The City of God: Book 17

We have now come to understand God's promises made to Abraham: those fulfilled in Israel as his physical descendants, and those fulfilled in all the nations of the earth as his spiritual descendants. How these promises were carried out became clear as the City of God moved through history. Our previous book ended with the reign of David, so let us continue with that same reign here, as far as our purpose requires. The entire period stretching from Samuel's first prophecy to Israel's return from seventy years of captivity in Babylon, when the Temple was rebuilt as Jeremiah had foretold, is known as "the time of the Prophets." It is true that Noah, in whose day the great flood came, and various others who lived before Israel had kings, may rightly be called prophets on account of their holy and heavenly predictions. Abraham and Moses in particular bear that title more prominently than the rest. Yet the era in which Samuel began to prophesy came to be known specifically as "the times of the Prophets." Samuel first anointed Saul, and then, after God rejected Saul, he anointed David as king by God's direct command. From David's line all royal blood would descend for as long as that kingdom endured. If I were to recount everything the prophets foretold about Christ during all the years the City of God persisted in those times, I would never reach the end. There are two reasons for this. First, the Scriptures, though they often appear to be nothing more than a straightforward account of each king's deeds in his own era, reveal themselves, when read with the help of God's Spirit, to be at least as much prophecy of things to come as history of things past. Anyone with even a modest familiarity with these texts knows how painstaking and enormous a task it would be to work through each instance individually. Second, the prophecies concerning Christ and His kingdom, the City of God, are so numerous that the discussion they would generate could not be contained in a volume far larger than what my present purpose requires. For these reasons, I will keep this work as free as possible from unnecessary digressions, while leaving out nothing that genuinely serves our purpose.

In the previous book, we noted that God made two promises to Abraham. The first concerned the possession of the land of Canaan for his descendants, expressed in these words: "Go into the land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation," and so on. The second was far more significant, touching not the physical but the spiritual descendants: not Israel alone, but all the believing nations of the world, expressed in these words: "In you shall all nations of the earth be blessed," and so on. We confirmed this with many testimonies. Now, Abraham's physical descendants, the Israelites, were settled in the promised land. They had towns, cities, and even kings, and God's promises had been fulfilled among them in great measure, including not only those He had made through signs or spoken words to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but also those that Moses (who led them out of Egyptian bondage) and every prophet after him up to that point had delivered to them from God. The specific promise concerning the land of Canaan, that Israel would reign over it from the river of Egypt to the great Euphrates, had not been fulfilled by Joshua, that worthy leader who brought them into the promised land and divided it among the twelve tribes, nor by any of the judges who followed him. No further prophecies foretold its coming; it was simply awaited. David and his son Solomon ultimately fulfilled it, enlarging the kingdom to the full extent of what had been promised, for these two kings made all those surrounding nations their servants and tributaries. Abraham's physical descendants were thus so firmly established in the land of Canaan under these kings that no part of the earthly promise remained unfulfilled. The Hebrews, had they obeyed God's commands, could have maintained their dominion there without disturbance, in complete security and prosperity. But God, knowing they would not do this, used temporal afflictions to test the faithful remnant He had preserved among them, and through that remnant to give warning to all His servants in the nations that were to come afterward. Those future servants were to be warned by the example of Israel, since it was among them that He would fulfill His other promise by opening the New Testament through the death of Christ.

Just as the prophecies spoken to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others before the age of the kings had a double reference, so too did everything the prophets spoke afterward. Part of it concerned Abraham's physical descendants, and part concerned those in whom all nations of the earth are blessed through him, being made co-heirs with Christ in the glory and kingdom of heaven through the new covenant. So these prophecies concern, in part, the slave woman's offspring born into bondage, that is, the earthly Jerusalem, which serves God along with her children; and in part, the free City of God, the true Jerusalem, eternal and heavenly, whose children are pilgrims on earth walking in God's word. Some prophecies belong to both: literally to the slave woman's line, and figuratively to the free woman's. The prophets, in other words, write with three meanings: some passages concern the earthly Jerusalem, some the heavenly, and some concern both at once. Consider, for example, the prophet Nathan, who was sent to confront David about his sin and to foretell the consequences that would follow. No one doubts that these words concerned the temporal city, whether they were spoken publicly for the people's general benefit or privately for some individual's instruction in the present life. But when we read, "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer 31:31-33), this is without any doubt a prophecy of the heavenly Jerusalem, to whom God Himself is the reward, and in whose enjoyment of Him all good is made complete. Yet it belongs to both cities in this sense: the earthly Jerusalem was called God's city, and His house was promised to be built there, a promise that seemed to be fulfilled when Solomon erected that magnificent temple. These things were at once accounts of events on earth and figures pointing toward heavenly realities. This kind of prophecy, compounded of both meanings, carries great weight in the canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament, and it rightly challenges readers to search out how things spoken of Abraham's physical descendants are fulfilled allegorically in his descendants by faith. Some have gone so far as to hold that nothing in Scripture was foretold and fulfilled, or fulfilled without being foretold, that did not point to something belonging to the City of God and to be applied to its holy pilgrims on earth. But if that is true, we would be binding the prophets' words to only two meanings and cutting out the third, and not only the prophets but the entire Old Testament. For there would then be nothing in Scripture that belongs specifically to the earthly Jerusalem, if everything spoken or fulfilled concerning it must point further to the heavenly Jerusalem, leaving the prophets with only two modes: either speaking of the heavenly Jerusalem, or speaking of both at once. I consider it a serious error when some readers find nothing in Scripture beyond the bare historical record; but I consider it equally presumptuous when others insist on reading everything allegorically. I therefore maintain that Scripture carries three meanings, not merely two. That said, I do not fault those who draw a sound spiritual sense from whatever they read, provided they do not contradict the truth of the historical account. But what faithful person would not say that interpretations which touch neither on God nor on humanity are empty? And who would not agree that the passages we have been discussing deserve a spiritual reading as well, or should at least be left to those who are capable of providing one?

As the City of God advanced through the era of the kings, when Saul was rejected and David chosen in his place to hold the kingdom of Jerusalem for himself and his descendants, we see something we cannot pass over: a foreshadowing of the future change between the two covenants, old and new, in which the old kingdom and priesthood would be transformed by that new and eternal King and Priest, Christ Jesus. When Eli was rejected, Samuel became both priest and judge of God; when Saul was rejected, David was chosen as king. These two transitions, taken together, signify the very change I am describing. And Samuel's mother, Hannah, who was barren at first and then made fruitful by God's grace, seems to prophesy nothing less than this in her song of rejoicing. After raising her son, she dedicated him to God as she had vowed, saying: "*My heart rejoiceth in the Lord, my horn is exalted in the Lord: my mouth is enlarged on mine enemies, because I rejoiced in Thy salvation. There is none holy as the Lord: there is no God like our God, nor any holy besides Thee. Speak no more presumptuously, let no arrogancy come out of your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by Him are enterprises established: the bow of the mighty men hath He broken, and girded the weak with strength, they that were full are hired forth for hunger: and the hungry have passed the land: for the barren hath borne seven, and she that had many children is enfeebled.

