Dialogue with Trypho the Jew

Sacrifice, Circumcision, and Sabbath

God Never Needed Your Sacrifices

And so that you may learn that these were commanded in the same way because of the sins of your people and because of their idolatries, and not because God had any need of such offerings, listen to how he speaks about them through Amos, one of the twelve, crying out:

Woe to you who crave the day of the Lord!

What is this day of the Lord to you?

It is darkness and not light.

It is as when a man escapes the face of a lion

and a bear meets him,

and he bolts into his house and leans his hands against the wall,

and the snake bites him.

Is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light,

gloom with no brightness in it?

I have hated, I have thrown out your festivals,

and I will not smell the offerings at your holiday gatherings.

Even if you bring me your burnt offerings and your sacrifices,

I will not accept them,

and I will not so much as look at the fine display of your deliverance offerings.

Take the crowd of your songs and psalms away from me;

I will not listen to your instruments.

And judgment will roll down like water,

and righteousness like a torrent no one can wade.

Did you bring me slaughtered animals and sacrifices in the wilderness, house of Israel? says the Lord.

You took up the tent of Moloch and the star of your god Raphan,

the figures you made for yourselves.

And I will resettle you beyond Damascus, says the Lord —

God the Almighty is his name.

Woe to those who wallow in luxury in Zion,

and to those who trust in the mountain of Samaria.

Men who are listed among the leading families have stripped the first of the nations bare;

the house of Israel walked in and took it for themselves.

Cross over, all of you, to Calneh and look;

go on from there to Hamath the great,

and go down from there to Gath of the foreigners,

the strongest of all these kingdoms,

and see whether their territory is larger than yours.

You who are coming to an evil day,

who are drawing near and clinging to false sabbaths,

who lie on beds of ivory and sprawl on your couches,

who eat lambs out of the flock and milk-fed calves out of the middle of the herd,

who clap along to the sound of the instruments —

they reckoned all this as standing firm and not as running away —

who drink wine by the bowlful and rub yourselves with the finest perfumes,

and felt nothing at all over the ruin of Joseph.

So now they will go into exile at the head of the powerful men who are carried off,

and the house of the wrongdoers will be overturned,

and the neighing of horses will be taken away from Ephraim.

And again through Jeremiah: Gather up your meat and your sacrifices and eat them. I gave your fathers no command about sacrifices or drink offerings on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.

And again through David, in the forty-ninth Psalm, he said this:

The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken,

and he has called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.

Out of Zion comes the splendor of his beauty.

God will come openly — our God — and he will not keep silent.

Fire will blaze in front of him,

and around him a violent storm.

He will summon the sky above, and the earth, so that he may judge his people.

Gather his holy ones to him,

the ones who made his covenant over sacrifices.

And the heavens will announce his righteousness, for God is judge.

Listen, my people, and I will speak to you;

Israel, and I will testify against you.

I am God, your God.

It is not for your sacrifices that I will confront you;

your burnt offerings are in front of me all the time.

I will not take bull calves out of your house

or male goats out of your folds,

for every animal of the field is mine,

the livestock on the mountains, and the oxen.

I know every bird of the sky,

and the beauty of the field is with me.

If I were hungry I would not tell you,

for the inhabited world is mine, and everything in it.

Am I going to eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?

Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise,

and pay your vows to the Most High,

and call on me in the day of trouble,

and I will rescue you, and you will glorify me.

But to the sinner God said:

Why do you recite my statutes

and take my covenant on your lips?

You have hated discipline

and thrown my words behind you.

Whenever you saw a thief, you ran along with him,

and you threw in your lot with the adulterer.

Your mouth overflowed with malice,

and your tongue wove deceit together.

You sat and talked against your brother,

and you laid a trap for your own mother’s son.

You did these things and I kept silent;

you supposed — and this was lawlessness — that I would be like you.

I will confront you and set your sins in front of your face.

Understand this, then, you who forget God,

or he will tear you away and there will be no one to rescue you.

A sacrifice of praise will glorify me,

and there is the road by which I will show him my salvation.

So he does not take sacrifices from you, and he did not command them in the first place because he needed them, but because of your sins. It is the same with what is called the temple in Jerusalem. He acknowledged it as his house, or his court, not because he needed it, but so that while you were giving him your attention in this way you would not worship idols. That this is so, Isaiah says: What kind of house have you built for me? says the Lord. Heaven is my throne, and the earth a footstool for my feet.

