Foreshadowings of the Cross

So understand, children of gladness, that the good Lord showed us everything in advance, so that we would know the one we ought to praise and thank for all of it. If the Son of God — who is Lord, and who is going to judge the living and the dead — suffered so that his wound might give us life, then let us believe that the Son of God could not have suffered except for our sake. [a]

And once he had been crucified, he was given vinegar and gall to drink. Listen to how the priests of the temple made this plain beforehand. There was a written command — “Whoever does not keep the fast is to be utterly destroyed” — and the Lord gave that order because he himself was going to offer the vessel of the Spirit as a sacrifice for our sins, so that the type that came about in Isaac, offered on the altar, might be carried through.

So what does he say in the prophet? “And let them eat of the goat that is offered at the fast for all their sins.” Pay close attention: “And let the priests, all of them, eat the entrails alone, unwashed, with vinegar.” Why? “Because when I am about to offer my flesh for the sins of my new people, you are going to give me gall with vinegar to drink. So eat, you alone, while the people fast and beat their breasts in sackcloth and ashes.” This was to show that he had to suffer at their hands.

Pay attention to what he commanded. “Take two goats, fine ones and alike, and offer them, and let the priest take the one as a whole burnt offering for sins.” And the other — what are they to do with it? “The one is accursed,” he says. Notice how the type of Jesus is being made plain: “And all of you spit on it and jab it and put the scarlet wool around its head, and let it be driven out into the wilderness that way.” And once that is done, the man who carries the goat takes it out into the wilderness, strips off the wool, and puts it on a bush called the rachēl — we are in the habit of eating its shoots when we come across it out in the country. The bramble alone has sweet fruit.

So what does all this mean? Pay attention. “The one on the altar, and the other accursed” — and why is the accursed one crowned? Because on that day they will see him with the scarlet robe reaching to his feet around his flesh, and they will say, “Isn’t this the one we crucified once, treating him as nothing, jabbing him, spitting on him? Truly this was the man who said back then that he was the Son of God.” For how is he like that goat? That is exactly why the goats are alike, fine and matched: so that when they see him coming then, they will be stunned at how like the goat he is. So look at the type of Jesus, who was going to suffer.

And why do they set the wool in the middle of the thorns? It is a type of Jesus, set there for the church: anyone who wants to carry off the scarlet wool has to suffer a great deal, because the thorn is fearsome, and he gets hold of it only by being hurt. In the same way, he says, “Those who want to see me and to take hold of my kingdom have to be hurt and suffer before they get me.”

And what do you suppose this is a type of? Israel was commanded that the men in whom sins are complete should offer a heifer, slaughter it and burn it; and that boys should then take up the ashes and put them into jars, and tie the scarlet wool onto a stick — look, again the type of the cross, and the scarlet wool — along with the hyssop; and that the boys should sprinkle the people this way, one at a time, so that they might be purified from their sins. [i]

See how plainly he speaks to you. The calf is Jesus; the sinful men who offer it are the ones who brought him to the slaughter. Then they are men no longer; the glory of sinners is no more. The boys who do the sprinkling are the ones who brought us the good news of the forgiveness of sins and the cleansing of the heart. He gave them the authority of the good news to preach — twelve of them, as a witness to the tribes, since Israel’s tribes are twelve. And why three boys doing the sprinkling? As a witness to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because these were great before God.

And why the wool on the wood? Because the kingdom of Jesus is on wood, and because those who hope in him will live forever. And why the wool and the hyssop together? Because in his kingdom there will be evil and filthy days, and in them we will be saved; and because a man sick in his flesh is cured by the filth of the hyssop. So these things, done this way, are plain to us and dark to them, because they did not listen to the voice of the Lord.

He speaks again about our ears, and how he circumcised our heart. The Lord says in the prophet, “They obeyed me at the hearing of the ear.” And again he says, “Those who are far off will hear with their hearing; they will know what I have done.” And, “Be circumcised in your hearts, says the Lord.” And again he says, “Hear, Israel, for this is what the Lord your God says.” And again the Spirit of the Lord prophesies, “Who is the one who wants to live forever? Let him hear with his hearing the voice of my servant.” And again he says, “Hear, heaven, and listen, earth, because the Lord has spoken these things as a witness.” And again he says, “Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of this people.” And again he says, “Hear, children, the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” So he circumcised our hearing, so that when we heard the word we would believe. [n]

And the circumcision they put their trust in has been done away with. For he said that circumcision was not to be of the flesh — but they broke the rule, because an evil angel outwitted them. He says to them, “This is what the Lord your God says” — here I find a command — “Do not sow among thorns; be circumcised to your Lord.” And what does he say? “Circumcise the hardness of your heart, and do not stiffen your neck.” Take it again: “Look, says the Lord, all the nations are uncircumcised in the foreskin, but this people is uncircumcised in the heart.”

