Poured Out Like Water

And what comes next in the psalm says this: “My hope from my mother’s breasts. On you I was cast from the womb; from my mother’s belly you are my God, for there is no one to help me. Many calves surrounded me; fat bulls hemmed me in. They opened their mouths at me like a lion tearing its prey and roaring. Like water all my bones were poured out and scattered. My heart has become like wax melting inside my belly. My strength has dried up like a piece of broken pottery, and my tongue has stuck to my throat.” It was making an announcement beforehand of the things that came to pass. [a]

Take the words “My hope from my mother’s breasts.” As soon as he was born in Bethlehem, as I said earlier, King Herod learned about him from the magi who came from Arabia and plotted to kill him; and at God’s command Joseph took him, together with Mary, and went away into Egypt. For the Father had decided that the one he had begotten would be put to death — but only after he had grown to manhood and had proclaimed the word that came from him.

Now if one of you says to us, “Could God not rather have killed Herod?” — I will answer ahead of time. Could God not have removed the serpent at the very beginning, so that it would not exist, instead of saying this? “And I will put enmity between him and the woman, and between his seed and her seed.” Could he not have made a multitude of human beings all at once? But because he knew it was good for things to be as they are, he made both angels and human beings free to choose what is right, and he fixed periods of time for as long as he knew it was good for them to have that freedom. And because he knew in the same way that this was good, he held judgments both general and particular, with each one’s freedom of choice kept intact. That is why the word says this, at the founding of the tower and the many-voiced confusion and change of languages: “And the Lord said: Look — one race, and one language for all of them; and this is what they have begun to do. And now nothing they set out to do will be beyond them.”

And the words “My strength has dried up like a piece of broken pottery, and my tongue has stuck to my throat” were likewise an announcement beforehand of what he would do according to the Father’s will. For the power of his strong word — the power by which he was always exposing the Pharisees and the scribes who argued with him, and, in a word, all the teachers of your people — came to a stop, like a spring of much water and great strength whose water has been turned aside, when he kept silent and would no longer answer anyone at all in front of Pilate, as has been made clear in the memoirs of his apostles. This happened so that what was said through Isaiah might bear its effective fruit, where it says: “The Lord gives me a tongue, so that I may know when I ought to speak a word.”

And in saying “You are my God; do not withdraw from me,” he was teaching at the same time that everyone ought to hope in the God who made all things, and to seek salvation and help from him alone — and not to suppose, as the rest of people do, that a person can be saved by his descent, or his wealth, or his strength, or his wisdom. Which is exactly what you have always done: at one time you made a calf, and you have always shown yourselves ungrateful, murderers of righteous men, and puffed up over your descent. For the Son of God plainly says that he cannot be saved because he is a son, or because he is strong, or because he is wise, but that, sinless as he is — Isaiah declares that he did not sin even so far as a word, “for he did no lawlessness, and there was no deceit in his mouth” — even so he cannot be saved apart from God. If that is how it stands with him, how can you, or anyone else who expects to be saved without this hope, not reckon that you are deceiving yourselves?

What is said next in the psalm — “For trouble is near, for there is no one to help me. Many calves surrounded me; fat bulls hemmed me in. They opened their mouths at me like a lion tearing its prey and roaring. Like water all my bones were poured out and scattered” — was likewise an announcement beforehand of the things that happened to him. For on that night, when the men from your people who had been sent by the Pharisees and the scribes and the teachers came upon him at the Mount of Olives, the ones the word called butting calves, doomed before their time, surrounded him. [g]

And in saying “Fat bulls hemmed me in,” he was speaking beforehand about the men who did the same things the calves did, when he was led before your teachers. The word called them bulls for this reason: we know that bulls are the cause of calves existing. So just as bulls are the fathers of calves, your teachers were the cause of their own children going out to the Mount of Olives to seize him and bring him to them. And the words “For there is no one to help” also point to what took place. For there was not so much as one single man there to help him, though he had done no wrong.

And the words “They opened their mouths at me like a roaring lion” indicate the man who was king of the Jews at that time and was himself called Herod — the successor of the Herod who, when Christ was born, killed all the children in Bethlehem born about that time, because he supposed that the one the magi from Arabia had told him about was certainly among them. He did not know the plan of the one who is stronger than all: how he had ordered Joseph and Mary to take the child and get away into Egypt, and to stay there until it should be revealed to them to come back to their own country. And there they stayed until Herod, the man who killed the children in Bethlehem, died and Archelaus succeeded him. And Archelaus himself died before Christ came to the arrangement, made for him according to the Father’s will, of being crucified. Then Herod, the successor of Archelaus, received the authority allotted to him, and Pilate sent Jesus to him bound, as a courtesy. God knew beforehand that this would happen, and had spoken this way: “And they bound him and carried him off to Assyria as a present for the king.”

