Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
City of God (Penguin Classics) (125 page)
It is a great mistake to pay attention only to the words ‘he will build me a house’, and, because Solomon erected that famous Temple, to imagine that this magnificent promise was fulfilled in Solomon, overlooking the statement that ‘his house will be faithful to me and his
sovereignty will be secure for ever in my presence.’ Anyone who supposes this should turn his attention to Solomon’s household, and consider the state of things there; for his house was full of foreign women who worshipped false gods; and the king himself, who had been a man of wisdom, was seduced and degraded to the same idolatry. Such a reader must not dare to imagine that God made this promise untruthfully, nor to suppose that God could not foresee that Solomon and his house would be like this. We ought not, in fact, to have any doubt about this even if we did not see these prophecies now fulfilled in Christ our Lord, who was born of the line of David by physical descent. This would prevent us from vainly and foolishly looking for someone else, as the ‘Jews after the flesh’ still look. For they realize that the son promised, as they read in this passage, to King David, was not Solomon; but so amazing is their blindness that they go on to profess their hope for another, even when the promised son has been so clearly manifested.
No doubt a partial reflection of the future reality was shown even in Solomon, in that he did build the Temple, and that he enjoyed the peace that fits his name – for ‘Solomon’ means ‘peacemaker.’
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And at the start of his reign he was remarkably praiseworthy. Even so, Solomon himself in his own person merely gave notice of the coming of Christ, by a foreshadowing of the future; he did not show men the Lord Christ himself. Hence some things are written about him as if they were predictions of Solomon himself, while in fact holy Scripture, which prophesies by historical events also, sketches, as it were, in him a pattern of the future. For besides the books of sacred history in which the events of his reign were recorded, the seventy-first psalm also has his name inscribed in its title. In this psalm there are many sayings which cannot conceivably apply to Solomon, but are appropriate – nothing could be clearer – to the Lord Christ. So much so that there is no mistaking the fact that in Solomon there is a kind of shadowy sketch, while in Christ the reality itself is presented to us. For the limits bounding Solomon’s kingdom are well known; yet we read in this psalm, to mention only one point, ‘His sway will extend from sea to sea, and from the river as far as the bounds of the earth.’
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It is in Christ that we see the fulfilment of these words. It was certainly from the river that he began his lordship; for there, after his baptism by John, he began to be recognized, at John’s prompting,
by his disciples. And they called him not only ‘Master’ but also ‘Lord.’
Moreover, the reason why Solomon began to reign while his father David was still alive (a thing which did not happen to any other of their kings) was simply to make it sufficiently obvious, in this way as well as in others, that he himself was not the man designated by that prophecy which was addressed to his father. For the prophecy said, ‘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.’ How can it be supposed that this is a prophecy about Solomon, just because of the following statement: ‘He will build me a house’? Instead, we should notice what precedes: ‘When your days are ended, and you are at rest with your ancestors, I shall raise up your offspring after you’, and infer from this that another ‘peacemaker’ is promised, who is to be raised up, according to the prediction, after David’s death, not, like Solomon, before it. It may be that there was a long interval before the coming of Jesus Christ, but certainly it was after the death of King David, to whom the promise was made, that he was to come who would build God a house, not of wood and stone, but of human beings, the kind of house that he makes us glad by building. It is to this house, that is, to all Christ’s faithful believers, that the Apostle addresses the words, ‘For the temple of God is holy; and you are that temple.’
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9.
The prophecy of Christ in the eighty-ninth psalm compared with Nathan’s prophecy
For the same reason God’s promises to King David are also recorded in the eighty-eighth psalm, which has the title ‘For the understanding of Ethan the Israelite.’ Some of the things said in the psalm are similar to those set down in the book of Kingdoms;
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for example, ‘I have sworn to David my servant: “I shall establish your offspring for ever.”’
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Again,
Then you spoke in a vision to your sons, and you said: ‘I have conferred help on a mighty man, I have exalted a man chosen from my people. I have found David my servant; I have anointed him with my holy oil. For my hand will help him, and my arm will support him. The enemy will not get the better of him, and the son of wickedness will not hurt him. I shall strike
down his enemies from before his face, and I shall put to flight those who hate him. My truth and mercy will be with him, and in my name his prosperity will be exalted. I shall give him authority over the sea and supreme power over the rivers. He will invoke me thus: “You are my father, my God, and the upholder of my safety”: and I shall make him my first-born, exalted among the kings of the earth. I shall keep my mercy for him for ever, and my covenant will be faithfully kept for him. I shall establish his line to last for ever and ever, and his throne to endure as long as the heavens.’
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All these prophecies, when rightly interpreted, are referred to the Lord Jesus, under the name of David because of the ‘form of a servant’
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which that same mediator took from the virgin, from the line of David.
There follows immediately a mention of the sins of his son, very similar to that found in the book of Kingdoms. This is too easily assumed to apply to Solomon. For here, in the book of Kingdoms, the Lord says, ‘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.’
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‘Touches’ means here the strokes of correction. Hence the saying, ‘Do not touch my anointed ones’,
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which can only mean ‘Do not injure them.’ Now in the psalm, when ostensibly dealing with David, the Lord’s intention is to say something of the same sort there also; and so he says, ‘If his sons desert my Law and cease to live according to my rulings; if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, I shall punish their wickedness with the rod and their sins with the scourge; yet I shall not sweep away my mercy from him.’
