1 When I had quoted this, I added, “Hear, then, how this Man, whom the Scriptures declare will come again in glory after His crucifixion, was symbolized both by the tree of life, which was said to have been planted in paradise, and by the things that would happen to all the righteous. Moses was sent with a rod to bring about the redemption of the people; and holding it in his hands at the head of the people, he divided the sea. Through it he saw water gushing out of the rock; and when he threw a piece of wood into the waters of Marah, which were bitter, he made them sweet. 2 Jacob, by putting rods into the watering troughs, succeeded in making his uncle’s sheep conceive, so that he would gain their young. The same Jacob boasts that he crossed the river with his rod. He said he had seen a ladder, and the Scripture has declared that God stood above it; and we have proved from the Scriptures that this was not the Father. And when Jacob poured oil on a stone in the same place, the very God who appeared to him testified that he had anointed a pillar to the God who appeared to him. 3 We have also proved from many Scriptures that the stone symbolically proclaimed Christ; and we have likewise proved that every anointing, whether of oil, or of myrrh, or of any of the other ointments compounded into perfume, referred to Him, since the word says, ‘Therefore God, your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your companions.’ For indeed all kings and anointed ones received from Him their share in being called kings and anointed, just as He Himself received from the Father the titles of King, Christ, Priest, and Angel, and all the other such titles that He bears or has borne. 4 Aaron’s rod, which blossomed, showed him to be the high priest. Isaiah prophesied that a rod would come out of the root of Jesse, [and this was] Christ. And David says that the righteous man is ‘like the tree planted by the streams of water, which will yield its fruit in its season, and whose leaf will not wither.’ Again, the righteous is said to flourish like the palm tree. 5 God appeared to Abraham from a tree, as it is written, by the oak of Mamre. The people found seventy willows and twelve springs after crossing the Jordan. David says that God comforted him with a rod and staff. 6 Elisha, by throwing a stick into the river Jordan, brought up the iron head of the axe with which the sons of the prophets had gone to cut wood to build the house in which they wanted to read and study the law and commandments of God; just as our Christ, by being crucified on the tree and by purifying [us] with water, has redeemed us, though we were sunk in the gravest sins we had committed, and has made [us] a house of prayer and worship.⁠a Moreover, it was a rod that, by a great mystery, revealed Judah to be the father of Tamar’s sons.”