Or else by the lion roaring against him he meant the devil — the one Moses calls a serpent, who in Job and in Zechariah is called the devil, and whom Jesus addresses as Satan, showing that he had got a compound name out of the thing he did. For sata, in the language of the Jews and the Syrians, means “apostate,” and nas is the noun from which, by interpretation, the serpent got its name; and out of both these words together comes the single name Satanas.

For at the moment when Jesus came up from the river Jordan and the voice was spoken to him, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you,” this devil came to him and tempted him — as it is written in the memoirs of the apostles — going so far as to say to him: “Worship me.” And Christ answered him: “Get behind me, Satan. You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve.” For, since he had deceived Adam, he said that he could work something on this one as well.

And the words “Like water all my bones were poured out and scattered; my heart has become like wax melting inside my belly” were an announcement beforehand of what happened to him on that night when men went out against him to the Mount of Olives to seize him. For in the memoirs — which I say were drawn up by his apostles and by those who followed them — it is written that his sweat poured down like clots while he was praying and saying: “Let this cup pass, if it is possible.” His heart, plainly, was trembling, and his bones with it, and his heart was like wax melting into his belly. This was so that we might know that the Father wanted his own Son really to be in such sufferings for our sake, and that we might not say that he, being the Son of God, did not feel what was being done to him and happening to him.

And the words “My strength has dried up like a piece of broken pottery, and my tongue has stuck to my throat” were, as I said before, an announcement beforehand of that silence, when the one who convicts all your teachers of being unwise gave no answer at all to anyone.

And the words — “You brought me down to the dust of death; for many dogs surrounded me, a gathering of evildoers hemmed me in. 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 over my clothing they cast lots” — were, as I said before, an announcement beforehand of the kind of death the gathering of evildoers was going to condemn him to. He calls them both dogs and hunters, showing that the very men who hunted him came together and worked hard at getting him condemned. And this too is written in the memoirs of his apostles as having happened. And I have already shown that after he was crucified, the men who crucified him divided his clothes among themselves. [o]

What follows in the psalm — “But you, Lord, do not put your help far from me; give heed to my aid. Rescue my soul from the sword, and my only one from the hand of the dog; save me from the lion’s mouth, and my humiliation from the horns of the one-horned oxen” — was again, in the same way, teaching and announcement beforehand of the things that belonged to him and were going to happen to him. For I have already shown that this one was the only Son to the Father of all things, begotten from him in a particular way as Word and Power, and that afterwards he became man through the virgin, as we have learned from the memoirs. [q]

And in the same way he foretold that he would die by being crucified. For the passage “Rescue my soul from the sword, and my only one from the hand of the dog; save me from the lion’s mouth, and my humiliation from the horns of the one-horned oxen” likewise points to the suffering by which he was going to die — that is, crucifixion. For I explained to you earlier that “the horns of the one-horned oxen” is the shape of the cross and of nothing else. And his asking that his soul be saved from the sword and the lion’s mouth and the hand of the dog was a request that no one should get the mastery of his soul — so that when we ourselves come to the departure from this life, we may ask the same thing of God, who is able to turn away every shameless and evil angel from taking hold of our soul.

And that souls go on existing, I proved to you from the fact that Samuel’s soul was called up by the woman who spoke out of her belly, at Saul’s demand. It also appears that all the souls of righteous men and prophets like him fell under the power of such beings, as the very facts in the case of that woman make plain. That is why God teaches us, through his Son as well, to struggle in every way to become righteous, and at our departure to ask that our souls not fall under any such power. For when he was giving up his spirit on the cross he said, “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit,” as I learned this too from the memoirs. And it is written in the memoirs that he said this when he was pressing his disciples to go beyond the Pharisees’ way of life, warning them that if they did not, they should know they would not be saved: “Unless your righteousness overflows beyond that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of the heavens.”

