CHAPTER 15
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
Bk. VI. will come and will not tarry," and encourages the hearer to trust the prediction, saying, that he that trusts it, shewn by his very faith to be just, shall live the life according to God, as on the other hand he that does not trust, drawing back through lack of boldness, and putting no faith in the words,
"My soul hath no pleasure in him."
So, then, if we follow this course and place the first clause last, and the last first, we shall preserve the sense of the passage, putting, "The just shall live by my faith," after, "For he that comelh will come and will not tarry," by transposing the clauses, and (278) adding to this, " If he draw back my soul taketh no pleasure in him."
And Aquila agrees with this interpretation saying, "If he delay, expect him, for he that coniethwill come, and will not tarry.
Lo, if he be sluggish,^ my soul is not true in him, and the just shall live by his faith."
CHAPTER
From the same.
That the Hearing about the Descent of the Lordfrom Heaven is Terrible^ and His // 'orks Wonderful^ and at His Coming the Whole Earth shall be filled 7i<ith His Praise, tvhen the Word of His Netu Covenant shall peri'ade all Men.
[Passage quoted, Hab. iii. 2-5.] ('!) Listp:ning to himself, or rather to the divine prophetic spirit within him, which said of the subject of the prophecy,
" He that cometh will come, and will not tarry, and the just shall live by my faith," and believing as a just man in the oracle, the holy prophet says in the passage before us, "O Lord, I have heard thy report, and I was afraid," and the words that follow in which he clearly announces that God will come to men.
And who could this be who was known of old, and was to be known afterwards when the time drew near, and (279) was to be shewn forth at the date predicted, but that same Being before shewn to be the second Lord of the Universe, who agreeably to the prophecy at the end of the ages has ' vwXf><fJ"l^^*">v.
('{. vuxf\T)s. v. v..
114.1.
I'.ur..
(V.
Soo.
The veil) seems only lo be used here.
Ch. 15.
BETWEEN TWO LIVES
been proclaimed for all to hear?
It was surely His works that are written in the Holy C.ospels, and it was clearly His Birth from the Virgin Tabernacle whence he sprang, and how " being in the form of God, he thought it not a thing to be grasped at to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,'" and it was the miracles He Phil. ii.
6. performed among men, and the insults offered to Him by the Jewish race that the prophet anticipated with the eyes (b) of his soul ; and learning of the Holy Spirit his Teacher what would accrue to minds purified from sin, he confessed that he was astonished and afraid at what he heard, and said, " Lord, I have heard thy report, and I was afraid, I understood thy works, and was astonished."
Our Lord and Saviour, too, the ^^'ord of God Himself, " was known between two lives."
The word ^wwv is jilural and accented with circumflex on the last syllable as the plural of the singular noun c^i/ (life).
It is not ^^^^^(c) accented acute on the penultimate from tft)ov (a living creature), but ^ 7i'ith circumflex on the last syllable (^cooii) from nominative plural tiacLi (lives).
He says, therefore, He was known between two lives.
One life is that according to God, the other that according to man : the one mortal, the other eternal.
And the Lord having experienced both, is rightly said to have been made known between two lives in the LXX translation.
Aquila translates differently :
" In the nearing of the years, cause it to live.'
\\\\dX does "it" mean here but " thy work " ?
And Thcodotion says: "In(d) the midst of the years, cause him to live," and Symmachus renders:
"Within the years, revive him."'
They all by the use of ^(owo-ov "(cause to live) shew clearly that the word in the original does not refer to irrational or rational animals.
And so following the rendering of the Septuagint, " He was made known between two lives," and not the commentators who have preceded me, I understand that the two lives of the Subject of the prophecy are referred to, the Divine and the Human.
^ toioIi'tokos : Jo.
Alex. tSiv iropay^, p. i6.
For the adverb : Ath.
409 \.
For itapoXxyroviU!, Kust. itx^xj, iS.
Tlie older grammarians alw.Tys liave Ka.^oivvtii, as Ath. 320 C * Kipia-KiiiyLfvos, Ath. 400 A. (Jramm.
' Hab. iii.
2 has iv fitacfi Svo (lywv yvoia6i\<Tri (Swete), in opposition to E.'s Ctfuv.
See S.
Driver, Minor Prophets, Century
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
Bk. VI.
To this the prophet adds :
" \Vhen my soul is troubled thou wilt in wrath remember mercy," teaching that when he foresaw the time of the Passion of the Subject of the (2S0) prophecy he was troubled in spirit.
Yet at that very time, he says, in which I was troubled in spirit, though at no other time such anger ever threatened men for the impiety dared against their Lord, the Lord of Love Himself in place of wrath remembered mercy, as the Son of the good
Father.
For His Passion became to all the world the ground of God's salvation and mercy.
To this is added: "God will come from ThxMiian."
(h) And Thceman translated into Greek is "consummation," so that it means simply, " God will come at the consummation."
For at the consummation of the age and in these last days the kindness of the God of the Universe has been made evident to us through our Saviour.
Put perhaps he foretells also His Second Coming in glory, in which case a fresh beginning is made at "God will come from Th;Bman," as shewing that at the consummation of the age He will come from the southern part of the heaven.
For Thx'man is translated " south."
^^'hercfore Theodotion (c) translates thus: "God will come from the south."
And you will understand the sentence that follows if you compare with it these words in Zechariah :
"8.
I saw the night, and behold a man sitting on a bay horse, and he stood in the midst of the shady Zcch. i.
8. mountains."
I believe this rider on the bay horse who stands in the midst of the shady mountains to be the same person mentioned in the prophecy before us, which says that the Holy One will come from a thick and shady mountain.
