Two Houses of Jacob

When they had all agreed, I said: There are some passages I did not go over earlier, and I would like to state them now. They were spoken by the faithful servant Moses, but spoken under a covering. They run like this: “Rejoice, you heavens, together with him, and let all the angels of God worship him.” And I added what comes next in the passage: “Rejoice, you nations, with his people, and let all the angels of God be made strong in him; for he avenges the blood of his sons, and will avenge, and will pay back justice to his enemies, and will pay back those who hate him; and the Lord will cleanse the land of his people.” [a]

By these words he says that we, the nations, rejoice together with his people — I mean Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the prophets, and simply everyone from that people who is pleasing to God, as we have already agreed between us. But we do not take it of everyone descended from your race, since we know from Isaiah as well that the limbs of those who have broken the law will be eaten away by the worm and by unquenchable fire, while they go on being deathless, so that they become a sight for all flesh to see.

I went on: Besides these, sirs, I want to add some other passages out of the words of Moses themselves, from which you can understand this: that from of old God scattered all people into their races and their languages, and out of all the races took your race for himself — a useless race, disobedient and faithless — and showed that those who choose him out of every race have been won over to his purpose through Christ, whom he also calls Jacob and names Israel. These, then, as I have said at length already, must be Jacob and Israel. For when he says “Rejoice, you nations, with his people,” he assigns them an inheritance like theirs, and he gives them the same name. But when he calls them nations, rejoicing along with his people, he says it as a reproach to your nation. For just as you provoked him to anger by worshiping idols, so he counted them worthy — idolaters as they were — to know his purpose and to inherit the inheritance that is with him.

But I will state the passage as well by which it is made clear that God divided all the nations. It goes like this: “Ask your father, and he will tell you; ask your elders, and they will say to you. When the Most High divided the nations, as he scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the numbers of the sons of Israel; and the Lord’s portion became his people Jacob, and the measured share of his inheritance Israel.” And when I had said this I added that the Seventy translated it, “He set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.” But since my argument is again in no way weakened by this, I have used your reading. [g]

And you yourselves, if you are willing to admit the truth, will have to admit that we are more faithful toward God than you are. We were called by God through the despised mystery of the cross, a thing full of reproach. For confessing it, for obeying it, and for our reverence toward God, punishments have been laid on us even to death by demons and by the army of the devil — through the service you yourselves rendered them. And we endure everything rather than deny Christ, even with a word. Through him we were called to the salvation the Father prepared beforehand.

More faithful, that is, than you — you who were redeemed out of Egypt with a raised arm and a visitation of great glory, when the sea was cut open for you and became a dry road, and in that road he killed the men chasing you with a very great force and splendid chariots, flooding back over them the sea that had been made a road for your sake. A pillar of light shone on you, so that you, beyond every other people in the world, would have a light of your own that never failed and never set. For you he rained bread as food through the angels of heaven — the manna — so that you would not have to go looking for baking. And the water at Marah was made sweet.

A sign of the one who was going to be crucified was made for you as well, in the matter of the snakes that bit you, as I said earlier. God was getting ahead of the proper time with all these mysteries, to do you a kindness — and you are convicted of having been ungrateful to him always. The same sign was in the pattern of Moses stretching out his hands, and in the man renamed Jesus, when they were fighting Amalek. About that God ordered the event written down, and said to lay the name of Jesus up in your hearing, saying that this is the one who will wipe out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Now it is plain that the memory of Amalek remained even after the son of Nave. But through Jesus who was crucified — and those symbols were announcements in advance of everything to do with him — he makes it clear that the demons will be utterly destroyed and will dread his name, that all rulers and kingdoms will look on him with the same fear, and that people out of every race who believe in him will be shown to be reverent toward God and peaceable. What I have already set out for you, Trypho, points to this.

And when you craved meat, such a quantity of quail was given you that no one could count them. Water gushed for you out of a rock. A cloud went with you for shade from the heat and cover from the cold, announcing the manner of another, new heaven, and telling of it in advance. The straps of your sandals did not break, the sandals themselves did not wear out, your clothes did not wear away — and even the children’s clothes grew along with them.

