Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
City of God (Penguin Classics) (124 page)
6. The Jewish priesthood and kingdom, said to have been established for ever, no longer exist. The promised eternity must be interpreted as applying to others
These prophecies were uttered at that time in such an elevated strain, and are now revealed with such clarity; and yet someone may be puzzled, not without justification, and may ask, ‘How can we be confident that all the things prophesied in these books as due to happen in the future will in fact happen, if a particular statement, made there by divine inspiration was not capable of fulfilment? This is the statement: “Your house and your father’s house will pass by in my presence for ever.” Now we observe that that priesthood has been superseded and that the promise made to that house has no hope of fulfilment at any time; because the priesthood which succeeded, on the rejection and supersession of the old order, is proclaimed as eternal in its stead.’ This questioner does not yet understand, or does not recall, that the priesthood of Aaron’s line was itself set up as a kind of shadow of the eternal priesthood that was to be. It follows that when eternity was promised to it, it was not promised for the shadow, the prefigurement, but for what was foreshadowed and prefigured by it. We were not intended to suppose that the shadow itself was to continue; and for that reason its supersession had to be foretold.
In the same way, the kingdom of Saul himself, who was certainly rejected and cast aside, was a shadow of the future kingdom which was to continue for ever. Undoubtedly the oil with which he was anointed – and because of that chrism he was called the anointed (
christus
) — is to be taken in a mystical sense and interpreted as a great sacrament.
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In fact, David himself had such reverence for this sacrament in the person of Saul that he was smitten to the heart and shaken with dread when, after hiding in the dark cave which Saul had entered, under the compulsion of a call of nature, he secretly cut off a tiny piece of Saul’s robe from behind, so as to have a proof of how he had spared him when he could have taken his life. David’s purpose was to remove from Saul’s mind the suspicions that led him to pursue the holy David with violence, supposing him to be his enemy. But David was filled with terror in consequence, for fear that he should be guilty of violating so great a sacrament in the person of Saul, simply because he had so treated even his clothing. The scriptural narrative says, ‘Now David’s heart smote him, because he took away the tail of Saul’s cloak.’ Furthermore, when the men who were with him were
urging him to make away with Saul, now that he was delivered into their hands, David said to them, ‘May the Lord preserve me from doing what you suggest, to my lord, the Lord’s anointed, that I should lay hands on him, for he is the Lord’s anointed.’
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So great, we see, was the reverence displayed to this shadow of what was to come, not on its own account, but for the sake of what it foreshadowed.
The same consideration applies to what Samuel said to Saul,
‘You have not observed my command, an order given to you by the Lord; and therefore, just as the Lord had once designed that your kingdom over Israel should be everlasting, so now your kingdom will not endure for you. The Lord will look for a man after his own heart, and the Lord will command him to be the ruler over his people, because you have not kept the commands of the Lord.’
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We must not take this to mean that God had designed that Saul himself should reign for ever, and then refused to carry out his design when Saul sinned, for God was not unaware that Saul would sin. No; the meaning is that God had designed his kingship to be a prefigurement of the eternal kingship. That is why Samuel added, ‘and now your kingdom will not endure
for you
.’ Thus what was symbolized in that kingdom endured, and will endure; but the king-ship ‘will not endure’ for Saul, since he was not destined to reign for ever, nor was his line – for in that case, with his posterity succeeding one after the other, the promise of an ‘everlasting’ kingdom would have seemed, in that sense, to have been fulfilled. But Samuel goes on to say, ‘The Lord will look for a man’; and this means either David or the Mediator of the new covenant
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himself, who was prefigured also in the chrism with which David and his descendants were anointed. Now when God ‘looks for’ a man for himself, it does not mean that God does not know where that man is. The truth is that when God speaks through the mouth of a man he speaks in human fashion; for he uses the same way of speaking when he ‘seeks’ us. The only-begotten Son came ‘to seek what was lost’,
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although we were already so well-known to him, as well as to God the Father, that we were ‘chosen in him before the foundation of the world.’