The rest of the psalm made clear that he knew his Father would grant him everything he asked, and would raise him from the dead; and that he was urging all who fear God to praise God, because through the mystery of this crucified one he had mercy on every race of people who believe; and that he stood in the middle of his brothers, the apostles. They had repented of deserting him when he was crucified — this after he rose from the dead and convinced them that even before he suffered he had told them he had to suffer these things, and that the prophets had announced them beforehand. And while he was living among them he sang a hymn of praise to God, as the memoirs of the apostles also show to have happened. These are the words: “I will tell your name to my brothers; in the middle of the assembly I will sing your praise. You who fear the Lord, praise him; all the offspring of Jacob, glorify him; let all the offspring of Israel fear him.” [v]

And there is the statement that he renamed one of the apostles Peter — and it is written in his memoirs that this happened — along with his renaming two others, brothers, the sons of Zebedee, with the name Boanerges, which means “sons of thunder.” That was a sign that this was the same one through whom the added name was given to Jacob when he was called Israel, and through whom Hoshea was named Jesus, and by whose name the people who were left of those who came out of Egypt were brought into the land promised to the patriarchs.

And that he was going to rise like a star out of the family of Abraham, Moses showed beforehand when he said: “A star will rise out of Jacob, and a leader out of Israel.” And another Scripture says, “Look — a man: Sunrise is his name.” So when a star rose in heaven at the very time he was born, as it is written in the memoirs of his apostles, the magi from Arabia recognized him by it, and came and worshiped him.

And as to his rising on the third day after being crucified — it is written in the memoirs that men of your people who were arguing with him said: “Show us a sign.” And he answered them: “An evil and adulterous generation looks for a sign, and no sign will be given to them except the sign of Jonah.” He said it in a veiled way, but his hearers were meant to understand that after he was crucified he would rise on the third day. [z]

And he was showing that your generation is more wicked and more adulterous than the city of Nineveh. For Jonah was thrown up on the third day out of the belly of the great fish, and preached to the Ninevites that after three days they would all be destroyed together — and they proclaimed a fast for absolutely every living thing, people and animals alike, with sackcloth and with unbroken wailing, and with a repentance out of their hearts that was real, and a renouncing of injustice. They believed that God is merciful and kind toward everyone who turns away from wickedness. So even the king of that city and his great men put on sackcloth in the same way and stayed at their fasting and their pleading, and they got what they asked: their city was not overthrown.

But Jonah was distressed that the city was not overthrown on the third day, as he had preached. So God dealt with him by an arrangement: a gourd came up out of the ground for him, and he sat under it and was shaded from the heat. The gourd had come up suddenly — Jonah neither planted it nor watered it; it sprang up all at once to give him shade. Then by the other arrangement, its withering away, which Jonah grieved over, God convicted him of being unjustly downcast because the city of Nineveh had not been overthrown. He said: “You had pity on the gourd, which you did not labor for and did not raise, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And am I not to spare Nineveh, the great city, where more than a hundred and twenty thousand people live who do not know the difference between their right hand and their left — and a great many animals besides?”

Every man of your people knew what happened through Jonah; and Christ cried out among you that he would give you the sign of Jonah, urging you to repent — at least after he rose from the dead — of the wicked things you had done, and to weep before God as the Ninevites did, so that your nation and your city might not be captured and destroyed, as they have been destroyed. And not only did you not repent when you learned that he had risen from the dead: as I said before, you appointed chosen men and sent them out into the whole inhabited world to announce that a godless and lawless sect had arisen from one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver — “whom we crucified; and his disciples stole him from the tomb at night, where he was laid after he was unnailed from the cross, and they are deceiving people by saying that he has risen from the dead and gone up into heaven.” And you accuse him of having taught the very things you say against us — the godless and lawless and unholy things you tell every race of people about those who confess him to be Christ, and a teacher, and Son of God. [ad]

On top of this, now that your city has been captured and your land laid waste, you still do not repent. You even dare to curse him and all who believe in him. And yet we do not hate you, or the people who because of you have taken up such ideas about us. We pray instead that all of you may repent even now and find mercy from God, the tenderhearted and very merciful Father of all things.

But bear with me while I say a few words from the prophecy of Micah, one of the twelve, to show that the nations were going to repent of the wickedness in which they wandered and lived, once they heard the word preached from Jerusalem by his apostles and learned it through them. These are the words: “And it will be in the last days that the mountain of the Lord will be plain to see, made ready on the top of the mountains, lifted up above the hills; and peoples will make a river to it. And many nations will go, and will say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and they will give us light on his way, and we will walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion a law will go out, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem. And he will judge between many peoples and will rebuke strong nations far away; and they will hammer their swords into plows and their spears into sickles. Nation will not lift a sword against nation, and they will not learn war any more. And each man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and there will be no one to make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken it. For all the peoples will walk in the name of their own gods, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever. And it will be on that day: ‘I will gather her who is crushed, and I will bring together her who was driven out and the one I afflicted; and I will make her who is crushed into a remnant, and her who was pressed down into a strong nation. And the Lord will reign over them on Mount Zion from now on and forever.’” [af]