And after all this you made a calf, and you threw yourselves into sexual immorality with the daughters of foreigners and into worshiping idols. And then again, when the land was handed over to you with such great power that you watched the sun stand still in the sky at the order of that man who was renamed with the name Jesus, and not go down for thirty-six hours, along with all the other acts of power that were done for you as the time called for them. Of these it seems good to me now to count out one more, since it helps you to recognize Jesus from this too — the Jesus whom we have come to know as Christ the Son of God, crucified and raised and gone up into the heavens, and coming again as judge of absolutely everyone, right back to Adam himself. [o]

I said: You know, then, that when the tent of the testimony was seized by the enemy peoples around Ashdod, and a terrible, incurable plague broke out among them, they decided to set it on a cart, and to yoke under the cart cows that had just calved. It was a test, to find out whether they had been struck by the power of God on account of the tent, and whether God wanted it carried back to the place it had been taken from. And when they had done it, the cows, with no man leading them, did not go to the place the tent had been taken from, but to the field of a certain man called Oshea — the same name as the man who was renamed with the name Jesus, as I said before, the one who brought the people into the land and parceled it out to them. And when the cows came into that field they stayed there. By this too it was shown to you that they were guided by the name of power, just as, before that, the people who were left of those who came out of Egypt were guided into the land by the man who received the name Jesus, and who was called Oshea beforehand.

And though these things and every other such astonishing and marvelous thing happened among you and were seen by you at one time or another, you are convicted by the prophets of going so far as to sacrifice your own children to demons — and, on top of all that, of daring to do what you did against Christ, and daring it still. For all of which I pray that you may receive mercy from God and from his Christ, and be saved. [r]

For God knew beforehand, through the prophet Isaiah, that you were going to do these things, and he cursed you like this: “Woe to their soul! They have planned an evil plan against themselves, saying: Let us bind the righteous one, for he is a nuisance to us. So then they will eat the fruit of their own works. Woe to the lawless man! Evil things will come on him according to the works of his hands. My people, your collectors strip you bare, and the men who demand payment lord it over you. My people, those who call you blessed lead you astray and throw the path of your ways into confusion. But now he will bring his people to judgment, and the Lord himself will come to judgment with the elders of the people and its rulers: But you — why did you burn up my vineyard, and why is what was plundered from the poor man in your houses? Why do you wrong my people and shame the faces of the lowly?”

And in other words again the same prophet spoke to the same effect: “Woe to those who drag their sins along as with a long rope, and their lawless deeds as with the strap of a heifer’s yoke; who say: Let his speed come near, and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel come, so that we may know it. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put light for darkness and darkness for light, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and knowing in their own sight. Woe to your strong men, the wine-drinkers, the men of power, the mixers of strong drink; who count the ungodly man righteous for a bribe and take away the right of the righteous man. Therefore, as stubble is burned by a coal of fire and burned up by a blazing flame, their root will be like chaff and their flower will go up like dust. For they refused the law of the Lord of Sabaoth, and they provoked the word of the Lord, the Holy One of Israel. And the Lord of Sabaoth was furious with anger, and laid his hands on them and struck them; and he was provoked against the mountains, and their corpses lay out in the middle like dung on the road. And through all this they did not turn back, but their hand is still raised.”

For truly your hand is raised to do evil, since you killed Christ and even so do not repent. Instead you hate us and murder us — us who have come to trust God the Father of all through him — whenever you get the authority for it. And you curse him without stopping, and those who belong to him, while all of us pray for you and for absolutely everyone, as we were taught to do by our Christ and Lord, who ordered us to pray even for our enemies, to love those who hate us, and to bless those who curse us.

If, then, the teachings of the prophets and of Christ himself put you to shame, it is better for you to follow God than your senseless and blind teachers, who to this day let each of you have four and five wives. If a man sees a beautiful woman and craves her, they recite the deeds of Jacob — Israel — and of the other patriarchs, and say that men who do the same are doing nothing wrong. In this matter too they are wretched and without understanding. For as I said before, certain arrangements of great mysteries were being worked out in each act of that kind. In the marriages of Jacob I will say what arrangement and what announcement in advance were worked out, so that in these things too you may recognize that your teachers never looked to the more divine reason each act happened for, but only to the low, corrupting passions. So pay attention to what I say. [w]

The marriages of Jacob were patterns of what Christ was going to accomplish. It was not lawful for Jacob to marry two sisters at the same time. He serves Laban for the daughters, and when he was cheated over the younger he served seven years again. Now Leah is your people and the synagogue, and Rachel is our church. And for these two, and for the slaves in both, Christ is serving to this day. For Noah gave the offspring of the third son to the two sons as slaves; now, on the other hand, Christ has come to set both back in their place — the free children and the slaves among them — counting worthy of the same things all who keep his commands. In the same way, the sons born to Jacob from the free women and from the slave women all became sons and equal in honor; and it was said in advance, by rank and by foreknowledge, what each of them would be.

