City of God, Book 16

It is difficult to discover from Scripture whether, after the flood, traces of the holy city are continuous, or are so interrupted by intervening seasons of godlessness, that not a single worshipper of the one true God was found among men; because from Noah, who, with his wife, three sons, and as many daughters-in-law, was delivered in the ark from the destruction of the flood, down to Abraham, we do not find in the canonical books that the piety of anyone is celebrated by express divine testimony, except in the case of Noah, who commends his two sons Shem and Japheth with a prophetic blessing, as he saw and foresaw what was to happen long afterward. It was also by this prophetic spirit that, when his middle son — that is, the son who was younger than the first and older than the last born — had sinned against him, he cursed him not in his own person, but in his son's (his own grandson's), in the words, “Cursed be the lad Canaan; he shall be a servant to his brothers.” Genesis 9:25 Now Canaan was born of Ham, who, far from covering his sleeping father's nakedness, had made it known. For the same reason he also adds the blessing on his two other sons, the oldest and youngest, saying, “Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall gladden Japheth, and he shall dwell in the houses of Shem.” Genesis 9:26-27 And so, too, the planting of the vine by Noah, and his intoxication by its fruit, and his nakedness while he slept, and the other things done at that time, and recorded, are all full of prophetic meanings, and veiled in mysteries.

The things which then were hidden are now sufficiently revealed by the actual events which have followed. For who can carefully and intelligently consider these things without recognizing them accomplished in Christ? Shem, of whom Christ was born in the flesh, means “named.” And what is of greater name than Christ, the fragrance of whose name is now everywhere perceived, so that even prophecy sings of it beforehand, comparing it in the Song of Songs, Song of Songs 1:3 to ointment poured forth? Is it not also in the houses of Christ, that is, in the churches, that the “enlargement” of the nations dwells? For Japheth means “enlargement.” And Ham (that is, hot), who was the middle son of Noah, and, as it were, separated himself from both, and remained between them, belonging neither to the firstfruits of Israel nor to the fullness of the Gentiles, what does he signify but the tribe of heretics, hot with the spirit, not of patience, but of impatience, with which the breasts of heretics usually blaze, and with which they disturb the peace of the saints? But even the heretics are of use to those who are making progress, according to the apostle's saying, “There must also be heresies, so that those who are approved may be made known among you.” 1 Corinthians 11:19 For this reason, too, it is said elsewhere, “The son who receives instruction will be wise, and he uses the foolish as his servant.” For while the hot restlessness of heretics stirs questions about many articles of the Catholic faith, the necessity of defending them forces us both to investigate them more accurately, to understand them more clearly, and to proclaim them more earnestly; and the question raised by an adversary becomes the occasion of instruction. However, not only those who are openly separated from the church, but also all who glory in the Christian name, and at the same time lead dissolute lives, may reasonably seem to be prefigured by Noah's middle son: for the passion of Christ, which was signified by that man's nakedness, is at once proclaimed by their profession, and dishonored by their wicked conduct. Of such, therefore, it has been said, “By their fruits you shall know them.” Matthew 7:20 And therefore Ham was cursed in his son, who was, so to speak, his fruit. So, too, this son of his, Canaan, is fittingly interpreted “their movement,” which is nothing else than their work. But Shem and Japheth, that is to say, the circumcised and the uncircumcised, or, as the apostle otherwise calls them, the Jews and Greeks, but called and justified, having somehow discovered the nakedness of their father (which signifies the Savior's passion), took a garment and laid it on their backs, and went in backward and covered their father's nakedness, without their seeing what their reverence hid. For we both honor the passion of Christ as accomplished for us, and we hate the crime of the Jews who crucified Him. The garment signifies the sacrament, their backs the memory of things past: for the church celebrates the passion of Christ as already accomplished, and no longer to be looked forward to, now that Japheth already dwells in the dwellings of Shem, and their wicked brother between them. But the wicked brother is, in the person of his son (that is, his work), the boy, or slave, of his good brothers, when good men make skillful use of bad men, either for the exercise of their patience or for their advancement in wisdom. For the apostle testifies that there are some who preach Christ from no pure motives; “but,” he says, “whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice.” Philippians 1:18 For it is Christ Himself who planted the vine of which the prophet says, “The vine of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel;” Isaiah 5:7 and He drinks of its wine, whether we understand by this the cup of which He says, “Can you drink of the cup that I shall drink of?” Matthew 20:22 and, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” Matthew 26:39 by which He obviously means His passion. Or, as wine is the fruit of the vine, we may prefer to understand that from this vine, that is to say, from the race of Israel, He has assumed flesh and blood so that He might suffer; “and he was drunk,” that is, He suffered; “and was naked,” that is, His weakness appeared in His suffering, as the apostle says, “though He was crucified through weakness.” 2 Corinthians 13:4 Therefore the same apostle says, “The weakness of God is stronger than men; and the foolishness of God is wiser than men.” 1 Corinthians 1:25 And when to the expression “he was naked” Scripture adds “in his house,” it elegantly indicates that Jesus was to suffer the cross and death at the hands of His own household, His own flesh and blood, the Jews. This passion of Christ is only externally and verbally professed by the reprobate, for what they profess, they do not understand. But the elect hold in the inner man this great mystery, and honor inwardly in the heart this weakness and foolishness of God. And of this there is a figure in Ham going out to proclaim his father's nakedness; while Shem and Japheth, to cover or honor it, went in, that is to say, did it inwardly. These secrets of divine Scripture we investigate as well as we can. Not all will accept our interpretation with equal confidence, but all hold it certain that these things were neither done nor recorded without some foreshadowing of future events, and that they are to be referred only to Christ and His church, which is the city of God, proclaimed from the very beginning of human history by figures which we now see everywhere accomplished. From the blessing of the two sons of Noah, and the cursing of the middle son, down to Abraham, or for more than a thousand years, there is, as I have said, no mention of any righteous persons who worshipped God. I do not therefore conclude that there were none; but it would have been tedious to mention every one, and would have displayed historical accuracy rather than prophetic foresight. The object of the writer of these sacred books, or rather of the Spirit of God in him, is not only to record the past, but to depict the future, as far as it concerns the city of God; for whatever is said of those who are not its citizens, is given either for her instruction, or as a foil to enhance her glory. Yet we are not to suppose that all that is recorded has some meaning; but those things which have no meaning of their own are interwoven for the sake of the things which are significant. It is only the plowshare that cuts the soil; but to do this, other parts of the plow are required. It is only the strings in harps and other musical instruments which produce melodious sounds; but so that they may do so, there are other parts of the instrument which are not indeed struck by those who sing, but are connected with the strings which are struck, and produce musical notes. So in this prophetic history some things are narrated which have no significance, but are, as it were, the framework to which the significant things are attached.

We must therefore introduce into this work an explanation of the generations of the three sons of Noah, insofar as that may illustrate the progress in time of the two cities. Scripture first mentions that of the youngest son, who is called Japheth: he had eight sons, and by two of these sons seven grandchildren, three by one son, four by the other; in all, fifteen descendants. Ham, Noah's middle son, had four sons, and by one of them five grandsons, and by one of these two great-grandsons; in all, eleven. After enumerating these, Scripture returns to the first of the sons, and says, “Cush fathered Nimrod; he began to be a giant on the earth. He was a giant hunter against the Lord God: therefore they say, As Nimrod the giant hunter against the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babylon, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land Assur went out, and built Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: this was a great city.” Now this Cush, father of the giant Nimrod, is the first-named among the sons of Ham, to whom five sons and two grandsons are ascribed. But he either fathered this giant after his grandsons were born, or, which is more credible, Scripture speaks of him separately on account of his eminence; for mention is also made of his kingdom, which began with that magnificent city Babylon, and the other places, whether cities or districts, mentioned along with it. But what is recorded of the land of Shinar which belonged to Nimrod's kingdom, namely, that Assur went out from it and built Nineveh and the other cities mentioned with it, happened long after; but he takes occasion to speak of it here on account of the grandeur of the Assyrian kingdom, which was wonderfully extended by Ninus son of Belus, and founder of the great city Nineveh, which was named after him, Nineveh, from Ninus. But Assur, father of the Assyrian, was not one of the sons of Ham, Noah's son, but is found among the sons of Shem, his eldest son. From this it appears that among Shem's offspring there arose men who afterward took possession of that giant's kingdom, and advancing from it, founded other cities, the first of which was called Nineveh, from Ninus. From him Scripture returns to Ham's other son, Mizraim; and his sons are enumerated, not as seven individuals, but as seven nations. And from the sixth, as if from the sixth son, the race called the Philistines are said to have sprung; so that there are in all eight. Then it returns again to Canaan, in whose person Ham was cursed; and his eleven sons are named. Then the territories they occupied, and some of the cities, are named. And thus, if we count sons and grandsons, there are thirty-one of Ham's descendants recorded. It remains to mention the sons of Shem, Noah's eldest son; for to him this genealogical narrative gradually ascends from the youngest. But at the beginning of the record of Shem's sons there is an obscurity which calls for explanation, since it is closely connected with the object of our investigation. For we read, “To Shem also, the father of all the children of Heber, the brother of Japheth the elder, children were born.” Genesis 10:21 This is the order of the words: And to Shem was born Heber, to him himself, that is, to Shem himself was born Heber, and Shem is the father of all his children. We are intended to understand that Shem is the patriarch of all his posterity who were to be mentioned, whether sons, grandsons, great-grandsons, or descendants at any remove. For Shem did not father Heber, who was indeed in the fifth generation from him. For Shem fathered, among other sons, Arphaxad; Arphaxad fathered Cainan, Cainan fathered Salah, Salah fathered Heber. And it was with good reason that he was named first among Shem's offspring, taking precedence even of his sons, though only a grandchild of the fifth generation; for from him, as tradition says, the Hebrews derived their name, though the other etymology which derives the name from Abraham (as if Abrahews) may possibly be correct. But there can be little doubt that the former is the right etymology, and that they were called after Heber, Heberews, and then, dropping a letter, Hebrews; and so their language was called Hebrew, which was spoken by no one but the people of Israel among whom was the city of God, mysteriously prefigured in all the people, and truly present in the saints. Six of Shem's sons then are first named, then four grandsons born to one of these sons; then it mentions another son of Shem, who fathered a grandson; and his son, again, or Shem's great-grandson, was Heber. And Heber fathered two sons, and called the one Peleg, which means “dividing;” and Scripture adds the reason for this name, saying, “for in his days the earth was divided.” What this means will appear later. Heber's other son fathered twelve sons; consequently all Shem's descendants are twenty-seven. The total number of the progeny of the three sons of Noah is seventy-three, fifteen by Japheth, thirty-one by Ham, twenty-seven by Shem. Then Scripture adds, “These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations.” And so of the whole number it says, “These are the families of the sons of Noah after their generations, in their nations; and by these were the isles of the nations dispersed through the earth after the flood.” From which we gather that the seventy-three (or rather, as I shall shortly show, seventy-two) were not individuals, but nations. For in an earlier passage, when the sons of Japheth were enumerated, it is said in conclusion, “By these were the isles of the nations divided in their lands, every one after his language, in their tribes, and in their nations.” But nations are expressly mentioned among the sons of Ham, as I showed above. “Mizraim fathered those who are called Ludim;” and so also of the other seven nations. And after enumerating all of them, it concludes, “These are the sons of Ham, in their families, according to their languages, in their territories, and in their nations.” The reason, then, why the children of several of them are not mentioned, is that they belonged by birth to other nations, and did not themselves become nations. Why else is it that though eight sons are counted for Japheth, the sons of only two of these are mentioned; and though four are counted for Ham, only three are spoken of as having sons; and though six are counted for Shem, the descendants of only two of these are traced? Did the rest remain childless? We cannot suppose so; but they did not produce nations so great as to warrant their being mentioned, but were absorbed in the nations to which they belonged by birth.