"The Lord kills and gives life; He brings down to the grave and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; He humbles and He exalts. He raises the poor out of the dust and lifts the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes and make them inherit the seat of glory. He gives vows to those who vow to Him, and blesses the years of the just; for in his own strength no man will be strong. The Lord, the holy Lord, will weaken His adversaries. Let not the wise boast of his wisdom, nor the rich in his riches, nor the mighty in his might, but let their glory be to know the Lord and to execute His judgment and justice on the earth. The Lord has thundered from heaven; He will judge the ends of the world, and will give power to our kings, and will exalt the horn of His anointed." Are these the words of a woman simply giving thanks for a son? Are men's minds so darkened that they cannot see a greater spirit at work here than anything merely human? And if anyone is moved by the events that were beginning to unfold in this earthly story, does he not recognize and acknowledge the very true religion and City of God, whose King and Founder is Jesus Christ, in the words of His Hannah, whose name is fittingly interpreted as "His grace"? And was it not the spirit of grace (from which the proud turn away and fall, and to which the humble cling and are lifted up, as this hymn declares) that spoke those prophetic words? If anyone insists that the woman was not prophesying but simply praising God's goodness for answering her prayer with a son, then what are we to make of this: "The bow of the mighty has He broken, and girded the weak with strength; they that were full are hired out for hunger, and the hungry have passed over the land; for the barren has borne seven, and she that had many children is enfeebled"? Had she, being barren, borne seven? She had borne only one when she said this, and she did not go on to bear seven afterward, or even six (with Samuel making up the seventh), but only three sons and two daughters. Again, since there was no king in Israel at that time, what was the point of her conclusion: "He will give power to our kings, and exalt the horn of His anointed"? Was she not prophesying in this? Let the Church of God, therefore, that fruitful Mother, that gracious City of that great King, boldly say what this prophetic mother spoke on her behalf so long before: "My heart rejoices in the Lord and my horn is exalted in the Lord." True joy, and equally true exaltation, both found in the Lord and not in herself. "My mouth is enlarged over my enemies," because God's word is not confined to narrow straits, nor to preachers who are merely told what to say. "I have rejoiced," she says, "in Thy salvation." That salvation was Christ Jesus, whom old Simeon in the Gospel held in his arms and recognized in His infancy, saying, "Lord, now let Thy servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen Thy salvation." Let the Church then say, "I have rejoiced in Thy salvation: there is none holy as the Lord is; no God like our God, for He is holy and makes holy, just Himself and justifying others; none is holy besides Thee, for none is holy except from Thee." What follows is equally striking: "Talk no more so exceeding proudly, let not arrogance come out of your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by Him are all enterprises established." No one knows what He knows; for the man who thinks himself to be something deceives himself and is nothing at all. This is directed against the presumptuous Babylonian enemies of God's City, who glory in themselves rather than in God, and equally against the carnal Israelites who, as the apostle says, being ignorant of the righteousness of God (that is, the righteousness that He, being the only righteous and justifying One, gives to man), "and going about to establish their own righteousness" (as though they had achieved it themselves and received none of it from Him) "submitted not themselves unto the righteousness of God," but thought proudly to please God by a righteousness of their own, one that owed nothing to Him who is the God of knowledge, the Arbiter of consciences, and the Discerner of all human thoughts, which, being empty, do not derive from Him. So they fell into reprobation. And by Him, says the hymn, "are all enterprises established," which are nothing other than the suppression of the proud and the advancement of the humble. These are God's purposes, as what follows makes clear: "The bow of the mighty has He broken, and girded the weak with strength" ; that is, He has broken their proud conviction that they could sanctify themselves without His inspiration, and He girds with strength those who say in their hearts, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak." "They that were full are hired out for hunger" ; that is, they are brought lower than they were, for in their very bread, meaning the Divine words that Israel alone possessed among all the nations, they taste nothing but the flavor of earth. But the hungry nations that had not the law, coming to those holy words through the New Testament, passed over the earth and found nourishment, because they tasted a heavenly savor in those holy doctrines and not the flavor of earth. And this is the reason that follows: "For the barren has brought forth seven, and she that had many children is enfeebled." Here the whole prophecy is opened to those who understand the significance of the number seven for the Jews: it is the number of the Church's perfection, and for that reason the Apostle John writes to the seven churches, signifying in that number the fullness of the one Church. The same figure appears in Solomon: "Wisdom has built her a house and hewn out her seven pillars" (Prov 9:1). For the City of God was barren among all the nations until she obtained that fruit by which we now see her a fruitful mother, while the earthly Jerusalem, which had so many sons, we now behold weak and enfeebled. All the freewoman's sons were her virtues, but now that she has only the letter without the spirit, she has lost her strength and become weak. "The Lord kills and the Lord gives life": He kills her that had so many sons; He gives life to her whose womb was dead before, and has made her bring forth seven. Though properly speaking, His giving of life falls on those whom He has killed, for she repeats it in other words: "He brings down to the grave and raises up." Those to whom the Apostle says, "If ye be dead with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God," are killed unto salvation by the Lord, to which end he adds, "Set your affections on things above, and not on things that are on the earth. For ye are dead" ; behold how healthfully the Lord kills. And then it follows: "And your life is hid with Christ in God." Behold how God gives life. But does He bring them to the grave and back again? Yes, without doubt, all of us who are faithful see that fulfilled in our Head, with whom our life is hidden in God. For He who spared not His own Son but gave Him for us all killed Him in this manner, and in raising Him from death gave Him life again. And because we hear Him say in the Psalm, "Thou shalt not leave My soul in the grave" (Ps 16:10), He brought Him to the grave and back again. By His poverty we are enriched, for the Lord makes poor and enriches, which is nothing other than the Lord humbling the proud and exalting the humble. For that passage, "God resisteth the proud and giveth grace unto the humble," is the text on which all this prophetess's words depend. What follows, "He raises the poor out of the dust and lifts the beggar from the dunghill," is most fittingly understood of Him who became poor for us, though He was rich, so that by His poverty (as I said) He might enrich us. For He raised Him from the earth so swiftly that His flesh saw no corruption. Nor is the next line, "And lifts the beggar from the dunghill," meant of anyone but Him, for the beggar and the poor man are one and the same. The dunghill from which He was lifted is the persecuting multitude of Jews, among whom the Apostle had once been numbered, but afterward, as he says, "That which was advantage to me I counted loss for Christ's sake; no, not only loss, but I count them all dung, that I might win Christ" (Phil 3:7-8). So this poor man was raised above all the rich men of the earth, and this beggar was lifted from the dunghill to sit with the princes of the people, to whom He says, "Ye shall sit on twelve thrones," and "to make them inherit the seat of glory." For those mighty ones had said, "Behold, we have left all and followed Thee" ; this was the vow those mighty ones had vowed. But where did they get this vow except from Him who gives vows to those who vow? Otherwise they would be among those mighty ones whose bow He has broken. "He gives vows," she says, "to those who vow." For no one can vow anything to God without first receiving it from God. It follows: "and blesses the years of the just," meaning that they will be with Him eternally, of whom it is written, "Thy years shall never fail" (Ps 102:27), for they are fixed. Here, years either pass or perish, for they are gone before they have fully come, always carrying their end within them. Of these two things, He gives vows to those who vow and blesses the years of the just: the one we perform and the other we receive, but what we receive we always receive by God's giving, and what we perform we cannot do without God's help, because in his own strength no man will be strong. The Lord will weaken His adversaries, namely those who resist and envy His servants in fulfilling their vows. The Greek may also read this as His own adversaries, for whoever is our adversary when we are God's children is His adversary as well, and is overcome by us, but not by our own strength, for in his own strength no man will be strong. The Lord, the holy Lord, will weaken His adversaries and cause them to be conquered by those whom He, the most Holy, has also made holy. Therefore, let not the wise glory in his wisdom, the mighty in his might, nor the rich in his riches, but let their glory be to know God and to execute His judgments and justice on earth. A man has made genuine progress in the knowledge of God when he knows that God must give him the very means by which he comes to know God. "For what do you have," says the Apostle, "that you did not receive?" (1 Cor 4:7) ; that is, what do you possess of your own to boast about? Now, the one who does right executes judgment and justice, and the one who lives in God's obedience fulfills what Scripture says: "the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and a good conscience and faith unfeigned" (1 Tim 1:5). But this charity, as the Apostle John says, "is of God" (1 John 4:7). To do judgment and justice, then, is of God. But why add "on the earth"? Could it not simply have said "to do judgment and justice"? The command would then apply equally to people everywhere. But lest anyone suppose that after this life there would be another opportunity elsewhere to do justice and judgment, and so evade the great Judgment by failing to do them in the flesh, the phrase "on the earth" is added to confine those acts within this life. For each person carries his earth about with him in this world, and when he dies, bequeaths it to the great earth, which must return it to him at the Resurrection. In this earth, therefore, in this fleshly body, we must do justice and judgment, for our own benefit hereafter, when everyone will receive according to his works done in the body, good or bad. "In the body" means during the time the body was alive, for if a man blasphemes in his heart though he does no harm with any bodily member, he will not be innocent, because even though he did not act with his body, he did it during the time he was in the body. And so we may understand that verse of the Psalm: "The Lord, our King, has wrought salvation in the midst of the earth before the beginning of the world" (Ps 74:12) ; that is, the Lord Jesus our God, before the beginning (for He made the beginning), has wrought salvation in the midst of the earth, namely when the Word became flesh and dwelt bodily among us. But to proceed. Having shown how each person ought to glory, not in himself but in God, in view of the reward that follows the great judgment, Hannah continues: "The Lord went up into heaven and has thundered; He will judge the ends of the worlds, and will give power to our kings, and exalt the horn of His anointed." This is the plain faith of a Christian. "He ascended into heaven, and from there He will come to judge the living and the dead," for who has ascended, says the Apostle, "but He who first descended into the lower parts of the earth?" (Eph 4:9) He thundered in the clouds, which He filled with His Holy Spirit at His ascension, and from those clouds He threatened Jerusalem, that ungrateful vine, with the withholding of rain. Now it is said, "He will judge the ends of the world," meaning the ends of men, for He will judge no actual portion of the earth but only all the people on it, and He does not judge them as they are changed into good or bad in the meantime, but as each person ends, so will he be judged. Hence Scripture says, "He that endures to the end shall be saved" (Matt 10:22); therefore the one who does justice in the midst of the earth will not be condemned when the ends of the earth are judged. "And will give power to our kings" ; that is, by not condemning them in judgment, He gives them power, because they rule over the flesh like kings and conquer the world in Him who shed His blood for them. "And will exalt the horn of His anointed." How does Christ the Anointed exalt the horn of His anointed? All those sayings, "The Lord went up to heaven," and so on, refer to Christ, and so does this final one about exalting the horn of His anointed. "Christ therefore will exalt the horn of His anointed," that is, of every faithful servant of His, as she said at the beginning: "My horn is exalted in the Lord," for all who have received the anointing of His grace may rightly be called His anointed, and all of them together with their Head make but one Anointed. This was the prophecy of Hannah, holy Samuel's mother, in whom the change of the ancient priesthood was prefigured and is now fulfilled, when the woman with many sons was enfeebled so that the barren one who brought forth seven might receive the new priesthood in Christ.