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Thus in saying ‘he will look for’, Samuel means ‘he will have as his own.’ Hence in Latin this verb
quaerere
, ‘to seek’, receives a preposition and becomes
ad-quirere
, ‘to acquire’; and the meaning then is quite clear. And yet even without the prefix the simple verb can mean ‘acquire’; in fact, from this simple verb is derived the noun
questus
, meaning‘profit.’
7.
The disruption of the Israelite kingdom, prefiguring the perpetual separation of spiritual from carnal Israel
Saul sinned again through disobedience, and again Samuel said to him, speaking the word of the Lord, ‘Because you have spurned the word of the Lord, the Lord has spurned you, so that you will not be king over Israel.’ And again, for the same sin, when Saul confessed and prayed for pardon, and besought Samuel to return with him to make his peace with God, Samuel said,
‘I shall not return with you, because you have spurned the word of the Lord and he has spurned you, so that you will not be king over Israel.’ Then Samuel turned his face away, to leave Saul; and Saul held on to the tail of his robe, and tore it. And Samuel said to him: The Lord has torn the kingdom
from
Israel, out of your hand, today: and he will give it to a neighbour of yours, who is a better man than you, and Israel will be divided in two. The Lord will not go back on his word, nor will he change his mind; for he is not like a man, so as to change his mind. A mere man threatens, and does not stand by this threats.’
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Thus Saul was told, ‘The Lord will spurn you, so that you will not be king over Israel’, and, ‘The Lord has torn the kingdom from Israel, out of your hand, today.’ And yet he reigned over Israel for forty years, in fact the same length of time as David himself; and he heard this prophecy in the early part of his reign. So the purpose of the prophecy is that we may realize that none of his line was destined to reign, and may turn our attention to the stock of David, from which sprang, by physical descent, ‘the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.’
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Now the Scripture does not show the reading found in most Latin texts: ‘The Lord has torn the kingdom from Israel out of your hand’, but the reading we have followed, which is found in the Greek version: ‘The Lord has torn the kingdom from Israel, out of your hand.’ The purpose of this reading is to make it plain that ‘out of your hand’ means the same as ‘from Israel.’ Thus the man Saul figuratively personified Israel, the people which was to lose its kingdom when Christ Jesus our Lord should take the kingship under the new covenant, a spiritual instead of a physical kingship. When it is said of him, ‘And he will give it to a neighbour of yours’, the reference is to physical kinship; for Christ was descended from Israel by physical descent, just as Saul was. Now the following phrase,
bono super te
, can be rendered
‘a better man than you’, and that is how some interpreters have translated it. But it is better to take it as meaning ‘
good, above you
’, indicating that his superiority is based on his goodness. This would fit in with the prophetic saying, ‘until I put all your enemies under your feet.’
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Israel is one of these enemies, and Christ has taken away the kingdom from Israel, his persecutor. And yet there was even there an Israel ‘in whom there was no trickery’,
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like some grain among that chaff. For the apostles, as we know, came from Israel, as did all those martyrs, of whom Stephen was the first; and so did all those churches, which the apostle Paul mentions as giving glory to God for his conversion.
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I have no doubt that the next words are to be interpreted along these lines. ‘And Israel will be divided into two’ must mean, into Israel the enemy of Christ, and Israel which attaches itself to Christ – the Israel connected with the maidservant, and the Israel connected with the free woman.
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For these two kinds of Israel were at first together, just as Abraham was still attached to the maidservant until the barren wife, made fertile by the grace of Christ, exclaimed, ‘Throw out the maidservant and her son.’
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We know, of course, that because of Solomon’s sin Israel was divided into two in the reign of his son Re-hoboam, and that it continued so divided, each part having its own king, until that whole nation was overthrown with enormous devastation and deported by the Chaldeans. But what has this to do with Saul? If any such threat had to be uttered, it should have been levelled at David, rather than Saul, for Solomon was David’s son. And then again, the Hebrew race at the present time is not divided, but dispersed indiscriminately throughout the world, though united by association in the same error. But that division with which God threatened this same kingdom and people in the person of Saul, who personified that kingdom and people, was shown to be eternal and unchangeable by the words which follow: ‘The Lord will not go back on his word, nor will he change his mind; for he is not like a man, so as to change his mind. A mere man threatens, and does not stand by his threats.’ That is, a man threatens and does not stand by his threats, unlike God, who does not change his mind, as a man does. For when we are told that God changes his mind, or repents, this signifies an alteration in the course of history, though the divine prescience remains unchanged. Thus when it is said that God does not change his mind the meaning is that there is no alteration in him.