But though these nations are said to have been dispersed according to their languages, the narrator still returns to the time when all had only one language, and explains how it came about that a diversity of languages was introduced. “The whole earth,” he says, “was of one lip, and all had one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and dwelt there. And they said to one another, Come, and let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly. And they had bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar. And they said, Come, and let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top shall reach the sky; and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered on the face of all the earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. And the Lord God said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this is what they begin to do: and now nothing they have planned to do will be kept from them. Come, and let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they may not understand one another's speech. And God scattered them from there on the face of all the earth: and they stopped building the city and the tower. Therefore the name of it is called Confusion; because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth: and the Lord God scattered them from there on the face of all the earth.” Genesis 11:1-9 This city, which was called Confusion, is the same as Babylon, whose wonderful construction Gentile history also notices. For Babylon means Confusion. From this we conclude that the giant Nimrod was its founder, as had been hinted a little before, where Scripture, in speaking of him, says that the beginning of his kingdom was Babylon, that is, Babylon had a supremacy over the other cities as the metropolis and royal residence; although it did not rise to the grand dimensions intended by its proud and impious founder. The plan was to make it so high that it would reach the sky, whether this was meant of one tower which they intended to build higher than the others, or of all the towers, which might be signified by the singular number, as we speak of “the soldier,” meaning the army, and of the frog or the locust, when we refer to the whole multitude of frogs and locusts in the plagues with which Moses struck the Egyptians. Exodus x But what did these vain and presumptuous men intend? How did they expect to raise this lofty mass against God, when they had built it above all the mountains and the clouds of the earth's atmosphere? What injury could any spiritual or material elevation do to God? The safe and true way to heaven is made by humility, which lifts up the heart to the Lord, not against Him; as this giant is said to have been a “hunter against the Lord.” This has been misunderstood by some through the ambiguity of the Greek word, and they have translated it, not “against the Lord,” but “before the Lord;” for ἐναντίον means both “before” and “against.” In the Psalm this word is translated, “Let us weep before the Lord our Maker.” The same word occurs in the book of Job, where it is written, “You have broken into fury against the Lord.” Job 15:13 And so this giant is to be recognized as a “hunter against the Lord.” And what is meant by the term “hunter” but deceiver, oppressor, and destroyer of the animals of the earth? He and his people, therefore, erected this tower against the Lord, and so gave expression to their impious pride; and their wicked intention was justly punished by God, even though it was unsuccessful. But what was the nature of the punishment? As the tongue is the instrument of domination, in it pride was punished; so that man, who would not understand God when He issued His commands, would be misunderstood when he himself gave orders. So that conspiracy was broken up, for each man withdrew from those he could not understand, and associated with those whose speech was intelligible; and the nations were divided according to their languages, and scattered over the earth as seemed good to God, who accomplished this in ways hidden from and incomprehensible to us.

We read, “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men built:” it was not the sons of God, but that society which lived in a merely human way, and which we call the earthly city. God, who is always wholly everywhere, does not move from place to place; but He is said to descend when He does anything on the earth outside the usual course, which, as it were, makes His presence felt. And in the same way, He does not by “seeing” learn some new thing, for He cannot ever be ignorant of anything; but He is said to see and recognize, in time, what He causes others to see and recognize. And therefore that city was not previously being seen as God made it be seen when He showed how offensive it was to Him. We might, indeed, interpret God's descending to the city as the descent of His angels in whom He dwells; so that the following words, “And the Lord God said, Behold, they are all one race and of one language,” and also what follows, “Come, and let us go down and confuse their speech,” are a recapitulation, explaining how the previously mentioned “descent of the Lord” was accomplished. For if He had already gone down, why does He say, “Come, and let us go down and confuse?”— words which seem to be addressed to the angels, and to indicate that He who was in the angels descended in their descent. And the words most appropriately are, not, “Go down and confuse,” but, “Let us confuse their speech;” showing that He so works by His servants, that they are themselves also fellow workers with God, as the apostle says, “For we are fellow workers with God.” 1 Corinthians 3:9

We might have supposed that the words uttered at the creation of man, “Let us,” and not Let me, “make man,” were addressed to the angels, if He had not added “in our image;” but since we cannot believe that man was made in the image of angels, or that the image of God is the same as that of angels, it is proper to refer this expression to the plurality of the Trinity. And yet this Trinity, being one God, even after saying “Let us make,” goes on to say, “And God made man in His image,” Genesis 1:26 and not “Gods made,” or “in their image.” And if there were any difficulty in applying to the angels the words, “Come, and let us go down and confuse their speech,” we might refer the plural to the Trinity, as if the Father were addressing the Son and the Holy Spirit; but it rather belongs to the angels to approach God by holy movements, that is, by pious thoughts, and in this way to consult the unchangeable truth which rules in the court of heaven as their eternal law. For they are not themselves the truth; but partaking in the creative truth, they are moved toward it as the fountain of life, so that what they do not have in themselves they may obtain in it. And this movement of theirs is steady, for they never go back from what they have reached. And to these angels God does not speak, as we speak to one another, or to God, or to angels, or as the angels speak to us, or as God speaks to us through them: He speaks to them in an ineffable manner of His own, and what He says is conveyed to us in a manner suited to our capacity. For the speaking of God, which is prior and superior to all His works, is the immutable reason of His work: it has no noisy and passing sound, but an energy eternally abiding and producing results in time. This is how He speaks to the holy angels; but to us, who are far off, He speaks otherwise. When, however, we hear with the inner ear some part of the speech of God, we come close to the angels. But in this work I need not labor to give an account of the ways in which God speaks. For either the unchangeable Truth speaks directly to the mind of the rational creature in some indescribable way, or speaks through the changeable creature, either presenting spiritual images to our spirit, or bodily voices to our bodily sense. The words, “Nothing they have planned to do will be kept from them,” Genesis 11:6 are certainly not meant as a statement, but as a question, of the kind used by people making threats, as, for example, when Dido exclaims, “They will not take arms and pursue?” We are to understand the words as if it had been said, Shall nothing they have planned to do be kept from them? From these three men, therefore, the three sons of Noah, that is, 73, or rather, as the catalogue will show, 72 nations and as many languages were dispersed over the earth, and as they increased filled even the islands. But the nations multiplied much more than the languages. For even in Africa we know several barbarous nations which have only one language; and who can doubt that, as the human race increased, men contrived to pass to the islands in ships?

There is a question raised about all those kinds of beasts which are not domesticated, nor are produced like frogs from the earth, but are propagated by male and female parents, such as wolves and animals of that kind; and it is asked how they could be found in the islands after the deluge, in which all the animals not in the ark perished, unless the breed was restored from those which were preserved in pairs in the ark. It might, indeed, be said that they crossed to the islands by swimming, but this could only be true of those very near the mainland; while there are some so distant that we imagine no animal could swim to them. But if men caught them and took them across with themselves, and thus propagated these breeds in their new homes, this would not imply an incredible fondness for hunting. At the same time, it cannot be denied that by the intervention of angels they might be transferred by God's order or permission. If, however, they were produced out of the earth as at their first creation, when God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature,” Genesis 1:24 this makes it more evident that all kinds of animals were preserved in the ark, not so much for the sake of renewing the stock, as of prefiguring the various nations which were to be saved in the church; this, I say, is more evident, if the earth brought forth many animals in islands to which they could not cross over.

It is also asked whether we are to believe that certain monstrous races of men, spoken of in secular history, have sprung from Noah's sons, or rather, I should say, from that one man from whom they themselves were descended. For it is reported that some have one eye in the middle of the forehead; some, feet turned backward from the heel; some, a double sex, the right breast like a man, the left like a woman, and that they alternately father and bear children: others are said to have no mouth, and to breathe only through the nostrils; others are only a cubit high, and are therefore called by the Greeks “Pigmies:” they say that in some places the women conceive in their fifth year, and do not live beyond their eighth. So, too, they tell of a race who have two feet but only one leg, and are marvelously swift, though they do not bend the knee: they are called Skiopodes, because in the hot weather they lie down on their backs and shade themselves with their feet. Others are said to have no head, and their eyes in their shoulders; and other human or quasi-human races are depicted in mosaic in the harbor esplanade of Carthage, on the authority of histories of curiosities. What am I to say of the Cynocephali, whose dog-like head and barking proclaim them beasts rather than men? But we are not bound to believe all we hear of these monstrosities. But whoever is anywhere born a man, that is, a rational, mortal animal, no matter what unusual appearance he presents in color, movement, sound, or how unusual he is in some power, part, or quality of his nature, no Christian can doubt that he springs from that one first-formed man. We can distinguish the common human nature from what is unusual, and therefore wonderful. The same account which is given of monstrous births in individual cases can be given of monstrous races. For God, the Creator of all, knows where and when each thing ought to be, or to have been created, because He sees the similarities and diversities which can contribute to the beauty of the whole. But He who cannot see the whole is offended by the deformity of the part, because he is blind to what balances it, and to which it belongs. We know that men are born with more than four fingers on their hands or toes on their feet: this is a smaller matter; but we must never be so foolish as to suppose that the Creator mistook the number of a man's fingers, though we cannot account for the difference. And so in cases where the divergence from the rule is greater. He whose works no man justly finds fault with knows what He has done. At Hippo-Diarrhytus there is a man whose hands are crescent-shaped, and have only two fingers each, and his feet similarly formed. If there were a race like him, it would be added to the history of the curious and wonderful. Are we therefore to deny that this man is descended from that one man who was first created? As for the Androgyni, or Hermaphrodites, as they are called, though they are rare, from time to time there appear persons of sex so doubtful, that it remains uncertain from which sex they take their name; though it is customary to give them a masculine name, as the more worthy. For no one ever called them Hermaphroditesses. Some years ago, quite within my own memory, a man was born in the East, double in his upper, but single in his lower half — having two heads, two chests, four hands, but one body and two feet like an ordinary man; and he lived so long that many had an opportunity of seeing him. But who could list all the human births that have differed widely from their known parents? Just as, therefore, no one will deny that these are all descended from that one man, so all the races which are reported to have diverged in bodily appearance from the usual course which nature generally or almost universally preserves, if they are included in that definition of man as rational and mortal animals, unquestionably trace their descent to that one first father of all. We are supposing these stories about various races who differ from one another and from us to be true; but perhaps they are not: for if we were not aware that apes, and monkeys, and sphinxes are not men, but beasts, those historians would perhaps describe them as races of men, and flaunt with impunity their false and vainglorious discoveries. But supposing they are men of whom these marvels are recorded, what if God has seen fit to create some races in this way, so that we might not suppose that the monstrous births which appear among ourselves are the failures of that wisdom by which He fashions the human nature, as we speak of the failure of a less perfect workman? Accordingly, it ought not to seem absurd to us that, as in individual races there are monstrous births, so in the whole race there are monstrous races. Therefore, to conclude this question cautiously and guardedly, either these things which have been told of some races do not exist at all; or if they do exist, they are not human races; or if they are human, they are descended from Adam.

But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets for us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that is in no way credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: from this they conclude that the part which is beneath must also be inhabited. But they do not notice that, even if it is supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, it still does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor, even if it is bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled. For Scripture, which proves the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, gives no false information; and it is too absurd to say that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man. Therefore let us seek if we can find the city of God that sojourns on earth among those human races who are listed as having been divided into seventy-two nations and as many languages. For it continued down to the deluge and the ark, and is proved to have existed still among the sons of Noah by their blessings, and chiefly in the eldest son Shem; for Japheth received this blessing, that he would dwell in the tents of Shem.