But this was spoken more plainly to Eli the priest by a man of God whose name we are not told, though his ministry proved him a prophet. The text reads: "There came a man of God to Eli, and said to him: Thus says the Lord, did I not plainly appear to the house of your father when they were in Egypt in Pharaoh's house? And I chose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be My priest, to offer at My altar, to burn incense, and to wear an ephod, and I gave your father's house all the burnt-offerings of the house of Israel to eat. Why then have you looked with scorn on My sacrifices and offerings, and honored your children above Me, blessing the first of all the offerings of Israel in My sight? Therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel: I said your house and your father's house should walk before Me forever; but now the Lord says: those who honor Me, I will honor, and those who despise Me, I will despise. Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your descendants and your father's descendants, so that there shall not be an old man in your house. I will destroy every one of yours from My altar, so that your eyes may fail and your heart faint, and all the remainder of your house shall fall by the sword. And this shall be a sign to you, that which shall befall your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas: in one day they shall both die. And I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who shall do according to My heart; I will build him a sure house, and he shall walk before My Christ forever. And the remnant of your house shall come and bow down to him for a halfpenny of silver, saying, Put me, I pray you, in some office about the priesthood, that I may eat a morsel of bread."

We cannot say that this prophecy, which plainly announces the change of the old priesthood, was fulfilled in Samuel. Although Samuel belonged to the tribe that served the altar, he was not of Aaron's sons, to whose descendants God had bound the priesthood. In this way, the change that Christ was to accomplish was foreshadowed: it belonged to the Old Testament in its literal sense, but figuratively to the New, and is now fulfilled both in the event of the prophecy and in the history that records these words of the prophet to Eli. Afterward there were still priests of Aaron's line, such as Abiathar and Zadok in David's reign, and many others, because the time for the change to be effected by Christ had not yet come. But who, looking with the eye of faith, can fail to see that all is now fulfilled? The Jews have no tabernacle, no temple, no altar, and no priest of Aaron's descent, as God had commanded them to have. Just as this prophet said: "Thou and thy father's house shall walk before me for ever." Yet that is no longer the case; "for them that honor Me, will I honor," and so on. By "his father's house" the prophet means not Eli's immediate ancestors, but Aaron's line, from whom they all descended, as these words make plain: "Did I not appear to thy father's house in Egypt," and so on. Who was the father in Egyptian bondage, chosen as priest after their liberation, if not Aaron? Of his line, then, it was said that there would be no more priests, as we now see has come to pass. Let faith be vigilant, and it will discern and grasp the truth, whether it wishes to or not. "Behold," says he, "the days do come, that I will cast out thy seed," and so on. It is true: those days have come. Aaron's line has no priest now, and his entire offspring watches the sacrifice of Christians offered gloriously throughout the whole world, with failing eyes and fainting hearts. But what follows, "All the remainder of thine house shall fall by the sword," and so on, belongs properly to the house of Eli. The death of his sons was a sign of the change of Aaron's priesthood, signifying the death of the priesthood itself rather than merely the death of those men. But the next passage points to the priest whom Samuel, Eli's successor, prefigured: Christ, the priest of the New Testament. "I will take Me up a faithful priest, that shall do all according to Mine heart: I will build him a sure house," and so on. (This house is the heavenly Jerusalem.) "And he shall walk before mine anointed for ever": that is, he shall live among them, just as God had said before of the house of Aaron, "I said, thou and thine house shall walk before Me for ever." "Behold Mine anointed" refers to His anointed flesh, not His anointed priest, for that is Christ Himself, the Saviour. So it is His house and people who shall walk before Him; this may also refer to the passage of the faithful from death to life at the end of their mortality and at the last judgment. When the text says, "He shall do all according to Mine heart," we should not imagine that God literally has a heart, since He is the heart's maker; it is a figurative way of speaking, as Scripture speaks of other members: "The hand of the Lord," "the finger of God," and so on. And lest we suppose that in this respect man bears the image of God, Scripture also gives Him wings, which man does not have: "Hide me under the shadow of thy wings," teaching us that these expressions bear no literal but only a figurative relation to that ineffable essence. Let us continue. "And the remains of thine house shall come and bow down unto him," and so on. This refers not to the house of Eli but to Aaron's line, of which some remained until the coming of Christ, and indeed remain to this day. The earlier statement, "The remainder of thy house shall fall by the sword," referred to Eli's lineage. How can both passages be true, that some would come to bow down and yet the sword would devour all, unless they refer to two different groups: the first to Aaron's line, and the second to Eli's? If they belong to those predestined remnants of whom the prophet says, "The remnant shall be saved," and the apostle, "At this present time is there a remnant through the election of grace," which may well be understood as the remnant the man of God speaks of here, then they surely believed in Christ, as many of their nation (the Jews) did in the apostle's time, and as some (though very few) do even now, fulfilling what the prophet adds: "And bow down to him, for an halfpenny of silver." To whom do they bow but to the great Priest who is eternal God? For in the time of Aaron's priesthood the people did not come to the temple to worship or bow down to the priest. But what does "for an halfpenny of silver" mean? It refers simply to the brevity of the word of faith, as the apostle says, "The Lord will make a short account in the earth." That silver stands for the word is shown by the psalmist, who says, "The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver, tried in the fire." What then are the words of one who bows before this God's priest, this Priest who is God? "Place me in some office about the priesthood, that I may eat a morsel of bread. I will not have my father's honours, they are nothing, but place me anywhere in the priesthood. I would gladly be a doorkeeper, or anything in your service and among your people." Here "priesthood" stands for the people, for whom Christ the Mediator is the High Priest: the people whom the apostle called a holy nation and a royal priesthood. Some manuscripts read "sacrifice" in place of "priesthood" in the earlier passage; it makes no difference, since both refer to the Christian flock. Of this flock St. Paul says, "We are one bread, being many, and one body," and again, "Give up your bodies a living sacrifice." The addition, "That I may eat a morsel of bread," is therefore a direct expression of the sacrifice, of which the Priest Himself says, "The bread which I will give is My flesh," and so on. This is the sacrifice not after the order of Aaron, but of Melchizedek: let the reader understand. So these words, "Place me in some office about thy priesthood that I may eat a morsel of bread," are a direct and concise confession of the faith. This is the halfpenny of silver, because it is brief, and it is God's word, dwelling in the house of the believer. For having said earlier that He had given Aaron's house the food of the offering of the house of Israel (which were the sacrifices of the Jews in the Old Testament), he therefore adds "the eating of bread" in this conclusion, which is the sacrifice of the New Testament.

Although these things were as deeply prophesied then as they are plainly fulfilled now, some may raise this doubt: how can we expect all the events foretold to come to pass, when what the Lord said, "Your house, and your father's house, shall walk before Me forever," can no longer be fulfilled in any way, since the priesthood has been entirely abolished and there is no reason to expect it will be restored, given that eternity was promised to the priesthood that succeeded it? Whoever raises this objection fails to understand that Aaron's priesthood was only a type and shadow of the future priesthood that would follow, and therefore the eternity promised to the shadow belonged only to the substance it pointed toward. The change was itself prophesied precisely to prevent anyone from assuming the shadow would last forever. In the same way, the kingdom of Saul, the rejected king, was a shadow of the eternal kingdom to come, and the oil with which he was anointed carried a great and solemn mystery. David honored that mystery so deeply that when he was hiding in the dark cave where Saul entered to relieve himself, David was afraid, and only cut off a piece of Saul's robe, keeping it as proof of how groundlessly Saul suspected and pursued him. He was troubled even by doing that much, fearing he had somehow violated the mystery of Saul's anointing. "He was stricken in heart," says the Scripture, "for cutting off the skirt of his raiment." His men urged him to seize the moment: Saul was now in his hands, and this was his chance to strike. "The Lord keep me," said David, "from doing such a thing to my master, the Lord's anointed: to lay my hands on him, for he is the anointed of the Lord." So David honored this figure, not for its own sake, but for what it represented.

