and with the trumpet of God shall descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive, who remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
LVII. I have set these things forth for you briefly, Theophile, as drawn from the divine Scriptures, so that by guarding with faith what has been written and looking forward to what is to come, you may keep yourself without offense to God and to men, awaiting the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, B in which, after raising our saints, He shall rejoice with them, glorifying the Father. To Him be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.
OF SAINT HIPPOLYTUS BISHOP AND MARTYR DEMONSTRATION AGAINST THE JEWS
FRANCISCO TURRIANO INTERPRETER.
1. Incline your ear, O Jew, and hear my words, and attend. You often boast that you condemned Jesus the Nazarene to death, and that you offered Him vinegar and gall to drink; and you think this is glorious. Come then, and let us consider together whether you boast unjustly, O Israel, and whether that little vinegar and gall brought this terrible threat upon you; whether it is because of that that you are in these infinite calamities.
II. Let there come forth into the midst, therefore, he who speaks through the Holy Spirit and is truthful, David the son of Jesse. He, while singing certain things prophetically concerning the true Christ, and celebrating our God by the singing of the Holy Spirit, clearly heralded everything that was done by the Jews during His passion; in which Christ, who humbled Himself and put on the form of the servant Adam, as if from our own person, calls upon God the Father who is in heaven, and says in the 68th Psalm: “Save me, O God, for the waters have entered even unto my soul.”
A I am stuck in the mire of the deep,” that is, into the corruption of Hades, because of the disobedience in paradise; “and there is no substance,” that is, no help. “My eyes failed from hoping in my God, for when He shall come and save me.”
Then, having said these things, Christ speaks henceforth as if from His own person: “‘The things which I did not plunder,’ He says, ‘then I restored,’” that is, those things which I did not sin, for the sin of Adam I endured death. “‘Because, O God, You know my foolishness, and my transgressions from You are not hidden,’” that is, He says, I did not transgress; therefore, “‘let them not be ashamed who wait for me to see my three-day resurrection,’” that is, the apostles. “‘Because on Your account,’” that is, for the sake of obeying You, “‘I have suffered reproach,’” that is, the cross, B when the Jews “covered my face with shame;” when “‘I became estranged to my brothers by blood, and a stranger to the sons of my mother,’” that is, the Synagogue. “‘Because the zeal of Your house, Father, has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach You,’” and of those who sacrifice to idols, “‘have fallen upon me.’” Therefore, “‘those who sat in the gates talked against me;’” for they crucified me outside the gate; “‘and they sang against me who drink wine,’” that is, at the feast of the Passover. “‘But I, in my prayer to You, O Lord,’ was saying: ‘Father, forgive them,’” that is, the Gentiles, “because it is the time of the good pleasure of the Gentiles. May not therefore the storm” of temptations “overwhelm me, C nor the deep swallow me up,” that is, Hades. “‘For You will not abandon my soul to Hades,’” nor “‘let the pit close its mouth upon me,’” that is, the tomb. “‘For the sake of my enemies, deliver me,’” so that the Jews may not boast, saying, “Let us swallow him up.”
All these things Christ prayed economically as a man, being true God. But, as I have said before, it was the form of a servant that was saying and suffering these things. Wherefore He added, saying: “‘My soul awaited reproach and misery,’” that is, I suffered voluntarily, not because of any force; yet “‘I waited for someone who would sorrow with me, and there was none.’” For all my disciples left me and fled; “‘and I sought for one to comfort me, and did not find.’” D
Hear attentively, O Jew, what Christ says: “‘They gave gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.’” And these things He suffered at your hands. Hear the Holy Spirit saying what He repaid you in return for that little vinegar. For the prophet says, as if from the person of God: “‘Let their table become a snare, and for a retribution.’” Which retribution 32 Christ says: “They gave into my food gall, and into my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” For it is written in the sixty-eighth Psalm in the person of Christ: “And they gave into my food gall, and into my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” Or let the Jews say who he is who says these things in the prophet, and let them demonstrate from history the one who was fed with gall for food and given vinegar to drink.
A What recompense does he speak of? It is manifest: the misery that now holds you.
