No One Left in Bethlehem

So then: since the sons of Israel maintain that we are in error for accepting a Christ who has already come, let us enter a formal plea against them out of the Scriptures themselves, to this effect — that the Christ the prophets spoke of has come. We have already proved from the dates in Daniel’s prophecy that the Christ who was announced has come. Now he had to be born in Bethlehem of Judah, for this is what is written in the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, are not the least among the leaders of Judah; for out of you will come a leader who will shepherd my people Israel.” But if he has not been born yet, what “leader” was this, announced as coming out of the tribe of Judah, out of Bethlehem? For he has to come from the tribe of Judah and from Bethlehem. [a]

And we can see that not one of the race of Israel is left in Bethlehem now — and it has been so ever since the order went out forbidding any Jew to stay inside the boundaries of that district. That happened so that this prophetic word too should be exactly fulfilled: “Your land is a desert, your cities burned with fire” — he is foretelling, that is, what would happen to them in wartime — “strangers will devour your country before your eyes, and it will be a desert, overthrown by foreign peoples.” And in another place it is said through the prophet, “You will see the King with his glory” — that is, Christ, doing works of power in the glory of God the Father — “and your eyes will see the land from far off.” That is exactly what you do. Ever since the storming of Jerusalem you have been barred, as you deserved, from entering your own land, and are permitted only to look at it with your eyes from a distance. “Your soul,” he says, “will brood on terror” — at the time, that is, when they suffered their own ruin. How, then, will a leader be born out of Judea, and how far will he “come out of Bethlehem,” as the prophets’ own books plainly announce, when to this day not one is left there of the house of Israel from whose line Christ could be born?

And another thing. If, as the Jews say, he has not yet come, then when he does begin to come, where will he be anointed? For the Law laid it down that while they were in captivity the royal anointing oil could not lawfully be mixed. But if there is no longer any “anointing” there — as Daniel prophesied, for he says, “The anointing will be wiped out” — then it follows that they no longer have it, since they do not even have a temple where the horn was kept from which kings used to be anointed. So if there is no anointing oil, where will this “leader who is to be born in Bethlehem” be anointed? Or how will he “come out of Bethlehem,” seeing that none of the seed of Israel exists in Bethlehem at all?

Now for a second proof that Christ has already come, as the prophets foretold; that he has suffered; that he has already been received back into the heavens; and that he is to come from there just as the predictions said. For we read in Daniel that after his coming the city itself had to be wiped out — and we can see that this is what happened. The Scripture says this: that “the city and the holy place are wiped out together with the leader” — beyond question the leader who was to come “out of Bethlehem” and from the tribe of “Judah.” From which it is clear again that “the city had to be wiped out” at the very time when its “leader” had to suffer in it, as the writings of the prophets foretold. They say: “All day long I have stretched out my hands to a people who defy me and contradict me, who walk in a way that is not good, but after their own sins.” And in the Psalms David says: “They put my hands and feet out of place; they counted all my bones; they looked at me and stared at me, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” David never suffered these things, so that he could be thought to be speaking properly about himself; the Christ who was crucified did. And besides, no one’s hands and feet are “put out of place” except the hands and feet of a man hung on a tree.

That is why David also said that “the Lord reigned from the tree.” For elsewhere too the prophet foretells the fruit of this “tree,” saying, “The earth has given her blessings” — that virgin earth, of course, not yet watered by rains or made fertile by showers, out of which the first man was formed long ago, and out of which Christ has now been born in the flesh from a virgin. “And the tree,” he says, “has brought forth its fruit” — not that “tree” in paradise which gave death to the first man and woman, but the “tree” of the suffering of Christ, on which life hung, and you did not believe it.

For this “tree,” taken as a sacred sign, was the wood with which Moses long ago sweetened the bitter water, so that the people, who were dying of thirst in the desert, drank and revived. It is exactly what happened to us. We were caught in the disasters of this world, waiting there and dying of thirst — cut off, that is, from the word of God — and then we drank the baptismal water of the “tree” of the suffering of Christ, “by the faith that is in him,” and revived. It is a faith that Israel has fallen away from, as was foretold through Jeremiah, who says: “Send and ask carefully whether such things have ever been done — whether nations will exchange their gods (and these are not gods at all!). But my people have exchanged their glory, and no profit will come to them from it. At this the heavens turned pale” — and when did they turn pale? Beyond question when Christ suffered — “and shuddered,” he says, “most violently”; and “the sun went dark at midday.” And when did it “shudder violently,” except at the suffering of Christ, when the earth also shook to its center, and the curtain of the temple was torn, and the tombs were broken open? “Because my people have done these two evils: they have utterly abandoned me,” he says, “the fountain of the water of life, and they have dug themselves worn-out tanks, which will not be able to hold water.” Beyond question, by not receiving Christ, the “fountain of the water of life,” they have come to have “worn-out tanks” — that is, synagogues for the use of the scattered communities among the nations, in which the Holy Spirit no longer stays, as in time past he used to stay in the temple before the coming of Christ, who is the true temple of God.

For Isaiah had said that they would suffer this thirst for the divine Spirit as well: “Look: those who serve me will eat, but you will go hungry; those who serve me will drink, but you will go thirsty; and out of the general distress of your spirit you will howl. For you will hand your name on to my chosen ones as a thing they are sick of, but you the Lord will kill; while for those who serve me a new name will be named, which will be blessed in all the lands.”