The words Samuel spoke to Saul, "The Lord had prepared thee a kingdom for ever in Israel, but now it shall not remain unto thee, because thou hast not obeyed His voice: therefore will He seek Him a man according to His heart," and so on, should not be read as though Saul himself was meant to reign forever, and that his sin caused God to break a promise afterward. God already knew Saul would sin when He prepared that kingdom for him. Rather, that kingdom was prepared as a figure pointing toward the kingdom that will endure forever. This is why He adds, "It shall not remain unto thee": it does remain, and always will, in what it signifies, but not in Saul's line, since neither he nor his descendants were ever meant to reign there eternally.

"The Lord will seek him a man," He says, meaning either David himself, or the Mediator prefigured in the anointing of David and his descendants. The phrase "He will seek" does not imply that God is uncertain where to look. Rather, He speaks as one seeking our understanding, since we were all known to God the Father and to His Son, the seeker of the lost sheep, and were chosen in Him before the world began. "He will seek" means, in effect, that He will reveal to the world what He already knows. This parallels how Latin uses *acquiro* (to attain) with a preposition, and how *quæro* can carry the same sense, as seen in *quæstus* (gains) as its noun form.

Saul fell again through disobedience, and Samuel told him once more, this time from God directly: "You have rejected the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you, so that you will no longer be king over Israel." Saul confessed his sin, asked for pardon, and begged Samuel to go with him to entreat the Lord. "Not I," said Samuel. "You have cast off the Lord," and so on. Samuel then turned to leave, and Saul grabbed him by the hem of his coat, tearing it. Samuel said: "The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to your neighbor, who is better than you. Israel will be divided in two and will never again be united, and He is not a man that He should repent," and so on. Now the man to whom these words were spoken ruled Israel for forty years, just as long as David, and yet he was told this at the very beginning of his reign. The purpose was to show that none of his descendants would reign after him, and to turn our attention to the line of David, from which Christ our Mediator took His humanity. The original text does not read in this passage as the Latin copies do, "The Lord shall tear the kingdom of Israel from you this day," but rather, "The Lord has torn the kingdom from Israel out of your hand," meaning from Israel itself, so that this man served as a figure of Israel, which was destined to lose the kingdom as soon as Christ came with the New Testament to rule spiritually rather than carnally.

The words "and has given it to your neighbor" point to a kinship with Israel in the flesh, and therefore with Saul as well. The phrase that follows, "who is better than you," implies no goodness in Saul or Israel, but rather what the Psalmist says: "Until I make your enemies your footstool," of which Israel the persecutor (from whom Christ tore the kingdom) was one. And yet there was also an Israel of wheat among the Israel of chaff: the apostles came from there, as did Stephen and many other martyrs, and from their seed grew so many churches as Paul counts, all glorifying God at his conversion. The words that follow, "Israel will be divided in two," speak precisely to this point: into Israel that is Christ's friend and Israel that is Christ's enemy, into Israel the free woman and Israel the slave. These two were first united, Abraham living with his servant woman until his wife's barrenness gave way to fruitfulness, at which point she cried out, "Cast out the slave woman and her son." We know, of course, that because of Solomon's sin, Israel divided into two kingdoms during the reign of his son Rehoboam, each with its own king, until the Chaldeans came and conquered and destroyed them all. But what did that have to do with Saul? Such a threat would have made more sense directed at David, Solomon's father. And in our own time, the Hebrews are not divided but scattered across the entire world, persisting in their error. The division God threatened against Saul, who was a figure of this people, was a foreshadowing of an eternal and irrevocable separation, because the text immediately continues: "And they will never again be united, and He will not change, nor will He repent, for He is not as a man that He should repent, who threatens and does not follow through." What God once resolves cannot be undone.

When we read that "God repented," it signals a change in outward circumstances within His eternal foreknowledge. Likewise, when we read that "He did not repent," it signals that things remain fixed as they are. Here, then, we see the division of Israel declared perpetual and irrevocable, grounded in this prophecy. Those who came from Israel to Christ, or went the other way, did so by God's providence, even if human reasoning cannot grasp it. Their separation is spiritual as well as physical. Those Israelites who stand with Christ to the end will never share in the fate of those who remained with His enemies to the end, but will be, as the text says, "eternally separate." The Old Testament of Sinai, which produces only bondage, will do them no good, nor anyone else, except insofar as it confirms the New. Otherwise, as long as Moses is read, the veil remains drawn over their hearts. When they come to Christ, it is removed. The thoughts of those who pass from the old to the new are changed and improved in the crossing, and the happiness they seek becomes spiritual rather than carnal.

This is why the great prophet Samuel, before he anointed Saul, cried out to the Lord for Israel and was heard. When he offered the burnt offering (as the Philistines advanced against Israel, and the Lord thundered against them and scattered them so that they fell before Israel), he took a stone and placed it between the two Mizpehs, the Old and the New, and named the place Ebenezer, meaning "the stone of help," saying, "To this point the Lord has helped us." That stone represents the mediation of our Savior, through which we pass from the Old Mizpeh to the New, from the hope of a carnal kingdom in all its prosperity to the expectation of a crown of spiritual glory as the New Testament teaches us. And since that is the sum and scope of everything: "even to this point God has helped us."

Now I must relate God's promises to David, Saul's successor (a change that prefigured the great spiritual transformation to which all Scripture points), because it bears directly on our purpose. David, having enjoyed continual good fortune, intended to build God a house: namely, that famous and celebrated temple which Solomon built after him. While this plan was forming in his mind, Nathan came to him from God to deliver God's will. After God had said that David should not build Him a house, and that He had never commanded Israel throughout all that time to build Him any house of cedar, He continued: "Tell My servant David, that thus saith the Lord: I took thee from the sheepcote, to make thee a ruler over My people Israel: and I was with thee wheresoever thou walked, and have destroyed all thine enemies out of thy sight, and given thee the glory of a mighty man upon earth. I will appoint a place for My people Israel, and will plant it, it shall dwell by itself, and move no more, nor shall wicked people trouble them any more, as they have done, since I appointed Judges over Israel. And I will give thee rest from all thine enemies, and the Lord telleth thee also that thou shalt make Him an house. It shall be when thy days be fulfilled, and thou sleepest with thy fathers, then will I set up thy seed after thee, even he that shall proceed from thy body, and will prepare his kingdom. He shall build an house for My name, and I will direct his throne forever. I will be his father, and he shall be My son: if he sin I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the plagues of the children of men. But My mercy will I not remove from him, as I removed it from Saul, whom I have rejected. His house shall be faithful, and his kingdom eternal before Me: his throne shall be established for ever."

Anyone who believes this great promise was fulfilled in Solomon is badly mistaken. Notice how the text reads: "He shall build Me an house." Solomon did exactly that, and this is the part such a person focuses on. But what about "His house shall be faithful, and his kingdom eternal before Me"? That part he ignores entirely. Well, let him look at Solomon's household and see the crowds of foreign, idol-worshipping women dragging this supposedly wisest of kings down into the same ruin as themselves. Does he see it? Then let him neither call God's promises false nor suppose that God was ignorant of Solomon's future fall into idolatry. We need never be uncertain here, nor foolishly follow the reckless Jews in searching for someone else in whom these promises might be fulfilled. We would never have seen them fulfilled except in our Christ, the son of David in the flesh. The Jews know perfectly well that the son these promises describe was not Solomon, but (such is the astonishing blindness of their hearts!) they still stand waiting for another to come, when He has already come in the most open and unmistakable way.

There was indeed some foreshadowing of things to come in Solomon: in his building of the temple, in the praiseworthy peace he enjoyed at the beginning of his reign, and in his very name (for Solomon means "peacemaker"). But he was only a shadow in his own person, not a true representation of Christ our Saviour. For this reason, certain things written about him actually concern our Saviour, with Scripture weaving the prophecy of the one into the history of the other. Beyond the books of Kings and Chronicles, which cover his reign, the seventy-second Psalm bears his name as its title. Yet that Psalm contains so many things that are impossible to apply to Solomon and so plainly true of Christ that it is clear he was only the figure, not the reality itself. Solomon's kingdom had well-known boundaries, yet (to leave aside everything else) that Psalm declares: "He shall reign from sea to sea, and from the river to the land's end." This is most perfectly true of Christ, who began His reign at the river when John baptized and proclaimed Him, and when His disciples acknowledged Him, calling Him Lord and Master.

