Wisdom’s House and Hezekiah’s Sun

“Such is the way of an adulterous woman: when she has done the deed she washes herself, and says that nothing out of place has been done.” Such is the way of the church that believes in Christ. After prostituting herself with idols she renounces them and the devil, and is washed clean of her sins and receives forgiveness — and then says that no wickedness has been done. [a]

“By three things the earth is shaken” — by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. “And the fourth it cannot bear” — the last appearing of Christ. “When a slave becomes king”: Israel was a slave in Egypt, and in the land of promise became a ruler. “And a fool when he has his fill of food”: that is, when the people got the land into their hands easily, and ate its fruit, and were filled, they kicked. “And a slave girl when she drives out her mistress”: that is, the synagogue, which took the Lord’s life and crucified the flesh of Christ.

“There are four things that are least on the earth, and these are wiser than the wise. The ants have no strength, yet they get their food ready in the summer.” In the same way the Gentiles, by faith in Christ, prepare eternal life for themselves through good works. “And the rock badgers, a feeble people, have made their homes in the rocks.” That is, the Gentiles are built on Christ, the spiritual rock, who has become the cornerstone. “The gecko, which braces itself on its hands and is easily caught, lives in the strongholds of kings.” That is, the thief, with his hands stretched out on the cross, leans on the cross of Christ and lives in paradise, the stronghold of the three kings — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “The locust has no king, and yet it marches out in ranks at a single command.” The Gentiles had no king, since sin ruled them; but now, believing God, they take the field in the heavenly war.

“There are three things that go well, and a fourth that walks gracefully”: that is, the angels in heaven, the holy ones on earth, and the souls of the righteous under the earth. And the fourth is God, the Word in the flesh, who passed in honor through the Virgin’s womb; and, making our Adam new again, he passed through the gates of heaven and became the firstfruits of the resurrection and of the ascension for all. “The lion’s cub is stronger than the beasts”: that is, Christ, as Jacob prophesied of him under the person of Judah. “A rooster strutting boldly among the hens”: such was Paul, preaching boldly among the churches the word of the Christ of God. “A he-goat leading the herd”: such is he who was offered for the sins of the world. “And a king making his speech before the people”: so Christ reigns over the nations, and speaks the word of truth through prophets and apostles.

That is a man confirmed in wickedness. The apostle says the same: “Rebuke those who sin in front of everyone” — meaning all who are past hope. And who are meant by the rock badgers, if not ourselves? Once we were like hogs, walking about in all the filth of the world; but now, believing in Christ, we build our houses on the holy flesh of Christ as on a rock.

The shaking of the earth means the change of things on earth. Sin, then, which is by its own nature a slave, has reigned in the mortal body of men: once, at the time of the flood; again in the time of the men of Sodom, who were not satisfied with what their land yielded and forced themselves on strangers; and a third time in the case of hateful Egypt, which had in Joseph a man who handed out food to everyone so that they would not die of famine, and yet did not take his prosperity well, but persecuted the children of Israel. “The slave girl casting out her mistress”: that is, the church of the Gentiles, which, though a slave herself and a stranger to the promises, cast out the free-born and lordly synagogue and became the wife and bride of Christ. By Father, Son, and Holy Spirit the whole earth is shaken. “The fourth it cannot bear”: for he came first through lawgivers, and second through prophets, and third through the good news, showing himself openly; and the fourth time he will come as the judge of the living and the dead, and the whole creation will not be able to bear his glory.

Christ, he means — the wisdom and the power of God the Father — has built his house: that is, his nature in the flesh, taken from the Virgin, just as John said long ago, “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” The wise prophet testifies to the same thing: Wisdom, who was before the world and is the source of life, the boundless Wisdom of God, “has built her house” by a mother who had known no man — that is, in taking on the temple of the body. “And she has set up her seven pillars”: that is, the fragrant grace of the all-holy Spirit, as Isaiah says, “And the seven spirits of God will rest upon him.” But others say the seven pillars are the seven divine orders that hold up the creation by his holy and inspired teaching: the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, the hierarchs, the hermits, the holy ones, and the righteous.

