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| The Dispersion of the Jews, and Their Desolate Condition for Rejecting Christ, Foretold.
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Chapter
XXIII.—The Dispersion of the Jews, and Their Desolate Condition
for Rejecting Christ, Foretold.
Now, since you join the Jews in denying that their
Christ has come, recollect also what is that end which they were
predicted as about to bring on themselves after the time of Christ, for
the impiety wherewith they both rejected and slew Him. For it began to
come to pass from that day, when, according to Isaiah, “a man
threw away his idols of gold and of silver, which they made into
useless and hurtful objects of worship;”3416
in
other words, from the time when he threw away his idols after the truth
had been made clear by Christ. Consider whether what follows in the
prophet has not received its fulfilment: “The Lord of hosts hath
taken away from Judah and from Jerusalem, amongst other things, both
the prophet and the wise artificer;”3417
that is, His Holy Spirit, who builds the church, which is indeed the
temple, and household and city of God. For thenceforth God’s
grace failed amongst them; and “the clouds were commanded to rain
no rain upon the vineyard” of Sorech; to withhold, that is, the
graces of heaven, that they shed no blessing upon “the house of
Israel,” which had but produced “the thorns”
wherewith it had crowned the Lord, and “instead of righteousness,
the cry” wherewith it had hurried Him away to the cross.3418
And so in this manner the law and the
prophets were until John, but the dews of divine grace were withdrawn
from the nation. After his time their madness still continued, and the
name of the Lord was blasphemed by them, as saith the Scripture:
“Because of you my name is continually blasphemed amongst the
nations”3419
(for from them did
the blasphemy originate); neither in the interval from Tiberius to
Vespasian did they learn repentance.3420
| 3420 Compare Adv.
Judæos, 13, p. 171, for a like statement. | Therefore
“has their land become desolate, their cities are burnt with
fire, their country strangers are devouring before their own eyes; the
daughter of Sion has been deserted like a cottage in a vineyard, or a
lodge in a garden of cucumbers,”3421
ever since the time when “Israel acknowledged not the Lord, and
the people understood Him not, but forsook Him, and provoked the Holy
One of Israel unto anger.”3422
So likewise
that conditional threat of the sword, “If ye refuse and hear me
not, the sword shall devour you,”3423
has proved that it was Christ, for rebellion against whom they have
perished. In the fifty-eighth Psalm He demands of the Father their
dispersion: “Scatter them in Thy power.”3424
By Isaiah He also says, as He finishes a
prophecy of their consumption by fire:3425
“Because of me has this happened to you; ye shall lie down in
sorrow.”3426
But all this would
be unmeaning enough, if they suffered this retribution not on account
of Him, who had in prophecy assigned their suffering to His own cause,
but for the sake of the Christ of the other god. Well, then, although
you affirm that it is the Christ of the other god who was driven to the
cross by the powers and authorities of the Creator, as it were by
hostile beings, still I have to say, See how manifestly He was
defended3427
| 3427 Defensus, perhaps
“claimed.” | by the Creator:
there were given to Him both “the wicked for His burial,”
even those who had strenuously maintained that His corpse had been stolen, “and
the rich for His death,”3428
even those who had
redeemed Him from the treachery of Judas, as well as from the lying
report of the soldiers that His body had been taken away. Therefore
these things either did not happen to the Jews on His account, in which
case you will be refuted by the sense of the Scriptures tallying with
the issue of the facts and the order of the times, or else they did
happen on His account, and then the Creator could not have inflicted
the vengeance except for His own Christ; nay, He must have rather had a
reward for Judas, if it had been his master’s enemy whom they put
to death. At all events,3429
if the
Creator’s Christ has not come yet, on whose account the prophecy
dooms them to such sufferings, they will have to endure the sufferings
when He shall have come. Then where will there be a daughter of Sion to
be reduced to desolation, for there is none now to be found? Where will
there be cities to be burnt with fire, for they are now in
heaps?3430
| 3430 Compare a
passage in the Apology, chap. xxi. p. 34,
supra. | Where a nation to
be dispersed, which is already in banishment? Restore to Judæa its
former state, that the Creator’s Christ may find it, and then you
may contend that another Christ has come. But then,
again,3431
how is it that He
can have permitted to range through3432
His own heaven
one whom He was some day to put to death on His own earth, after the
more noble and glorious region of His kingdom had been violated, and
His own very palace and sublimest height had been trodden by him? Or
was it only in appearance rather that he did this?3433
God is no doubt3434
a
jealous God! Yet he gained the victory. You should blush with shame,
who put your faith in a vanquished god! What have you to hope for
from him, who was not strong enough to protect himself? For it was
either through his infirmity that he was crushed by the powers and
human agents of the Creator, or else through maliciousness, in order
that he might fasten so great a stigma on them by his endurance of
their wickedness.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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