But you will say, “Surely the people has been circumcised as a seal.” So has every Syrian and Arab, and all the priests of idols. Are they, then, inside their covenant too? The Egyptians are circumcised as well.

So learn about all of it richly, children of love. Abraham, the first man to give circumcision, circumcised while looking ahead in the Spirit to Jesus, because he had received the teachings of three letters. For it says, “And Abraham circumcised eighteen and three hundred men of his household.” So what was the knowledge given to him? Notice that he says the eighteen first and then, leaving a gap, three hundred. The eighteen is iota, ten, and eta, eight — and there you have Jesus. And because the cross was going to carry its grace in the letter tau, he says “and three hundred” as well. So he shows Jesus in the two letters and the cross in the one. The one who planted the gift of his teaching in us knows this. No one has learned a more genuine lesson from me — but I know that you are worthy of it.

Now Moses said, “You shall not eat pig, or eagle, or hawk, or crow, or any fish that has no scales on it.” In saying it he took hold of three teachings in his understanding. And in Deuteronomy he goes on to say to them, “And I will set out my rulings for this people.” So it is not a command of God that they should not eat these things; Moses was speaking in the Spirit. [u]

He named the pig with this in mind: “You shall not attach yourself,” he says, “to men who are like pigs” — that is, men who forget the Lord while they live in luxury, but recognize the Lord when they are in need. It is the same with the pig: while it is eating it does not know its owner, but when it is hungry it squeals, and once it has been fed it goes quiet again.

“And you shall not eat the eagle or the hawk or the kite or the crow.” “You shall not,” he says, “attach yourself or become like men who do not know how to get food for themselves by hard work and sweat, but seize what belongs to others in their lawlessness. They keep watch while walking about as though they were harmless, and they look around to see whom they can strip because of their greed.” It is the same with those birds: they are the only ones that do not provide their own food, but sit idle and hunt for a way to devour the flesh of others — pests, in their wickedness.

“And you shall not eat,” he says, “the moray, or the octopus, or the cuttlefish.” “You shall not,” he says, “become like men who are godless right to the end and already condemned to death, or attach yourself to them.” It is the same with those little fish: they alone are accursed, drifting in the deep instead of swimming like the rest, and living in the mud at the bottom.

“And you shall not eat the hare.” Why? “You shall not molest children,” he says, “or become like men who do” — because the hare gains another opening every year: for as many years as it lives, that is how many holes it has. “And you shall not eat the hyena either.” “You shall not,” he says, “become an adulterer or a seducer, or become like men who are.” Why? Because that animal changes its nature from one year to the next, and is male at one time and female at another. And he was right to hate the weasel. “You shall not,” he says, “become like the people we hear of who do what is lawless with their mouth because of their uncleanness; and you shall not attach yourself to the unclean women who do what is lawless with their mouth.” For that animal conceives with its mouth.

So Moses received three teachings about food and spoke them in the Spirit. But they took them according to the craving of the flesh, as though he had been talking about eating. David takes hold of the knowledge of the same three teachings and says it the same way: “Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the godless” — like the fish that go in darkness to the depths; “and has not stood in the way of sinners” — like those who seem to fear the Lord but sin like the pig; “and has not sat in the seat of the pestilent” — like the birds sitting there ready to snatch. Now you have all of it about food.

Moses says again, “Eat everything that has a split hoof and chews the cud.” What does he mean? That the man who takes his food knows the one who feeds him, and rests on him and is glad. He spoke well, with the command in view. So what does he mean? Attach yourselves to those who fear the Lord, to those who think over in their heart the distinction in the word they received, to those who both speak the Lord’s rulings and keep them, to those who know that thinking things over is a work of gladness and who chew the word of the Lord like cud. And what is the split hoof? That the righteous man walks in this world and at the same time waits for the holy age. See how well Moses laid down the law. But where would they get the sense to grasp this? We understand the commands rightly and say what they mean, as the Lord intended. That is why he circumcised our hearing and our hearts, so that we would understand these things.