It is necessary, therefore, to preserve the series of generations descending from Shem, in order to show the city of God after the flood, as before the flood it was shown in the series of generations descending from Seth. And therefore divine Scripture, after showing the earthly city as Babylon or “Confusion,” returns to the patriarch Shem, and recapitulates the generations from him to Abraham, specifying as well the year in which each father had the son that belonged to this line, and how long he lived. And unquestionably it is this which fulfills the promise I made, that it would be shown why it is said of the sons of Heber, “The name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided.” Genesis 10:25 For what can we understand by the division of the earth, if not the diversity of languages? And, therefore, omitting the other sons of Shem, who are not concerned in this matter, Scripture gives the genealogy of those by whom the line runs on to Abraham, as before the flood those are given who carried on the line to Noah from Seth. Accordingly this series of generations begins thus: “These are the generations of Shem: Shem was a hundred years old, and fathered Arphaxad two years after the flood. And Shem lived five hundred years after he fathered Arphaxad, and fathered sons and daughters.” In the same way it records the rest, naming the year of his life in which each had the son who belonged to that line which extends to Abraham. It specifies, too, how many years he lived after that, fathering sons and daughters, so that we may not childishly suppose that the men named were the only men, but may understand how the population increased, and how regions and kingdoms so vast could be populated by the descendants of Shem; especially the kingdom of Assyria, from which Ninus subdued the surrounding nations, reigning with brilliant prosperity, and bequeathing to his descendants a vast but thoroughly consolidated empire, which held together for many centuries. But to avoid needless length, we shall mention not the number of years each member of this series lived, but only the year of his life in which he fathered his heir, so that we may count in this way the number of years from the flood to Abraham, and may at the same time leave room to touch briefly and in passing on some other matters necessary to our argument. In the second year, then, after the flood, Shem when he was a hundred years old fathered Arphaxad; Arphaxad when he was 135 years old fathered Cainan; Cainan when he was 130 years old fathered Salah. Salah himself, too, was the same age when he fathered Eber. Eber lived 134 years, and fathered Peleg, in whose days the earth was divided. Peleg himself lived 130 years, and fathered Reu; and Reu lived 132 years, and fathered Serug; Serug 130, and fathered Nahor; and Nahor 79, and fathered Terah; and Terah 70, and fathered Abram, whose name God afterward changed into Abraham. There are thus from the flood to Abraham 1072 years, according to the Vulgate or Septuagint versions. In the Hebrew copies far fewer years are given; and for this either no reason or a not very credible one is given. When, therefore, we look for the city of God in these seventy-two nations, we cannot affirm that while they had only one lip, that is, one language, the human race had departed from the worship of the true God, and that genuine godliness had survived only in those generations which descend from Shem through Arphaxad and reach to Abraham; but from the time when they proudly built a tower to heaven, a symbol of godless exaltation, the city or society of the wicked becomes apparent. Whether it was only disguised before, or did not exist; whether both cities remained after the flood, — the godly in the two sons of Noah who were blessed, and in their posterity, and the ungodly in the cursed son and his descendants, from whom sprang that mighty hunter against the Lord, — is not easily determined. For perhaps — and certainly this is more credible — there were despisers of God among the descendants of the two sons, even before Babylon was founded, and worshippers of God among the descendants of Ham. Certainly neither race was ever wiped from the earth. For in both the Psalms in which it is said, “They have all gone astray, they have all alike become corrupt; there is no one who does good, no, not one,” we read further, “Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? They eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call on the Lord.” There was then a people of God even at that time. And therefore the words, “There is no one who does good, no, not one,” were said of the sons of men, not of the sons of God. For it had been previously said, “God looked down from heaven on the sons of men, to see if any understood and sought after God;” and then follow the words which demonstrate that all the sons of men, that is, all who belong to the city which lives according to man, not according to God, are reprobate.

Therefore, just as the fact that all used one language did not ensure the absence of men infected by sin from the race — for even before the deluge there was one language, and yet all but the single family of just Noah were found worthy of destruction by the flood, — so when the nations, by a prouder godlessness, earned the punishment of the dispersion and the confusion of tongues, and the city of the godless was called Confusion or Babylon, there was still the house of Heber in which the primitive language of the race survived. And therefore, as I have already mentioned, when an enumeration is made of the sons of Shem, who each founded a nation, Heber is first mentioned, although he was of the fifth generation from Shem. And because, when the other races were divided by their own separate languages, his family preserved that language which is reasonably believed to have been the common language of the race, it was for this reason from then on named Hebrew. For it then became necessary to distinguish this language from the rest by a proper name; though, while there was only one, it had no other name than the language of man, or human speech, since it alone was spoken by the whole human race. Someone will say: If the earth was divided by languages in the days of Peleg, Heber's son, that language, which was formerly common to all, should rather have been called after Peleg. But we are to understand that Heber himself gave to his son this name Peleg, which means Division; because he was born when the earth was divided, that is, at the very time of the division, and that this is the meaning of the words, “In his days the earth was divided.” Genesis 10:25 For unless Heber had been still alive when the languages were multiplied, the language which was preserved in his house would not have been called after him. We are led to believe that this was the primitive and common language, because the multiplication and change of languages was introduced as a punishment, and it is fitting to ascribe to the people of God an immunity from this punishment. Nor is it without significance that this is the language which Abraham retained, and that he could not transmit it to all his descendants, but only to those of Jacob's line, who distinctively and eminently constituted God's people, and received His covenants, and were Christ's progenitors according to the flesh. In the same way, Heber himself did not transmit that language to all his posterity, but only to the line from which Abraham sprang. And thus, although it is not expressly stated that when the wicked were building Babylon there was a godly seed remaining, this obscurity is intended to stimulate inquiry rather than to defeat it. For when we see that originally there was one common language, and that Heber is mentioned before all Shem's sons, though he belonged to the fifth generation from him, and that the language which the patriarchs and prophets used, not only in their conversation, but in the authoritative language of Scripture, is called Hebrew, when we are asked where that primitive and common language was preserved after the confusion of tongues, certainly, as there can be no doubt that those among whom it was preserved were exempt from the punishment it embodied, what else can we suggest but that it survived in the family of the man whose name it took, and that this is no small proof of the righteousness of this family, that the punishment with which the other families were punished did not fall on it? But yet another question is raised: How did Heber and his son Peleg each found a nation, if they had only one language? For no doubt the Hebrew nation propagated from Heber through Abraham, and becoming through him a great people, is one nation. How, then, are all the sons of the three branches of Noah's family enumerated as founding a nation each, if Heber and Peleg did not do so? It is very probable that the giant Nimrod also founded his nation, and that Scripture has named him separately on account of the extraordinary dimensions of his empire and of his body, so that the number of seventy-two nations remains. But Peleg was mentioned, not because he founded a nation (for his race and language are Hebrew), but on account of the critical time at which he was born, when all the earth was being divided. Nor ought we to be surprised that the giant Nimrod lived to the time in which Babylon was founded and the confusion of tongues occurred, and the consequent division of the earth. For though Heber was in the sixth generation from Noah, and Nimrod in the fourth, it does not follow that they could not be alive at the same time. For when the generations are few, they live longer and are born later; but when they are many, they live a shorter time, and come into the world earlier. We are to understand that, when the earth was divided, the descendants of Noah who are recorded as founders of nations were not only already born, but were of an age to have immense families, worthy to be called tribes or nations. And therefore we must by no means suppose that they were born in the order in which they were set down; otherwise, how could the twelve sons of Joktan, another son of Heber's, and brother of Peleg, have already founded nations, if Joktan was born, as he is recorded, after his brother Peleg, since the earth was divided at Peleg's birth? We are therefore to understand that, though Peleg is named first, he was born long after Joktan, whose twelve sons had already families large enough to be divided by different languages. There is nothing extraordinary in the last born being first named: of the sons of Noah, the descendants of Japheth are first named; then the sons of Ham, who was the second son; and last the sons of Shem, who was the first and oldest. The names of these nations have partly survived, so that today we can see from whom they have sprung, as the Assyrians from Assur, the Hebrews from Heber, but partly have been altered with the passing of time, so that the most learned men, by profound research in ancient records, have scarcely been able to discover the origin, I do not say of all, but of some of these nations. There is, for example, nothing in the name Egyptians to show that they are descended from Misraim, Ham's son, nor in the name Ethiopians to show a connection with Cush, though such is said to be the origin of these nations. And if we take a general survey of the names, we shall find that more have been changed than have remained the same.

Let us now survey the progress of the city of God from the era of the patriarch Abraham, from whose time it begins to be more conspicuous, and the divine promises which are now fulfilled in Christ are more fully revealed. We learn, then, from what holy Scripture indicates, that Abraham was born in the country of the Chaldeans, a land belonging to the Assyrian empire. Now, even at that time impious superstitions were rife among the Chaldeans, as with other nations. The family of Terah, to which Abraham belonged, was the only one in which the worship of the true God survived, and the only one, we may suppose, in which the Hebrew language was preserved; although Joshua the Son of Nun tells us that even this family served other gods in Mesopotamia. Joshua 24:2 The other descendants of Heber gradually became absorbed in other races and other languages. And thus, as the single family of Noah was preserved through the deluge of water to renew the human race, so, in the deluge of superstition that flooded the whole world, there remained only the one family of Terah in which the seed of God's city was preserved. And as, when Scripture has enumerated the generations before Noah, with their ages, and explained the cause of the flood before God began to speak to Noah about the building of the ark, it is said, “These are the generations of Noah;” so also now, after enumerating the generations from Shem, Noah's son, down to Abraham, it then marks a new era by saying, “These are the generations of Terah: Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldees. And Abram and Nahor took wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.” Genesis 11:27-29 This Iscah is supposed to be the same as Sarah, Abraham's wife.

Next it is related how Terah with his family left the region of the Chaldeans and came into Mesopotamia, and dwelt in Haran. But nothing is said about one of his sons called Nahor, as if he had not taken him along with him. For the narrative runs as follows: “And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarah his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and led them out of the region of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan; and he came into Haran, and dwelt there.” Genesis 11:31 Nahor and Milcah his wife are nowhere named here. But afterward, when Abraham sent his servant to take a wife for his son Isaac, we find it written: “And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his lord, and of all the goods of his lord, with him; and arose, and went into Mesopotamia, into the city of Nahor.” Genesis 24:10 This and other testimonies of this sacred history show that Nahor, Abraham's brother, had also left the region of the Chaldeans, and settled in Mesopotamia, where Abraham dwelt with his father. Why, then, did the Scripture not mention him, when Terah with his family went out of the Chaldean nation and dwelt in Haran, since it mentions that he took with him not only Abraham his son, but also Sarah his daughter-in-law, and Lot his grandson? The only reason we can think of is that perhaps he had fallen away from the piety of his father and brother, and clung to the superstition of the Chaldeans, and had afterward emigrated from there, either through penitence, or because he was persecuted as a suspected person. For in the book called Judith, when Holofernes, the enemy of the Israelites, inquired what kind of nation that might be, and whether war should be made against them, Achior, the leader of the Ammonites, answered him thus: “Let our lord now hear a word from the mouth of your servant, and I will declare to you the truth about the people who dwell near you in this hill country, and no lie shall come out of the mouth of your servant. For this people is descended from the Chaldeans, and they formerly dwelt in Mesopotamia, because they would not follow the gods of their fathers, which were glorious in the land of the Chaldeans, but went out of the way of their ancestors, and adored the God of heaven, whom they knew; and they cast them out from the face of their gods, and they fled into Mesopotamia, and dwelt there many days. And their God told them to depart from their dwelling, and go into the land of Canaan; and they dwelt,” and so on, as Achior the Ammonite narrates. From this it is plain that the house of Terah had suffered persecution from the Chaldeans for the true piety with which they worshipped the one and true God.⁠a

On Terah's death in Mesopotamia, where he is said to have lived 205 years, the promises of God made to Abraham now begin to be pointed out; for so it is written: “And the days of Terah in Haran were two hundred and five years, and he died in Haran.” Genesis 11:32 This is not to be taken as if he had spent all his days there, but that he completed there the days of his life, which were two hundred and five years: otherwise it would not be known how many years Terah lived, since it is not said in what year of his life he came into Haran; and it is absurd to suppose that, in this series of generations, where it is carefully recorded how many years each one lived, his age was the only one not put on record. For although some whom the same Scripture mentions do not have their age recorded, they are not in this series, in which the counting of time is continuously indicated by the death of the parents and the succession of the children. For this series, which is given in order from Adam to Noah, and from him down to Abraham, contains no one without the number of the years of his life.

