Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Remains of the Second and Third Centuries/Melito, the Philosopher/Chapter 13

by Various

VI.

Two Scholia on Genesis XXII. 13.^[1]

The Syriac and the Hebrew use the word “suspended,”^[2] as more clearly typifying the cross.

The word Sabek^[3] some have rendered remission,^[4] others upright,^[5] as if the meaning, agreeing with the popular belief, were—a goat walking erect up to a bush, and there standing erect caught by his horns, so as to be a plain type of the cross.  For this reason it is not translated, because the single Hebrew word signifies in other languages^[6] many things.  To those, however, who ask it is proper to give an answer, and to say that Sabek denotes lifted up.^[7]

Footnotes

1. In the edition of the LXX. published by Card. Caraffe, 1581.
2. κρεμάμενος.  The Hebrew is זחאנ, the Syriac ***, both meaning simply “caught.”
3. See note on the fragment just before.
4. ἀφεσις.
5. ὄρθιος.
6. Lit. “when translated.”
7. ἐπηρμένος.