Again, we read of the sacred sign of this “tree” being kept even in the Books of the Reigns. The sons of the prophets were cutting wood with axes on the bank of the river Jordan, and the iron head flew off and sank in the stream. So when Elisha the prophet came up, the sons of the prophets begged him to get the sunken iron out of the stream. And Elisha took wood and threw it into the place where the iron had gone under, and at once the iron came up and floated on the surface, and the wood sank, and the sons of the prophets recovered it. From this they understood that Elijah’s spirit had just been given to him. What could be plainer than the sacred sign of this “wood”? The hardness of this world had sunk into the depths of error, and is set free in baptism by the “wood” of Christ, that is, by his suffering — so that what had once been lost through the “tree” in Adam should be restored through the “tree” in Christ. Meanwhile we, of course, who have taken over and now occupy the place of the prophets, endure in the world today the same treatment the prophets always suffered on account of the religion of God: some of them they stoned, some they drove out, and more of them still they handed over to be killed — which is a fact they cannot deny.

This “wood,” again, is what Isaac the son of Abraham carried himself for his own sacrifice, when God had ordered that he be made a victim to him. But because these were sacred signs being held back for their full completion in the times of Christ, Isaac was spared along with his wood, and the ram was offered instead, caught by its horns in the bramble; while Christ, when his own times came, carried his wood on his own shoulders, holding fast to the horns of the cross, with a crown of thorns circling his head. For it was right that he should be made a sacrifice on behalf of all the nations — he who “was led like a sheep to be a victim, and, like a lamb with no voice before the man who shears it, so he did not open his mouth” (for when Pilate questioned him he said nothing); for “in his humiliation his judgment was taken away, and his birth — who shall declare it?” Because no human being at all was aware of Christ’s birth at his conception, when the Virgin Mary was found to be pregnant by the word of God; and because “his life was to be taken from the land.”

Why, then, after his resurrection from the dead, which took place on the third day, did the heavens receive him back? It was in keeping with a prophecy of Hosea, which runs like this: “Before daybreak they will rise up to me, saying, Let us go and return to the Lord our God, because he himself will draw us out and set us free. After a space of two days, on the third day” — which is his glorious resurrection — the heavens received back the one whose birth and whose suffering the Jews have alike refused to acknowledge; and it was from the heavens that the Spirit himself had come to the Virgin.

Therefore, since the Jews still insist that the Christ has not yet come, when we have proved in so many ways that he has come, let the Jews recognize their own fate — a fate they were constantly told they would meet after the coming of the Christ, on account of the contempt with which they despised him and killed him. For first, from the day when, as Isaiah said, “a man threw away his abominations of gold and silver, which they had made in order to worship them with empty and harmful rites” — that is, ever since we from the nations, our hearts lit twice over by the truth of Christ, threw away our idols (let the Jews look at it) — what follows has been fulfilled as well. For “the Lord of hosts has taken away from Jerusalem, from among the Jews,” along with the other things named, “the skilled architect” too — the one who builds the church, God’s temple, and the holy city, and the house of the Lord. From that time on God’s grace stopped working among them.

And “the clouds were ordered not to rain a shower on the vineyard of Sorek” — the clouds being the benefits of heaven, which were ordered not to be given to the house of Israel any longer. For it “had produced thorns,” out of which that house of Israel made a crown for Christ, and not “righteousness, but an outcry” — the outcry by which it forced his surrender to the cross. And so, with the former gifts of grace withdrawn, “the law and the prophets were until John,” and the pool of Bethesda lasted until the coming of Christ; after that it stopped curing Israel of bodily illnesses. For as a result of their persistence in their frenzy, the name of the Lord was blasphemed because of them, as it is written: “On your account the name of God is blasphemed among the nations.” It was from them that the disgrace attached to that name began, and it spread through the years from Tiberius to Vespasian.

And because they had committed these crimes, and had failed to understand that Christ “was there to be found” in “the time of their visitation,” their land has been made “a desert, and their cities utterly burned with fire, while strangers devour their country before their eyes; the daughter of Zion is left abandoned, like a watchman’s hut in a vineyard, or a shed in a cucumber field” — ever since the time, that is, when “Israel did not know” the Lord and “the people did not understand him,” but instead “utterly abandoned the Holy One of Israel and provoked him to anger.” So too we find a threat of the sword with a condition attached: “If you are unwilling, and will not obey, the sword will devour you.” From this we prove that the sword was Christ: by not listening to him they perished. And it is he who, again, in the Psalm asks the Father to scatter them, saying, “Scatter them by your power”; and he who, again through Isaiah, prays that they be burned up completely. “On my account,” he says, “these things have happened to you; you will lie down in anguish.”

So then: it was foretold that the Jews would suffer these disasters on Christ’s account, and we find that they have suffered them, and we see them sent into dispersion and left in it. It is plain that these things have come upon the Jews on Christ’s account, the sense of the Scriptures agreeing with the way events turned out and with the order of the times. Or else, if Christ has not yet come — the Christ on whose account it was foretold that they would suffer in this way — then it follows that they will suffer it when he does come. And where then will there be a daughter of Zion left to be abandoned, when she has no existence now? Where the cities to be burned up, which are burned already and lie in heaps? Where the scattering of a people that is already in exile? Restore to Judea the condition Christ is to find it in — and then, if you like, argue that some other Christ is coming.