When, after the record of the death of Terah, the father of Abraham, we next read, “And the Lord said to Abram, Go out from your country, and from your kindred, and from your father's house,” Genesis 12:1 and so on, it is not to be supposed, because this follows in the order of the narrative, that it also followed in the chronological order of events. For if it were so, there would be an insoluble difficulty. For after these words of God which were spoken to Abraham, the Scripture says: “And Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abraham was seventy-five years old when he departed out of Haran.” Genesis 12:4 How can this be true if he departed from Haran after his father's death? For when Terah was seventy years old, as is indicated above, he fathered Abraham; and if to this number we add the seventy-five years which Abraham had reached when he went out of Haran, we get 145 years. Therefore that was the number of the years of Terah, when Abraham departed out of that city of Mesopotamia; for he had reached the seventy-fifth year of his life, and thus his father, who fathered him in the seventieth year of his life, had reached, as was said, his 145th. Therefore he did not depart from there after his father's death, that is, after the 205 years his father lived; but the year of his departure from that place, since it was his seventy-fifth, is inferred beyond a doubt to have been the 145th of his father, who fathered him in his seventieth year. And thus it is to be understood that the Scripture, according to its custom, has gone back to the time which had already been passed by the narrative; just as above, when it had mentioned the grandsons of Noah, it said that they were in their nations and tongues; and yet afterward, as if this also had followed in order of time, it says, “And the whole earth was of one lip, and one speech for all.” Genesis 11:1 How, then, could they be said to be in their own nations and according to their own tongues, if there was one for all; except because the narrative goes back to gather up what it had passed over? Here, too, in the same way, after saying, “And the days of Terah in Haran were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran,” the Scripture, going back to what had been passed over in order to complete what had been begun about Terah, says, “And the Lord said to Abram, Go out from your country,” Genesis 12:1 and so on. After these words of God it is added, “And Abram departed, as the Lord spoke to him; and Lot went with him. But Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed out of Haran.” Therefore it was done when his father was in the 145th year of his age; for it was then the seventy-fifth of his own. But this question is also solved in another way, that the seventy-five years of Abraham when he departed out of Haran are counted from the year in which he was delivered from the fire of the Chaldeans, not from that of his birth, as if he was rather to be held as having been born then. Now the blessed Stephen, in narrating these things in the Acts of the Apostles, says: “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and said to him, Go out from your country, and from your kindred, and from your father's house, and come into the land which I will show you.” Acts 7:2-3 According to these words of Stephen, God spoke to Abraham, not after the death of his father, who certainly died in Haran, where his son also dwelt with him, but before he dwelt in that city, although he was already in Mesopotamia. Therefore he had already departed from the Chaldeans. So when Stephen adds, “Then Abraham went out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Charran,” Acts 7:4 this does not point out what took place after God spoke to him (for it was not after these words of God that he went out of the land of the Chaldeans, since he says that God spoke to him in Mesopotamia), but the word “then” which he uses refers to that whole period from his going out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelling in Haran. Likewise in what follows, “And from there, when his father was dead, he settled him in this land, in which you now dwell, and your fathers,” he does not say, after his father was dead he went out from Haran; but from there he settled him here, after his father was dead. It is to be understood, therefore, that God had spoken to Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran; but that he came to Haran with his father, keeping in mind the command of God, and that he went out from there in his own seventy-fifth year, which was his father's 145th. But he says that his settlement in the land of Canaan, not his departure from Haran, took place after his father's death; because his father was already dead when he purchased the land, and personally entered on possession of it. But when, on his having already settled in Mesopotamia, that is, already gone out of the land of the Chaldeans, God says, “Go out from your country, and from your kindred, and from your father's house,” Genesis 12:1 this means, not that he should cast out his body from there, for he had already done that, but that he should tear away his soul. For he had not gone out from there in mind, if he was held by the hope and desire of returning — a hope and desire which was to be cut off by God's command and help, and by his own obedience. It would indeed be no incredible supposition that afterward, when Nahor followed his father, Abraham then fulfilled the command of the Lord, that he should depart out of Haran with Sarah his wife and Lot his brother's son.

God's promises made to Abraham are now to be considered; for in these the oracles of our God, that is, of the true God, began to appear more openly about the godly people, whom prophetic authority foretold. The first of these reads thus: “And the Lord said to Abram, Go out from your country, and from your kindred, and from your father's house, and go into a land that I will show you: and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and magnify your name; and you shall be blessed: and I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you: and in you shall all tribes of the earth be blessed.” Genesis 12:1-3 Now it is to be observed that two things are promised to Abraham, the one, that his seed would possess the land of Canaan, which is indicated when it is said, “Go into a land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation;” but the other far more excellent, not about the carnal but the spiritual seed, through which he is the father, not of the one Israelite nation, but of all nations who follow the footprints of his faith, which was first promised in these words, “And in you shall all tribes of the earth be blessed.” Eusebius thought this promise was made in Abraham's seventy-fifth year, as if soon after it was made Abraham had departed out of Haran because the Scripture cannot be contradicted in which we read, “Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed out of Haran.” But if this promise was made in that year, then of course Abraham was staying in Haran with his father; for he could not depart from there unless he had first dwelt there. Does this, then, contradict what Stephen says, “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran?” Acts 7:2 But it is to be understood that the whole took place in the same year — both the promise of God before Abraham dwelt in Haran, and his dwelling in Haran, and his departure from there — not only because Eusebius in the Chronicles counts from the year of this promise, and shows that after 430 years the exodus from Egypt took place, when the law was given, but because the Apostle Paul also mentions it.

During the same period there were three famous kingdoms of the nations, in which the city of the earth-born, that is, the society of men living according to man under the domination of the fallen angels, chiefly flourished, namely, the three kingdoms of Sicyon, Egypt, and Assyria. Of these, Assyria was by far the most powerful and exalted; for that king Ninus, son of Belus, had subdued the people of all Asia except India. By Asia I now mean not that part which is one province of this greater Asia, but what is called Universal Asia, which some set down as the half, but most as the third part of the whole world — the three being Asia, Europe, and Africa, which makes an unequal division. For the part called Asia stretches from the south through the east even to the north; Europe from the north even to the west; and Africa from the west even to the south. Thus we see that two, Europe and Africa, contain one half of the world, and Asia alone the other half. And these two parts are formed by the fact that there enters between them from the ocean all the Mediterranean water, which makes this great sea of ours. So if you divide the world into two parts, the east and the west, Asia will be in the one, and Europe and Africa in the other. So of the three kingdoms then famous, one, namely Sicyon, was not under the Assyrians, because it was in Europe; but as for Egypt, how could it fail to be subject to the empire which ruled all Asia with the single exception of India? In Assyria, therefore, the dominion of the impious city had the preeminence. Its head was Babylon — an earth-born city, most fittingly named, for it means confusion. There Ninus reigned after the death of his father Belus, who had first reigned there sixty-five years. His son Ninus, who, on his father's death, succeeded to the kingdom, reigned fifty-two years, and had been king forty-three years when Abraham was born, which was about the 1200th year before Rome was founded, as it were another Babylon in the west.

Abraham, then, having departed out of Haran in the seventy-fifth year of his own age, and in the hundred and forty-fifth of his father's, went with Lot, his brother's son, and Sarah his wife, into the land of Canaan, and came even to Sichem, where again he received the divine oracle, of which it is written: “And the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, To your seed I will give this land.” Genesis 12:7 Nothing is promised here about that seed in which he is made the father of all nations, but only about that by which he is the father of the one Israelite nation; for by this seed that land was possessed.

Having built an altar there, and called on God, Abraham went on from there and dwelt in the desert, and was compelled by pressure of famine to go on into Egypt. There he called his wife his sister, and told no lie. For she was this also, because she was a close blood relative; just as Lot, on account of the same nearness, being his brother's son, is called his brother. Now he did not deny that she was his wife, but kept silent about it, committing to God the defense of his wife's chastity, and providing as a man against human wiles; because if he had not provided against the danger as much as he could, he would have been tempting God rather than trusting in Him. We have said enough about this matter against the slanders of Faustus the Manichæan. At last what Abraham had expected the Lord to do took place. For Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who had taken her as his wife, restored her to her husband on being severely plagued. And we must never believe that she was defiled by lying with another; because it is much more credible that, by these great afflictions, Pharaoh was not permitted to do this.

On Abraham's return out of Egypt to the place he had left, Lot, his brother's son, departed from him into the land of Sodom, without any breach of love. For they had grown rich, and began to have many herdsmen of cattle, and when these quarreled, they avoided in this way the quarrelsome discord of their families. Indeed, as human affairs go, this cause might even have given rise to some strife between themselves. Consequently these are the words of Abraham to Lot, when taking precaution against this evil, “Let there be no strife between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen; for we are brothers. Behold, is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me: if you go to the left, I will go to the right; or if you go to the right, I will go to the left.” Genesis 13:8-9 From this, perhaps, has arisen a peaceable custom among men, that when there is any partition of earthly things, the greater should make the division, the lesser the choice.

Now, when Abraham and Lot had separated, and dwelt apart, owing to the necessity of supporting their families, and not to base discord, and Abraham was in the land of Canaan, but Lot in Sodom, the Lord said to Abraham in a third oracle, “Lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you now are, to the north, and to Africa, and to the east, and to the sea; for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your seed forever. And I will make your seed as the dust of the earth: if anyone can number the dust of the earth, your seed shall also be numbered. Arise, and walk through the land, in the length of it, and in the breadth of it; for I will give it to you.” Genesis 13:14-17 It is not clear whether this promise also contains the one by which he is made the father of all nations. For the clause, “And I will make your seed as the dust of the earth,” may seem to refer to this, being spoken by the figure the Greeks call hyperbole, which indeed is figurative, not literal. But no person of understanding can doubt in what manner the Scripture uses this and other figures. For that figure (that is, way of speaking) is used when what is said is far larger than what is meant by it; for who does not see how incomparably larger the number of the dust must be than that of all men can be from Adam himself down to the end of the world? How much greater, then, must it be than the seed of Abraham — not only that belonging to the nation of Israel, but also that which is and will be according to the imitation of faith in all nations of the whole wide world! For that seed is indeed very small in comparison with the multitude of the wicked, although even those few of themselves make an innumerable multitude, which by a hyperbole is compared to the dust of the earth. Truly that multitude which was promised to Abraham is not innumerable to God, although it is to man; but to God not even the dust of the earth is so. Further, the promise here made may be understood not only of the nation of Israel, but of the whole seed of Abraham, which may be fittingly compared to the dust for multitude, because regarding it also there is the promise of many children, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. But we said that this is not clear because the multitude even of that one nation, which was born according to the flesh of Abraham through his grandson Jacob, has increased so much as to fill almost all parts of the world. Consequently, even it might by hyperbole be compared to the dust for multitude, because even it alone is innumerable by man. Certainly no one questions that only that land is meant which is called Canaan. But that saying, “I will give it to you and to your seed forever,” may trouble some, if by “forever” they understand “to eternity.” But if in this passage they take “forever” in this way, as we firmly hold it means that the beginning of the world to come is to be ordered from the end of the present, there is still no difficulty, because, although the Israelites are expelled from Jerusalem, they still remain in other cities in the land of Canaan, and will remain even to the end; and when that whole land is inhabited by Christians, they also are the very seed of Abraham.