Circumcision Given as a Sign

But if we do not admit this, we will fall into absurd ideas. We would have to say that the God of Enoch’s day, and of all the rest of them, was not the same God — men who had no circumcision in the flesh, who kept no sabbaths and none of the other observances, since it was Moses who commanded that these be done. Or else we would have to say that he has not always wanted every race of people to do the same right things. To admit either one looks ridiculous and senseless.

So we have to admit that the one who is always the same commanded these things, and things like them, because of sinful people; and then we can declare him to be kind toward people, one who knows beforehand, one who needs nothing, righteous and good. If that is not how it stands, then answer me, gentlemen: what do you make of the questions we are looking into?

No one answered a word. This, Trypho, is why I am going to announce to you, and to anyone who wants to become a proselyte, the divine message I heard from that man. Do you see that the elements never go idle and never keep a sabbath? Stay as you were born. If there was no need of circumcision before Abraham, and no need of sabbath-keeping and feasts and offerings before Moses, there is no need of them now either — now that, according to God’s purpose, Jesus Christ the Son of God has been born through Mary, a virgin of Abraham’s line.

For Abraham himself, while he was still uncircumcised, was counted righteous and blessed because of the faith he put in God, as the Scripture indicates. He received circumcision as a sign, not as righteousness, and both the Scriptures and the facts themselves force us to admit it. So it was rightly said about that people that any soul which is not circumcised on the eighth day will be cut off from its family.

And the fact that women cannot receive circumcision in the flesh shows that this circumcision was given as a sign, and not as a work of righteousness. God made women just as able as men to keep everything that is right and good. We do see that the body has been made one shape in the male and another in the female; but we know that this is not what makes either of them righteous or unrighteous. Reverence toward God and doing what is right are what make the difference.

Now, gentlemen, I said, we could show you at this point that the eighth day held a certain mystery, announced by God through these rites — more than the seventh day did. But so that I do not look as if I am turning off onto other subjects, understand what I am saying, and I say it loudly: the blood of that circumcision has been done away with, and we have put our trust in the blood that saves. There is another covenant now, and another law has gone out from Zion. Jesus Christ circumcises everyone who is willing — with knives of stone, as was announced long ago — so that they may become a righteous nation, a people that keeps faith, that takes hold of truth and keeps peace.

Come with me, all of you who fear God, all who want to see the good of Jerusalem. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord, for he has let his people go, the house of Jacob. Come, all you nations; let us be gathered into a Jerusalem that is no longer fought over because of the lawless deeds of its peoples. For I became plain to see to those who were not looking for me, and I was found by those who were not asking after me — so he cries out through Isaiah: I said, Here I am, to nations that had not called on my name. All day long I stretched out my hands to a people who disobey and talk back, to people who walk in a way that is not good but after their own sins. They are a people who provoke me to my face.

Who Inherits the Holy Mountain

These people who count themselves righteous and say they are children of Abraham will want to inherit along with us, even if it is only some small place. That is how the Holy Spirit cries out through Isaiah, speaking in their person:

Turn back from heaven, and look out from your holy house and your glory.

Where now is your zeal and your strength?

Where is your abundant mercy? For you have borne with us, Lord.

You are our Father, for Abraham did not know us,

and Israel did not recognize us.

But you, Lord our Father, rescue us;

from the beginning your name has been on us.

Why, Lord, did you make us wander off your road,

and harden our heart so that we do not fear you?

Turn back for the sake of your servants,

for the tribes of your inheritance,

so that we may inherit a little of your holy mountain.

We have become what we were at the beginning,

when you did not rule us and your name was not called over us.

If you open the sky, trembling will take the mountains before you,

and they will melt as wax melts before fire;

and fire will burn up your enemies,

and your name will be made known among your enemies,

and before your face the nations will be thrown into confusion.

When you do glorious things, trembling will take the mountains before you.

From of old we have not heard,

and our eyes have not seen any God but you — and your works.

He will show mercy to those who repent.

He will meet those who do what is right, and they will remember your ways.

Look, you were angry, and we went on sinning.

That is why we wandered off and all became unclean,

and all our righteousness is like the rag of a woman set apart;

and we have dropped like leaves because of our lawless deeds,

and so the wind will carry us away.

And there is no one who calls on your name,

no one who remembers to take hold of you,

because you turned your face away from us

and handed us over because of our sins.