We see that by these words an utterly irrevocable sentence was divinely proclaimed concerning this division of the people of Israel, a sentence absolutely perpetual. For all those who have passed over from that people to Christ, or who are now passing over, or who will pass over, were not of that people according to God’s foreknowledge, nor by reason of the one common nature of the human race. Moreover, all those of the Israelites who attach themselves to Christ and continue steadfastly in his fellowship will never be associated with those Israelites who persist in their hostihty to him to the end of his life; in fact, they will continue for ever in that state of separation which is prophesied here. For the old covenant from Mount Sinai which ‘has children destined for slavery’
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is of no value except in so far as it bears witness to the new covenant. Otherwise, as long as ‘Moses’ is read, ‘a veil is laid on their hearts’; on the other hand, whenever anyone passes over from that people to Christ, the veil will be taken away.
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For we may be sure that the very aim of those who pass over is transformed from the old to the new, so that the aim of each is no longer the attainment of material felicity, but spiritual happiness. That explains the action of the great prophet Samuel himself, before he had anointed King Saul.
Samuel cried out to the Lord on behalf of Israel, and God heard him; and when he offered a whole burnt-offering, and the foreigners approached to do battle with the people of God, the Lord thundered over them and they were thrown into confusion and panic as they faced Israel, and so they were overcome. Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between the old and the new Mizpah, and gave it the name Ebenezer, which means ‘the stone of the helper.’ And he said: ‘So far the Lord has helped us.’
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Now Mizpah means ‘aim.’
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That ‘stone of the helper’ is the mediation of the Saviour, through whom we must pass over from the old Mizpah to the new, that is from the aim which looked for material bliss – a false bliss, in a material kingdom – to the aim which looks for spiritual bliss – the really true bliss, in the kingdom of heaven. And since there is nothing better than this, God helps us ‘so far.’
8.
God’s promises to David about his son; in no way fulfilled in Solomon, but abundantly fulfilled in Christ
It is dear to me that my next task is to explain the promises given by God to David himself, who succeeded Saul on the throne. This transference of the royal power was a symbol of that final transference, and all these things were said and recorded by divine inspiration with reference to that change; and these promises are relevant to our present subject. After King David had met with much prosperity, he contemplated the building of a house for God. What he had in mind was that world-famous Temple which was afterwards erected by King Solomon, his son. While David was contemplating this prospect the word of the Lord came to Nathan the prophet, for him to convey it to the king. The first part of God’s message was that his house would not be built by David himself, and that he had never given orders to any member of his people, during all that length of time, that a house of cedar should be constructed for him. He then went on to say,
‘And now you will say this to my servant David: ‘This is the message of the Lord omnipotent: ‘I took you from the sheepfold so that you should become the leader over my people, over Israel; and I was with you in your every enterprise. I have banished all your enemies from before your face; and I have given you a title borne by all the great ones who are on the earth. I shall provide a place for my people Israel, and I shall plant them there, and they will dwell by themselves; and they will be troubled no longer. The son of wickedness will not continue to oppose them, as he has done from the beginning from the time when I established judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies, and the Lord will give you news that you will build a house for him. What will happen is that when your days are ended, and you are at rest with your ancestors, I shall raise up your offspring after you, the issue of your body, and I shall prepare his kingdom. He will build me a house for my name, and I shall direct his throne for all eternity. I shall be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. If any wickedness appears in him, I shall chastise him with the rod that men use, with the touches that human beings inflict. Yet I shall not withdraw my mercy from him, as I did from those whom I banished from my presence. His house will be faithful, and his sovereignty will be secure for ever in my presence, and this throne will stand for all eternity.’”’
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