Having received this oracle of promise, Abraham migrated, and remained in another place of the same land, that is, beside the oak of Mamre, which was Hebron. Then on the invasion of Sodom, when five kings carried on war against four, and Lot was taken captive with the conquered Sodomites, Abraham delivered him from the enemy, leading with him to battle three hundred and eighteen of his household servants, and won the victory for the kings of Sodom, but would take nothing of the spoils when offered by the king for whom he had won them. He was then openly blessed by Melchizedek, who was priest of God Most High, about whom many and great things are written in the epistle which is addressed to the Hebrews, which most say is by the Apostle Paul, though some deny this. For then the sacrifice first appeared which is now offered to God by Christians in the whole wide world, and that is fulfilled which long after the event was said by the prophet to Christ, who was yet to come in the flesh, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek,” — that is to say, not according to the order of Aaron, for that order was to be taken away when the things shone forth which were indicated beforehand by these shadows.

The word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision also. For when God promised him protection and a very great reward, he, being anxious about posterity, said that a certain Eliezer of Damascus, born in his house, would be his heir. Immediately he was promised an heir, not that household servant, but one who was to come from Abraham himself; and again a seed innumerable, not as the dust of the earth, but as the stars of heaven, — which rather seems to me a promise of a posterity exalted in heavenly happiness. For, as far as multitude is concerned, what are the stars of heaven to the dust of the earth, unless one says the comparison holds because the stars also cannot be numbered? For it is not to be believed that all of them can be seen. For the more keenly one observes them, the more he sees. So it is to be supposed some remain concealed from the keenest observers, to say nothing of those stars which are said to rise and set in another part of the world most remote from us. Finally, the authority of this book condemns those like Aratus or Eudoxus, or any others who boast that they have found out and written down the complete number of the stars. Here, indeed, is set down that sentence which the apostle quotes in order to commend the grace of God, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness;” so that the circumcised would not glory, and be unwilling to receive the uncircumcised nations to the faith of Christ. For at the time when he believed, and his faith was counted to him as righteousness, Abraham had not yet been circumcised.

In the same vision, God in speaking to him also says, “I am God who brought you out of the region of the Chaldees, to give you this land to inherit it.” Genesis 15:7 And when Abram asked how he might know that he would inherit it, God said to him, “Take for me a heifer three years old, and a she-goat three years old, and a ram three years old, and a turtledove, and a pigeon. And he took all these, and divided them in the middle, and laid each piece opposite the other; but he did not divide the birds. And the birds came down,” as it is written, “on the carcasses, and Abram sat down by them. But about the going down of the sun, great fear fell on Abram; and, lo, a horror of great darkness fell on him. And He said to Abram, Know for certain that your seed shall be a stranger in a land not theirs, and they shall reduce them to servitude and shall afflict them four hundred years: but I will judge the nation they serve; and afterward they shall come out here with great possessions. And you shall go to your fathers in peace; kept in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall come here again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. And when the sun was setting, there was a flame, and a smoking furnace, and lamps of fire, that passed through between those pieces. In that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates: the Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Hivites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” Genesis 15:9-21 All these things were said and done in a vision from God; but it would take long, and would exceed the scope of this work, to treat of them exactly in detail. It is enough that we should know that, after it was said Abram believed in God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, he did not fail in faith in saying, “Lord God, by what shall I know that I shall inherit it?” for the inheritance of that land was promised to him. Now he does not say, How shall I know, as if he did not yet believe; but he says, “By what shall I know,” meaning that some sign might be given by which he might know the manner of those things which he had believed, just as it is not for lack of faith the Virgin Mary says, “How shall this be, since I do not know a man?” Luke 1:34 for she inquired as to the way in which what she was certain would come to pass was to take place. And when she asked this, she was told, “The Holy Spirit shall come on you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you.” Luke 1:35 Here also, in short, a symbol was given, consisting of three animals, a heifer, a she-goat, and a ram, and two birds, a turtledove and a pigeon, so that he might know that the things which he had not doubted would come to pass were to happen in accordance with this symbol. Whether, therefore, the heifer was a sign that the people should be put under the law, the she-goat that the same people was to become sinful, the ram that they should reign (and these animals are said to be of three years old for this reason, that there are three remarkable divisions of time, from Adam to Noah, and from him to Abraham, and from him to David, who, on the rejection of Saul, was first established by the will of the Lord in the kingdom of the Israelite nation: in this third division, which extends from Abraham to David, that people grew up as if passing through the third age of life), or whether they had some other more suitable meaning, I still have no doubt at all that spiritual things were prefigured by them as well as by the turtledove and pigeon. And it is said, “But he did not divide the birds,” because carnal men are divided among themselves, but the spiritual not at all, whether they seclude themselves from the busy company of men, like the turtledove, or dwell among them, like the pigeon; for both birds are simple and harmless, signifying that even in the Israelite people, to which that land was to be given, there would be individuals who were children of the promise, and heirs of the kingdom that is to remain in eternal happiness. But the birds coming down on the divided carcasses represent nothing good, but the spirits of this air, seeking some food for themselves in the division of carnal men. But that Abraham sat down with them, signifies that even amid these divisions of the carnal, true believers will persevere to the end. And that about the going down of the sun great fear fell on Abraham and a horror of great darkness, signifies that about the end of this world believers will be in great distress and tribulation, of which the Lord said in the gospel, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning.” Matthew 24:21 But what is said to Abraham, “Know for certain that your seed shall be a stranger in a land not theirs, and they shall reduce them to servitude, and shall afflict them 400 years,” is most clearly a prophecy about the people of Israel which was to be in servitude in Egypt. Not that this people was to be in that servitude under the oppressive Egyptians for 400 years, but it is foretold that this would take place in the course of those 400 years. For as it is written of Terah the father of Abraham, “And the days of Terah in Haran were 205 years,” Genesis 11:32 not because they were all spent there, but because they were completed there, so it is said here also, “And they shall reduce them to servitude, and shall afflict them 400 years,” for this reason, because that number was completed, not because it was all spent in that affliction. The years are said to be 400 in round numbers, although they were a little more — whether you count from this time, when these things were promised to Abraham, or from the birth of Isaac, as the seed of Abraham, of which these things are predicted. For, as we have already said above, from the seventy-fifth year of Abraham, when the first promise was made to him, down to the exodus of Israel from Egypt, 430 years are counted, which the apostle mentions in this way: “And this I say, that the covenant confirmed by God, the law, which was made 430 years after, cannot annul, so as to make the promise of no effect.” Galatians 3:17 So then these 430 years might be called 400, because they are not much more, especially since part even of that number had already gone by when these things were shown and said to Abraham in vision, or when Isaac was born in his father's 100th year, twenty-five years after the first promise, when of these 430 years there now remained 405, which God was pleased to call 400. No one will doubt that the other things which follow in the prophetic words of God concern the people of Israel. When it is added, “And when the sun was now setting there was a flame, and lo, a smoking furnace, and lamps of fire, which passed through between those pieces,” this signifies that at the end of the world the carnal will be judged by fire. For just as the affliction of the city of God, such as never was before, which is expected to take place under Antichrist, was signified by Abraham's horror of great darkness about the going down of the sun, that is, when the end of the world draws near — so at the going down of the sun, that is, at the very end of the world, there is signified by that fire the day of judgment, which separates the carnal who are to be saved by fire from those who are to be condemned in the fire. And then the covenant made with Abraham particularly sets forth the land of Canaan, and names eleven tribes in it from the river of Egypt even to the great river Euphrates. It is not then from the great river of Egypt, that is, the Nile, but from a small one which separates Egypt from Palestine, where the city of Rhinocorura is.

And here follow the times of Abraham's sons, the one by Hagar the slave woman, the other by Sarah the free woman, about whom we have already spoken in the previous book. In this matter, Abraham is in no way to be branded as guilty over this concubine, for he used her to father children, not for the gratification of lust; and not to insult, but rather to obey his wife, who supposed it would be a comfort in her barrenness if she could make use of the fruitful womb of her handmaid to supply the defect of her own nature, and by that law of which the apostle says, “Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does,” 1 Corinthians 7:4 could, as a wife, make use of him for childbearing by another, when she could not do so in her own person. Here there is no wanton lust, no filthy lewdness. The handmaid is delivered to the husband by the wife for the sake of progeny, and is received by the husband for the sake of progeny, each seeking, not guilty excess, but natural fruit. And when the pregnant slave woman despised her barren mistress, and Sarah, with womanly jealousy, rather laid the blame of this on her husband, even then Abraham showed that he was not a slavish lover, but a free father of children, and that in using Hagar he had guarded the chastity of Sarah his wife, and had gratified her will and not his own — had received her without seeking, had gone in to her without being attached, had impregnated without loving her — for he says, “Behold your maid is in your hands: do to her as it pleases you;” Genesis 16:6 a man able to use women as a man should — his wife temperately, his handmaid compliantly, neither intemperately!

After these things Ishmael was born of Hagar; and Abraham might think that in him was fulfilled what God had promised him, saying, when he wished to adopt his household servant, “This man shall not be your heir; but one who shall come from you shall be your heir.” Genesis 15:4 Therefore, so that he would not think that what was promised was fulfilled in the handmaid's son, “when Abram was ninety-nine years old, God appeared to him, and said to him, I am God; be well-pleasing in my sight, and be without complaint, and I will make my covenant between me and you, and will fill you exceedingly.” Here there are more distinct promises about the calling of the nations in Isaac, that is, in the son of the promise, by which grace is signified, and not nature; for the son is promised from an old man and a barren old woman. For although God brings about even the natural course of procreation, where the work of God is plain, through the decay or failure of nature, grace is more plainly discerned. And because this was to be brought about, not by generation, but by regeneration, circumcision was commanded now, when a son was promised by Sarah. And by ordering all, not only sons, but also household and purchased servants to be circumcised, he testifies that this grace belongs to all. For what else does circumcision signify than a nature renewed on the putting off of the old? And what else does the eighth day mean than Christ, who rose again when the week was completed, that is, after the Sabbath? The very names of the parents are changed: all things proclaim newness, and the new covenant is shadowed forth in the old. For what does the term old covenant imply but the concealing of the new? And what does the term new covenant imply but the revealing of the old? The laughter of Abraham is the exultation of one who rejoices, not the scornful laughter of one who mistrusts. And those words of his in his heart, “Shall a son be born to me, who am a hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” are not the words of doubt, but of wonder. And when it is said, “And I will give to you, and to your seed after you, the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession,” if it troubles anyone whether this is to be held as fulfilled, or whether its fulfilment may still be looked for, since no kind of earthly possession can be everlasting for any nation at all, let him know that the word translated everlasting, by our writers is what the Greeks term αἰώ·νιον, which is derived from αἰὼ·ν, the Greek for sæculum, an age. But the Latins have not ventured to translate this by secular, for fear of changing the meaning into something widely different. For many things are called secular which so happen in this world as to pass away even in a short time; but what is termed αἰω·νιον either has no end, or lasts to the very end of this world.

