Cursed on a Tree

“Tell me: was it not God who commanded through Moses that no image and no likeness of anything in heaven above or on the earth was to be made at all — and who himself, in the wilderness, had the bronze snake made through Moses and set it up as a sign, the sign through which those bitten by snakes were saved? And is he not free of any wrong in doing it? [a]

“For by this, as I said before, he was announcing a mystery. He was announcing that through it he would break the power of the snake — the snake that brought about Adam’s trespass — and that for those who believe in the one who was going to be put to death by this sign, that is, by the cross, there would be salvation from the snake’s bites, which are wicked deeds, the worship of idols, and other wrongs.

“If that is not how the thing is to be understood, then give me a reason why Moses set up the bronze snake as a sign and told those who were being bitten to look at it, and the bitten were healed — and this when he had himself given the order that no likeness of anything whatever was to be made.”

Then one of the men who had arrived on the second day said: “You have spoken the truth. We have no reason to give. I have often asked the teachers about this myself, and not one of them gave me a reason. So go on with what you are saying. We are paying attention while you uncover a mystery — the mystery on account of which the teachings of the prophets are left open to slander.”

And I said, “Just as God commanded the sign to be made by means of the bronze snake, and is blameless for it, so too a curse does lie in the law against people who are crucified — but no curse lies against the Christ of God, through whom he saves everyone who has done things that deserve a curse.

“For the whole human race will be found to be under a curse, judged by the law of Moses. It says, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue in everything written in the book of the law, to do it.’ And no one has done all of it exactly — you will not dare to deny it. Some have kept the commands more and some less than others. But if the people under this law are shown to be under a curse for not having kept everything, how much more will all the nations be shown to be under a curse, worshiping idols and molesting children and doing every other evil? [d]

“So if the Father of all wanted his own Christ to take on himself the curses of them all, for the sake of people out of every race, knowing that he would raise him up after he had been crucified and had died — why do you argue about the one who submitted to suffer this according to the Father’s will, as though he were under a curse, instead of grieving for yourselves? For even though his Father, and he himself, brought it about that he should suffer this for the human race, you did not do what you did as people serving God’s purpose. It was no work of reverence when you killed the prophets.

“And let none of you say: If his Father wanted him to suffer this, so that healing might come to the human race by his bruise, then we have done nothing wrong. You may say that if you say it while repenting of your sins, and recognizing that this man is the Christ, and keeping his commands; for I have said already that forgiveness of sins will be yours. But if you curse him and those who believe in him, and put them to death whenever you have the power, how will an accounting not be required of you for having laid your hands on him — required of unrighteous and sinful men, hard-hearted through and through, and without understanding?

“And the saying in the law, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,’ braces up the hope we have hanging from the crucified Christ. It does not do so because God is cursing this crucified man, but because God said in advance what would be done by all of you, and by people like you, who do not know that this is the one who exists before all things, God’s eternal priest, and king, and the one who was to become Christ. [h]

“And you can see with your own eyes that it is happening. In your synagogues you curse everyone who has become a Christian from him, and the other nations put the curse into effect, killing people who do nothing more than confess that they are Christians. To all of them we say: You are our brothers — recognize the truth of God instead. And when neither they nor you are persuaded by us, but you struggle to make us deny the name of Christ, we choose death instead, and we endure it, convinced that God will give us every good thing he has promised through Christ.

“On top of all that, we pray for you, that Christ may have mercy on you. For he taught us to pray even for our enemies, saying, ‘Be kind and merciful, as your heavenly Father also is.’ And in fact we see that Almighty God is kind and merciful: he makes his sun rise on the ungrateful and the righteous, and sends rain on the holy and the wicked. He has taught us that he is going to judge them all.

“It was not for nothing, either, that the prophet Moses stayed in that posture until evening, while Hur and Aaron held up his hands. The Lord too stayed on the tree almost until evening, and they buried him toward evening; then on the third day he rose. David announced it like this: ‘With my voice I cried out to the Lord, and he heard me from his holy mountain. I lay down and slept; I woke, because the Lord took hold of me.’ [m]

“And through Isaiah, in the same way, the manner of his death was told in advance: ‘I stretched out my hands to a people who would not obey and who contradicted me, to people walking in a way that is not good.’ And that he would rise again, Isaiah himself said: ‘His burial has been taken away from the midst.’ And: ‘I will give the rich in exchange for his death.’

“And in other words again, David spoke of the suffering and the cross in a mysterious parable, in the twenty-first psalm: ‘They dug through my hands and my feet; they counted all my bones. They looked and stared at me. They divided my clothes among themselves, and cast lots for my clothing.’ For when they crucified him they drove in the nails, and so dug through his hands and his feet; and the men who crucified him divided his clothes among themselves, each throwing a lot for the piece he had chosen to have, and taking it as the lot fell.

“And you insist that this very psalm was not spoken about the Christ. You are blind in every way, and you do not understand that no one in your nation who was ever called king had his hands and his feet dug through while he was alive, and died by this mystery — by being crucified — except this Jesus alone.