And the phrase “She has slaughtered her animals” means the prophets and martyrs who are killed like sheep every day, in every city and every countryside, by unbelievers, for the sake of the truth, and who cry aloud, “For your sake we are killed all day long; we were counted as sheep for the slaughter.” And again, “She has mixed her wine” in the bowl. By this is meant that the Savior, joining his divinity, like unmixed wine, to the flesh in the Virgin, was born from her at once God and man, without either being blurred into the other. “And she has furnished her table”: that means the promised knowledge of the holy Trinity; and it means as well his honored and undefiled body and blood, which day by day are administered and offered in sacrifice at the spiritual and divine table, as a memorial of that first and ever-remembered table of the spiritual and divine supper.

And again, “She has sent out her servants”: Wisdom has done it — Christ, that is — summoning them with a lofty proclamation. “Whoever is without sense, let him turn aside to me,” she says, plainly meaning the holy apostles, who traveled the whole world and called the nations to the true knowledge of him with their lofty and divine preaching. And again, “And to those who lack sense she said” — that is, to those who have not yet received the power of the Holy Spirit — “Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine I have mixed for you.” By this is meant that he gave us his divine flesh and his honored blood, to eat and to drink for the forgiveness of sins.

“Awake, north wind, and come, south wind; blow on my garden, and let its spices flow out.” Joseph was delighted with these spices, and so God names him the son of the king. The Virgin Mary was anointed with them, and so she conceived the Word. Then new secrets, and new truth, and a new kingdom, and great mysteries beyond telling, are made plain.

And where is all this rich knowledge? And where are these mysteries? And where are the books? For the only ones we still have are Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. What then? Does Scripture speak falsely? Certainly not. The matter of his writings was of many kinds, as the phrase “Song of Songs” itself shows: it means that in this one book he boiled down the contents of the five thousand songs. Besides, in the days of Hezekiah some of the books were picked out for use and others were set aside. That is why Scripture says, “These are the miscellaneous proverbs of Solomon, which the friends of Hezekiah the king copied out.” And where did they take them from, if not out of the books that held the three thousand parables and the five thousand songs? Out of these, then, Hezekiah’s wise friends took the parts that bore on the building up of the church. And the books of Solomon on the Parables and the Songs, in which he wrote about the nature of plants and of every kind of animal belonging to the dry land and the air and the sea, and about the cures of diseases — these Hezekiah did away with, because the people were looking to them for remedies for their illnesses and neglecting to seek their healing from God.

Hippolytus of Rome, on Hezekiah: When Hezekiah king of Judah was still sick and weeping, an angel came and said to him: “I have seen your tears, and I have heard your voice. Look, I am adding fifteen years to your time. And this will be a sign to you from the Lord: look, I am turning back the shadow on the steps of your father’s house, the steps down which the sun has gone — the ten steps down which the shadow has gone.” So that day was a day of thirty-two hours; for when the sun had run its course to the tenth hour, it turned back again.

And again, when Joshua son of Nun was fighting the Amorites, and the sun was already leaning toward its setting, and the battle was being pressed hard, Joshua grew anxious that the enemy army would get away once night came down, and he cried out: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon; and you, moon, over the valley of Aijalon — until I have beaten this people.” And the sun stood still, and the moon, in their places, so that day was one of twenty-four hours. And in Hezekiah’s time the moon turned back along with the sun, so that the two heavenly bodies would not collide by driving against each other out of their lawful order. And Merodach the Chaldean, king of Babylon, was struck with amazement at the time — for he studied the science of the stars and measured the courses of these bodies carefully — and when he learned the cause he sent a letter and gifts to Hezekiah, just as the wise men from the east did to Christ.

From the discourse of Hippolytus on the beginning of Isaiah: By “Egypt” he meant the world; by “things made with hands,” its idolatry; and by “the shaking,” its overturning and undoing. And by “the Lord” he meant the Word, and by “the light cloud” the purest tabernacle, in which our Lord Jesus Christ set up his throne and came into the world to shake error.

We find in the commentaries written by those before us that the day had thirty-two hours. For when the sun had run its course and reached the tenth hour, and the shadow had gone down the ten steps in the house of the temple, the sun turned back again by the ten steps, according to —