Solomon, unlike any other king of Israel, did not begin his reign during his father's lifetime, and this was precisely to show that he was not the true subject of the prophecy that said: "It shall be when thy days are fulfilled, and that thou sleepest with thy fathers, then will I set up thy seed after thee, and prepare His kingdom." Why, then, should we lay all of this on Solomon simply because it says "He shall build Me an house," rather than understanding that it is the other Peacemaker being spoken of: one who is not promised to be raised up before David's death (as Solomon was) but after, exactly as the preceding text states? And though Christ came long after David, He came after David's death just as He was promised, and He built God the Father a house: not of timber and stone, but of living souls, in whom we all rejoice. For it is to this house of God, that is, His faithful people, that Paul says, "The temple of God is holy, which temple are ye."

The eighty-ninth Psalm, titled "An instruction for himself by Ethan the Israelite," recounts God's promises to David, and some of these closely resemble those of Ethan. Among them are these: "I have sworn to David My servant, thy seed will I establish for ever;" and this: "Then spakest Thou in a vision unto Thy sons, and said, I have laid help upon the Mighty One: I have exalted one chosen out of My people. I have found David My servant, with My holy oil have I anointed him. For Mine hand shall help him, and Mine arm shall strengthen him. The enemy shall not oppress him, nor shall the wicked hurt him. But I will destroy his foes before his face, and plague them that hate him. My truth and mercy shall be with him, and in My name shall his horn be exalted. I will set his dominion in the sea, and his right hand in the floods, he shall call upon Me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. I will make him My first-born, higher than the kings of the earth: My mercy will I keep unto him forever, and My covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven." All of this refers to Christ under the figure of David, because Christ took on human nature from a virgin of David's line. What follows then concerns David's sons, just as Ethan's words properly concerned Solomon: "If they sin, I will chasten them with the rods of men, and with the plagues of the sons of men" (that is, corrective afflictions), "but My mercy will I not utterly remove from him." This connects to the command, "Touch not Mine anointed, hurt them not." And here in this Psalm, speaking of the mystical David, the same thought appears: "But if his children forsake My law, and walk not in My righteousness, etc., their transgression will I visit with rods and their sins with scourges: yet My mercy will I not take from him." Notice that He says "from him," not "from them," even though He is speaking of His sons. This distinction matters: no sins worthy of God's correction could be found in Christ, the Head of the Church, whether with or without the reservation of mercy. Such sins belong to His members, that is, His people. This is why the passage in Kings calls them His son, and this Psalm calls them His children, so that we might understand that everything said about His body has some bearing on Him personally. It is the same principle at work when, as Saul was persecuting His faithful members, Christ called down from heaven, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" The Psalm then continues: "My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing I have spoken, I have sworn only by My holiness: that if I fail David," meaning "I will not fail David." This is the Scripture's customary way of expressing that He will not fail. He adds: "His seed shall remain for ever, and his throne shall be as the sun before Me: perfect as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven."

Now, after the confirmation of all these promises, the Psalm adds a warning against assuming they would be fulfilled in Solomon: "Thou hast cast him off, and brought him to nothing." And indeed, that is precisely what happened to Solomon's kingdom in the generations that followed, right down to the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem, the seat of that royalty, and the burning of the temple Solomon had built. Yet lest anyone think God had failed to keep His word, the Psalm continues: "Thou hast delayed Thine anointed." This was not Solomon, nor even David, who was meant by the Lord's anointed being delayed. Although all the kings consecrated with that mystical oil were called "anointed" from Saul onward (for David himself uses that title of him), there was only one True Anointed whom all these kings prefigured. He was long delayed, in the eyes of those who looked for Him in David or Solomon, yet He was being prepared to come at the time God had appointed. What became of the earthly Jerusalem in the meantime, where He was expected to reign, the Psalmist makes plain: "Thou hast overthrown Thy servant's covenant, profaned his crown, and cast it on the ground. Thou hast pulled down his walls, and laid his fortresses in ruin. All passengers do spoil him, he is the scorn of his neighbours: Thou hast set up the right hand of his foes, and made his enemies glad. Thou hast turned the edge of his sword, and given him no help in battle. Thou hast dispersed his dignity, and cast his throne to the ground. Thou hast shortened the days of his reign, and covered him with shame." All of this fell upon Jerusalem the bondwoman, in which, nonetheless, some sons of the freewoman reigned during the appointed time, hoping for the heavenly Jerusalem in true faith, being the true children of that city in Christ. As for how all these things came upon that kingdom, the historical record makes it clear to anyone willing to read it.

After this, the prophet begins to pray, though this prayer is also a prophecy: "Lord, how long wilt Thou turn away? (Thy face) for ever?" As it is said elsewhere: "How long wilt Thou turn thy face from me." Some manuscripts read this in the passive voice, but it can also be understood in the active voice as referring to God's mercy: "for ever," meaning unto the end, which is the last times, when that nation will believe in Christ. Before that time, it must suffer all those mysteries the prophet mourns. So the text continues: "Shall Thy wrath burn like fire? O remember of what I am; my substance." Nothing fits here more naturally than Jesus, the substance of this people, for it was from them that He took His flesh.

Did God create the children of men in vain? Unless there were one Son of Man, of the substance of Israel, through whom a multitude would be saved, they were all created in vain indeed. For now all the seed of humanity has fallen, through the first man, from truth into vanity: "Man is like to vanity," says the Psalm, "his days vanish like a shadow." Yet God did not create all people in vain, for He frees many from vanity through Christ the Mediator, His Son. Those He knows will not be freed, He still puts to use: for the benefit of those who are free, and for the greater distinction between the two cities. In this way, there is good reason for the creation of every rational creature.

It follows, "What man liveth that shall not see death? or shall free his soul from the hand of hell?" None but Christ Jesus, the substance of Israel and the son of David, of whom the apostle says: "Who being raised from death, dieth no more: death hath no more dominion over Him." For He lives and will not see death, but freed His soul from the hand of hell, because He descended into the lower parts to release some from the bonds of sin, by that power the Evangelist records in His own words: "I have power to lay down My life and I have power to take it up again."

The rest of this Psalm reads: "Lord, where are Thy old loving-kindnesses which Thou swarest unto David in Thy truth? Lord, remember the rebuke of Thy servants (by many nations that have scorned them), because they have reproached the footsteps of Thine Anointed." Whether this refers to the Israelites who awaited the promise made to David, or to the spiritual Israelites, the Christians, is a question worth settling. These words were written or spoken in the time of Ethan, whose name the Psalm's title bears, which was also during David's reign. This means the words "Lord, where are Thine old mercies which Thou swarest unto David in Thy truth" could not have been spoken in their plain sense at that time; rather, the prophet was speaking as a type of something far in the future, namely a moment when the era of David, in which those mercies were promised, would seem ancient. A further interpretation is also possible: that many nations, in persecuting the Christians, threw the passion of Christ in their faces, calling it His change, that is, His transformation into immortality through death.

Christ's change in this respect may also serve as a rebuke to the Israelites, because they expected Him yet the nations were the ones who received Him. The believers of the New Testament reproach those who remain in the Old for this very reason, so that the prophet may say, "Lord, remember the reproach of Thy servants," because in time (God not forgetting to show them mercy) they too will believe. But I find the former meaning more convincing. The words "Lord, remember the reproach of Thy servants," and so on, cannot be spoken by the enemies of Christ, to whom it is a source of shame that Christ left them and came to the nations (such Jews are no servants of God). They can only be spoken by those who, having endured great persecution for the name of Christ, can call to mind that exalted kingdom promised to David's seed, and say in longing for it, knocking, seeking, and asking: "Where are Thine old loving-kindnesses, Lord, which Thou swaredst unto Thy servant David? Lord, remember," and so on, because Thine enemies have counted Thy change a destruction, and have thrown it in the face of Thine anointed.

And what does "Lord, remember" mean, if not "Lord, have mercy, and for my patient endurance, grant me that exalted promise You swore to David in Your truth"? If we read this as the voice of the Jewish people, it must refer to those servants of God who endured captivity in Babylon before Christ's coming, and who understood what the change Christ would bring actually meant: not the earthly, passing prosperity that Solomon enjoyed for a few years, but the eternal and spiritual kingdom. The unbelieving nations, unable to grasp this at the time, exulted over the people of God and mocked them for being captives, though they did so in ignorance, and only in the eyes of those who truly understood. That final verse of the Psalm, "Blessed be the Lord for evermore, amen, amen," fits perfectly with the people of the heavenly Jerusalem, wherever you choose to place them: hidden within the Old Testament before the New was revealed, or made visible in the New once it was fully disclosed. For God's blessing on the seed of David is not meant to last only for a season, as Solomon's did, but forever, and so the Psalm closes with "Amen, amen." The hope is confirmed, and the word is doubled.

