City of God (Penguin Classics) (123 page)

These words in Hannah’s prophecy describe how a man who glories ought to glory, not in himself, of course, but in the Lord. Hannah next alludes to the retribution which is to come on the day of judgement. ‘The Lord has ascended into the heavens and has thundered; he himself will judge the ends of the earth, because he is just.’ Here she kept precisely to the order of the confession of the faithful,
⁴⁰
‘The Lord ascended into heaven, and thence he will come to judge the living and the dead.’ For, as the Apostle says, ‘Who ascended, except him who also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same person as he who ascended above all the heavens, so that he might fulfil all things.’
⁴¹
Thus it was through his own clouds that he thundered, the clouds which he filled with the Holy Spirit when he ascended. It was concerning these clouds that he speaks to Jerusalem the maidservant (the ‘ungrateful vine’), in the book of Isaiah, threatening that the clouds would not send rain upon it.
⁴²
Now to say he himself will judge the ends of the earth’ is as much as to say ‘
even
to the ends of the earth.’ For it is not that he will fail to judge the other parts of the world; he will, without a shadow of doubt, judge all men. But it is better to take ‘the ends of the earth’ to mean ‘the latter end of man.’ For the judgement will not be passed on situations which change for better or worse in the intermediate period. The judgement will be on the final state in which the man who will be judged is found. That is why it is said that ‘the man who perseveres to the end is the man who will be saved.’
⁴³
Therefore the man who perseveres in the performance of justice and righteousness ‘in the midst of the earth’ will not be condemned when ‘the ends of the earth’ are judged.

‘He gives strength to our kings’, she says. The purpose of this is that he may not condemn them in his judgement. He gives them strength by which they may, like kings, rule over the flesh, and overcome the world in the power of him who shed his blood for them. ‘And he will exalt the horn of his anointed.’ In what way will Christ exalt the horn of his anointed? For it was said earlier of him, ‘The Lord has ascended into the heavens’, and this was taken to mean ‘the Lord Christ.’ It is Christ himself, as is said here, who ‘will exalt the horn of his anointed.’ Who then is the anointed (
christus
) of Christ? Does it mean that he will exalt the horn of every faithful follower of his, just as Hannah herself says at the start of her hymn, ‘My horn is exalted in my God’?
Certainly we can properly apply the name ‘anointed’ (
christus
) to all who have been anointed with his chrism; and yet it is the whole body, with its head, which is the one Christ.

This was what Hannah prophesied; and she was the mother of Samuel, a holy man, a man highly praised. In him indeed the transformation of the ancient priesthood was then symbolically represented, a transformation which has now been fulfilled, when she who had many sons has become feeble, with the result that the barren woman who has borne seven children has received a new priesthood in Christ.

This is a prophecy of a change in the ancient priesthood, announced in quite unmistakable terms; but there is no reason for maintaining that it was finally fulfilled in Samuel. It was in a degree fulfilled: for although Samuel was not of a different tribe from the one which had been appointed by the Lord to serve the altar, still he was not among the sons of Aaron, whose descendants had been granted the privilege of supplying the priesthood.
⁴⁵
And in this way the transformation that was to come about through Jesus Christ was hinted at; and the prophecy contained in the event, not the prophecy expressed in the words, was concerned directly with the old covenant; but it had a figurative application to the new. In the event, what was said to Eli the priest in words through the mouth of the prophet had reference to the new covenant. However, there were in later times priests of the stock of Aaron, Zadok, for example, and Abiathar in the reign of David, and others thereafter, until the time came when the prophecies about the transformation of the priesthood, uttered so long before, were destined to be brought to effect in Christ. No one who looks at these prophecies with the eye of faith could fail to see that they have been fulfilled. For now, to be sure, no tabernacle has been left to the Jews, no temple, no altar, no sacrifice and, it follows, no priesthood; although the Jews had once been commanded by God’s law to have a priesthood established belonging to the line of Aaron.

This was indeed mentioned in the passage, where the prophet says, ‘This is what the Lord says: “I have said: ‘Your house and your father’s house will go to and fro before me for ever”. But now the Lord says: “This will not be so; but I shall honour those who honour me, and those who spurn me will be spurned.”’ The prophet speaks of ‘your father’s house’; but he does not mean his immediate father, but the great Aaron who was ordained as the first priest, from whose
descendants all other priests were to follow in succession. This is shown by his previous words, where he says, ‘I revealed myself to your father’s house, when they were in the land of Egypt as slaves in the house of Pharaoh; and I chose your father’s house out of all the sceptres of Israel, to perform the priestly office for me.’ Which of his fathers was in that slavery in Egypt, and was elected to the priesthood after the liberation? Only Aaron. It follows that it was of Aaron’s stock that the prophet was speaking in this passage, when he said that the time would come when they would no longer be priests. We now see this prophecy fulfilled. Let faith be on the alert! The reality is before our eyes; the facts are observed and laid to heart; they are thrust upon the notice even of those who have no wish to see them. ‘Behold, the days are coming’, he says, ‘when I shall banish your seed, and the seed of your father’s house, and you will not have an elder in my house all your days; and I shall banish all the men of your family from my altar, so that their eyes will fail and their spirit fade away.’

Look, the days which were foretold have now arrived. There is no priest in the line of Aaron; and any man who belongs to his line sees the Christian sacrifice prevailing all over the world, while that great honour has been taken from him; and seeing this, his ‘eyes fail and his spirit fades away’, wasted with grief.