When it is said, “The male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people, because he has broken my covenant,” Genesis 17:14 some may be troubled how that ought to be understood, since it can be no fault of the infant whose life it is said must perish; nor has the covenant of God been broken by him, but by his parents, who have not taken care to circumcise him. But even the infants, not personally in their own life, but according to the common origin of the human race, have all broken God's covenant in that one in whom all have sinned. Now there are many things called God's covenants besides those two great ones, the old and the new, which anyone who pleases may read and know. For the first covenant, which was made with the first man, is just this: “In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” Genesis 2:17 So it is written in the book called Ecclesiasticus, “All flesh grows old like a garment. For the covenant from the beginning is, You shall die the death.”⁠a Sirach 15:17 Now, as the law was more plainly given afterward, and the apostle says, “Where there is no law, there is no transgression,” Romans 4:15 on what supposition is what is said in the psalm true, “I counted all the sinners of the earth transgressors,” except that all who are held liable for any sin are accused of transgressing some law? If on this account, then, even the infants are, according to the true belief, born in sin, not actual but original, so that we confess they have need of grace for the remission of sins, certainly it must be acknowledged that in the same sense in which they are sinners they are also transgressors of that law which was given in Paradise, according to the truth of both scriptures, “I counted all the sinners of the earth transgressors,” and “Where there is no law, there is no transgression.” And so, because circumcision was the sign of regeneration, and the infant, on account of the original sin by which God's covenant was first broken, was deservedly to lose what his birth gave him unless delivered by rebirth, these divine words are to be understood as if it had been said, Whoever is not born again, that soul shall perish from his people, because he has broken my covenant, since he also has sinned in Adam with all others. For if He had said, Because he has broken this covenant of mine, He would have compelled us to understand by it only this covenant of circumcision; but since He has not expressly said what covenant the infant has broken, we are free to understand Him as speaking of that covenant whose breach can be ascribed to an infant. Yet if anyone contends that it is said of nothing else than circumcision, that in it the infant has broken the covenant of God because he is not circumcised, he must seek some method of explanation by which it may be understood without absurdity (such as this) that he has broken the covenant, because it has been broken in him although not by him. Yet in this case also it is to be observed that the soul of the infant, being guilty of no sin of neglect against itself, would perish unjustly, unless original sin made it liable to punishment.

Now when a promise so great and clear was made to Abraham, in which it was so plainly said to him, “I have made you a father of many nations, and I will increase you exceedingly, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. And I will give you a son by Sarah; and I will bless him, and he shall become nations, and kings of nations shall come from him,” — a promise which we now see fulfilled in Christ — from that time forward this couple are not called in Scripture, as formerly, Abram and Sarai, but Abraham and Sarah, as we have called them from the first, for everyone does so now. The reason why the name of Abraham was changed is given: “For,” He says, “I have made you a father of many nations.” This, then, is to be understood to be the meaning of Abraham; but Abram, as he was formerly called, means “exalted father.” The reason for the change of Sarah's name is not given; but as those say who have written interpretations of the Hebrew names contained in these books, Sarah means “my princess,” and Sarai “strength.” So it is written in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed.” Hebrews 11:11 For both were old, as the Scripture testifies; but she was also barren, and had ceased to menstruate, so that she could no longer bear children even if she had not been barren. Further, if a woman is advanced in years, but still has her monthly periods, she can bear children to a young man, but not to an old man, although that same old man can father children, but only by a young woman; as after Sarah's death Abraham could by Keturah, because he found her in the vigor of her age. This, then, is what the apostle mentions as wonderful, saying, moreover, that Abraham's body was now dead; Hebrews 11:12 because at that age he was no longer able to father children by any woman who retained now only a small part of her natural vigor. Of course we must understand that his body was dead only to some purposes, not to all; for if it was so to all, it would no longer be the aged body of a living man, but the corpse of a dead one. Although that question, how Abraham fathered children by Keturah, is usually solved in this way, that the gift of fathering children which he received from the Lord remained even after the death of his wife, I think that solution of the question which I have followed is preferable, because, although in our days an old man of a hundred years can father children by no woman, it was not so then, when men still lived so long that a hundred years did not yet bring on them the decrepitude of old age.

God appeared again to Abraham at the oak of Mamre in three men, who were undoubtedly angels, although some think that one of them was Christ, and assert that He was visible before He put on flesh. Now it belongs to the divine power, and invisible, incorporeal, and unchangeable nature, without changing itself at all, to appear even to mortal men, not by what it is, but by what is subject to it. And what is not subject to it? Yet if they try to establish that one of these three was Christ by the fact that, although he saw three, he addressed the Lord in the singular, as it is written, “And, lo, three men stood by him: and, when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed to the ground, and said, Lord, if I have found favor before you,” Genesis 18:2-3 and so on; why do they not notice this also, that when two of them came to destroy the Sodomites, while Abraham still spoke to one, calling him Lord, and interceding that he would not destroy the righteous along with the wicked in Sodom, Lot received these two in such a way that he too in his conversation with them addressed the Lord in the singular? For after saying to them in the plural, “Behold, my lords, turn aside into your servant's house,” Genesis 19:2 and so on, it is afterward said, “And the angels took hold of his hand, and the hand of his wife, and the hands of his two daughters, because the Lord was merciful to him. And it came to pass, when they had led him outside, that they said, Save your life; do not look behind you, nor stay anywhere in this region: save yourself on the mountain, so that you are not caught. And Lot said to them, I beg you, Lord, since your servant has found grace in your sight,” Genesis 19:16-19 and so on. And then after these words the Lord also answered him in the singular, although He was in two angels, saying, “See, I have accepted your face,” Genesis 19:21 and so on. This makes it much more credible that both Abraham in the three men and Lot in the two recognized the Lord, addressing Him in the singular number, even when they were addressing men; for they received them as they did for no other reason than to offer them human refreshment as men who needed it. Yet there was about them something so excellent, that those who showed them hospitality as men could not doubt that God was in them as He used to be in the prophets, and therefore sometimes addressed them in the plural, and sometimes God in them in the singular. But that they were angels the Scripture testifies, not only in this book of Genesis, in which these events are related, but also in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where in praising hospitality it is said, “For by it some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Hebrews 13:2 By these three men, then, when a son Isaac was again promised to Abraham by Sarah, such a divine oracle was also given that it was said, “Abraham shall become a great and numerous nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him.” Genesis 18:18 And here these two things are promised with the utmost brevity and fullness — the nation of Israel according to the flesh, and all nations according to faith.

After this promise Lot was delivered out of Sodom, and a fiery rain from heaven turned into ashes that whole region of the impious city, where custom had made sodomy as prevalent as laws have elsewhere made other kinds of wickedness. But this punishment of theirs was a sample of the divine judgment to come. For what is meant by the angels forbidding those who were delivered to look back, but that we are not to look back in heart to the old life which, being regenerated through grace, we have put off, if we expect to escape the last judgment? Lot's wife, indeed, when she looked back, remained, and, being turned into salt, furnished to believing men a condiment with which to season the warning to be drawn from that example. Then Abraham again did at Gerar, with Abimelech the king of that city, what he had done in Egypt about his wife, and received her back untouched in the same way. On this occasion, when the king rebuked Abraham for not saying she was his wife, and calling her his sister, he explained what he had been afraid of, and added this further, And yet indeed she is my sister by the father's side, but not by the mother's; Genesis 20:12 for she was Abraham's sister by his own father, and so a close relative. But her beauty was so great, that even at that advanced age she could be fallen in love with.

After these things a son was born to Abraham, according to God's promise, by Sarah, and was called Isaac, which means laughter. For his father had laughed when he was promised to him, in wondering delight, and his mother, when he was again promised by those three men, had laughed, doubting for joy; yet she was blamed by the angel because that laughter, although it was for joy, was not full of faith. Afterward she was confirmed in faith by the same angel. From this, then, the boy got his name. For when Isaac was born and called by that name, Sarah showed that her laughter was not that of scornful reproach, but that of joyful praise; for she said, “God has made me laugh, so that everyone who hears will laugh with me.” Genesis 21:6 Then in a little while the slave woman was cast out of the house with her son; and, according to the apostle, these two women signify the old and new covenants — Sarah representing that of the Jerusalem which is above, that is, the city of God. Galatians 4:24-26

Among other things, all of which it would take too long to mention, Abraham was tested over the offering up of his beloved son Isaac, to prove his pious obedience, and so make it known to the world, not to God.⁠a Now not every testing is blameworthy; it may even be praiseworthy, because it provides proof. And, for the most part, the human mind cannot attain to self-knowledge otherwise than by making trial of its powers through testing, by questioning itself in experience and not merely in words; and then, if it has acknowledged the gift of God, it is pious, and is made firm by steadfast grace and not puffed up by vain boasting. Of course Abraham could never believe that God delighted in human sacrifices; yet when the divine commandment thundered, it was to be obeyed, not disputed. Yet Abraham is worthy of praise, because he all along believed that his son, on being offered up, would rise again; for God had said to him, when he was unwilling to fulfill his wife's pleasure by casting out the slave woman and her son, “In Isaac shall your seed be called.” No doubt He then goes on to say, “And as for the son of this slave woman, I will make him a great nation, because he is your seed.” Genesis 21:12-13 How then is it said “In Isaac shall your seed be called,” when God calls Ishmael also his seed? The apostle, in explaining this, says, “In Isaac shall your seed be called, that is, it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as the seed.” Romans 9:7-8 In order, then, that the children of the promise may be the seed of Abraham, they are called in Isaac, that is, are gathered together in Christ by the call of grace. Therefore the father, holding fast from the first the promise which had to be fulfilled through this son whom God had ordered him to kill, did not doubt that the son he had once thought it hopeless he would ever receive would be restored to him when he had offered him up. It is in this way the passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews is also to be understood and explained. “By faith,” he says, “Abraham overcame, when tested over Isaac: and he who had received the promise offered up his only son, to whom it was said, In Isaac shall your seed be called: thinking that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead;” therefore he has added, “from which he also received him as a likeness.” Hebrews 11:17-19 A likeness of whom, if not of Him of whom the apostle says, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all?” Romans 8:32 And on this account Isaac also himself carried to the place of sacrifice the wood on which he was to be offered up, just as the Lord Himself carried His own cross. Finally, since Isaac was not to be killed, after his father was forbidden to strike him, who was that ram by the offering of which that sacrifice was completed with symbolic blood? For when Abraham saw him, he was caught by the horns in a thicket. What, then, did he represent but Jesus, who, before He was offered up, was crowned with thorns by the Jews? But let us rather hear the divine words spoken through the angel. For the Scripture says, “And Abraham stretched out his hand to take the knife, to kill his son. And the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, Abraham. And he said, Here I am. And he said, Do not lay your hand on the boy, or do anything to him: for now I know that you fear God, and have not spared your beloved son for my sake.” Genesis 22:10-12 It is said, “Now I know,” that is, Now I have made to be known; for God was not previously ignorant of this. Then, having offered up that ram instead of Isaac his son, “Abraham,” as we read, “called the name of that place The Lord sees: as they say to this day, In the mount the Lord has appeared.” Genesis 22:14 As it is said, “Now I know,” for Now I have made to be known, so here, “The Lord sees,” for The Lord has appeared, that is, made Himself to be seen. “And the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven the second time, saying, By myself I have sworn, says the Lord; because you have done this thing, and have not spared your beloved son for my sake; that in blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess by inheritance the cities of the adversaries: and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because you have obeyed my voice.” Genesis 22:15-18 In this way that promise about the calling of the nations in the seed of Abraham is confirmed even by the oath of God, after that burnt offering which prefigured Christ. For He had often promised, but never sworn. And what is the oath of God, the true and faithful, but a confirmation of the promise, and a certain reproof to the unbelieving? After these things Sarah died, in the 127th year of her life, and the 137th of her husband for he was ten years older than she, as he himself says, when a son is promised to him by her: “Shall a son be born to me, who am a hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” Genesis 17:17 Then Abraham bought a field, in which he buried his wife. And then, according to Stephen's account, he was settled in that land, entering then on actual possession of it — that is, after the death of his father, who is inferred to have died two years before.