David understood this, as we see in 2 Samuel (the passage we digressed from when discussing this Psalm), where he says: "Thou hast spoken of Thy servant's house for a great while to come." Then, a little later: "Now therefore begin and bless the house of Thy servant for ever," and so on. The reason is that he was about to father a son, through whom his line would descend to Christ, in whom David's house and the house of God would become one, and that house would be eternal. It is David's house because it comes from David's seed, and it is God's house because it is His temple, built not of stones but of souls, in which God's people will dwell forever, in and with Him, and He forever in and with them. He fills them, and they are full of Him. God is all in all: their reward in peace and their strength in war. Where Ethan had earlier said, "Thus saith the Lord, shalt thou build me an house?" David now responds: "Thou, O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, hast revealed unto Thy servant saying, I will build thee an house." We build this house by living well, and the Lord builds it by giving us the power to live well, for "except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it" (Ps 127:1). At the final dedication of this house, the word of the Lord that Ethan spoke will be fulfilled: "I will appoint a place for My people Israel, and will plant him, and he shall dwell by himself, and be no more moved, nor shall the son of iniquity trouble him any more, as from the beginning when I appointed judges over My people Israel."

He who looks for this great good in this world is badly mistaken. Can anyone tie its fulfillment to Solomon's time? No: the Scriptures commend it as a figure of a future good, not a present one. But this one phrase, "the son of iniquity shall not trouble him any more," dissolves that suspicion entirely, especially when it adds, "as from the beginning when I appointed judges over My people Israel." The judges ruled Israel before the kings, from the moment the people first entered the promised land, and the wicked enemy troubled them greatly, with the fortunes of war shifting constantly. Yet they enjoyed longer stretches of peace in those days than ever they did under Solomon, who reigned only forty years; under the judge Ehud alone, they had eighty years of peace. Solomon's reign, therefore, cannot be taken as the fulfillment of these promises, and still less can any other king's, for no king enjoyed the peace that Solomon had. Nor has any nation ever possessed a kingdom entirely free from the fear of enemies, because the instability of human affairs can never grant any realm absolute security from all hostile incursion. The place where this promised peace will dwell and remain is therefore eternal: it is that heavenly Jerusalem, that free city where the true Israel will make their blessed home. The name itself says as much: Jerusalem means "beholding God," and the longing for that reward must carry us through all the sorrow of this present pilgrimage.

GOD'S City, in its earthly progress, was first represented by David's reign over the earthly Jerusalem. David was extraordinarily gifted in song and deeply devoted to music, not for personal pleasure but out of sincere faith. Through the rich variety of harmonious and proportionate sounds he employed in the worship of his God (who is also the true God of all), he mystically portrayed the concord and unity of the heavenly City of God, composed of many different parts brought together as one. Nearly all of his prophecies appear in his psalms, and the collection we call the Book of Psalms, or the Psalter, contains one hundred and fifty of them.

Scholars disagree about which of these psalms David actually wrote. Some hold that only the psalms bearing his name in their title are his. Others believe that only those specifically titled "a psalm of David" belong to him, while those merely dedicated to David were composed by others and adapted to his voice. But our Savior Himself refutes this view when He says that David, speaking in the Spirit, called Christ his Lord, citing the psalm that begins, "The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool" (Ps 110:1). This psalm is not titled "of David" but "for David," as many others are.

I find most convincing the view that David composed all one hundred and fifty psalms, sometimes giving them the names of other figures as a way of pointing toward some prefiguration, and leaving others untitled altogether, as God saw fit to breathe these deep mysteries and hidden varieties (all of them useful, whatever their form) into his mind. Nor does it count against this view that we read the names of great prophets who lived after David written over some of his psalms, as though those prophets had composed them. The Spirit of prophecy could just as easily have revealed their names to David in advance as it could reveal any other detail concerning their lives, just as the reign of King Josiah was disclosed to a prophet who foretold his deeds and even his name roughly three hundred years before it came to pass.

I can see that my reader expects me to cover every prophecy concerning Christ and His Church contained in the Psalms. But it is the sheer abundance of such prophecies, not any lack of them, that prevents me from explaining them all as I have done with one, and as the subject seems to demand. To recite them all would take far too long, yet I fear to select only a portion lest some readers think I have left out something more important. There is another reason as well: the testimony we have brought forward must be confirmed by the psalter as a whole, so that even if not every psalm affirms it, none may contradict it. Otherwise we might appear to be snatching verses out of context for our own purposes, like fragments torn from a patchwork poem whose original theme was something entirely different. Now, to demonstrate this testimony from every psalm in the book, we would need to expound each one, and that is so vast an undertaking that both other scholars' works and our own volumes, in which we have done exactly that, make the scale plain enough. Let those who are willing and able read those volumes, and there they will find how rich David's prophecies concerning Christ and His Church truly are, particularly concerning that heavenly King and the city He has built.

Although some prophecies are stated plainly, they are still mixed with figurative language, which puts scholars to considerable labor in making them intelligible to those less familiar with such things. Yet some passages reveal Christ and His Church at first glance, even if we must take time to work through the difficulties we encounter along the way. Consider, for example, Ps 45: "My heart has given out a good word: I dedicate my works to the King. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer: Thou art fairer than the children of men, grace is poured in Thy lips, for God hath blessed Thee for ever. Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O Thou most Mighty: proceed in Thy beauty and glory: and reign prosperously because of Thy truth, Thy justice and Thy gentleness: Thy right hand shall guide Thee wondrously: Thine arrows are sharp (most Mighty) against the hearts of the King's enemies: the people shall fall under Thee. Thy throne, O God, is everlasting, and the sceptre of Thy kingdom, a sceptre of direction: Thou lovest justice, and hatest iniquity: therefore God, even Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. All Thy garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia, from the ivory palaces, wherein the King's daughters had made Thee glad, in their honor." Who could be so dull as to miss Christ our God in this passage? Here He is called God, His throne declared everlasting, and He is anointed by God not with visible oil but with spiritual chrism. Who could be so ignorant of this universal and immortal religion as not to know that the very name "Christ" comes from *chrisma*, meaning "anointing"? We recognize Christ here clearly. Now let us consider the figurative language: in what sense is He a father to the sons of men? In a beauty far more compelling than any physical beauty. What of His sword, His arrows, and the rest? These are all figurative expressions of His power, and anyone who is a willing subject of this true, just, and gentle King may explore their meaning at leisure. Then behold His Church, that spiritual bride of His, and the divine union between them: "The Queen stood on Thy right hand, her clothing was of gold embroidered with many colors. Hear, O daughter, and mark, attend, and forget your people and your father's house. For the King takes pleasure in your beauty: and He is the Lord your God. The sons of Tyre shall adore Him with gifts, the rich men of the people shall woo Him with presents: the King's daughter is all glorious within, her clothing is of wrought gold. The virgins shall be brought after her unto the King, and her kinsfolks and companions shall follow her, with joy and gladness shall they be brought, and shall enter into the King's chamber. Instead of your fathers you shall have children, that you may make them princes in all lands. They shall remember Thy name, O Lord, from generation to generation; therefore shall their people give thanks unto Thee, world without end." I don't think anyone could be so obtuse as to read this as a description of a literal woman. No, she is the bride of the One to whom it is said: "Thy throne, O God, is everlasting; and the sceptre of Thy kingdom a sceptre of direction. Thou hast loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore the Lord thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness before thy fellows," meaning Christ before the Christians. For the Christians are His companions, and from their unity drawn out of every nation comes this Queen. As another psalm says, she is "the city of the great King," the spiritual Zion. Zion means *speculatio* (watchful discernment): she perceives the future good she is to receive and directs all her intentions toward it. This is the spiritual Jerusalem we have been discussing all along, the sworn enemy of that devilish Babylon, which is nothing but confusion, and which is equally her enemy. Yet this city is freed from Babylonian bondage through regeneration, passing from the worst ruler to the best who ever lived, turning from the devil and coming home to Christ. Hence the words: "Forget your people and your father's house," and so on. The Israelites were part of this city in the flesh, but not in faith, and they became enemies of both this great King and His Queen. Christ was killed by them, yet He came from them to those He had never seen in the flesh. And so our King says through the psalmist in another place: "Thou hast delivered Me from the contentions of the people, and made Me the head of the heathen: a people whom I have not known hath served Me: and as soon as they heard Me obeyed Me." These were the Gentiles who had never seen Christ in the flesh, nor He them; yet when they heard Him preached, they believed so firmly that He could rightly say: "As soon as they heard Me, they obeyed Me," for faith comes by hearing. This people, joined together with the true Israel in both flesh and spirit, is that City of God which, when it existed only in Israel, brought forth Christ in the flesh: for it was from Israel that the Virgin Mary came, from whom Christ took our humanity upon Himself. Of this city, another psalm says: "Men shall call it our Mother Zion: He became man therein, the Most High hath founded her." Who was this Most High but God? So did Christ found her in His patriarchs and prophets before He took flesh in her from the Virgin Mary. Since the prophet declared so long ago what we now see fulfilled, "Instead of fathers you shall have children, whom you may make princes over all the earth" (for so it has come to pass when whole nations and their rulers freely confess and profess Christ's truth forever and ever), there is no doubt that every figure of speech in this passage, however it is understood, points directly to these realities.

