On the Mountains Sina and Sion

This is the interpretation from the Hebrew tongue into Latin. Mount Sinai is interpreted as eternal temptation and hatred; and likewise Sion is interpreted as temptation of exacerbation and watchfulness. You see therefore that in the Hebrew interpretation they do not resemble one another, nor are they one mountain, but rather two differing from each other in grace and honour. Moreover, since David the prophet says in the second Psalm: But I have been established as king by him upon Sion his holy mountain, proclaiming his dominion; behold, how greatly he designates mount Sion as holy. Whence it is manifest that mount Sion is heavenly and spiritual, and that mount Sinai is earthly. For nothing that is on earth can be holy, since the whole world has evil deeds and has been defiled by the devil, Jesus saying: The world hates me, and I hate it: because its deeds are evil. For which reason, whatever is in this earthly age cannot be holy.

But mount Sion, from the prophetic saying, is established to be holy and spiritual; on which mountain the Holy Spirit, the Son of God, has been established as king, proclaiming the will and dominion of God his Father: and mount Sinai to be earthly, set in a dry land, which is in Syria Palestina; where is the land of Judaea, where also is that city the slayer of the Prophets: before whose gate Christ was crucified by the Jews in a garden: which city is called Jerusalem by the prophet Isaiah, but spiritually is accursed and forsaken.

And not without reason, because God also, from that same earthly mount Sinai, through Moses still placed in the earthly flesh of the first man, received from God the law to be handed on to the earthly and carnal people of the Jews, written by sacred fingers on two tablets of stone (though by sacred fingers, yet fingers in the figure of flesh), as it were for a carnal and most hard people: just as the tablets of stone were most hard, on which tablets they received the Law. Therefore on two, because it would signify that the unity of the people would be divided into two parts, the part that is saved, and the unbelieving part that perishes; the Angel saying to Rebecca the wife of Isaac: "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be divided from your womb, and people shall prevail over people, and the greater shall serve the lesser." Now Rebecca bore the figure of the Church, just as Isaac her husband bore in himself the type of Christ.

Therefore, when he says, two nations are in your womb, because he was also designating two future parts from among the Gentiles, the idolatrous part that is lost, and the believing part living through faith; he designates this one part of the Gentiles as remaining in the womb of the Church unto the eternal generation in the figure of Rebecca; and the part of the unbelieving Jewish people as being divided from the womb of Rebecca at that time, and separated from the birth of the Church. This was the prefiguration announced spiritually in Genesis by the Angel. These names of the mountains have such an interpretation in the Latin tongue as to demonstrate the truth, as to who these two mountains Sinai and Sion are: which indeed we shall speak of a little further on. For thus we have proved this interpretation of truth, coming from the beginning of the human race.

Thus from the beginning of the world and thereafter all men being born received names from their parents according to the time and circumstance (not indeed of themselves, but they were impelled in mind by God, who, before things come to be, has foreknowledge of things to come) so that what sort of persons they would be after the growth of their age, might be designated in later time by Hebrew words and names; and what was to come to each one, the interpretation of names would designate the truth; just as at that time it was fulfilled in the Patriarchs, according to the flesh of the first man being from the clay of the earth, from the protoplast himself we prove the truth.

Adam received his name from God. The Hebrew Adam in Latin is interpreted as earth made flesh, because from the four quarters of the circle of the lands he grasped with his fist, as it is written: With my palm I measured the heaven, and with my fist I grasped the earth, and I fashioned man from all the clay of the earth: I made him in the image of God. It was fitting that he should bear in himself the name Adam from these four quarters of the circle of the earth. We find in the Scriptures that through the individual quarters of the circle of the earth four stars have been established by the Founder of the world at the individual quarters. The first star, of the east, is called Anatole, the second, of the west, Dysis, the third star, of the north, Arctos, the fourth star, of the south, is called Mesembria.

From the names of the four stars, take their leading letters: A from Anatole, D from Dysis, A from Arctos, and M from Mesembria; in these four cardinal letters you have the name Adam. For also in a fixed number the name is designated through four Greek letters ADAM, thus A, one; D, four; A, one; M, forty. Do the sum, and you will find the number forty-six. This number XLVI designates the passion of the flesh of Adam, which flesh Christ bore in himself as a figure, and hung it upon the wood. Which flesh was called by God the Father the Holy Spirit, who descended from heaven; Christ, that is anointed, was called by God the living God; the spirit mingled with flesh, Jesus Christ. This number XLVI therefore declares the passion, in that in the six-thousandth year, at the sixth hour he suffered: rising from the dead; on the fortieth day he ascended into the heavens: or because Solomon built the temple to God in forty-six years.

