Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
39.
The reason for the surname ‘Israel’
Now, as I said just now, Jacob was also called Israel, which was the name generally borne by the people descended from him. This name was given him by the angel who wrestled with him when he was on his way back from Mesopotamia. This angel obviously presents a type of Christ. For the fact that Jacob ‘prevailed over’ him (the angel, of course, being a willing loser to symbolize the hidden meaning) represents the passion of Christ, in which the Jews seemed to prevail over him. And yet Jacob obtained a blessing from the very angel whom he had defeated; thus the giving of the name was the blessing. Now Israel’ means ‘seeing God’;
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and the vision of God will be the reward of all the saints at the end of the world. Moreover, the angel also touched the apparent victor on the broad part of his thigh, and thus made him lame. And so the same man, Jacob, was at the same time blessed and lame – blessed in those who among this same people of Israel have believed in Christ, and crippled in respect of those who do not believe. For the broad part of the thigh represents the general mass of the race. For in fact it is to the majority of that stock that the prophetic statement applies, ‘They have limped away from their paths.’
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The meaning of the statement that Jacob entered Egypt ‘with seventy-five souls’
The narrative tells us that seventy-five people entered Egypt in company with Jacob himself – Jacob being reckoned in, together with his children. In this number only two women are mentioned, one a daughter, the other a granddaughter.
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But a careful examination of the facts does not reveal that Jacob’s offspring amounted to that number in the day or year when he entered Egypt. In fact even the great-grandsons of Jacob are recorded among the number, and those could not possibly have been alive at that time, seeing that Jacob was
then 130 years old, while his son Joseph was thirty-nine. Since it is established that Joseph married his wife in his thirtieth year, or later, how could he have had great-grandsons within nine years from the sons he had by that wife? Since Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, did not then have sons (in fact Jacob found them as boys of less than nine years old when he entered Egypt) how is it that not only their sons, but even their grandsons, are counted among the seventy-five persons who entered into Egypt at that time with Jacob? For Machir is mentioned there, the son of Manasseh, and Joseph’s grandson, and Machir’s son Galaad, Manasseh’s grandson and Joseph’s great-grandson. Included also is the son of Ephraim, Joseph’s second son, that is Utalaam, Joseph’s grandson, and Edom, son of this Utalaam; and he was Ephraim’s grandson and Joseph’s great-grandson. They could not conceivably have been born by the time when Jacob went to Egypt, and found Joseph’s sons, his own grandsons, who were the grandfathers of the above-named, as boys of less than nine years old.
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No doubt the entry of Jacob into Egypt, which the scriptural narrative describes as the entry of a company of seventy-five people, is not a matter of one day or one year; it includes the whole period of the life of Joseph, who was responsible for that entry. For the same Scripture says, speaking of Joseph himself, ‘Now Joseph lived in Egypt, with his brothers and all his father’s household; and he lived 110 years. And Joseph saw the sons of Ephraim as far as the third generation.’ The third generation from Ephraim is Joseph’s great-grandson, the third generation undoubtedly referring to son, grandson, and great-grandson. Then the account continues, ‘And the sons of Machir, son of Manasseh, were born on Joseph’s knees.’ Now this is the son of Manasseh, and the great-grandson of Joseph. (The plural is here used in the common scriptural idiom, just as Jacob’s only daughter is called ‘the daughters’; similarly Latin idiom speaks of ‘sons’ even if there is no more than one child.)
Thus, when the felicity of Joseph himself is emphasized, in the fact that he was able to see his great-grandsons, we must by no means suppose that those were already in existence in the thirty-ninth year of their great-grandfather Joseph, at the time when his father Jacob came to him in Egypt. Now this is a point which is missed by those who do not examine the facts carefully, since the Scripture says, ‘Now these are the names of the children of Israel, who entered Egypt together with their father Jacob.’ The ground for this statement is that seventy
five people, including Jacob, are reckoned, not that they were all together at the time when Jacob entered Egypt. But, as I said, this entry is taken to cover the whole lifetime of Joseph, who is regarded as responsible for that entry.
41.
The blessing promised by Jacob to his son Judah
Thus when we are studying the people of Christ, in whom the City of God is on pilgrimage in this world, if we look for the physical ancestry of Christ in the descendants of Abraham, we discount the sons of his concubines, and Isaac presents himself. If we look in the descendants of Isaac, we set aside Esau, who is also Edom, and Jacob presents himself, who is also Israel. If we examine the descendants of Israel himself, we set aside the others, and Judah presents himself, because it was from the tribe of Judah that Christ was born. And for this reason we should attend to the prophetic blessing invoked on Judah by Israel when he blessed his sons in Egypt just before his death.