And now turn back, Lord, for we are all your people.

Your holy city has become a desert.

Zion has become like a wilderness, Jerusalem a curse.

The house, our holy place, and the glory our fathers blessed,

has been burned with fire, and all the glorious nations have fallen with it.

And on top of all this, Lord, you have held yourself back

and kept silent, and you have humbled us very deeply.

And Trypho remarked: What do you mean by that? That not one of us will inherit anything on God’s holy mountain?

And I answered. That is not what I am saying. Those who persecuted Christ and go on persecuting him, and do not repent, will inherit nothing on the holy mountain. But the nations who have trusted in him and have repented of the sins they committed — they will inherit along with the patriarchs and the prophets and all the righteous who are descended from Jacob. Even though they do not keep the sabbath, are not circumcised, and do not observe the feasts, they will most certainly receive God’s holy inheritance. For God speaks this way through Isaiah:

I, the Lord God, have called you in righteousness,

and I will take hold of your hand and make you strong.

I have given you as a covenant to a race, as a light to the nations,

to open the eyes of the blind,

to bring the shackled out of their chains

and those who sit in darkness out of the prison house.

And again:

Raise a signal for the nations.

Look, the Lord has made it heard to the end of the earth.

Say to the daughters of Zion: Look, your Savior has come,

with his own wages in his hand, and his work going before his face.

And he will call them a holy people, ransomed by the Lord;

and you will be called a city sought out and not abandoned.

Who is this coming from Edom,

the red of his clothes from Bozrah?

Beautiful in his robe, climbing up with force and strength?

I am speaking righteousness, and the judgment that saves.

Why are your clothes red,

and your garments like a man’s out of a trodden winepress,

full of the grapes he has crushed?

I trod the winepress entirely alone,

and of the nations there was not a man with me.

I trampled them in my fury and crushed them like earth,

and I brought their blood down to the ground.

For the day of recompense had come upon them,

and the year of ransoming is here.

I looked, and there was no helper;

I paid attention, and no one took hold to help.

So my own arm rescued, and my fury stood by me,

and I trampled them in my anger,

and I brought their blood down to the ground.

Trypho on the Sabbath

And Trypho said: Why do you pick out whatever you want from the prophets’ words and quote that, and never mention the passages that plainly order sabbath-keeping? This is what is said through Isaiah:

If you turn your foot away from the sabbaths,

so as not to do what you please on the holy day,

and call the sabbaths your God’s delight and his holy days;

if you do not lift your foot to work,

and do not speak a word out of your own mouth —

then you will trust in the Lord,

and he will bring you up onto the good things of the land,

and he will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob your father.

For the mouth of the Lord has spoken this.

And I answered. I passed those over, friends, not because prophecies like them go against me, but because you have understood, and still understand, why he does it. Even though he orders you through all the prophets to do the same things he ordered through Moses, it is because of your hard hearts and your ingratitude toward him that he keeps calling out the same things — so that even this way you might repent at last and please him. Then you would not sacrifice your children to demons, or be partners with thieves, or lovers of bribes, or men chasing after rewards, who give no verdict for orphans and pay no attention to a widow’s case; and your hands would not be full of blood.

For the daughters of Zion walked with their necks held high, playing with their eyes as they made signals and trailing their tunics behind them. They have all turned aside, he cries; together they have all become worthless. There is no one who understands, not so much as one. With their tongues they kept up their deceit; their throat is an open grave; the venom of asps is under their lips; ruin and misery are on their roads, and the way of peace they have not known.

So, just as these commands were given at the start because of your wickedness, in the same way, because you persist in it — or rather because you press further into it — he uses the very same commands to call you back to remembering him and knowing him. But you are a hard-hearted people, and senseless, blind and lame, sons with no faith in them, as he himself says. You honor him with your lips only, while your heart is far away from him, and you teach your own teachings and not his.

Tell me this, then. Did God want the high priests to sin when they bring the offerings on the sabbaths? Or the men who are circumcised, and the men who do the circumcising, on the sabbath day — when he commands that every child born be circumcised on the eighth day without fail, even if that day happens to be a sabbath? Could he not have arranged for newborns to be circumcised one day before the sabbath or one day after, if he knew that doing it on the sabbath was wrong? Or the men before Moses and Abraham, who are named as righteous and pleasing to him, who were not circumcised in the foreskin and kept no sabbaths — why did he not teach them to do these things?