In the likeness of which temple Jesus said that his flesh was, saying to the Pharisees: Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days. And the Pharisees said: This temple was built in forty-six years, and will this man raise it up in three days? But Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body.

Then Abel, the son of Adam, received a Hebrew name, designating the slaying of a brother and the grief of parents. Likewise Enoch, who before the flood pleased God as a just man, and therefore was translated alive from this world in the birth of his flesh to a place where God knows; from which place, at the consummation of the world, he is to be renewed in this world, whence also he was translated, to confound and refute Antichrist. By whom, slain, they shall complete their martyrdom, living forever in ages of ages. And therefore Enoch is interpreted as renewed. Then Job the just, who before the day of judgment merited to be praised by the voice of the judge, and therefore, with the devil conquered and overcome, Job is interpreted as most dear to God.

Likewise Abraham also was called Abram by his parents at his birth; but being tested by God, he was found faithful, and blessed by God was established as father of many nations, and therefore, his name being changed by God, he was called Abraham, which is interpreted as father of many peoples.

Behold, in the meantime we have said a few things out of many proofs, so that coming to the names of the two mountains, we may prove the interpretations of the names of those mountains, how they have been designated for our instruction; so that from this interpretation of names, we may understand that mount Sinai is earthly, and mount Sion is heavenly. Sinai is interpreted spiritually as eternal temptation and hatred; and mount Sion, as temptation of exacerbation and watchfulness. Thus it is understood when mount Sinai is said to mean eternal temptation and hatred, in that from that mountain Moses received the law for a most hard and stubborn people. Through which law, being tested by the eternal God, they were found unable to sustain that same law in perpetuity, and from that point were turned into hatred toward God.

Therefore in the name of mount Sinai, from which they had received the law, the interpretation of the name designated the people as tested by God and turned into eternal hatred: therefore Sinai is called eternal temptation and hatred. For we find in the Scriptures that they were tested by God. Thus it is set down, the Lord saying to Moses: Let this people go out and gather for themselves a day's portion each day, and I will test them whether they are able to sustain my law or not; and being tested by God through the law, they were found to be strangers to that law. From that point they were turned into eternal hatred toward God, and the interpretation of Sinai was fulfilled.

But it is also manifest that Moses himself, through whom God tested them through the Law, is interpreted in Latin similarly as Moses the temptation of God and discovery, through whom, being tested by God, they were found to be strangers to the observance of the Law, and therefore were turned into eternal hatred toward God. This hatred we find written in the very lineage of the Jews, Isaac saying of his two sons Esau the elder and Jacob the younger: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. Now Esau the elder was hairy all over, he says, like a hairy skin, in the figure of the greater people, established in the impiety of their sins. And Jacob was smooth and younger, in the figure of the newer people, who through the hearing of the word has been converted by the faith of belief from the roughness of the age into smoothness toward Christ God and the Son of God.

Behold, we have proved through the testimony of the Scriptures that the greater and more ancient people has been turned into hatred toward God, according to the interpretation of mount Sinai saying, eternal temptation and hatred. Likewise mount Sion is interpreted as temptation of exacerbation and watchfulness. Now this Latin interpretation designates the passion of the sacred wood, Solomon saying of the Lord's passion itself: "With insult and torment let us question him, that we may know his reverence and prove his patience, and test what things are to befall him. For if he is truly the Son of God, he will receive him, and will deliver him from the hands of his adversaries; let us condemn him to a most shameful death.

These things they thought and went astray; their malice blinded them, and they did not understand the mysteries of God." Behold the Jewish tempters: likewise it is written: "And they tempted God in a waterless place." But watchfulness declares the height of the wood, Solomon saying: "They set me as a watchman of an orchard," in that he hung in a garden upon the wood fixed between two thieves: and from the height of the wood he watches over both in the figure of two peoples of evildoers; the Gentiles lying in the evil deeds of the age, and the Jews the slayers of the Prophets. These are the two peoples of evildoers; whose figure the two thieves between whom the innocent one hung bore in themselves. One blasphemed; but the other confessed that the innocent one was suffering wrong. But Jesus watched over both from the watching-wood, the blasphemer and the confessor; he saved the confessor and destroyed the blasphemer, just as he did with the two peoples.