‘Judah’, he said,
your brothers will praise you. Your hands will be laid on the back of your enemies: the sons of your father will do reverence to you. Judah is a lion’s whelp; you have arisen, my son, from the shoot; you have lain down and slept, like a lion, and a lion’s whelp; who will rouse him up? A prince shall not be lacking from Jacob, nor a leader from his loins, until three things come which have been laid up for him; and he himself is the expectation of the nations. Binding his foal to the vine and his ass’s foal with the tendril, he will wash his garment in wine, and his clothing in the blood of the grape. His eyes are dark with wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.
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I have explained these points in my argument against Faustus the Manichean,
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and the true meaning of this prophecy shines out, I think, clearly enough. Here is foretold the death of Christ, in the mention of sleeping; and also, in the title, ‘lion’, power, not compulsion, is foretold in his death. He himself emphasizes this power in the Gospel, when he says, ‘I have the power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again. No one takes it away from me; but I lay it down of my own accord, and I take it up again.’
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This is how the lion roared, this is how he fulfilled what he said. For there is another reference to this power in the following words about his resurrection: ‘Who will rouse him up?’ It means that no man will do so, except himself, for he said, about his own body, ‘Destroy this temple,
and in three days I will raise it up again.’
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While the manner of his death, that is the exaltation of the cross, is implied by one word, when he goes on, ‘You have arisen.’ The words which follow, ‘You have lain down and slept’, are explained by the evangelist, when he says, Then he bowed his head, and gave up his spirit.’
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Or if not, it certainly refers to his burial, for he lay down in the grave and slept; and no human being aroused him from that grave, as the prophets aroused some persons, or as he himself aroused others. He arose of himself, as if from sleep.
Moreover, the robe which he washes in wine means that he washes away sins in his blood, for the baptized experience the sacrament of that blood. Hence Israel adds, ‘and his clothing in the blood of the grape’. What is this clothing but the Church? And ‘his eyes are dark with wine’ means the spiritual men who are made drunk with his cup, the cup about which the psalm sings, ‘And your cup which makes me drunk, how wonderful it is.’
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‘And his teeth are whiter than milk’; this is the milk that the infants drink – as the Apostle says – meaning nourishing words when they are not yet capable of solid food.
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Thus it is Christ himself in whom the promises made to Judah ‘have been laid up’; and ‘until these things come’ to fulfilment princes from that stock – that is, kings of Israel – have never been lacking. ‘And he himself is the expectation of the nations.’ This is a saying which is clearer at first sight than it can be made by any explanation.
42.
The two sons of Joseph, whom Jacob blessed by a prophetic crossing of hands
We have seen that Isaac’s two sons, Esau and Jacob, presented a symbol of the two peoples, the Jews and the Christians – although in respect of physical descent it is not the Jews, but the Idumaeans who are descended from Esau; and it is not the Christian Gentiles, but the Jews, who are descended from Jacob; for the symbol only held good as far as the words ‘the elder shall be servant to the younger.’
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Now the same thing happened in the case of Joseph’s two sons – for the elder typifies the Jews, the younger the Christians. When Jacob blessed them, putting his right hand on the younger, whom he had on his left side, and his left hand on the younger, whom he had on the right, it seemed a serious matter to their father, and he warned his
father, thinking to correct his mistake and to show him which of them really was the elder. But his father refused to change his hands, and said, ‘I know, my son, I know. This one also will become a prophet, and he will be exalted; but his younger brother will be greater than he, and his descendants will become a multitude of nations.’
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What could be more evident than that in those two promises the people of Israel and the whole world are included in Abraham’s descendants, the former in respect of physical descent, the latter in respect of faith?
43.
The period of Moses, Joshua, the judges and the kings. Saul the first king; but David, the most important, both for his achievements, and as a symbol
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After the death of Jacob and of Joseph, for the remaining 144 years until their exodus from the land of Egypt, the race increased in an incredible fashion, even though they were worn down by such great persecutions, which went as far as the massacre at one time of the male children born to them, because the excessive increase of the people aroused amazement and alarm in the Egyptians.