Jacob served Laban for the speckled and many-marked flocks; Christ served — a slavery that went as far as the cross — for the varied, many-formed people out of every race, getting them for himself by the blood and the mystery of the cross. Leah’s eyes were weak; and the eyes of your soul are extremely weak. Rachel stole Laban’s gods and hid them away to this day; and for us the gods of our fathers, the gods made of matter, are gone. Jacob was hated the whole time by his brother; and we now, and our Lord himself, are hated by you and by everyone else, though all of us are brothers by nature. Jacob was surnamed Israel; and Israel has been shown to be the Christ, the one who is and is called Jesus.

And when Scripture says, “I am the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, who made Israel your king known” — will you not take it that Christ truly is the everlasting king? You know that Jacob the son of Isaac was never a king. And that is why Scripture, explaining to us again what king it means by Jacob and Israel, said this: “Jacob is my servant, I will take hold of him; and Israel is my chosen one, my soul will receive him. I have given my Spirit upon him, and he will bring judgment out to the nations. He will not shout, and his voice will not be heard outside; a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not put out, until he brings victory out. He will take up judgment, and he will not be broken, until he sets judgment on the earth. And in his name the nations will hope.” So is it Jacob the patriarch that the people out of the nations hope in — and you yourselves? Or is it not Christ? Then just as Scripture calls Christ Israel and Jacob, so we too, quarried out of the belly of Christ, are the true Israelite race. But let us attend to the words themselves instead. [ab]

“And I will bring out,” he says, “the seed from Jacob and from Judah; and it will inherit my holy mountain, and my chosen ones and my slaves will inherit it and will live there. And there will be sheepfolds in the thicket, and the valley of Achor a resting place for cattle, for the people who sought me. But you who abandon me and forget my holy mountain, and set a table for demons and fill a mixing bowl for the demon — I will hand you over to the sword. You will all fall in the slaughter, because I called you and you did not obey, I spoke and you did not listen, and you did what was evil in front of me and chose what I did not want.”

Those are the words of Scripture. Understand for yourselves, then, that the seed from Jacob that is spoken of here is something else, and is not — as someone might suppose — spoken about your people. For those already born from Jacob leave no opening for others sown from Jacob to be brought in; nor could he reproach the people as unfit for the inheritance and then promise it to those same people again, as someone might have assumed. But just as the prophet says in that other place — “And now, house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord; for he has let his people go, the house of Jacob, because their country was filled, as it was at the beginning, with fortune-telling and omen-reading” — so here too we have to see two seeds of Judah and two races, just as there are two houses of Jacob: the one begotten from blood and flesh, the other from faith and Spirit.

For you see how he is speaking to the people now, having said a little earlier: “As a grape is found in the cluster and they say, Do not ruin it, for a blessing is in it, so I will do for the sake of the one who serves me; for his sake I will not destroy them all.” And after that he adds: “And I will bring out the seed from Jacob and from Judah.” It is plain, then, that if he is angry with them like this and threatens to leave very few of them, he is promising to bring out certain others, who will live on his mountain. These are the ones he said he would sow and beget. For you neither put up with him when he calls you nor listen to him when he speaks, but you did what was evil in the presence of the Lord. And the height of your wickedness is this: that you hate the righteous one you murdered, and hate those who have received from him everything they are — reverent, righteous, and kind to other people. And so, “Woe to their soul,” says the Lord, “for they have planned an evil plan against themselves, saying: Let us take away the righteous one, for he is a nuisance to us.” [ah]

For you are not the ones sacrificing to Baal, as your fathers did, nor making cakes for the host of heaven in shaded places and on high ground. It is that you did not receive his Christ. For the man who does not know him does not know the purpose of God; and the man who insults and hates him plainly hates and insults the one who sent him too. And if anyone does not believe in him, he does not believe the proclamations of the prophets, who announced him as good news and proclaimed him to everyone.