The persecutors who have been abandoned, who have not believed in him under the sentence of eternal death, if they depart from this world in such a state, shall perish. But the nations who have turned to him, having faith in him that he is the Son of God, shall be saved and shall behold their emperor and king in the eternal ages of ages. But in that very passion, hanging upon the wood, looking out upon two parts of the people, he surveyed them from the height of the wood. That part of the people who had seen his wonderful and divine miracles wept, grieving that he was suffering wrongs; but other Jews, mocking, shook his head with a reed, blaspheming and saying: "Hail, king of the Jews, where is your father?

Let him come and deliver you from the cross." Thereupon the Father, provoked to anger, caused the sky to be opened, and thunders were made, and unbearable darkness; the earth was shaken, the tombs were opened, and they cast out their bodies and sent them forth from themselves; the veil of the temple was rent; and by so great a crash of the sky and movement of the earth, all who stood before the wood, some grieving, others blaspheming and mocking, fell prostrate upon their faces, trembling as though dead. Then the Jews understood that they had offended God, and they were turned to mourning; and there was provocation. For at the time when he hung nailed upon the wood, the days were those of unleavened bread, which are the feast days of the Jews.

On that day, fearing that an earthquake had occurred and a crash of the sky, they fell prostrate upon their faces, lamenting upon the ground, and were turned to mourning; and in his very passion he fulfilled the prophetic saying: "And I will turn their feast days into mourning, and their songs into lamentation." For before, when they were held captive in Babylon, the Babylonians said to them: Sing us songs from the songs of Zion. And the Jews, lamenting their captivity, said to the Babylonians, as we have said, lamenting themselves: How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land?

Behold, to what extent the interpretation of mount Sion has been completed: temptation of provocation and a place of watching. Whence it is manifest that mount Sion is the kingdom of the sacred wood, justified in holiness, as David says: Proclaim the kingdom of God among the nations, because the Lord has reigned from the wood, and has passed over among the nations. Concerning which kingdom of the royal wood the same prophet says: But I have been established as king by him upon Sion his holy mountain, proclaiming his dominion. Which prophetic saying he fulfilled through Pontius Pilate, hanging upon the wood in his passion.

Pontius Pilate, his mind impelled by God, took a tablet and wrote a title in three languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin: Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews; and at the head of the wood he fixed the tablet with nails, bearing the name of the king of the Jews: and then he made manifest the prophetic saying, in that spiritually mount Sion is the cross, which is the power of God, as the Apostle says: The cross of Christ is foolishness to those who do not believe, but to those who believe the cross is the power of God; and again he says: But we proclaim to you Christ, and him crucified: to the Jews indeed a stumbling block, but to the nations foolishness; yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

So also another prophet declares that the wood of the Lord's passion is the holy mount Sion, speaking thus in the Spirit: Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord, or who shall stand in his holy place? Innocent in hands; with right and left extended, fixed with nails, showing innocence. Therefore he says: Innocent in hands and pure in heart, who has not received his soul in vain, and has not sworn deceitfully to his neighbor, this one shall receive blessing from the Lord, and mercy from God his savior. Every passion of men shall fall to the earth; this passion of the cross alone shows one standing: whence we truly say that the holy mountain is the wood of the passion. Hence Moses was not innocent in hands and pure in heart.

For he was not pure in heart, in that he struck the Egyptian with his heel in Egypt and killed him, and buried him in the sand with his own hands; but Christ ascended the holy mountain, the wood of his kingdom, to die at the hands of the Jews, although he himself had not killed any man, save only the devil, the enemy of the human race. Therefore he ascended the mountain innocent and pure in heart; and therefore the prophet says: Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord, and who shall stand in his holy place? Innocent in hands and pure in heart. And he declared that the holy mount Sion is the holy cross, as the prophet likewise says: Out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. The law of Christians is the holy cross of Christ the Son of the living God, as the prophet likewise says: Your law is in the midst of my belly.

