The Vinegar and the Gall

Now then, bend your ear to me, hear my words, and pay attention, you Jew. Over and over you boast that you condemned Jesus of Nazareth to death and gave him vinegar and gall to drink, and you make it your brag. So come, and let us weigh the matter together: whether your boasting is not unjust, Israel; whether that small measure of vinegar and gall has not brought this terrible threat down on your head; and whether it is not the reason for the state you are in now, tangled in troubles beyond counting. [a]

Then let the man be brought before us who speaks by the Holy Spirit and tells the truth — David the son of Jesse. Singing a song that pointed prophetically to the true Christ, he praised our God by the Holy Spirit and set out plainly everything that happened to him at the hands of the Jews in his suffering. In that song the Christ who humbled himself and took on the form of the servant Adam calls on God the Father in heaven as though he were speaking in our place, and in the sixty-ninth Psalm he says this: “Save me, God, for the waters have come in as far as my soul. I am sunk in the mire of the deep” — that is, in the decay of Hades, because of the trespass in paradise — “and there is nothing to stand on,” that is, no help. “My eyes failed while I hoped in my God. When will he come and save me?” [c]

Then in what comes next Christ speaks, as it were, in his own person. “Then I paid back what I never took,” he says — that is, because of Adam’s sin I underwent the death that was not mine, since I had not sinned. “For you, God, know my foolishness, and my sins are not hidden from you” — meaning, as he intends it, “for I did not sin.” And that is why it goes on, “Let them not be put to shame who long to see” my resurrection on the third day — that is, the apostles. “Because for your sake” — that is, for the sake of obeying you — “I have borne disgrace,” meaning the cross, when “they covered my face with shame,” that is to say, the Jews; when “I became a stranger to my brothers according to the flesh, and a foreigner to my mother’s sons” — and by the mother he means the synagogue. “For zeal for your house, Father, has eaten me up, and the insults of those who insulted you have fallen on me” — the insults, that is, of people who sacrificed to idols. [e]

That is why “those who sit in the gate spoke against me,” for they crucified me outside the gate. “And the drinkers made songs against me” — the wine-drinkers, that is, at the Passover feast. “But as for me, in my prayer to you, Lord, I said: Father, forgive them” — that is, the Gentiles, because this is the time of favor for the Gentiles. “So do not let the storm” — the storm of trials — “sweep over me, and do not let the deep” — that is, Hades — “swallow me up; for you will not abandon my soul to Hades. And do not let the pit close its mouth over me” — that is, the grave. “Because of my enemies, rescue me,” so that the Jews may not boast and say, Let us make an end of him. Christ prayed all this as a man, in keeping with the plan he was carrying out; but he was true God all the while. As I have already said, though, it was “the form of the servant” that spoke and suffered these things. That is why he added, “My soul looked for insult and misery” — meaning, I suffered because I chose to, not under any compulsion. And yet, “I waited for someone to grieve with me, and there was no one” — for all my disciples abandoned me and ran — and for “someone to comfort me, and I found no one.” [j]

Listen carefully, you Jew, to what the Christ says: “They gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” And these things he did indeed suffer from you. Now hear the Holy Spirit tell you what he paid you back for that small measure of vinegar. The prophet says, speaking as though in God’s own person, “Let their table become a trap and a recompense.” What recompense does he mean? Plainly, the misery that has now taken hold of you. [l] And then hear what follows: “Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see.” And you have indeed been darkened in the eyes of your soul, with a darkness total and unending. Now that the true light has risen, you wander as though it were night; you stumble in country with no roads and fall headlong, because you have left the way that says, “I am the way.” [m]

Then hear a still heavier word: “And bend their back always.” That means: so that they may be slaves to the nations — not four hundred and thirty years, as in Egypt, nor seventy, as in Babylon, but bend them to slavery, he says, “always.” So then, why do you feed on empty hopes and expect to be delivered from the misery that has hold of you? That is a strange thing to expect. And he has not called down this blindness of the eyes on you unjustly. Because you covered Christ’s eyes and struck him in that state, for this reason too bend your back to slavery always. And since you poured out his blood in your rage, hear what you will be paid: “Pour out your rage on them, and let your burning anger take hold of them”; and, “Let their dwelling be left desolate” — meaning their famous temple.

But tell us, prophet: why, and for what reason, was the temple left desolate? Was it for that old business of making the calf? Was it for the people’s idolatry? Was it for the blood of the prophets? Was it for Israel’s adultery and sexual immorality? Not at all, he says. In all those offenses pardon always stood open to them, and kindness too. It was because they killed the Son of their Benefactor — for he is eternal together with the Father. [q]

That is why he says, “Father, let their temple be left desolate, for they have hunted down the one whom you of your own will struck for the salvation of the world” — that is, they have hunted me down with a violent and unjust death — “and they have added to the pain of my wounds.” Long ago, as the one who loves humankind, I was in pain over the straying of the Gentiles; and to that pain they have added another by going astray themselves. So: “Add lawlessness to their lawlessness, and trouble to their trouble, and let them not enter your righteousness” — that is, your kingdom — but “let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written down with the righteous” — that is, with their own holy fathers and the patriarchs. What do you say to this, you Jew? It is not Matthew who says these things, and not Paul, but David, your own anointed one, who hands down and pronounces these terrible sentences on account of Christ. And like the great Job, speaking to you who talk against the righteous and true one, he says, “You bargained over the Christ as though he were a slave; you came at him like a bandit in the garden.” [s]

Now I bring forward the prophecy of Solomon, which speaks of Christ and announces plainly and clearly the things concerning the Jews — not only what is coming upon them at present, but what will come upon them in the age to come, because of the stubbornness and the insolence they showed toward the Prince of Life. For the prophet says, “The ungodly said, reasoning among themselves, but not rightly” — that is, about Christ — “Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is no use to us. He is against our deeds and our words; he reproaches us for offenses against the law, and claims to have knowledge of God, and he calls himself God’s child.” And then he says, “He is a burden to us even to look at, for his life is not like other people’s, and his paths are of another kind. He counts us as counterfeit, and he keeps away from our ways as from filth, and he calls the end of the righteous blessed.” And listen to this too, you Jew: not one of the righteous men or the prophets ever called himself the Son of God. And so, speaking as though in the person of the Jews, Solomon speaks again about this righteous one, who is Christ: “He has become a rebuke to our thoughts, and he boasts that God is his father. Let us see, then, whether his words are true; let us test what will happen at the end of him. For if the righteous man is the Son of God, God will help him and rescue him out of the hand of his enemies. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for by his own words he will be watched over.” [u]

And again David says in the Psalms, with the age to come in view, “Then he” — that is, Christ — “will speak to them in his anger, and terrify them in his fury.” And again Solomon says about Christ and the Jews: “When the righteous one stands with great confidence before the face of those who afflicted him and made nothing of his words, they will see it and be shaken with terrible fear, and they will be amazed at how unlooked-for his salvation is. Repenting, and groaning in anguish of spirit, they will say among themselves: This is the man we used to laugh at and hold up as a byword of reproach. We fools thought his life was madness and his end without honor. How is it that he is counted among the sons of God, and his portion is among the holy ones? So we wandered from the way of truth; the light of righteousness never shone on us, and the sun of righteousness never rose on us. We wore ourselves out on the road of wickedness and destruction; we crossed deserts where there was no road; but the way of the Lord we never knew. What good did our pride do us? All of it has gone by like a shadow.” [y]