VI. Hear then what follows: “Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see.” But you have been darkened in the eyes of your soul with a dark and eternal blindness. For when the true light rose, you wandered as in the night, stumbling and falling in pathless places, as those who have forsaken the way that said: “I am the way.” Then hear what is more urgent: “And bow down their back always.” That is, that they may serve the nations, not for four hundred and thirty years, as in Egypt, nor for seventy, as in Babylon, but always, he says, bow [them] down into slavery. What then do you hope to be delivered from the misery that possesses you, vainly and to no purpose? For what is more astonishing is this: it is not unjustly that he prayed for the blinding of your eyes, but because you covered the eyes of Christ (whose) you were slapping. And for this reason, “bow your back always” into slavery. And because you poured out his blood with wrath, hear the requital: “Pour out upon them thy wrath, and let the fury of thy anger take hold of them.” And: “Let their habitation be desolate”; the famous temple, of course. B
VII. But why, O prophet, explain to us, why was the temple devastated? Was it on account of that old construction of the calf? Was it on account of the people’s idolatry? Was it on account of the blood of the prophets? Was it on account of the adultery and fornication of Israel? By no means, he says. For in all those cases they were always deemed worthy of forgiveness and indulgence. But it is because they put to death the Son of the Benefactor, for he is co-eternal with the Father. Whence he says: Let, O Father, “their temple be desolate; for they persecuted him whom thou” for the salvation of the world willingly “didst strike,” that is, they persecuted me with a violent and unjust death. For this is what it signifies, “and they have added to the pain of my wounds.” Firstly, I had pain as a lover of mankind because of the error of the nations, but to this pain they added another for me, having wandered themselves. Therefore, “add iniquity upon their iniquity, and let them not enter into thy justice,” that is, into thy kingdom, “but let them be wiped out of the book of the living, and not be written with the just,” that is, with their holy fathers and patriarchs. C D
VIII. What do you say to this, O Jew? Neither Matthew nor Paul says these things, but David, your own Christ, who renders and pronounces the fearful judgments against you on account of Christ. And like the great Job, speaking to you who talk against the just and true, he utters thus: You bought Christ like a slave; you came to him like a robber in the garden.
IX. I shall also bring into the middle the prophecy of Solomon concerning Christ, that which openly and clearly, that which to the Jews
them at the present time, but also what will happen to them in the future world on account of the insolence and daring which they committed against the Prince of Life. For the prophet says: "The ungodly reasoned," regarding Christ, saying correctly: "Let us lie in wait for the righteous, because he is difficult for us, and he is opposed to our works and our words, and he reproaches us for our sins against the law, and he boasts that he has the knowledge of God, and he calls himself the Son of God." Then he says: "He is grievous to us even to behold, because his life is unlike others, and his paths are strange. We are considered by him as counterfeit, and he abstains from our ways as from filthiness, and he blesses the final end of the righteous."
And again, hear this, O Jew. No one among the righteous or the prophets called himself the Son of God. Solomon, therefore, says again, as if in the person of the Jews, concerning this righteous one, who is Christ: B "That he became unto us a rebuke of our thoughts, and he boasts that he has God as his Father. Let us see, therefore, if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end; for if the righteous one is the Son of God, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hands of those who oppose him. Let us condemn him with a shameful death; for there will be a visitation of him from his words."
And again, David says in the Psalms concerning the future world: "Then Christ shall speak to them in his wrath, and in his anger he shall trouble them." And again, Solomon says concerning Christ and the Jews, that when the righteous one stands in great confidence before the face C of those who afflicted him, and of those who rejected his words, they, seeing him, shall be troubled with terrible fear, and they shall be amazed at the unexpectedness of his salvation; and they shall say within themselves, acting in repentance, and groaning for the anguish of spirit: "This is he whom we once held in derision and as a proverb of reproach. We fools accounted his life as madness, and his end as without honor. How is he numbered among the sons of God, and his lot is with the saints? Therefore we have wandered from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness has not shone upon us, and the sun has not risen upon us. We have filled ourselves with the paths of iniquity and destruction. We have traveled through pathless D deserts, but we have not known the way of the Lord. What has our pride profited us? All those things have passed away like a shadow."