Struck in the belly of his side by a lance, blood and water mingled flowed forth, from which he fashioned for himself the holy Church, in which he consecrated the law of his passion, as he himself says: Whoever thirsts, let him come and drink. Whoever believes in me, as it is written, rivers of living water shall flow from his belly. Likewise in the Psalms: And he shall be like a tree planted beside the courses of waters, which shall give its fruit in its season. Behold the prophetic word, speaking of the fruit of the resurrection on the third day, to be understood spiritually: Out of Sion shall go forth the law, that is, from the royal wood, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, which is the Church.

The flesh nailed to the wood sent forth the word of the Lord, saying: Heli, heli. And the spiritual prophetic saying spoken beforehand was fulfilled: Out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He speaks of Jerusalem descending from heaven, the new city, foursquare through the four Gospels, having twelve foundations of twelve Prophets, twelve gates of twelve Apostles; through whose proclamation Christians have entered into this holy and new city, which is the spiritual Church.

Behold, we have proved through the faith of all the divine Scriptures that the two mountains, Sinai on earth and Sion in heaven, bear the figure of the two Testaments, the old of Sinai and the new of Sion. From which two mountains, that is, from the two testaments, we have shown and declared two peoples in later time: the old and former people of the Jews, and the new and later people of the Christians: the Jews earthly, who received the land promised by God in a carnal manner; and the Christians heavenly, who are to receive in the age to come the kingdoms of heaven promised by God. For the flesh of Christians shall be spiritual and immortal.

By another proof of truth set forth in the Scriptures, from that heavenly truth we make a spiritual comparison of figures, drawn from the manner of life of this world. For we have said that the holy mount Sion, that is, the royal and sacred wood, has its interpretation from Hebrew into Greek or Latin as temptation, provocation, or a place of watching, in that from the wood he surveyed those standing before him, both good and bad.

Thus we find the Savior himself declared through Solomon to be the unspotted mirror of the Father, in that the Holy Spirit, the Son of God, sees himself doubled; the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, each seeing himself in the other, and therefore an unspotted mirror. For we also who believe in him see Christ in us as in a mirror, as he himself instructs and admonishes us in the Epistle of John his disciple to the people: See me in you, just as any one of you sees himself in water or in a mirror: and he confirms the saying of Solomon spoken of himself, saying: Who is the unspotted mirror of the Father.

But he also said that he is the eternal and true vine; and his Father the husbandman. If therefore Christ is the true vine, it is certainly established that we also, who believe in him and put him on, are the true vine, which is the Lord's vineyard, and Christ the keeper of his vineyard, as Solomon says: They set me as keeper in the vineyard. We find indeed in the manner of life of this world a figure set forth in spiritual likeness of a vineyard, having its lord and owner.

But at the ripe season, near the days of the vintage, a boy set as keeper in the vineyard upon a tall piece of wood fixed in the middle of the vineyard; and upon that wood they make a square watchtower of crushed reeds, and on each side of the square structure they make three openings, which make twelve openings in all: through which square arrangement of openings the boy keeper, surveying the whole vineyard, keeps watch, singing, lest a wayfarer entering the Lord's vineyard assigned to him should trouble it, or thieves trample down the grapes of the vineyard.

But if a troublesome thief in need should wish to enter the vineyard and take away grapes, then the boy, watchful over his vineyard from within the watchtower, raises a harsh cry, cursing and threatening, lest the wayfaring thief dare to approach the vineyard, saying: "Walk straight." But the thief, fearing the voice of the boy threatening him, flees from the vineyard, sees the watchtower, hears the voice, does not see the boy threatening him from within the watchtower, and in fear goes on his way.

This worldly manner of life is likened to spiritual grace. For so it is also among the people of God, as in an earthly vineyard. The Lord's vineyard and spiritual flock is the people of Christians, which is guarded by the command of God the Father by the boy Christ exalted in the watchtower of the wood. But if the devil, a wayfarer wandering along the worldly road, should dare to separate a man from the Lord's flock out of the spiritual vineyard and trouble him, he is immediately rebuked by the heavenly voice of the boy and corrected by spiritual stripes, and driven out to the hundredth place, he flees to dry and desert places. There is the boy keeper, the Lord's son; who received his vineyard, commended to him by his father, to save and preserve: of whom the prophet Isaiah sings, saying: Behold my most beloved servant, I will place my spirit upon him, and he shall proclaim judgment to the nations: he shall not cry out, nor shall he contend.

A bruised reed he shall not break, and smoking flax he shall not extinguish, until he drives out judgment in contention; and in his name the nations shall believe and hope.