Holy Spirit, that the subject of his prophecy would not come riding on chariots and horses like some distinguished man, but on an ass and a foal, like a poor common man of the people. And this raised another prophet's wonder, who said: (380) 

"Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion, behold thy King cometh unto thee meek, sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass."

And the words, "He will wash his garments in wine, and in the blood of the grape his girdle," will shew you surely how as in a secret way He suggests His mystic Passion, in which He washed His garment and vesture with the washing wherewith He is revealed to wash away the old stains of them that believe in Him. For with the wine which was indeed the symbol of His blood. He cleanses them that are baptized into His death, and believe on His - 115 - blood, of their old sins, washing them away and purifying (b) their old garments and vesture, so that they, ransomed by the precious blood of the divine spiritual grapes, and with the wine from this vine, "put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new man which is renewed into knowledge in the image of Him that created him."

The words, "His eyes are cheerful from wine, and his teeth white as milk," again I think secretly reveal the (c) mysteries of the new Covenant of our Saviour. "His eyes are cheerful from wine," seems to me to shew the gladness of the mystic wine which He gave to His disciples, when He said, "Take, drink; this is my blood that is shed for you for the remission of sins: this do in remembrance of me." And, "His teeth are white as milk," shew the brightness and purity of the sacramental food. For again, He gave Himself (d) the symbols of His divine dispensation to His disciples, when He bade them make the likeness of His own Body. For since He no more was to take pleasure in bloody sacrifices, or those ordained by Moses in the slaughter of animals of various kinds, and was to give them bread to use as the symbol of His Body, He taught the purity and brightness of such food by saying, "And his teeth are white as milk." This also another prophet has recorded, where he says, "Sacrifice and offering hast thou not required, but a body hast thou prepared for me."

But these matters should be examined at leisure, for they require deeper criticism and longer interpretation. For the present I must refuse to enter on that great task, in order that I may incorporate in this work the evidence that the time of the Saviour's Coming from above was known to the (381) ancient prophets, and clearly handed down in writing.