Let us ask whether the Lord took any care to show in advance about the water and about the cross. About the water, it is written concerning Israel that they will not accept the baptism that brings forgiveness of sins, but will build for themselves instead. For the prophet says: “Be astonished, heaven, and let the earth shudder at this all the more, because this people has done two evil things: they have abandoned me, a spring of life, and have dug themselves a pit of death. Is my holy mountain Sinai a deserted rock? For you will be like the nestlings of a bird, flying up when the nest has been taken away.” [z]

And again the prophet says: “I will go ahead of you and level mountains, and I will shatter gates of bronze and break bars of iron to pieces, and I will give you treasures that are dark, hidden, unseen, so that they may know that I am the Lord God.” And, “You will live in a high cave of strong rock.” And, “His water is sure; you will see a king with glory, and your soul will think on the fear of the Lord.”

And again in another prophet he says: “And the man who does these things will be like the tree planted beside the channels of water, which will give its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall, and everything he does will prosper. Not so the godless — not so — but they are like the chaff the wind sweeps off the face of the earth. That is why the godless will not rise in the judgment, nor sinners in the counsel of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, and the way of the godless will perish.”

Do you notice how he marked out the water and the cross together? This is what he means: blessed are the ones who put their hope in the cross and went down into the water. He speaks of the reward as coming “in its season”: then, he says, I will pay it. But when he says here, “the leaves will not fall,” he means that every word that comes out of your mouth in faith and love will bring many to turn and to hope.

And again another prophet says, “And the land of Jacob was praised above every land.” He means this: he is glorifying the vessel of his Spirit. Then what does he say? “And there was a river running on the right, and beautiful trees were coming up out of it, and whoever eats of them will live forever.” He means this: we go down into the water full of sins and filth, and we come up bearing fruit, with the fear in our heart and the hope in Jesus in our spirit. And “whoever eats of these will live forever” means this: whoever, he says, hears these things spoken and believes will live forever.

In the same way he marks out the cross again in another prophet, who says, “And when will these things be finished? The Lord says: When a tree bends down and stands up again, and when blood drips from wood.” Again you have something about the cross, and about the one who was going to be crucified. [af]

And he speaks to Moses again, when Israel was under attack by foreigners — so as to remind them, while they were being attacked, that they had been handed over to death because of their sins. The Spirit speaks to Moses’ heart, telling him to make a figure of the cross and of the one who was going to suffer: unless they hope in him, he says, they will be under attack forever. So Moses piles one weapon on another in the middle of the fight, and standing higher than all the people he stretched out his hands — and so Israel started winning again. Then, whenever he let his hands down, the men were being killed. Why? So that they would know they cannot be saved unless they hope in him. And again in another prophet he says, “All day long I stretched out my hands to a disobedient people, one that argues against my righteous way.”

Again Moses makes a type of Jesus — that he had to suffer, and that he himself would give life, though they would think they had destroyed him — and he does it with a sign, at the time when Israel was falling. (The Lord made every kind of snake bite them, and they were dying, since the transgression came about through the serpent in Eve.) It was to convict them that they would be handed over to the distress of death because of their transgression. And so this same Moses, who had given the command, “You shall have no cast or carved image for your god,” makes one himself, to show a type of Jesus. Moses makes a bronze snake, sets it up in a place of honor, and calls the people together by proclamation. So they came together and begged Moses to bring up a petition on their behalf for their healing. And Moses said to them, “Whenever one of you is bitten, let him come to the snake set on the wood, and let him hope and believe that even though it is dead it can give life — and he will be saved at once.” And that is what they did. In this too you have the glory of Jesus, because all things are in him and for him.

And what does Moses say to Jesus son of Nave, when he laid this name on him — a prophet, so that all the people might just hear it? That the Father reveals everything about his Son Jesus. So Moses says to Jesus son of Nave, having laid this name on him, when he sent him out to spy out the land: “Take a book in your hands and write what the Lord says, that the Son of God will cut off the whole house of Amalek by the roots in the last days.”

Look again: Jesus — not a son of man, but the Son of God, and shown in the flesh by a type. Since, then, they were going to say that the Christ is David’s son, David himself prophesies, afraid, and understanding the error of sinners: “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” And again Isaiah speaks this way: “The Lord said to my Christ the Lord, whose right hand I took hold of, that nations should obey before him; and I will break the strength of kings.” See how David calls him Lord, and does not call him son.