“Let me say the whole psalm, so that you may hear his reverence toward the Father, and how he refers everything to him, and how he asks the Father himself to save him from this death; and so that you may hear the psalm say what sort of men they were who banded together against him, and show that he had truly become a man who could suffer. It goes like this: [s]

When I had said this, I went on: “Now I will show you that the whole psalm was spoken about the Christ, by going through it again. The first thing it says — ‘God, my God, attend to me. Why have you forsaken me?’ — announced from long before what was going to be said in Christ’s own time. For when he had been crucified he said, ‘God, God, why have you forsaken me?’ [y]

“And what follows — ‘The words of my trespasses are far from my salvation. My God, I will cry out to you by day, and you will not listen; and by night, and there is no senselessness in me’ — was spoken in the same way as the things he was going to do. For on the day he was to be crucified he took three of his disciples up the hill called Olivet, which lies right beside the temple in Jerusalem, and prayed in these words: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” And praying again after that, he says: “Not as I want, but as you want.” By this he showed that he had truly become a man who could suffer.

“But in case anyone should say, ‘Then he did not know he was going to suffer,’ the psalm adds immediately: ‘And there is no senselessness in me.’ There was no senselessness in God, either, when he asked Adam where he was, or asked Cain where Abel was. He did it to show each man up for what he was, and so that the knowledge of all of it might come down to us in writing. In the same way this man was pointing out that the senselessness was not his own, but belonged to the people who thought he was not the Christ, and supposed that they would put him to death and that he would stay in Hades like any ordinary man.

“Then what comes next — ‘But you dwell in the holy place, the praise of Israel’ — meant that he was going to do something worth praise and wonder: he was going to rise from the dead on the third day after being crucified, and this he has received from his Father. For I have already shown that the Christ is called both Jacob and Israel, and I have shown that it was not only in the blessing of Joseph and Judah that the things about him were announced in a mystery. It is written in the Gospel as well that he said: “Everything has been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father and those to whom the Son reveals him.” [ab]

“So he revealed to us everything we have understood out of the Scriptures by his grace: that he is the firstborn of God and before all created things, and that he is the son of the patriarchs, since he was made flesh through the virgin who came from their family, and submitted to become a man without beauty, dishonored, and open to suffering.

“That is why, among his sayings, when he was talking about how he was going to suffer, he said: “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the Pharisees and scribes, and be crucified, and rise on the third day.” “So he called himself the Son of Man, either because of his birth through the virgin — who was, as I said, from the family of David and Jacob and Isaac and Abraham — or because Adam was the father both of him and of the ones just listed, from whom Mary traces her descent. For we know that the fathers of women are the fathers as well of the children their daughters bear.

“And when one of his disciples, previously called Simon, recognized him as Son of God and Christ by the revelation of his Father, he gave him the name Peter. We have it written in the memoirs of his apostles that he is the Son of God, and we call him Son, and we have understood that he came out from the Father before everything that was made, by the Father’s power and will. In the words of the prophets he is addressed in one way and another as Wisdom, and the Day, and the Dawn, and a Sword, and a Stone, and a Rod, and Jacob, and Israel. And we have understood that he became man through the virgin, so that the disobedience which began with the snake might be undone by the same road it started on.

“For Eve was a virgin, undefiled, and she conceived the word that came from the snake, and gave birth to disobedience and death. But Mary the virgin received faith and joy when the angel Gabriel brought her the good news that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her, so that the holy thing born from her would be the Son of God — and she answered: “Let it happen to me according to your word.” “And it is through her that he has been born, the one about whom we have shown that so many Scriptures were spoken; and through him God undoes the snake, and the angels and the men who have become like the snake, while he works release from death for those who change their minds about their worthless deeds and believe in him.

“What follows in the psalm is this, where he says: ‘Our fathers hoped in you; they hoped, and you rescued them. They cried out to you and were saved; they hoped in you and were not put to shame. But I am a worm and not a man, a reproach among men, a thing the people despise.’ These words show that he acknowledges as his fathers the men who hoped in God and were saved by him — the men who were also the fathers of the virgin through whom he was born and became man. They show him declaring that he too will be saved by that same God, while making no boast of doing anything by his own will or strength. [aj]

“He did the same thing on earth. When someone said to him, ‘Good teacher,’ he answered: “Why do you call me good? One is good — my Father who is in heaven.”

“And in saying, ‘I am a worm and not a man, a reproach among men, a thing the people despise,’ he was foretelling things that are so, and that are happening to him. We who believe in him are a reproach everywhere; and he is the thing the people despise, because he was despised and dishonored by your people and suffered what you arranged for him.

“And what follows — ‘Everyone who saw me sneered at me; they spoke with their lips, they shook their heads: He hoped in the Lord, let him rescue him, let him save him, since he wants him’ — he foretold in the same way as something that would happen to him. For the people who saw him crucified shook their heads, every one of them, and twisted their lips, and rasped at one another with their noses, and said in mockery the very words that are written in the memoirs of his apostles: “He said he was the Son of God — let him come down and walk about! Let God save him.”