The Bait and the Hook

But perhaps someone is alarmed to hear us speak of the death of the one whom, a little while ago, we said to be everlasting with God the Father, begotten of the Father’s substance, and one with God the Father in rule, majesty and eternity. Do not be alarmed, faithful hearer. In a moment you will see the one whose death you hear of immortal once again; for the death he submits to is about to plunder death. The purpose of that mystery of the Incarnation which we explained just now was this. The divine power of the Son of God, like a hook hidden beneath the form and appearance of human flesh (he being, as the apostle Paul says, “found in appearance as a man”), was to lure the ruler of this world into a fight. To him he offered his flesh as bait, so that the divinity underneath might catch him and hold him fast with its hook, through the shedding of his spotless blood. For he alone who knows no stain of sin has destroyed the sins of all, at least of all those who have marked the doorposts of their faith with his blood. When a fish seizes a baited hook, it does not get the bait off the hook; it is drawn out of the water to become food for others. In the same way, the one who had the power of death seized the body of Jesus in death, not knowing that the hook of divinity was enclosed within it. But once he had swallowed it he was caught at once, the bars of hell were burst open, and he was dragged out, as it were, from the abyss to become food for others. [a]

The prophet Ezekiel foretold this outcome long ago under this same picture, when he said, “I will draw you out with my hook and stretch you out on the earth. The plains will be filled with you, and I will set all the birds of the air over you, and I will fill all the beasts of the earth with you.” The prophet David also says, “You have broken the heads of the great dragon; you have given him to be food for the people of Ethiopia.” And Job likewise bears witness to the same mystery, for he says, in the person of the Lord speaking to him, “Will you draw out the dragon with a hook, and will you put your bit in his nostrils?”