The Cross Foretold

But perhaps, having heard the prophecy of his death, you ask to learn also what is said about the cross. Not even this is passed over. The holy men set it out very plainly. Moses foretells it first, and with a loud voice, when he says: “You will see your Life hanging before your eyes, and will not believe.” Next, the prophets after him bear witness to it, saying: “But I, like an innocent lamb led to be slaughtered, did not know it. They plotted an evil plot against me, saying, ‘Come, let us cast a tree upon his bread, and wipe him out from the land of the living.’” And again: “They pierced my hands and my feet; they counted all my bones; they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” Now a death lifted up high and taking place on a tree could be nothing other than the cross. And again, in no other death are the hands and feet pierced, except on the cross alone. [a]

And since, through the Savior’s coming to live among us, all the nations on every side also began to know God, the prophets did not leave this point without mention either; this matter too is spoken of in the Holy Scriptures. “There will be,” he says, “the root of Jesse, and the one who rises to rule the nations; in him the nations will hope.” This, then, is a small part of the proof of what has happened.

But the whole of Scripture is full of refutations of the unbelief of the Jews. Which of the righteous men, holy prophets and patriarchs recorded in the divine Scriptures was ever born bodily of a virgin alone? Or what woman has been enough by herself, without a man, to conceive a human being? Was not Abel born of Adam, Enoch of Jared, Noah of Lamech, Abraham of Terah, Isaac of Abraham, and Jacob of Isaac? Was not Judah born of Jacob, and Moses and Aaron of Amram? Was not Samuel born of Elkanah, David of Jesse, Solomon of David, Hezekiah of Ahaz, Josiah of Amon, Isaiah of Amoz, Jeremiah of Hilkiah, and Ezekiel of Buzi? Did not each have a father as the author of his existence? Who, then, is the one born of a virgin alone? For the prophet made a very great deal of this sign.

Or whose birth did a star in the sky go before, to announce to the world the one who was born? When Moses was born, he was hidden by his parents. David was not heard of even by his own neighbors, since even the great Samuel did not know him, but asked whether Jesse had yet another son. Abraham, again, became known to his neighbors as a great man only after he was born. But of Christ’s birth the witness was not a man, but a star in that heaven from which he was coming down.