Isaac married Rebecca, the granddaughter of Nahor, his father's brother, when he was forty years old, that is, in the 140th year of his father's life, three years after his mother's death. Now when a servant was sent to Mesopotamia by his father to fetch her, and when Abraham said to that servant, “Put your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the Lord of the earth, that you shall not take a wife for my son Isaac from the daughters of the Canaanites,” Genesis 24:2-3 what else was pointed out by this, but that the Lord, the God of heaven, and the Lord of the earth, was to come in the flesh which was to be derived from that thigh? Are these small signs of the foretold truth which we see fulfilled in Christ?

What did Abraham mean by marrying Keturah after Sarah's death? We must never suspect him of incontinence, especially when he had reached such an age and such sanctity of faith. Or was he still seeking to father children, though he held fast, with most approved faith, the promise of God that his children would be multiplied from Isaac as the stars of heaven and the dust of the earth? And yet, if Hagar and Ishmael, as the apostle teaches us, signified the carnal people of the old covenant, why may not Keturah and her sons also signify the carnal people who think they belong to the new covenant? For both are called both the wives and the concubines of Abraham; but Sarah is never called a concubine (but only a wife). For when Hagar is given to Abraham, it is written, “And Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her handmaid, after Abraham had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.” Genesis 16:3 And of Keturah, whom he took after Sarah's departure, we read, “Then again Abraham took a wife, whose name was Keturah.” Genesis 25:1 See, both are called wives, yet both are found to have been concubines; for the Scripture afterward says, “And Abraham gave his whole estate to Isaac his son. But to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from his son Isaac, (while he was still living) eastward, to the east country.” Genesis 25:5-6 Therefore the sons of the concubines, that is, the heretics and the carnal Jews, have some gifts, but do not attain the promised kingdom; “For it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as the seed, of whom it was said, In Isaac shall your seed be called.” Romans 9:7-8 For I do not see why Keturah, who was married after the wife's death, should be called a concubine, except on account of this mystery. But if anyone is unwilling to put such meanings on these things, he need not slander Abraham. For what if even this was provided against the heretics who were to be the opponents of second marriages, so that it might be shown that it was no sin in the case of the father of many nations himself, when, after his wife's death, he married again? And Abraham died when he was 175 years old, so that he left his son Isaac seventy-five years old, having fathered him when he was 100 years old.

Let us now see how the times of the city of God run on from this point among Abraham's descendants. In the time from the first year of Isaac's life to the seventieth, when his sons were born, the only memorable thing is that when he prayed to God that his wife, who was barren, might bear, and the Lord granted what he sought, and she conceived, the twins leapt while still enclosed in her womb. And when she was troubled by this struggle, and inquired of the Lord, she received this answer: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be separated from your body; and the one people shall overcome the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger.” Genesis 25:23 The Apostle Paul wants us to understand this as a great instance of grace; Romans 9:10-13 for when the children were not yet born, and had done neither good nor evil, the younger is chosen without any merit and the elder is rejected, when beyond doubt, as regards original sin, both were alike, and as regards actual sin, neither had any. But the plan of the work at hand does not permit me to speak more fully of this matter now, and I have said much about it in other works. Only that saying, “The elder shall serve the younger,” is understood by our writers, almost without exception, to mean that the elder people, the Jews, shall serve the younger people, the Christians. And truly, although this might seem to be fulfilled in the Idumean nation, which was born of the elder (who had two names, being called both Esau and Edom, which is the source of the name Idumeans), because it was afterward to be overcome by the people which sprang from the younger, that is, by the Israelites, and was to become subject to them; it is still more fitting to believe that, when it was said, “The one people shall overcome the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger,” that prophecy meant some greater thing; and what is that except what is evidently fulfilled in the Jews and Christians?

Isaac also received such an oracle as his father had often received. Of this oracle it is written: “And there was a famine over the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines to Gerar. And the Lord appeared to him, and said, Do not go down into Egypt; but dwell in the land of which I shall tell you. And remain in this land, and I will be with you, and will bless you: to you and to your seed I will give all this land; and I will establish my oath, which I swore to Abraham your father: and I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and will give to your seed all this land: and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because Abraham your father obeyed my voice, and kept my precepts, my commandments, my righteousness, and my laws.” Genesis 26:1-5 This patriarch neither had another wife, nor any concubine, but was content with the twin children fathered in one act of generation. He also was afraid, when he lived among strangers, of being brought into danger owing to the beauty of his wife, and did as his father had done in calling her his sister, and not telling that she was his wife; for she was his close blood relative on both the father's and the mother's side. She also remained untouched by the strangers, when it was known she was his wife. Yet we ought not to prefer him to his father because he knew no woman besides his one wife. For beyond doubt the merits of his father's faith and obedience were greater, since God says it is for his sake He does Isaac good: “In your seed,” He says, “shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because Abraham your father obeyed my voice, and kept my precepts, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” And again in another oracle He says, “I am the God of Abraham your father: do not fear, for I am with you, and will bless you, and multiply your seed for my servant Abraham's sake.” Genesis 26:24 So we must understand how chastely Abraham acted, because imprudent men, who seek some support for their own wickedness in the Holy Scriptures, think he acted through lust. We may also learn this, not to compare men by single good things, but to consider everything in each; for it may happen that one man has something in his life and character in which he excels another, and it may be far more excellent than that in which the other excels him. And thus, according to sound and true judgment, while continence is preferable to marriage, a believing married man is better than a continent unbeliever; for the unbeliever is not only less praiseworthy, but is even highly detestable. We must conclude, then, that both are good; but in such a way as to hold that the married man who is most faithful and most obedient is certainly better than the continent man whose faith and obedience are less. But if equal in other things, who would hesitate to prefer the continent man to the married?

Isaac's two sons, Esau and Jacob, grew up together. The primacy of the elder was transferred to the younger by a bargain and agreement between them, when the elder immoderately craved the lentils the younger had prepared for food, and for that price sold his birthright to him, confirming it with an oath. We learn from this that a person is to be blamed, not for the kind of food he eats, but for immoderate greed. Isaac grew old, and old age deprived him of his eyesight. He wished to bless the elder son, and instead of the elder, who was hairy, unwittingly blessed the younger, who put himself under his father's hands, having covered himself with kidskins, as if bearing the sins of others. So that we would not think this guile of Jacob's was fraudulent guile, instead of seeking in it the mystery of a great thing, the Scripture has predicted in the words just before, “Esau was a skilled hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a simple man, dwelling at home.” Genesis 25:27 Some of our writers have interpreted this, “without guile.” But whether the Greek ἄλαστος means “without guile,” or “simple,” or rather “without reigning,” in the receiving of that blessing what is the guile of the man without guile? What is the guile of the simple, what the fiction of the man who does not lie, but a profound mystery of the truth? But what is the blessing itself? “See,” he says, “the smell of my son is as the smell of a full field which the Lord has blessed: therefore may God give you of the dew of heaven, and of the fruitfulness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine: let nations serve you, and princes adore you: and be lord of your brothers, and let your father's sons adore you: cursed be whoever curses you, and blessed be whoever blesses you.” Genesis 27:27-29 The blessing of Jacob is therefore a proclamation of Christ to all nations. It is this which has come to pass, and is now being fulfilled. Isaac is the law and the prophecy: even by the mouth of the Jews Christ is blessed by prophecy as by one who does not know, because it is itself not understood. The world like a field is filled with the odor of Christ's name: His is the blessing of the dew of heaven, that is, of the showers of divine words; and of the fruitfulness of the earth, that is, of the gathering together of the peoples: His is the plenty of grain and wine, that is, the multitude that gathers bread and wine in the sacrament of His body and blood. Him the nations serve, Him princes adore. He is the Lord of His brothers, because His people rules over the Jews. Him His Father's sons adore, that is, the sons of Abraham according to faith; for He Himself is the son of Abraham according to the flesh. Whoever curses Him is cursed, and whoever blesses Him is blessed. Christ, I say, who is ours is blessed, that is, truly spoken of out of the mouths of the Jews, when, although they are in error, they still sing the law and the prophets, and think they are blessing another for whom they erringly hope. So, when the elder son claims the promised blessing, Isaac is greatly afraid, and wonders when he knows that he has blessed one instead of the other, and demands who he is; yet he does not complain that he has been deceived, indeed, when the great mystery is revealed to him, in his secret heart he at once gives up anger, and confirms the blessing. “Who then,” he says, “has hunted game for me, and brought it to me, and I have eaten of all before you came, and have blessed him, and he shall be blessed?” Genesis 27:33 Who would not rather have expected the curse of an angry man here, if these things had been done in an earthly manner, and not by inspiration from above? These are things done, yet done prophetically; on the earth, yet from heaven; by men, yet divinely! If everything that is so full of great mysteries were examined carefully, many volumes would be filled; but the moderate limits set for this work compels us to hasten to other things.

Jacob was sent by his parents to Mesopotamia to take a wife there. These were his father's words on sending him: “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of the Canaanites. Arise, flee to Mesopotamia, to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father, and take a wife from there from the daughters of Laban your mother's brother. And may my God bless you, and increase you, and multiply you; and you shall be an assembly of peoples; and give to you the blessing of Abraham your father, and to your seed after you; that you may inherit the land in which you dwell, which God gave to Abraham.” Genesis 28:1-4 Now we understand here that the seed of Jacob is separated from Isaac's other seed which came through Esau. For when it is said, “In Isaac shall your seed be called,” Genesis 21:12 by this seed is meant solely the city of God; so that from it is separated Abraham's other seed, which was in the son of the slave woman, and which was to be in the sons of Keturah. But until now it had been uncertain regarding Isaac's twin sons whether that blessing belonged to both or only to one of them; and if to one, which of them it was. This is now declared when Jacob is prophetically blessed by his father, and it is said to him, “And you shall be an assembly of peoples, and God give to you the blessing of Abraham your father.” When Jacob was going to Mesopotamia, he received in a dream an oracle, of which it is written: “And Jacob went out from the well of the oath, and went to Haran. And he came to a place, and slept there, for the sun had set; and he took of the stones of the place, and put them at his head, and slept in that place, and dreamed. And behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and the angels of God ascended and descended by it. And the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac; do not fear: the land on which you sleep I will give to you and to your seed; and your seed shall be as the dust of the earth; and it shall be spread abroad to the sea, and to Africa, and to the north, and to the east: and all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your seed. And, behold, I am with you, to keep you in all your way wherever you go, and I will bring you back into this land; for I will not leave you, until I have done all of which I have spoken to you. And Jacob awoke out of his sleep, and said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. And he was afraid, and said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob arose, and took the stone that he had put under his head there, and set it up for a memorial, and poured oil on the top of it. And Jacob called the name of that place the house of God.” Genesis 28:10-19 This is prophetic. For Jacob did not pour oil on the stone in an idolatrous way, as if making it a god; nor did he adore that stone, or sacrifice to it. But since the name of Christ comes from the chrism or anointing, something belonging to the great mystery was certainly represented in this. And the Savior Himself is understood to recall this in the gospel, when He says of Nathanael, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile!” John 1:47, 51 because Israel who saw this vision is no other than Jacob. And in the same place He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, You shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man.” Jacob went on to Mesopotamia to take a wife from there. And the divine Scripture points out how, without unlawfully desiring any of them, he came to have four women, by whom he fathered twelve sons and one daughter; for he had come to take only one. But when one was falsely given him in place of the other, he did not send her away after unwittingly using her in the night, so as not to seem to have put her to shame; but since at that time, in order to multiply posterity, no law forbade a plurality of wives, he also took the one to whom alone he had promised marriage. As she was barren, she gave her handmaid to her husband so that she might have children by her; and her elder sister did the same thing in imitation of her, although she had borne, because she desired to multiply progeny. We do not read that Jacob sought any but one, or that he used many, except for the purpose of fathering offspring, respecting conjugal rights; and he would not have done this if his wives, who had legitimate power over their own husband's body, had not urged him to do it. So he fathered twelve sons and one daughter by four women. Then he entered into Egypt by his son Joseph, who was sold by his brothers out of envy, and carried there, and who was there exalted.

