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| Types of the Death of Christ. Isaac; Joseph; Jacob Against Simeon and Levi; Moses Praying Against Amalek; The Brazen Serpent.
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Chapter XVIII.3343
| 3343 Compare adv.
Judæos, chap. 10. [pp. 165, 166, supra.] | —Types of the Death of Christ. Isaac;
Joseph; Jacob Against Simeon and Levi; Moses Praying Against Amalek;
The Brazen Serpent.
On the subject of His death,3344
I suppose, you endeavour to introduce a
diversity of opinion, simply because you deny that the suffering of the
cross was predicted of the Christ of the Creator, and because you
contend, moreover, that it is not to be believed that the Creator would
expose His Son to that kind of death on which He had Himself pronounced
a curse. “Cursed,” says He, “is every one who hangeth
on a tree.”3345
| 3345 Compare Deut. xxi. 23 with Gal. iii. 13. | But what is meant
by this curse, worthy as it is of the simple prediction of the cross,
of which we are now mainly inquiring, I defer to consider, because in
another passage3346
| 3346 The words
“quiaet aliasantecedit rerum probatio rationem,”
seem to refer to the parallel passage in adv. Judæos, where
he has described the Jewish law of capital punishment, and argued for
the exemption of Christ from its terms. He begins that paragraph with
saying, “Sed hujus maledictionis sensum antecedit rerum
ratio.” [See, p. 164, supra.] | we have given the
reason3347
| 3347 Perhaps
rationale or procedure. | of the thing
preceded by proof. First, I shall offer a full explanation3348
of the types. And no doubt it was proper
that this mystery should be prophetically set forth by types, and
indeed chiefly by that method: for in proportion to its incredibility
would it be a stumbling-block, if it were set forth in bare prophecy;
and in proportion too, to its grandeur, was the need of obscuring it in
shadow,3349
that the difficulty
of understanding it might lead to prayer for the grace of God. First,
then, Isaac, when he was given up by his father as an offering, himself
carried the wood for his own death. By this act he even then was
setting forth the death of Christ, who was destined by His Father as a
sacrifice, and carried the cross whereon He suffered. Joseph likewise
was a type of Christ, not indeed on this ground (that I may not delay
my course3350
| 3350 But he may mean, by
“ne demorer cursum,” “that I may not
obstruct the course of the type,” by taking off attention from
its true force. In the parallel place, however, another turn is given
to the sense; Joseph is a type, “even on this
ground—that I may but briefly allude to it—that he
suffered,” etc. | ), that he suffered
persecution for the cause of God from his brethren, as Christ did from
His brethren after the flesh, the Jews; but when he is blessed by his
father in these words: “His glory is that of a bullock; his horns
are the horns of a unicorn; with them shall he push the nations to the
very ends of the earth,”3351
—he was not,
of course, designated as a mere unicorn with its one horn, or a
minotaur with two; but Christ was indicated in him—a bullock in
respect of both His characteristics: to some as severe as a Judge, to
others gentle as a Saviour, whose horns were the extremities of His
cross. For of the antenna, which is a part of a cross, the ends are
called horns; while the midway stake of the whole frame is the
unicorn. By this virtue, then, of His cross, and in this manner
“horned,” He is both now pushing all nations through faith,
bearing them away from earth to heaven; and will then push them through
judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth. He will also,
according to another passage in the same scripture, be a bullock, when
He is spiritually interpreted to be Jacob against Simeon and Levi,
which means against the scribes and the Pharisees; for it was from them
that these last derived their origin.3352
Like Simeon and Levi, they consummated their wickedness by their
heresy, with which they persecuted Christ. “Into their counsel
let not my soul enter; to their assembly let not my heart be united:
for in their anger they slew men,” that is, the prophets;
“and in their self-will they hacked the sinews of a
bullock,”3353
| 3353 Gen. xlix. 6. The last clause is, “ceciderunt
nervos tauro.” | that is, of Christ.
For against Him did they wreak their fury after they
had slain His prophets, even
by affixing Him with nails to the cross. Otherwise, it is an idle
thing3354
when, after slaying men, he inveighs against
them for the torture of a bullock! Again, in the case of Moses,
wherefore did he at that moment particularly, when Joshua was fighting
Amalek, pray in a sitting posture with outstretched hands, when in such
a conflict it would surely have been more seemly to have bent the knee,
and smitten the breast, and to have fallen on the face to the ground,
and in such prostration to have offered prayer? Wherefore, but because
in a battle fought in the name of that Lord who was one day to fight
against the devil, the shape was necessary of that very cross through
which Jesus was to win the victory? Why, once more, did the same Moses,
after prohibiting the likeness of everything, set up the golden serpent
on the pole; and as it hung there, propose it as an object to be looked
at for a cure?3355
| 3355 Spectaculum
salutare. | Did he not here
also intend to show the power of our Lord’s cross, whereby that
old serpent the devil was vanquished,—whereby also to every man
who was bitten by spiritual serpents, but who yet turned with an eye of
faith to it, was proclaimed a cure from the bite of sin, and health for
evermore?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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