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He did not say ‘from
them
’, although he was speaking of his sons, not of David himself. He said ‘from
him
’, which, if correctly interpreted, has exactly the same force. For no sins could be found in Christ himself, who is the head of the Church, which would need to be disciplined by human correction, while the divine mercy continued unchanged. Such sins could only be found in his body and limbs, that is, in his people. Now in the book of Kingdoms ‘his iniquity’ is spoken of, whereas in the psalm we find ‘the iniquity of his sons.’ The purpose of this is to make us realize that what is said about his body is in some measure spoken of himself. (For the same reason he himself also spoke from heaven, when Saul was persecuting his body, that is, his faithful followers, and his words were: ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’
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) Then in the following
verses of the psalm he says, ‘I shall not do injury to my truth, nor shall I violate my covenant; and I shall not revoke the words that issue from my lips. I have sworn once by my holiness, if I prove a liar to David – ’ that is, I shall in no way prove a liar to David, this being a common idiom in Scripture. Now as to the subject on which he will not prove a liar, he adds this when he says, ‘His line endures for ever, and his throne in my sight is like the sun, like the moon that is established for ever, the faithful witness in the sky.’
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10. The contrast
between God’s promises and the actual
history of the
earthly Jerusalem teaches us that
the
promise refers to
the glory of the other
king and
the other kingdom
After these solid guarantees of such an important promise the psalmist prevents us from supposing that the prophecies were fulfilled in Solomon, for he suggests that these things were hoped for, and not found in actuality, by adding, ‘But you have cast him aside and reduced him to nothing, O Lord.’ This is certainly what happened to the kingdom of Solomon under his successors, whose history culminated in the overthrow of the earthly Jerusalem itself, which was the seat of that kingdom, and, above all, in the destruction of the very Temple which had been erected by Solomon. But we are not allowed to suppose that God acted in contradiction of his promise, for the psalm immediately continues, ‘You have deferred your anointed.’
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It follows that, if the anointed of the Lord was deferred, the anointed is not Solomon, nor even David himself. It is true that all kings consecrated with that mystic chrism were called ‘the Lord’s anointed’, not only in David’s time, and subsequently, but even in the time of Saul, who was first anointed king over that people. David himself, as we know, called Saul ‘the Lord’s anointed.’ For all that, there was just one true anointed, the one whom these kings represented symbolically in virtue of an anointing which was prophetic. In relation to the general assumption that ‘the anointed’ was to be identified with David or Solomon, the coming of the true anointed was long deferred; but in respect of God’s design, his future coming, in God’s own time, was already in preparation.
The psalm then continues with an account of what happened to the
kingdom of the earthly Jerusalem, where it was certainly expected that Christ would reign, while his coming was deferred.
You have overthrown the covenant of your servant, you have dishonoured his sanctity and cast it to the ground. You have destroyed all his walls, you have brought dread upon his defences. All the wayfarers have looted him; he has become an object of scorn to his neighbours. You have given his enemies the upper band over him; you have gladdened the hearts of all his foes. You have turned aside the sword that should have helped him; you have not supported him in war. You have stripped him of his immaculate attire; you have dashed his throne to the ground. You have diminished the length of his sovereignty; you have covered him with confusion.
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All this came upon Jerusalem the maidservant, in which there reigned also some sons of the free woman,
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holding that kingdom on a temporary lease, while possessing, by true faith, the kingdom of the Heavenly Jerusalem, whose sons they were, and placing their hope in the true Christ. How these things happened to that kingdom is revealed in the historical records to those who care to read them.
11. The
substance of the people of God
, in
Christ in virtue of his incarnation
After these prophecies, the prophet turns to address supplications to God; but the prayer is itself also an act of prophecy. ‘How long, Lord, do you turn away, to the end?’
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We must supply ‘your face’, on the analogy of another passage, ‘How long do you turn away your face from me?’
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That is why some texts read here ‘are you turned away’, instead of ‘do you turn away.’ Still, a possible interpretation is, ‘… do you turn away your mercy, which you promised to David?’ Then what is the meaning of ‘to the end’? It must be ‘right up to the end’; and ‘the end’ is to be understood as the last time, when even that nation is destined to believe in Christ Jesus.
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Before that end those distressing events were bound to happen which the psalmist had lamented previously. This is the reason for the next words, ‘Your anger blazes out like fire; remember what my substance is.’
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The best way of taking this is to refer it to Jesus as the substance of that people from whom he derived his physical nature.
The psalm continues, ‘For you have not created all the sons of men for nothing.’ The truth is that all the sons of men
would
have been created for nothing, had there not been one Son of Man who was the ‘substance’ of Israel, a Son of Man through whom many sons of men would be set free. For at this time all mankind had fallen from the truth into futility through the sin of the first man; that is why another psalm says, ‘Man has become like a thing of futility; his life passes away like a shadow.’
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And yet God did not create all the sons of men for nothing, seeing that he sets many free from this futility through Jesus the Mediator; while as for those who, in his foreknowledge, were not to be set free, he created them for the advantage of those who were to be liberated, and to mark the contrast between the two mutually opposed cities. Thus we may be sure that their creation was not in vain; it was included in a design of supreme beauty and justice, a design for the whole rational creation.
Then follows this passage: ‘What man is there who will live and not see death? Who will rescue his own soul from the clutches of hell?’ What man indeed, unless it is that ‘substance’ of Israel, the descendant of David, Christ Jesus. For it is of him that the Apostle says, ‘in rising from the dead he dies no more; and death will no more hold sway over him.’
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For he will live and will not see death, though on this condition: that he will first have died, but will have rescued his soul from the clutches of hell, where he descended in order to undo the bonds of hell from some of the dead. Moreover, he will have rescued his soul in virtue of that power he speaks of in the Gospel: ‘I have the power to lay down my life; and I have the power to resume it again.’
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