Now the following statement applies directly to the house of Eli, to whom it was spoken, ‘Everyone of your house that survives, they all will fall by the sword of men. And this will be a sign for you, that will come upon those two sons of yours, Ophni and phineas: they will both the on one day.’ This, therefore, happened as a sign of the transference of the priesthood from this man’s family; and by this sign it was indicated that the priesthood of Aaron’s house was to be changed. It is plain that the death of this man’s sons did not signify the death of individuals, but the death of the priesthood itself in the line of Aaron. Again, the following words refer to that priest who was prefigured by Samuel, in succeeding Eli. Hence the statement that follows was spoken about Christ Jesus, the true priest of the new covenant: ‘Then I shall raise up a faithful priest for me, who will do all that is in my heart and in my soul. I shall build him a faithful house, and he shall go to and fro in the presence of my anointed all his days.’ By ‘he shall go to and fro’ (the word is
transibit
) he means ‘he shall live with me’; just as he had previously said, about the house of Aaron, ‘I have said: “Your house and your father’s house will pass by in my presence for ever.”’ Now the statement, ‘he will pass by in the presence of my anointed’ must certainly be understood to refer to the house itself, not
to that priest who is himself the anointed Christ, the mediator and saviour. His house, then, will ‘pass by’ before the Christ. But ‘will pass by’ (
transibit
) can also be interpreted of the passing from death to life in ‘all his days’ the days in which life is spent in this mortal condition, up to the end of this world. We may also observe that when God says, ‘he will do all that is in my heart and in my soul’, this should not suggest to us that God has a soul, since he is the creator of the soul. It is, in fact, said of God in a metaphorical sense, not literally, in the same way as we speak of the hands of God, or his feet, or other parts of the body. And to prevent our supposing, on account of such statements, that man is made in God’s image in respect of his physical appearance, we have the addition of wings also, and man certainly does not possess these. Statements such as, ‘Under the shadow of your wings you will protect me’,
⁴⁶
are intended to make men realize that such descriptions of God’s ineffable nature are employing words not in a literal but in a transferred application.

To pass to the next statement: ‘And it will happen that anyone who survives in your family will come to do him obeisance.’ This is not said directly about the family of Eli, but about that of Aaron, of which there were individual survivors up to the time of the coming of Jesus Christ; and even now the line has not died out. For it had earlier been said, about that family of Eli, that ‘everyone of your family that survives, they will all fall by the sword of men.’ Then how could it betruly said in this verse, ‘And it will happen that anyone who survives in your family will come to do him obeisance’, if it was true that none of them would survive the avenging sword? This latter statement could only be true if the prophet meant it to be understood of those who belong to the same stock, in the sense of the whole priesthood in the line of Aaron. We may assume, then, that this refers to the predestined remnant, of whom another prophet says, ‘A remnant will be saved’,
⁴⁷
and the Apostle says, ‘In the same way a remnant has come into being at the present time through God’s gracious choice.’
⁴⁸
There fore, since it is well understood that the man described as ‘the survivor in your family’s is one of this remnant, then without doubt, that man believes in Christ, in the same way as in the time of the apostles very many of that race believed; and even now there is not a complete absence of believers from among them, though they are few and far between. In this we see the fulfilment of the next prophecy of the man of God, ‘He will come to do him obeisance for a piece of silver.’ Obeisance to whom? It can only be to that high priest who is also God. For
not even in that priesthood following Aaron’s line did men come to the temple or the altar of God in order to do obeisance to the priest. And then, what is the meaning of ‘a piece of silver? It must be the short statement of the faith; for in reference to this the Apostle quotes this saying, ‘The Lord will make his statement on the earth final and short.’
⁴⁹
And evidence for the use of ‘silver’ for ‘utterance’ is given by a verse of one of the psalms, The utterances of the Lord are pure, they are silver tested in the fire.’
⁵⁰

Then what is this man saying when he comes to do obeisance to the priest of God, and to the priest who is God? ‘“Thrust me into some part of your priestly office, so that I may have bread to eat.” I do not desire to be established in the honoured rank of my ancestors: that has now vanished. Thrust me into some part of
your
priesthood. For “I have chosen to be a menial servant in the house of God”
⁵¹
I long to be a member of your priesthood, in however lowly a capacity.’ Doubtless by ‘priesthood’ he means the people itself, the people whose priest is ‘the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.’
⁵²
This is the people whom the apostle Peter calls ‘a holy people, a royal priesthood.’
⁵³
It is true that some translators give the rendering ‘your sacrifice, not following the line of Aaron, but the line of Melchizedek, same Christian people. That is why the apostle Paul says, ‘We are many, but we are one loaf, one body.’
⁵⁴
And so the addition of ‘to have bread to eat’ neatly describes the kind of sacrifice referred to; for the priest himself says of this sacrifice, ‘The bread that I shall give you is my flesh, given for the life of the world.’
⁵⁵
This is the sacrifice, not following the line of Aaron, but the line of Melchizedek, ‘let the reader understand this.’
⁵⁶
Here, then, we have a short confession of faith, a confession of salutary humility, in these words: ‘Thrust me into some part of your priestly office, so that I may have some bread to eat.’ This confession is itself the ‘piece of silver’; it is short, and it is the utterance of God, dwelling in the heart of the believer. God had said earlier that he had given portions of food to the family of Aaron, from the sacrificial victims of the old covenant. That was when he said, ‘I gave your father’s house all the burnt-sacrifices of the children of Israel, for their food’; and those were, of course, the sacrifices of the Jews. Accordingly, the man of God at this point used the words ‘to eat bread’; for that, in the new covenant, is the sacrifice of the Christians.