Bible, p. 86 (ver. 2) : " LXX for most of the last clause .iml for Ibis have the curious and in jiai t double and even treble rendering, ' In the midst of two animals [a misreadincj or confusion of the lleb. words rendered rij^hlly, "In the midst of years revive it '"] thou shalt he known, when the ycnrs draw ni^h thou shalt be rccoijni?ed. when the lime approarlu's thou shalt be declared.'
Driver says this is the origin of the pictures of the Infant Jesus between an ass and an ox. suggested also by Isa. i. 3.
IIe(piotes A. West (Coiitiinf>otiji y A'rrinv, Her.
1003, pp. 873
.((/., who states that this interpretation of the LXX of Ilab. iii.
2 h is iirst found in '/'J/r Gos/<il o) l\<eiidoMixt!hc;v at the enil of the fifth century.
Ch. 15.
TRIUMPH OF THE WORD
In each passage shady mountains are mentioned, and I beheve they refer to the Paradise of God, which He planted (d) eastward in Eden, or perhaps to the Heavenly Jerusalem.
For " there are mountains around it, and the Eord is in j.^ j.^, the midst of his people."
And these mountains are said 2. to be shady, because they are full of divine powers and holy spirits, as of trees planted there and far-spreading.
But in Zechariah clearly the vision was of a man riding on a bay horse, by which the Incarnation of our Saviour was meant, and the flesh in which He rode : while here " God a Holy One " is named.
For to mark that it was from God that He made His approach to men, and that He arrived from diviner regions, it is said, "God came from Threman, and the Holy One from a thick and shady mountain."
And then it adds: "His glory covered the heavens, and the earth is full of his praise, and his ray (2S1) shall be as light."
In which both the glory of His Heavenly Kingdom is shewn, and also the increase of the praise of the teaching about Him that will be spread through all the earth.
And the expression, "horns in his hands," shews the symbols of His rule, wherewith He drives away the invisible and opposing powers by pushing and butting them.
And agreeing with this he adds :
" He made the love of his power strong": and the greatest sign of His strong (b) affection and love to men was "that his Word should go before his face," meaning the Gospel of Salvation, which should come forth and scour the plains, so that soon all the world should be filled with the salvation offered by Him to all men according to the prophecy which said, " Before his face shall his Word go forth, and shall go out into the plains."
His U'ord will bring a further and more exact (c) fulfilment to this prophecy and its context at His Second Coming, which it is not now the place to expound.
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
Bk. VT.
CHAPTER
From Zechariah.
That the Ahnii^hty Lord states that He is sent by Another Almighty Lord for the Destruction of the Wicked.
[Passage quoted, Zech. ii.
8.] In these words the Ahnighty Lord Himself says that He has been sent, and teaches who it was that sent Him, saying, "And ye shall know that the Almighty Lord has sent me."
Here, then, you have clearly two Persons using one Name, the Almighty Lord that sent, and Him that is (2S2) sent having the same Name as the Sender.
And whom else could you suppose Him that is sent to be, but Him that we have so often called God the Word, Who states that He is sent by the Father, and says clearly, " After his glory he has sent me," shewing that though pre-existing in the glory of the Father He was sent afterwards unto the nations that spoiled you ?
For the Word of God was sent unto the nations, who before were hostile to the people of God, and subjected them to Himself, making a spoil of them by His
(b) disciples, who belonged to the Jewish nation, which the Gentiles had long spoiled enslaving it to their own idolatry.
This, then. He says that the nations will suffer, as He ordained.
For as they perverted the people of God from their ancestral religion, and made them a spoil for their own d;\:mons, so some day shall they be made spoils from their fathers' idolatry to them who of old have served them, and be brought under the yoke of the Jewish religion.
And the Lord says that this will be done by Himself, as (c) He will be sent by His Father to accomplish it.
It might also be said that certain invisible spiritual powers are meant by the nations which spoiled and enslaved the souls of men, which the Word of God here says He loves as the apple of His eye.
And the proof of His great love to the human race is that He did not draw back, though He was the (d) Word of God and in the glory of the Father, hut agreed to live with men and govern them.
Ch. 17.
CHURCH OF THE GENTILES
CHAPTER
From the same.
Hoiv the Lordforetells that He will come from Heaven and dwell among Men, and that the Nations 7villfee to Him, and He states that He 7vas sent by Another Almighty Lord stronger than Himself.
[Passage quoted, Zech. ii.
10.] As it is now my object to unfold from the prophets the (283) second cause of our Lord's Hving our life on earth, the prophecy before us appears to state it so clearly that it hardly needs any elaboration.
Vou will notice that He C^) gives the cause of His coming, where He says, " And many nations shall flee unto the Lord in that day, and they shall be to me for a people."
And the AVord announces this to the daughter of Sion, calling the Church of God by this name, through her seeming to be the daughter of the heavenly Jerusalem, she that is the mother of the Saints, according to the holy apostle.
Or the Church of God (c) might be called the daughter of Sion for another reason as one separated from the former congregation of the jews by the apostles and evangelists, who also were the children of a mother divorced for her own impiety, and a widow because she had driven away her Husband,
^\'h() rebuked her by the prophets and said, " Hast thou not called me Jer. ill.
4. as a husband, and father, and leader of thy virginity ?
And accusing their mother's ways also to them that were born of her He says :
" Where is the bill of thy mother's divorcement, by which I rejected her?"^ And again : isa.
1. i "Judge the cause of your mother, judge it, because she (fl) is not my wife, and I am not her husband."
IIos. ii
So, then, this prophecy rightly announces the presence of the Lord to those who had rejected their mother (calling them) the daughter of the Lord.
And it is the Church of the Gentiles that is reckoned by the apostles of our Saviour to have taken the place of her tliat before was daughter.