For the Psalm that gives Christ the title of Priest (just as the other gives Him the title of King) begins: "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." We believe that Christ sits at God's right hand, but we cannot see it; nor can we yet see His enemies placed under His feet, which will become visible at the end of time and is now held by faith, to be seen clearly hereafter. But then comes this: "The Lord shall send the rod of Thy power out of Sion, be Thou ruler amidst Thine enemies." This is so plain that only sheer impudence could contradict it. His enemies themselves admit that the law of Christ came out of Sion, what we call the Gospel, and they acknowledge it to be the rod of His power. And that He rules in the midst of those same enemies, who are His unwilling subjects, grinding their teeth in futile resentment, they effectively concede. Then further: "The Lord sware and will not repent" (which confirms that this sequence is established for eternity) "Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." The reason is clear: Aaron's priesthood and its sacrifices have been abolished, and now throughout the entire world, under Christ the Priest, we offer what Melchizedek brought forth when he blessed Abraham. Who can doubt now of whom this speaks? All the other figures in the Psalm point toward this same revelation, as we have explained in detail in our sermons, and in that Psalm also in which Christ prophesies His own Passion through the mouth of David, saying, "They pierced My hands and My feet: they counted all My bones, and stood gazing upon Me." These words are a plain description of His posture on the Cross: His hands and feet nailed, His whole body stretched out, made a pitiful spectacle for those who looked on. And further: "They parted My garments among them, they cast lots upon My vesture." How this was fulfilled, let the Gospel tell you. And so in this Psalm too there are various obscurities, yet all of them fit together with the central meaning and scope of the Psalm, made clear in the Passion, especially since the things the Psalm foretold so long before have now come to pass exactly as it predicted, and are now laid open before the eyes of the whole world. For it says a little later: "All the ends of the world shall remember themselves, and turn unto the Lord: all the kindreds of the earth shall worship before Him: for the kingdom is the Lord's, and He shall rule among the nations."

The Psalms were not silent about His resurrection either. Consider what we read in the third Psalm: "I laid me down, and slept, and rose again, for the Lord sustained me" (Ps 3:5). Would anyone claim that the prophet recorded this as something remarkable, simply lying down and getting up again, unless he meant by sleep the death, and by rising again the resurrection? These are things that were fitting to be prophesied about Christ. In the forty-first Psalm this becomes even clearer: David, speaking in the person of the Mediator, discusses things to come as though they had already happened (as he often does), because in God's predestination and foreknowledge they already have. He writes: "Mine enemies speak evil of me, saying, when shall he die, and his name perish? and if he come to see, he speaketh lies, and his heart heapeth up iniquity within him, and he goeth forth and telleth it; mine enemies whisper together against me, and imagine how to hurt me. They have spoken an unjust thing upon me, shall not He that sleepeth, arise again?" (Ps 41:5-8). This is as much as saying, "Shall not He that is dead revive again?" The preceding words reveal how they conspired to bring about His death, and how the one who came in to visit Him went out to betray Him to them. And who else could that betrayer be but Judas, His own disciple? Now because He knew they would carry out their wicked plan and kill Him, He exposes the futility of their malice in murdering someone who would rise again, saying: "Shall not He that sleepeth, arise again?" (Ps 41:8). It is as if He said, "You fools, your wickedness will only put Me to sleep." But so that they would not escape such villainy unpunished, He intended to repay them in full, saying: "My friend and familiar, whom I trusted, and who ate of My bread, even he hath kicked at Me: but Thou Lord, have mercy upon Me, raise Me up and I shall requite them" (Ps 41:9-10). Who can look at the Jews driven from their land and scattered as wanderers across the whole world since the passion of Christ, and not grasp the meaning of this prophecy? He rose again after they had killed Him, and repaid them with temporal judgments, in addition to those He reserves for the final reckoning at the great judgment. Christ Himself, when He identified His betrayer to the apostles by handing him a piece of bread, called this very verse of the Psalm to mind and showed it fulfilled in Himself: "he that did eat of My bread, even he hath kicked at Me" (Ps 41:9). The words "in whom I trusted" apply properly not to the Head but to the members; for our Savior knew Judas well from the beginning, as He showed when He said, "One of you is a devil" (John 6:70). But Christ regularly transferred the particular experiences of His members to Himself, since He is their Head, and head and body together form the one Christ. This is why, in the Gospel, He says "I was hungry, and you gave Me to eat" (Matt 25:35), and then explains it this way: "In that ye did it to one of these, ye did it unto Me" (Matt 25:40). So when He says "that he trusted in him," He speaks as the apostles trusted in Judas when Judas was appointed an apostle. Now the Jews believe that the Christ they are waiting for will never die, and so they insist that the law and the prophets pointed not to our Christ but to one who will be entirely untouched by death, a figure they are still waiting for (and may wait a very long time). This miserable blindness leads them to read that sleep and rising again, of which we have been speaking, in a purely literal sense, rather than as death and resurrection.

But Ps 16 confounds them with this: "My heart is glad, and my tongue rejoiceth, my flesh also resteth in hope, for Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." What man could say that his flesh rested in the hope that his soul would not be left in hell, but would return to the flesh to save it from the corruption of a corpse, except Him alone who rose again on the third day? This cannot be said of David. Ps 68 also says: "Our God is the God that saveth us, and the issues of death are the Lord's." What could be plainer? Jesus Christ is the God who saves us, for "Jesus is a Saviour," as the meaning of His name was given in the Gospel: "He shall save His people from their sins." And since His blood was shed for the remission of sins, the power over death could belong to none but Him, nor could He have passed out of this life except by death. Therefore it is said, "Unto Him belong the issues of death," to show that He would redeem the world through death. And this last statement is spoken in wonder, as if the prophet were saying, "Such is the life of man, that the Lord Himself does not leave it except by death!"

All those testimonies and prefigurations, having been fulfilled so miraculously, still could not move the Jews. And so the words of Ps 69 were fulfilled in them: that psalm, speaking in the person of Christ about the events of His Passion, says among other things, "They gave Me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty they gave Me vinegar to drink." For this hospitality they showed Him, He thanks them in these terms: "Let their table be a snare for them, and their prosperity their ruin; let their eyes be blinded that they see not, and bend their backs forever," and so on. These are not wishes but prophecies of the plagues that would fall upon them. What wonder, then, that those whose eyes are blinded cannot see this, and whose backs are bent forever, fixing all their aims on the earth? For these words, drawn from the literal and physical sense, point to the vices of the mind. And so much for the Psalms of David, keeping within the limits I set for myself. Those who already know these texts must forgive me for dwelling on them at such length, and if they know that I have left out something more relevant to my purpose, I ask them to spare me their complaints.