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On this occasion Moses was secretly extricated from the hands of those who were butchering the infants, and taken to the royal palace, since God was planning immense achievements for him. He was reared and adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh (the name Pharaoh was borne by all the Egyptian kings) and he grew into such a great man that he rescued that race, so miraculously multiplied, from the cruel and burdensome yoke of slavery – or rather God rescued them through his agency, thus fulfilling his promise to Abraham. Moses, it is true, had formerly fled from the land, because in defending an Israelite he had killed an Egyptian,
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and was panic-stricken. But later he was sent on a divine mission, and in the power of God’s spirit he overcame Pharaoh’s magicians who opposed him. Then through his agency ten memorable plagues were inflicted on the Egyptians, since they refused to release God’s people; water turned to blood, frogs, lice, dog-flies, cattle murrain, ulcers, hail, locusts, darkness, death of the first-born. Finally, when the Egyptians had been broken down by all those great plagues and at last had released the Israelites, they were wiped out in the Red Sea when they were pursuing the fugitives. For the sea had divided and offered a path for the departing Israelites; but as the Egyptians
followed after them the water came together again and over whelmed them.
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Thereafter God’s people were led through the desert for forty years, under the command of Moses. During this time the ‘tabernacle of the testimony’ was given this name, the place where God was worshipped with sacrifices which foretold future events. This, we observe, was after the Law had been given on the mountain, with everything to inspire awe, for the divine power and presence was attested by the clearest evidence of miraculous signs and voices. This happened soon after the departure from Egypt, at the start of the period when the people lived in the desert, on the fiftieth day after the Paschal Feast had been celebrated by the sacrifice of a lamb.
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This lamb is so accurate a symbol of Christ, foretelling that through the sacrifice offered in his passion he would pass over from this world to the Father – ‘Pascha’, as is well known, is the Hebrew for ‘pass over’ – that when the new covenant was revealed after ‘Christ our Passover was sacrificed’, it was on the fiftieth day that the Holy Spirit came down from heaven. The Spirit is called in the Gospel ‘the finger of God’
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to bring to our minds the remembrance of that original symbolic event, since we are told that the tables of the Law also were written by the finger of God.
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After the death of Moses, Joshua led the people, and brought them into the land of promise and divided it among the people. Wars were waged, with marvellous success, by these two marvellous leaders. But God bears witness that these victories came to them not on account of the merits of the Hebrew people, but because of the sins of the nations whom they defeated. After those two leaders there were a number of ‘judges’, when the people were by now settled in the land of promise; and so the first promise to Abraham began to be fulfilled at this time, as far as it concerned one people, the Hebrew nation, and the land of Canaan, but not yet as it referred to all nations and to the whole world. This was to be fulfilled by the coming of Christ in the flesh, and not by the keeping of the old Law, but by the faith of the Gospel. This was symbolized in the fact that the people were led into the land of promise not by Moses, who had received the Law for the people on Mount Sinai, but by Joshua whose name had even been changed at God’s bidding, so that he should be called Jesus.
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Then, in the period of the judges, there was alternation of success and failure in war, according to the sins of the people and the mercy of God. After this comes the period of the kings, Saul being the first to exercise the royal power. When he was rejected by God and fell in a military disaster and his line was abandoned, so that it should not be the source of kings, David succeeded to the throne; and ‘Son of David’ is the chief title of Christ. David marks the beginning of an epoch, and with him there is what may be called the start of the manhood of God’s people, since we may regard the period from Abraham to David as the adolescence of this race. And there is a special significance in the fact that the evangelist Matthew records the generations in such a way as to attribute fourteen generations to this first stage, that is, the period from Abraham to David. For it is at adolescence that a man becomes capable of procreation; and that is why the list of generations starts with Abraham, who was also marked out as the ‘father of nations’ when he received his change of name.
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Before that time there was, as it were, the boyhood of this race of God’s people from Noah down to Abraham himself; and that is why this boyhood is found to have a language, namely Hebrew. For it is at boyhood that man begins to talk, after he leaves infancy – which is so called because it has not the power of speech.
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And this first age of infancy is sunk in oblivion, as the first age of mankind was wiped out by the Flood. For there are very few men who have any recollection of their infancy.
Thus the previous book covers one age, the first, in the development of the City of God, and this present book deals with the second and third. In this third age, as symbolized by the heifer, goat, and ram – all three years old – the yoke of the Law was imposed, a multitude of sinners came on the scene, and the earthly kingdom entered its first stage. Yet at the same time there were not lacking spiritual men who were prophetically indicated by the symbol of the dove and the pigeon.
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