As I said a little while ago, Jacob was also called Israel, the name which was most prevalent among the people descended from him. Now this name was given him by the angel who wrestled with him on the way back from Mesopotamia, and who was most evidently a type of Christ. For when Jacob overcame him, doubtless with his own consent, so that the mystery might be represented, it signified Christ's passion, in which the Jews are seen overcoming Him. And yet he begged a blessing from the very angel he had overcome; and so the giving of this name was the blessing. For Israel means seeing God, which will at last be the reward of all the saints. The angel also touched him on the breadth of the thigh when he was overcoming him, and in that way made him lame. So Jacob was at one and the same time blessed and lame: blessed in those among that people who believed in Christ, and lame in the unbelieving. For the breadth of the thigh is the multitude of the family. For there are many of that race of whom it was prophetically said beforehand, “And they have limped in their paths.”

Seventy-five men are reported to have entered Egypt along with Jacob, counting him with his children. In this number only two women are mentioned, one a daughter, the other a granddaughter. But when the thing is carefully considered, it does not appear that Jacob's offspring was so numerous on the day or year when he entered Egypt. There are also included among them the great-grandchildren of Joseph, who could not possibly be born already. For Jacob was then 130 years old, and his son Joseph thirty-nine, and since it is plain that he took a wife when he was thirty or more, how could he in nine years have great-grandchildren by the children whom he had by that wife? Now since Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of Joseph, could not even have children, for Jacob found them boys under nine years old when he entered Egypt, in what way are not only their sons but their grandsons counted among those seventy-five who then entered Egypt with Jacob? For Machir is counted there, the son of Manasseh, grandson of Joseph, and Machir's son, that is, Gilead, grandson of Manasseh, great-grandson of Joseph; there, too, is the one whom Ephraim, Joseph's other son, fathered, that is, Shuthelah, grandson of Joseph, and Shuthelah's son Ezer, grandson of Ephraim, and great-grandson of Joseph, who could not possibly be in existence when Jacob came into Egypt, and there found his grandsons, the sons of Joseph, their grandfathers, still boys under nine years of age. But doubtless, when the Scripture mentions Jacob's entrance into Egypt with seventy-five souls, it does not mean one day, or one year, but that whole time as long as Joseph lived, who was the cause of his entrance. For the same Scripture speaks of Joseph in this way: “And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he and his brothers, and all his father's house: and Joseph lived 110 years, and saw Ephraim's children of the third generation.” Genesis 50:22-23 That is, his great-grandson, the third from Ephraim; for the third generation means son, grandson, great-grandson. Then it is added, “The children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were born on Joseph's knees.” Genesis 50:23 And this is that grandson of Manasseh, and great-grandson of Joseph. But the plural number is employed according to scriptural usage; for the one daughter of Jacob is spoken of as daughters, just as in the usage of the Latin language liberi is used in the plural for children even when there is only one. Now, when Joseph's own happiness is proclaimed, because he could see his great-grandchildren, it is by no means to be thought they already existed in the thirty-ninth year of their great-grandfather Joseph, when his father Jacob came to him in Egypt. But those who diligently look into these things will be less easily mistaken, because it is written, “These are the names of the sons of Israel who entered into Egypt along with Jacob their father.” Genesis 46:8 For this means that the seventy-five are counted along with him, not that they were all with him when he entered Egypt; for, as I have said, the whole period during which Joseph, who was the cause of his entrance, lived, is held to be the time of that entrance.

If, on account of the Christian people in whom the city of God sojourns on the earth, we look for the flesh of Christ in the seed of Abraham, setting aside the sons of the concubines, we have Isaac; if in the seed of Isaac, setting aside Esau, who is also Edom, we have Jacob, who also is Israel; if in the seed of Israel himself, setting aside the rest, we have Judah, because Christ sprang from the tribe of Judah. Let us hear, then, how Israel, when dying in Egypt, in blessing his sons, prophetically blessed Judah. He says: “Judah, your brothers shall praise you: your hands shall be on the back of your enemies; your father's children shall adore you. Judah is a lion's cub: from the sprouting, my son, you have gone up: lying down, you have slept as a lion, and as a lion's cub; who shall awaken him? A prince shall not be lacking out of Judah, and a leader from his thighs, until the things come that are laid up for him; and He shall be the expectation of the nations. Binding his foal to the vine, and his donkey's foal to the choice vine; he shall wash his robe in wine, and his clothes in the blood of the grape: his eyes are red with wine, and his teeth are whiter than milk.” Genesis 49:8-12 I have explained these words in arguing against Faustus the Manichæan; and I think it is enough to make the truth of this prophecy shine, to note that the death of Christ is predicted by the word about his lying down, and not the necessity, but the voluntary character of His death, in the title of lion. That power He Himself proclaims in the gospel, saying, “I have the power of laying down my life, and I have the power of taking it again. No man takes it from me; but I lay it down of my own accord, and take it again.” John 10:18 So the lion roared, so He fulfilled what He said. For to this power what is added about the resurrection refers, “Who shall awaken him?” This means that no man but Himself has raised Him, who also said of His own body, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John 2:19 And the very nature of His death, that is, the height of the cross, is understood by the single words “You have gone up.” The evangelist explains what is added, “Lying down, you have slept,” when he says, “He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit.” John 19:30 Or at least His burial is to be understood, in which He lay down sleeping, and from which no man raised Him, as the prophets did some, and as He Himself did others; but He Himself rose up as if from sleep. As for His robe which He washes in wine, that is, cleanses from sin in His own blood, of which blood those who are baptized know the mystery, so that he adds, “And his clothes in the blood of the grape,” what is it but the Church? “And his eyes are red with wine,” [these are] His spiritual people drunk with His cup, of which the psalm sings, “And your cup that makes drunk, how excellent it is!” “And his teeth are whiter than milk,” Genesis 49:12 — that is, the nourishing words which, according to the apostle, the babes drink, being not yet fit for solid food. And it is He in whom the promises of Judah were laid up, so that until they come, princes, that is, the kings of Israel, shall never be lacking out of Judah. “And He is the expectation of the nations.” This is too plain to need explanation.

Now, as Isaac's two sons, Esau and Jacob, provided a figure of the two peoples, the Jews and the Christians (although as regards carnal descent it was not the Jews but the Idumeans who came of the seed of Esau, nor the Christian nations but rather the Jews who came of Jacob's; for the figure holds only as regards the saying, “The elder shall serve the younger” Genesis 25:23), so the same thing happened in Joseph's two sons; for the elder was a figure of the Jews, and the younger of the Christians. For when Jacob was blessing them, and laid his right hand on the younger, who was at his left, and his left hand on the elder, who was at his right, this seemed wrong to their father, and he warned his father by trying to correct his mistake and show him which was the elder. But he would not change his hands, but said, “I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be exalted; but his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.” Genesis 48:19 And these two promises show the same thing. For that one is to become “a people;” this one “a multitude of nations.” And what can be more evident than that these two promises include the people of Israel, and the whole world of Abraham's seed, the one according to the flesh, the other according to faith?

After Jacob and Joseph were dead, during the remaining 144 years until they went out of the land of Egypt, that nation increased to an incredible degree, even though it was wasted by persecutions so great, that at one time the male children were murdered at their birth, because the wondering Egyptians were terrified at the too great increase of that people. Then Moses, being secretly kept from the murderers of the infants, was brought to the royal house, as God prepared to do great things through him, and was nursed and adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh (that was the name of all the kings of Egypt), and became so great a man that he — indeed, rather God, who had promised this to Abraham, by him — drew that nation, so wonderfully multiplied, out of the yoke of hardest and most grievous servitude it had borne there. At first, indeed, he fled from there (we are told he fled into the land of Midian), because, in defending an Israelite, he had killed an Egyptian, and was afraid. Afterward, being divinely commissioned in the power of the Spirit of God, he overcame the magi of Pharaoh who resisted him. Then, when the Egyptians would not let God's people go, ten memorable plagues were brought on them by Him — the water turned into blood, the frogs and lice, the flies, the death of the cattle, the boils, the hail, the locusts, the darkness, the death of the firstborn. At last the Egyptians were destroyed in the Red Sea while pursuing the Israelites, whom they had let go when at last they were broken by so many great plagues. The divided sea made a way for the Israelites who were departing, but, returning on itself, it overwhelmed their pursuers with its waves. Then for forty years the people of God went through the desert, under the leadership of Moses, when the tabernacle of testimony was dedicated, in which God was worshipped by sacrifices prophetic of things to come, and that was after the law had been very terribly given in the mount, for its divinity was most plainly attested by wonderful signs and voices. This took place soon after the exodus from Egypt, when the people had entered the desert, on the fiftieth day after the passover was celebrated by the offering up of a lamb, which is so completely a figure of Christ, foretelling that through His sacrificial passion He would go from this world to the Father (for pascha in the Hebrew language means passing over), that when the new covenant was revealed, after Christ our passover was offered up, the Holy Spirit came from heaven on the fiftieth day; and He is called in the gospel the Finger of God, because He recalls to our memory the things done before as figures, and because the tablets of that law are said to have been written by the finger of God. On the death of Moses, Joshua the Son of Nun ruled the people, and led them into the land of promise, and divided it among them. By these two wonderful leaders wars were also carried on most prosperously and wonderfully, with God bearing witness that they had won these victories not so much on account of the merit of the Hebrew people as on account of the sins of the nations they subdued. After these leaders there were judges, when the people were settled in the land of promise, so that, in the meantime, the first promise made to Abraham began to be fulfilled about the one nation, that is, the Hebrew, and about the land of Canaan; but not yet the promise about all nations, and the whole wide world, for that was to be fulfilled, not by the observances of the old law, but by the coming of Christ in the flesh, and by the faith of the gospel. And it was to prefigure this that it was not Moses, who received the law for the people on Mount Sinai, that led the people into the land of promise, but Joshua, whose name also was changed at God's command, so that he was called Jesus. But in the times of the judges prosperity alternated with adversity in war, as the sins of the people and the mercy of God were displayed. We come next to the times of the kings. The first who reigned was Saul; and when he was rejected and laid low in battle, and his offspring rejected so that no kings should arise out of it, David succeeded to the kingdom, whose son Christ is chiefly called. He was made a kind of starting-point and beginning of the advanced youth of God's people, who had passed a kind of age of puberty from Abraham to this David. And it is not in vain that the evangelist Matthew records the generations in such a way as to sum up this first period from Abraham to David in fourteen generations. For from the age of puberty man begins to be capable of generation; therefore he starts the list of generations from Abraham, who also was made the father of many nations when his name was changed. So before this, this family of God's people was in its childhood, from Noah to Abraham; and for that reason the first language was then learned, that is, the Hebrew. For man begins to speak in childhood, the age following infancy, which is so called because then he cannot speak. And that first age is entirely drowned in forgetfulness, just as the first age of the human race was blotted out by the flood; for who is there that can remember his infancy? Therefore in this progress of the city of God, as the previous book contained that first age, so this one ought to contain the second and third ages, in which third age, as was shown by the heifer three years old, the she-goat three years old, and the ram three years old, the yoke of the law was imposed, and there appeared abundance of sins, and the beginning of the earthly kingdom arose, in which there were not lacking spiritual men, of whom the turtledove and pigeon represented the mystery.