David, the son of the celestial Jerusalem, reigned in the earthly one and was greatly commended in the Scriptures. His piety and true humility so overcame his imperfections that we might say of him what is written: "Blessed are those whose iniquity is forgiven and whose sins are covered." After him, his son Solomon reigned over the whole kingdom, having begun to reign, as we noted, during his father's lifetime. He started well but ended badly: prosperity, that moth of wisdom, did him more harm than his famous and remarkable wisdom ever did him good. He was a prophet, as his works prove, namely Proverbs, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes, all of which are canonical. Ecclesiasticus and the Book of Wisdom, however, were attributed to him only because of a certain resemblance in style. All the learned agree they are not his, yet the churches of the West have long held them in high authority. In the Book of Wisdom there is a clear prophecy of Christ's passion, where His wicked murderers are portrayed saying: "Let us circumvent the just, for He displeases us, and is contrary unto our doings, checking us for offending the law, and shaming us for breach of discipline. He boasts Himself of the knowledge of God, and calls Himself the Son of the Lord: He is made to reprove our thoughts, it grieves us to look upon Him, for His life is not like other men's: His ways are of another fashion. He counts us triflers, and avoids our ways, as uncleanness: He commends the ends of the just, and boasts that God is His Father. Let us see then if He say true: let us prove what end He shall have: if this just man be God's Son, He will help Him and deliver Him from the hands of His enemies: let us examine Him with rebukes and torments, to know His meekness, and to prove His patience. Let us condemn Him unto a shameful death, for He says He shall be preserved." So they imagined, completely astray, for their malice had blinded them. In Ecclesiasticus, too, the future faith of the Gentiles is prophesied in these words: "Have mercy upon us, O Lord God of all, and send Thy fear amongst the nations: lift up Thine hand upon the nations that they may see Thy power: and as Thou art sanctified in us before them, so be Thou magnified in them before us: that they may know Thee as we know Thee, that there is no god but only Thou O Lord." This prophetic prayer we see fulfilled in Jesus Christ. But the scriptures that are not in the Jewish canon carry no weight against our adversaries. It would be a tedious digression, and carry us far beyond our aim, if I were to trace here all the prophecies in Solomon's three canonical books back to the truth of Christ and His Church. That passage in Proverbs, spoken in the voice of the wicked, "Let us lay wait for the just without a cause, and swallow them up alive, as they that go down into the pit, let us raze His memory from earth, and take away His rich possession," can easily and briefly be referred to Christ and His Church, for the wicked tenant in His evangelical parable says something very similar: "This is the Heir, come let us kill Him, and take His inheritance." In the same book, that passage we touched on earlier when speaking of the barren woman who brought forth seven can only refer to the Church of Christ and to Christ Himself, as those readily understand who know that Christ is called the "Wisdom of His Father." The words are: "Wisdom hath built her an house, and hath hewn out her seven pillars: she hath sacrificed her victims, mingled her wine in the cup, and prepared her table. She hath sent forth her maidens to cry from the heights, saying, He that is simple come hither to me, and to the weak-witted she saith, Come and eat of my bread, and drink of the wine that I have mingled." Here we see that God's Wisdom, the co-eternal Word, built Himself a house of humanity in a virgin's womb, and to this head has joined the Church as His members. "Hath sacrificed her victims" means the martyrs were sacrificed; "and prepared the table with bread and wine" points to the sacrifice of Melchizedek; "hath called the simple and the weak-witted, for God," says the apostle, "hath chosen the weakness of the world to confound the strength by." To these same people, however, the following is addressed: "Forsake your foolishness, that ye may live; and seek wisdom, that ye may have life." Participation at that table is the beginning of life, for in Ecclesiastes, where he says "It is good for man to eat and drink," we cannot understand this better than as a reference to participation at the table that our Melchizedekian priest instituted for us in the New Testament. That sacrifice succeeded all the Old Testament sacrifices, which were merely shadows of the good things to come, as we hear our Savior speak prophetically in Ps 40: "Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire," but a body hast Thou prepared for me, for His body is now offered and sacrificed in place of all other offerings and sacrifices. Ecclesiastes does not mean carnal eating and drinking in those words he repeats so often, as one passage makes sufficiently clear: "It is better to go into the house of mourning than of feasting," and shortly after, "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning: but the heart of fools is in the house of feasting." There is one passage in this book of particular importance concerning the two cities and their two kings, Christ and the devil: "Woe to the land whose king is a child, and whose princes eat in the morning. Blessed art thou, O land, when thy King is the Son of Nobles, and thy princes eat in due time for strength and not for drunkenness." He calls the devil a child on account of his foolishness, pride, rashness, petulance, and the other vices typical of boyish youth. Christ he calls the Son of Nobles, meaning the patriarchs of that holy and free city, for it was from them that His humanity descended. The princes of the former city eat in the morning, before their proper hour, unwilling to wait for the true time of felicity and rushing headlong toward worldly pleasures; but those of the City of Christ await their future blessedness with patience. This patience is their strength, for their hope never fails them: "Hope," says Paul, "maketh not ashamed," and "All they that hope in Thee," says the Psalm, "shall not be ashamed." As for the Song of Songs, it is a spiritual and holy celebration of the marriage between the King and Queen of this city, that is, Christ and the Church. But it is expressed entirely in mystical figures, designed to inflame us all the more to search for the truth and to delight all the more in finding the appearance of that Bridegroom to whom it is said: "Truth hath loved Thee," and of that Bride who receives the word, "Love is in thy delights." I pass over many things in silence, in order to bring this work toward its end.

We find few prophecies among the Hebrew kings after Solomon that bear directly on Christ or the Church, whether in Judah or Israel. These were the names of the two parts into which the kingdom was divided after Solomon's death, as a consequence of his sins, during the reign of his son Rehoboam. The ten tribes that Jeroboam, Solomon's servant, gained control of were centered on Samaria and were called Israel proper (though the whole nation had gone by that name). The remaining two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, which stayed under Jerusalem, were called Judah, so that David's line would not die out entirely; David himself was from the tribe of Judah. Benjamin remained with Judah because Saul, who was of that tribe, had been the king immediately before David. These two tribes, as I say, were called Judah, and were distinguished from Israel, under which the other ten tribes remained. The tribe of Levi, being the source of God's priests, was set apart from both kingdoms and effectively formed a thirteenth tribe, since Joseph's tribe had been divided into two, Ephraim and Manasseh, while every other tribe counted as one. Even so, the Levites were most closely associated with Jerusalem because of the temple where they served. Following this division, Rehoboam, Solomon's son, reigned as king of Judah in Jerusalem, while Jeroboam, formerly Solomon's servant, reigned as king of Israel in Samaria. When Rehoboam moved to make war on the northern tribes for breaking away, a prophet stopped him with a word from the Lord, declaring that this division was the Lord's own doing. It was therefore no sin on the part of the king or people of Israel, but rather the fulfillment of God's will. Once this was understood, both sides stood down and accepted the situation, for they were divided only in governance, not in religion.

But Jeroboam, the King of Israel, fell away from God in the worst possible manner. God had truly enthroned him as He had promised, yet Jeroboam feared that the massive crowds of Israelites traveling to Jerusalem to worship and sacrifice in the Temple, as the law required, might draw the people away from him and back to the line of David. So he began setting up idols in his own kingdom, seducing God's people through this damnable and impious scheme. Yet God never stopped rebuking him for it through His prophets, and the two great men of God, Elijah and his disciple Elisha, also rebuked the people who followed Jeroboam and his successors in this sin. When Elijah said to God, "Lord, they have slain your prophets, and torn down your altars, and I alone am left, and now they seek my life," he received this answer: that God still had seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal.

Nor was Judah (the region surrounding Jerusalem) without prophets throughout all these successive generations. God consistently ensured that prophets were available, whether to foretell coming events or to call the people back to righteous living. The kings of Judah also offended God, though far less severely than Israel had, and both they and their people deserved the punishment they received. All of Judah's good kings receive their proper recognition in the record. Israel, by contrast, never produced a single good king; every one of them was wicked, to varying degrees. Both kingdoms, then, experienced the full range of fortune as God saw fit: sometimes prosperous, sometimes brought low through foreign invasions and civil wars, as His wrath or mercy was stirred. At last, their sins pushing Him beyond patience, He delivered them all into the hands of the Chaldeans, who carried most of them into captivity in Assyria, first the ten tribes of Israel and then Judah as well, destroying Jerusalem and its magnificent Temple in the process. The captivity lasted seventy years. When they were finally freed, they rebuilt the ruined Temple, and though many of them continued to live scattered among other nations, the land was no longer divided. A single ruler reigned in Jerusalem, and the whole people came there to offer sacrifices and celebrate their appointed feasts. But they were not yet free from foreign domination, for the Romans came next, and it was under Roman subjection that Christ would come and find His Israel.

After their return from Babylon (during which time they had the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and Ezra), they had no more prophets until our Savior's birth, except for one other Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. Shortly before His birth came old Simeon, the widow Anna, and finally John, who was roughly Christ's contemporary and who did not prophesy His coming but announced His presence to those who had not yet recognized Him. This is why Christ said, "The prophets and the law prophesied unto John." The prophecies of these last five are recorded in the Gospels, where the Virgin, our Lord's mother, also prophesied before John. The wicked Jews reject these prophecies, yet a great many of them did believe and receive them. For Israel was truly divided at that point, just as Samuel had long ago prophesied to Saul, a division foretold as permanent and irreversible. The unbelieving Jews do, however, accept Malachi, Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra in their canon, as the final books of their scriptures, and these books are, like the others, filled with great prophecies. Otherwise, very few writers attained the level of canonical authority. From these books I can see that I must draw out certain passages to include in this work, specifically those that concern Christ and His Church, but I will do this more effectively in the next book.